“Turning away” from the American Empire [American politics #20]

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Ted Grimsrud—July 14, 2026

Back in 2004 I published an essay that I have been thinking about a lot lately. It was called “Anabaptist Faith and American Democracy” (see the link in the comments). In the essay, I reflected on interaction among three different stories, what I called (1) “the American Empire story,” (2) “the American Democracy story,” and (3) “the Anabaptist story.” My agenda was to encourage Anabaptist types to apply the convictions of their story to the Democracy story in contemporary America. I suggested that to separate the Democracy story from the Empire story would help we Anabaptists see better how we can be involved in the Democracy story.

I argued against what I saw as a tendency for people with Anabaptist convictions to too quickly dismiss engagement with the Democracy story. That is, I believed that Anabaptist convictions did have political significance and that Anabaptists should take their convictions as far as they can in our society’s political world—as far as we can go without compromising on those convictions (most obviously in the area of support for and participation in war).

Second thoughts

I thought I did a pretty good job of making the case, and the essay got a lot of attention. However, I now have some second thoughts about what I wrote. It is not that I no longer think Anabaptists should take our convictions as far as we can. I believe more than ever that Anabaptist convictions are directly relevant for all areas of life, including politics and public policy (and national security issues). At this point, though, I am much less certain that the American Democracy story can be separated from the American Empire story. Such a separation, it seems to me, would have to be possible for bringing the Anabaptist and American Democracy stories together. I now sense that for the United States, the Empire story has always been the dominant story and is now more than ever. It may be that there is no Democracy story apart from the Empire story in this country.

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The Death Spiral of the American Empire [American Politics #19]

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Ted Grimsrud—July 2, 2026

[I have been overwhelmed for several months (my last post was March 2) by the cacophony of voices claiming to explain what is actually going on in the Iran War (and in American foreign policy in general). I have continued to read a fair bit every day from numerous sources. I don’t think I have a huge amount of clarity now, but it does seem objectively to be the case that the US Empire is in trouble. What follows probably won’t provide much clarity for anyone else, but I did finally find enough in my own mind to offer some current thoughts. I hope to write something weekly on these topics for a while, and I invite conversation.]

It seems impossible for a non-connected person to know what’s going on in the current wars of America. And the evidence seems to indicate that US leaders don’t know, either—including people at the very top.

Trump’s dishonesty

I find it embarrassing as an American how dishonest Trump has been ever since the beginning of the US war of aggression on Iran in late February 2026. Even before that, with the unprovoked June 2025 bombing of Iran by first Israel and then the US, Trump without batting an eye claimed that the US had destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities. This straight-out lie was recognized as such at the time by most observers.

We have been treated to the baffling spectacle of Trump claiming day after day that the US was crushing Iran. To the contrary, Iran took some blows but almost immediately retaliated with devasting effect, established control over the Strait of Hormuz, and essentially drove the US military out of the various American military bases in the area. As well, Iran visited as still undisclosed devastation on the Israeli military machine.

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Takeaways from the US/Israel attack on Iran [American Politics #18]

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Ted Grimsrud—March 2, 2026

The fog is still way too thick in the very early days of our new war to draw any stable conclusions about it. However, I believe that it is not too soon to see ways already about how the US/Israel attack on Iran underscores many of the problems humane people see with the current American Empire’s way of being in the world. Let me suggest five points.

  • We do well to redouble our work against warism. American warism created a society with an enormous military and with constant prowar propaganda so that we live in a kind of tinderbox waiting for a spark that set the fire off. Now that the nation has allowed an apparently quite war-oriented person to become president we have little potential for derailing the momentum toward an enormous disaster. What is needed, if we somehow survive the current crisis, is a concerted effort to empty the tinderbox. I don’t know how that can happen, but it is needed to prevent another similar crisis.
  • We do well to assume that the US government regularly lies, especially in relation to international affairs. We have lived with decades-long propaganda campaigns of dishonesty that have facilitated antipathy toward China, Iran, and Russia. They make it easy for our government to pursue destructive policies toward those countries with little resistance from the American people. So, we see an ongoing willingness among the American people to believe numerous mistruths regarding each of these countries as events unfold in the present.

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NEW REPRINT—Theology as if Jesus Matters: An Introduction to Christianity’s Main Convictions

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I am happy to announce the publication of a reprint edition of my 2009 book, Theology as if Jesus Matters: An Introduction to Christianity’s Main Convictions (Pandora Press, 2025), 217pp.

