JESUS AND EMPIRE

Richard Beck, professor and author wrote,

“So this post is a bit of a throwback, harkening back to the Bush years where talk of Constantinianism was common on Christian blogs. 

If you don’t remember those years, the Constantinian heresy refers to when the Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. The heresy was in fusing Jesus with empire.

Again, this was a point that was frequently raised during the Bush years, and while it is less common to find a conversation about Constantinianism on Christian blogs and Twitter today, I think it’s still the place to begin when looking for the “real” Christianity. Specifically, what poisoned the well of Christianity, then and now, was the marriage of the gospel with empire, the cross conflated with the nation state, the church sacralizing national ambitions. The great heresy of the faith was when Christians became
patriots. 

I know Yoder (John Howard Yoder) is a problematic figure, but he was exactly right in pointing out that the great heresy of Christian history, the demonic taproot of “bad Christianity,” is the Constantinian heresy, the mixing of “God and country.” 

My opinion is that to mix politics and religion is to build a bomb that will blow up in our face and perhaps blow our heads off. I am for God. I am for country. Two sentences, not one.

“Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.” Jesus