Ted Grimsrud—June 16, 2025
In the first three parts of this series on the Bible’s radical politics (part 1; part 2; part 3), I have sought to show the continuity between the Old Testament and the story of Jesus. Throughout the Bible we see a critique of the great powers and the presentation of an alternative to the politics of domination and exploitation. The Bible presents the way of peace and restorative justice as a genuine alternative that it expects the people of the promise to embody.
In this series-concluding post, I offer some brief reflections on how to apply these teachings from the Bible to contemporary American political life. I started this series motivated by a sense of my country—and the wider world—being caught in a spiraling series of social crises. This spiral gets worse as our political system displays an increasing inability to respond to the problems with creative and transformative solutions. Can the Bible help?
The Bible approaches politics in the context of life within empire
From Genesis through Revelation, the Bible reports the people’s efforts to navigate a world dominated by ruthless great empires. These empires offer two distinct challenges to the people—(1) the constant threat of violence and oppression and (2) the constant temptation for the communities of the promise to absorb and embody the ideology of empire.
From the enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt through the conquering violence of Assyria and Babylon and down to the Romans who executed Jesus as a rebel and destroyed the Jerusalem Temple, the Bible presents empires as God’s enemies, intrinsically hostile toward Torah-guided social justice. Yet empires are also seductive and alluring—either in the sense of seeking to be honored and even worshiped by those within their boundaries (see the book of Revelation) or in the sense of providing the template for the unjust ordering of life within independent kingdoms (as in the Old Testament’s Israel and Judah).
In the contemporary United States, people of faith face a strong pull from our great power to give it our ultimate loyalty. Probably nothing reflects this call to loyalty as much as demands for support for American wars and preparation for wars. Americans, with little dissent, devote their nation’s best energies and almost unlimited resources to this warism.
The Bible’s antipathy toward empires alerts those who value its teaching that all empires, even our own empire, likely practice devastating conquering violence. However, Americans have been subject to a lifetime of teaching, propaganda, and mythologies reinforcing the message that the United States is a force for good in the world. Our country celebrates its wars. It sustains consensus support to devote unimaginable amounts of wealth to its military and to prepare to kill massive numbers of people when the state decides to unleash its military forces.
With suspicion toward American warism, peaceable people will perceive the devastation of the story of American violence. We go back to the colonial settlements that displaced millions of indigenous North Americans—often by total war against indigenous communities. These wars continued to the end of the 19th century. Linked with that warfare, the settlers forcefully imported millions of enslaved Africans to create their economic system (sustained through deeply embedded practices of violent repression and domination) that enriched the nation’s elite.
The warist violence continued to characterize the nation as it expanded first to the rest of the western hemisphere and then around the world. One hundred years separated the American visiting of thousands of violent deaths upon the Filipinos early in the 20th century from the American visiting of thousands of violent deaths upon the Iraqis. The basic method of indiscriminate unjustified violence remained the same—the same method that was used in various other instances of American-caused mass death (a representative list would include Guatemala, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Chile).
Attention to the Bible’s long and relentless critique of the great empires as God’s enemies should empower peaceable people to turn a similarly critical sensibility toward the great American empire. All it takes is a sense of suspicion to see through the mythologies of the United States as a force for good in the world and as a “Christian” country whose actions reflect God’s will.
Torah offers a counter-empire social philosophy
The Old Testament’s law (Torah) provides guidelines for healthy and responsible living necessary for human wholeness. These guidelines, given to formerly enslaved Hebrews shortly after God’s liberating intervention in the exodus, provide a counter-empire social philosophy. Torah challenges those who seek to be attentive to its teaching to remember its directly anti-empire sensibility and to look at their present-day political context in its light
Torah offers a critique of how the practices of ancient Egypt and other empires (including our own) diminish human life and violate the wholeness that God wants for all humanity. What differentiated Torah’s vision for social life from the great powers was its emphasis on welcome and care for vulnerable people (the poor, widows, orphans, immigrants). This element served for the prophets as a key barometer indicating the health of the community.
The United States has consistently lagged behind peer nations, tolerating more poverty and social stratification. As I write this essay, we witness another wave of sharp hostility from the U.S. elite toward immigrants, especially people of color. The U.S. way of war, going back to colonial Indian wars, 19th century wars (Mexican American War, the Civil War, and the later Indian wars), and so many 20th century conflicts has characteristically involved intentional violence against non-combatants including especially children, women, and older people.