This book asks what Christian theology would look like if it consistently took Jesus’s central command to love God and neighbor as the most important consideration. Engaging that question, the book addresses the main beliefs Christians affirm in clear, practical, and challenging ways. Christian theology too often seems overly complicated, abstract, and removed from actual day-to-day life. Yet Jesus’s own teachings are simple, concrete, and directly engaged with people’s lives. Theology as if Jesus Matters approaches Jesus’s life and teaching as the model and core content for theology.

From the Preface to the new edition: “Reconsidering this book now nearly two decades after I first wrote it, I realize that I believe I may have produced something a bit more significant than I intended to. I believe it still works as a basic, non-technical introduction to Christian theology, and I would love for it to be used as a textbook within and beyond Mennonite circles. However, I think it also works as a constructive proposal for an important option for construing the Christian theological task. I am grateful to Maxwell Kennell and Pandora Press for making this book available again.

“Theology as if Jesus Matters offers a practice-oriented more than doctrine-oriented approach to Christian theology. It does so by placing and keeping Jesus as the center. What do all the main theological themes look like if we think of each of them as meant to serve Jesus’s call to his followers to love their neighbors? This is a serious proposal that theology center more on the gospel story in its broad biblical context than on doctrinal traditions, creeds, and confessions.”

Endorsements:

“This deeply compelling, engaging book brings theology back to the rough ground of our lived experience, where it can have traction again. Grimsrud recaptures a vision for theology that begins and ends with Jesus, and in so doing manages to call back the discipline from its metaphysical holiday to its home in the life of the messianic community.”—Christian Early, James Madison University

“Grimsrud provides an expansive, accessible, provocative, practical, and practice-able theology rooted in the life and teachings of Jesus. This book provides a foundation for a sensible, Jesus-rooted theology for the twenty-first century.”—Keith Graber Miller, Goshen College

Available online from Amazon.

Conclusion: A Christian pacifist in the American Empire [part 2]

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Ted Grimsrud—November 21, 2025

I have found Christian pacifism, properly understood, to be a most helpful framework as I try to understand the world I live in. In this series of 24 blogposts, I explain how I came to affirm pacifism and what it means for me. I have also showed how my pacifism shapes the questions I raise and criticisms I offer in relation to the American Empire. In this final post, I offer reflections on moving forward to live in the Empire in light of pacifist convictions.

Rethinking power

Christian pacifism posits two central affirmations— (1) We are called to resist and to seek to overcome evils in the world (“evil” most simply understood as that that harms life) and (2) We must work against evils in ways that do not add to the evil. The practice of pacifism helps us hold these two affirmations together. Committed to overcome evils, we engage the American Empire, the source of so many evils in our world. Committed not to add to the evil, we seek to find consistently nonviolent means as we strategize and act. One of the main ways human beings have tended to add to evil is to resist the wrong through the use of violence and coercion.

The American Empire cannot realistically be transformed in any immediate way. To try too hard to transform the Empire may lead us to take moral shortcuts that change us in ways that result to our actually adding to the evils that the Empire is doing. Violent resistance uses evil means to seek what might be good ends and may transform the effort into something that adds to the evil. On the other hand, many people try to reform the Empire through efforts that all too often actually result in compromise with the Empire on key issues and little genuinely changes.

We should recognize, then, the problematic character of conventional, top-down politics. Let’s use the term “Constantinianism” for politics that both tries to control history by making it turn out right and uses top-down power that is coercive and dominating. The embrace of such methods ensures that our efforts will add to evil, not overcome it. Pacifism understands power in a different way. It recognizes that we are not in control and that the only way to overcome evil is always to act consistently with love. One of the great insights of Gandhi and King was to recognize that ends and means must go together. We only achieve genuine healing when we act in healing ways. Violent and coercive means cannot achieve healing ends.

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23. Conclusion: A Christian pacifist in the American Empire [part one]

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Ted Grimsrud—November 18, 2025

My journey as an American citizen may be characterized as a radical reversal. I switched from a young adult ready to take up arms to serve the wishes of my nation’s leaders to an advocate for unrelenting resistance to those wishes. The reversal happened quickly back in the mid-1970s due to an intense simultaneous immersion in both a pacifist reading of the message of Jesus and a critical reading of the American Empire in light of the American war on Vietnam.

My sincerity in wanting to follow Jesus helped me to turn from the uncritical nationalism I grew up with. Jesus’s message helped me be ready to see the immorality of my country when it became apparent in unprecedented ways at the end of the war on Vietnam. The timing was significant. The hold of my embedded theology of uncritical nationalism was weakened due to Vietnam at precisely the moment I encountered the pacifist Jesus for the first time.

These blog posts have traced how I have deepened both the biblical grounding for my peace theology and my critical interpretation of the history of the American Empire in the years since 1976. I read that history through the lenses of Christian pacifism. Those lenses helped me ask questions I never would have imagined as long as I affirmed the uncritical nationalism I grew up with. When I have learned how the dynamics of imperialism have always shaped US policies, I have seen an endless series of choices for domination and exploitation that have determined the character of my country—a character full of violence, domination, and exploitation. Such choices have put the country on what now seems like an irreversible path to self-destruction.

In this concluding set of reflections, I think about how Christian pacifist convictions might contribute to the task of moral engagement within our empire. As I accept this task with utmost seriousness, I also recognize the relative powerlessness of the Christian pacifist. We do not command a massive following that we might mobilize to transform society. And the kind of power we seek to exercise is the power of service, of presence with, of compassion and love. That is, it is a kind of powerless power.

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The fatal alliance: The US and Israel

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Ted Grimsrud—November 14, 2025

Along with the various pillars of the US national security state that were established during the 1940s (such as the building of the Pentagon, establishing the nuclear weapons program, and creating the CIA and the National Security Council), another key element of the American Empire that dates back to the 1940s is America’s close alliance with Israel. The “special relationship” of the US with Israel has been the 21st century’s definitive expression of the American Empire. No other nation has as regularly backed American foreign policies. Israel’s failure to resolve its persistent conflicts with the people it has shared Palestine with throughout its existence has had huge ramifications for the US and its moral standing in the world. The US actually played only a secondary role in Israel’s foundation and early history. It was after the Six Day War of 1967 that the alliance become close and nearly unconditional.

The emergence of Zionism

The Zionist movement originated in Eastern Europe in the 19th century. These early Zionists imagined ancient Israel’s territory as a Jewish homeland. Early in the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire dominated Palestine. European Zionists began to move to Palestine and hoped eventually to gain political control of the area. The Arab population largely tolerated those initial Zionist settlements. In time as it became clearer that the new settlers did not seek harmonious coexistence and in fact wanted to displace the original inhabitants, tensions inevitably followed.

The European Zionists sought a major power to align with. Eventually, the British became that power. The Zionist cause was helped by the presence in Britain of Christian Zionists in positions of power. The British wanted a foothold in Western Asia near the newly constructed Suez Canal. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 set British policy for the following decades. It affirmed British support for the creation of a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine. The Declaration alluded to respect for the rights of the native Arab population—but only in a general sense with no support for a state for Palestinians. In fact, the Palestinians remained nameless.

Britain gained direct control over territories in the region after World War I in hopes mainly to strengthen control over the newly established oil production sites. The new League of Nations gave the British a Mandate to govern Palestine, directing the British to prepare the territory for self-governance. Palestinian Arabs increasingly recognized the Zionist settlements’ threat to their interests. However, they found it difficult to unify politically. The British overseers encouraged the tensions among the various Palestinian factions.

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Cold War redux and the Empire’s demise

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Ted Grimsrud—November 11, 2025

At the end of World War II, the leaders of the United States faced one of the most fateful crossroads in the history of the nation. What kind of relationship with the Soviet Union would they pursue? Since the Russian Revolution in 1917, the relationship had been adversarial. When Hitler declared war on the US following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, new possibilities and necessities opened up for US/USSR relations. Shouldn’t our enemy’s enemy be our friend? “Friend” would be too strong of a term for what followed, but over the next several years the Soviets and Americans formed a successful alliance that defeated the Germans.

The Cold War

As the War wound down, US leaders envisioned a new adversarial dynamic. The Soviet Union had a long history of being threatened, even invaded as in the Napoleonic wars, efforts by the West to abort the Russian Revolution, and the invasion from the Nazis. As the Soviets looked to the postwar era, the need for security would define their disposition toward the world. On the other hand, the US had hardly been under serious threat during the War and emerged with an expansive sensibility oriented toward establishing the nation as the single world leader.

The US could have gone in two different directions. One would be to respect and seek to find ways to accommodate Soviet security needs. The other would be to see the Soviets as an intractable adversary. The Americans chose the second. The alliance of World War II became a “Cold War.” The US sought, most of all, to enhance its military superiority. Between 1945 and the end of the Soviet Union, the US initiated virtually every step of intensification of the conflict. The Soviets could never match America’s lead in military capability, but they could establish a rough sense of “mutually assured destruction.” This dance deepened both blocs’ warism. Eventually, the Soviets could not keep up. Their empire imploded.