Torah directly sought to prevent large groups of people being deprived of a direct connection with the land. One of the central indictments from the prophet Amos toward life in Israel was the masses of landless citizens who were grievously exploited. The United States has long deprived large numbers of people of land ownership and been content with massive poverty and the use of mass incarceration as a tool of social control.
An important set of directives in Torah also called for care for the land itself. Today we may have a greater appreciation of various ways exploitation of the land leads to devastating consequences. Yet, while the U.S. has enacted significant legislation that protects the environment, we clearly still hurtle rapidly toward major ecological catastrophes. Powerful American corporations as a class have resisted such legislation and, even as various catastrophes emerge, seek relentlessly to roll back the inadequate laws that have been enacted.
Torah includes numerous directives that call for lifting up those in the bottom social strata and limiting the wealth and power of those at the top. In contrast, the United States for half a century has seen an ever-growing gap between the elite and the underprivileged. The crass celebration of wealth that characterizes American popular culture turns the concerns of Torah on their head.
Ancient Israel as a failed state
When we read the Old Testament story as a whole we note the failure of ancient Israel’s territorial kingdom. The story of this failure offers a sharp critique of all territorial kingdoms. Something inherent in the character all such kingdoms seems to put them in tension with the will of God as expressed in Torah. The Bible does recognize that states are a given reality in human social life. We invariably organize ourselves into state-like social structures and institutions. However, from the portrayal both of the great empires and Israel’s own territorial kingdom, we are taught to be deeply suspicious of these structures and institutions. They vie with God for the ultimate loyalty of their people and react with hostility toward attempts to embody Torah.
When analyzed in the light of the biblical story, the United States presents a complicated environment for peaceable people. The country does present itself as democratic, concerned for the wellbeing of its vulnerable people, and as a force for good in the wider world. The reality has often been much different. The American story has at its core profound violence and exploitation, especially toward the indigenous population of North America.
Once the American Empire completed its conquest of the North American continent by the end of the 19th century, it turned its focus to empire-building around the world. Both the exploitation of indigenous North Americans and imported Africans and the imperial expansion far beyond North America have been justified by a powerful ideology of nationalism. Thus, the American project has proven to be a rival to the God of the Bible. Certainly, the U.S. has presented itself as the world’s great “Christian” nation— “in God we trust,” “one nation under God.” Such a presentation, though, evokes the critique of the prophet Amos. He asserted that when ancient Israelites flocked to the worship centers at the same time as they practiced devastating injustices, they blasphemed the very God they claimed to worship and serve.
The Bible’s radical politics lead to deep suspicion toward the American Empire. As a fallen Power with an inclination toward idolatrous demands, America asks for a kind of blank-check loyalty. It wants its people simply to assume the validity its state’s war-preparation and interventions that demand enormous expenditures of money, ecological health, and human lives. The American Empire currently diverts the attention of its people from the incalculable costs of its deeply embedded warism with the seeming deep polarity between its two political parties. In reality, both parties agree when they support American warism (witness the continual bipartisan support for the country’s enormous military budget).
Jesus’s upside-down empire
We find at the heart of Jesus’s message a straightforward call, “Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.” The gospels embed this message in a deeply political story. This message comes from a man given the title “Christ”—which means “king”—who stands in direct opposition to the tyrannical rulers of empires and other nation-states. The Roman Empire acknowledged this political agenda when it executed Jesus as a rebel. The call to “love God” means that this practice of neighbor love and anti-empire resistance stands as our most important and all-encompassing responsibility.
Love of neighbor serves as our central, irrevocable standard for evaluating the behavior of nation-states—as well as all other human social engagement. Obviously, applying this standard to the behavior of the U.S. government is complicated. However, some actions and policies clearly directly violate it. For example, the U.S. has been engaged in active armed conflicts for virtually the entirety of its 250-year history. Virtually none of these conflicts have been about protecting the borders of the country. They almost all have been wars of conquest, aggression, and intervention in other countries. And, as a rule going all the way back to the early Indian wars, they have been fought with virtually unrestricted violence. In the words of historian John Grenier (interestingly, a professor at the Air Force Academy), “violence directed systematically against noncombatants through irregular means, from the start, has been a central part of Americans’ way of war” (in The First Way of War, 224). This constant warism has steadily reinforced both the potentially idolatrous valorizing of the American nation-state and the othering of those labeled enemies and potential enemies (especially non-white peoples). Such dynamics can hardly be compatible with the standard of love of neighbor.