The Cold War victory left the US at another fateful crossroads. A question similar to 1945 posed itself to American leaders: Would they seek to establish a collegial and mutually respectful relationship with the new Russia? Would they recognize the major shift from the ideology of the Soviet Union? Or would they see the demise of the Communist empire as an opportunity to enhance the global power of the US as the world’s single superpower?

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The sorrows of empire

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Ted Grimsrud—November 7, 2025

The realities of the American Empire were hidden right before my eyes when I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. Much of the violence we perpetrated on the world was not hidden, it just was not part of the story we told about America. Now that I know more, I am shocked that I could have been so positive about my country. I attribute my failure to see to the power of the embedded theology of uncritical nationalism. Like most Americans, I was invested in believing the best and filtered out everything that would challenge that belief. In this post, I will give a quick overview of what I did not see with my rose-colored glasses.

The Truman Doctrine established the template for US intervention “everywhere in the world” shortly after World War II. It remains in effect down to the present. I sketch here the history of American interventions of varying severity. These engagements have been truly global, as even this quick survey will illustrate. In future posts, we will look in a little more detail at two momentous sets of interventions, America’s post-Cold War continuation of the adversarial relationship with Russia and America’s support for Israel.

The first intervention of many

Soon after World War II, American leaders justified military engagement in Greece to resist Soviet “expansionism.” As it turned out, the Soviets did not join the conflict that emerged over struggles over Greece’s political future. They kept the agreement of the Yalta Conference regarding the postwar world. Central and eastern Europe were in the Soviet “sphere of influence” (where the Soviets intervened); the Soviets recognized Greece as part of the British sphere.

In Greece, indigenous leftists fought with a right-wing monarchy that the British wanted to restore to power. By embracing military aid to the monarchists, the US affirmed the military action taken by the British beginning in 1944. The British action predated any of the military actions that the Soviets took likewise to assert their “sphere of influence” over noncooperative Soviet bloc nations. The first use of violence to resist self-determination came not from the Soviets but from the British. When postwar British leaders determined that Britain would need greatly to curtail its engagement in sustaining its empire, they encouraged the Americans to “pick up the reigns.” In Greece the Americans intervened on behalf of anti-democratic interests. The Greek civil war resulted in a victory for the right-wing forces. The victors installed a military dictatorship that oversaw an unjust political system that lasted for many years.

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The quest for a unipolar world order

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Ted Grimsrud—November 4, 2025

The several years following World War II emphatically stamped the United States as an imperial power, not one that would seek to further the ideals of Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech of 1941 (such as self-determination and freedom from war everywhere on earth). As articulated in Harry Truman’s 1947 “Truman Doctrine” speech, instead the US would commit itself to be ready to intervene militarily everywhere on earth in order to defeat its enemies. Though the practices of the American Empire in the quarter century after World War II contradicted the ideals of the Four Freedoms, most Americans embraced an uncritical nationalism that prevented them from a clear-eyed view of their country’s actual way of being in the world.

From the colonial era through World War II, the North American colonies and the US pursued a domination agenda. From the start, the colonies utilized the superior firepower of European weapons to displace indigenous peoples and created an economic system that required coerced unpaid enslaved labor. While the American Empire could have made choices that moved in more humane directions, the odds for such humane choices always remained small. At the end of World War II, American leaders faced perhaps the greatest (and last?) opportunity to choose for the more humane. The US could have actually committed to the ideals of the World War II purpose statements that reflected the long-stated democratic hopes in the American tradition.

A choice of paths

American leaders in late 1945 faced two basic options. One, the US could have pursued a multipolar world order. Such had been hoped for (but not achieved) with the League of Nations after World War I. Then, during World War II, many leaders expressed the hope that this time the great powers might do it right. They hoped for structures that would allow for many different power locations that would find ways to cooperate. These hopes led to the creation of the United Nations. This time, unlike with the League of Nations, the United States embraced its role as a world leader. In fact, this time the world leadership organization would be located in the US.

Or, in contrast, the world order could be based on the dominant power of a single nation and its close allies. World opinion at the end of the War did not allow for an open affirmation of such an approach. The two powers (Germany and Japan) whose open quest for world domination had been so devastating lost the War. No other power would dare advocate such an approach. However, the War ended with a single nation having achieved a dominant global stature that had never before existed. The US could seek dominance without openly claiming to.  

The US found option two to be irresistible and embarked on a 50-year effort to establish and sustain a unipolar world order. However, the US “victory” in the Cold War did not result in American “full spectrum dominance,” an achieved unipolar world order. Rather, the years since the end of the Cold War have seen a steady diminishment of American power. Can the American Empire give up its quest for dominance and affirm the emerging multipolarity?

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