Jesus told his famous parable of the Good Samaritan in order to answer the question, “who is my neighbor?” He makes the point in this parable that the neighbor includes the person toward whom one’s nation has longstanding antipathy (i.e., the “Samaritan,” who would have been a natural enemy to Jews such as Jesus’s listeners). The parable also emphasizes that neighbor love involves hands-on efforts to meet practical needs. If we accept that the love of which Jesus speaks, linked as it is with love of God, applies to all people in all contexts, we will understand it to be a central interpretive principle for evaluating political policies. This love should shape how we think of our nation-state—much more so than the claims the state itself makes about its motives and intentions (recognizing the Bible’s clarity on the deceptive and self-serving sensibilities of the nations).
An important implication of the gospels calling Jesus the “Christ” who embodied the “Kingdom” of God has to do with political claims about Jesus and his ministry. Jesus’s meaning points to upside-down kings and kingdoms, for sure. However, that they are “upside-down” means that they are about love, not domination, not that they are not normative for all human social relationships and arrangements.
Destroying the destroyers of the earth
The book of Revelation announces that the time has come to “destroy the destroyers of the earth” (11:18). This enormously suggestive statement summarizes Jesus’s ministry during his life—and the effect of that ministry after his death and resurrection. What does “destroying the destroyers of the earth” have to do with? The rest of Revelation helps us understand that what Jesus’s ministry is about is to break the hold of anti-human structures and ideologies on humanity. The “destroyers of the earth” are those structures and ideologies (symbolized in Revelation as the “Dragon” and the “Beast”). They are “destroyed” when they are exposed for what they are and when human beings cease to believe in them and give them power.
Jesus exposed these destroyers when he practiced his radical politics of love, faced opposition from the religious and political structures and ideologies of his day, stayed true to his path to the point of death, and was raised by God to vindicate his life and prove that the fallen Powers were on the side of death and not God. Revelation symbolized Jesus’s path as “blood” that is drunk by the Powers and serves to take them down (17:6; 18). The story Revelation tells concludes with the destroyers destroyed and the “kings of the earth” and the “nations” (the human allies to the fallen Powers) healed and present in New Jerusalem.
Revelation tells us that the ideologies and structures that dehumanize are our true enemies, not human beings as human beings. Resist, expose, and debunk those ideologies and structures, and humanity might find healing and liberation. Revelation also makes clear the means of resistance that defeat the fallen Powers. The “comrades” of Jesus conquer the Dragon with the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony (Rev 12:11). “Blood” in Revelation signifies the entirety of Jesus life and teaching that led to his execution. The comrades conquer by embodying that same life and teaching.
In our setting in the 21st century American Empire, the embodiment of Jesus’s life and teaching points to the same general approach to life as it did in the first century. Focus on love of neighbor, discern ways that the Dragon tries to deceive and disempower, remain resolute in face of hostility from the Dragon and the Powers, pay attention to the needs of the vulnerable, and critique the coercive power embedded in the structures and ideologies that shape social life.
When we read the Bible, from Genesis through Revelation, with eyes open to its radical politics, we will find encouragement and guidance to join our story of love and resistance with the Big Story of love and resistance that the Bible tells.
Thinking Pacifism 
A well rounded out, and meaningful series! – With my deep thanks.
– Leonard Gross
Good wrap up to a great, important series! I’d like to add one thing to the vital list you give in the next to last paragraph which includes “love of neighbor”, “needs of the vulnerable”, discernment, remaining resolute, and “critique the coercive power embedded in the structures and ideologies that shape social life.”
Discernment and critique are vital along with love and compassion. And it does involve the “structures and ideologies” of both private and public life (shared, civic and governing processes). We have enough of a democracy left (though being seriously diminished and under further threat), that we can and must operate in that “political” realm or lose even things like freedom of speech, the press, and religion. And, to many of us operating deeply in that space, there are fast-developing good options to do so! These are things that do not endorse the status quo of either party but rather seek to transform the very structure of parties, dark money, polarization, etc.