The Evangelical Necessity of Creedal Confession in the World of Empire • Winston D

The Evangelical Necessity of Creedal Confession in the World of Empire • Winston D. Persaud 357 Outside the Theme The Evangelical Necessity of Creedal Confession in the World of Empire1 By Winston D. Persaud Abstract: The author argues that in the world of Empire where greed, violence, and idolatry pervade, the Church is challenged to recognise that it exists to witness to the radical, liberating message of the gospel of the crucified and risen Lord, Jesus Christ. The Church is challenged to recognise and acknowledge how it is a beneficiary of Empire, but that its focus is to be on the Lord Jesus Christ and not the ‘Caesars’ who cannot give the life, healing, and forgiveness that only God can give. Faithfulness to the gospel calls for creedal-confession that becomes both inevitable and necessary because the church’s confession is communal. The community in Christ needs one another in order to be faithful through mutual creedal-remembering and reminding of the identity of the God of Jesus Christ. Key Terms: Empire, Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, theological surplus, superior and inferior peoples, Caesars Creed and Empire many of the churches. In a special way this is true of the Ecumenical Creed of Nicea and Constantinople (381) in distinc- tion from other creeds of regional authority. When I speak of creedal confession, I call to mind And, even in churches where the ancient creedal paragraph eight of the Introduction in Confessing statements are not regularly used, the faith to the One Faith, which is the culmination of a study which they bear witness is confessed and lived.2 project of the World Council of Churches that be- gan 1981–82: In the Preface to the Revised Edition, Mary Tan- ner, D.B.E. soberly notes, “The challenges of the The central affirmations of the apostolic contemporary world are not identical to those of faith were set out in a particular way in the 1980s. But there could hardly be a time in the creedal statements of the early Church. history when the world is more in need of hearing These ancient creeds continue to function a confident and united voice proclaiming the good within the context of the life of faith of news of Christ for all people.”3 Rev. Winston D. Persaud, PhD, is Professor of Systematic Theology and Director of the Center of Global Theologies, and is the Holder of The Kent S. Knutson & United Evangelical Lutheran Church Chair in Theology and Mission, Wartburg Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa, U.S.A. C 2013 Wiley Periodicals and Dialog, Inc. 358 Dialog: A Journal of Theology • Volume 52, Number 4 • Winter 2013 • December I begin this article with an autobiographical Historically, religions have both served the inter- note. I was born in a colony, British Guiana, in the ests of empire and challenged its power, authority, waning years of the British Empire, whose breakup, and influence. Indeed, the histories of religions and scholars argue, was speeded up with the end of secular ideologies, which have functioned as quasi- World War II. It was in the context of this Em- religions, are filled with a mixture of teachings, pire that my great-grandparents were brought as practices, and stories that highlight progressive, indentured emigrants from northeast and north In- liberating, humanizing thrusts as well as teachings, dia, specifically from the areas of what today are practices, and stories that enslave, dehumanize, the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (and other and point to and bear the demonic. We turn now neighboring states), to British Guiana to work on to a consideration of the theme of empire as a the sugar plantations. I knew three of my grand- historical reality and as a concept in today’s world. parents: both my maternal grandfather and grandmother, and my paternal grandmother. One time, when I was a young boy, I asked my mother about Empire as a Historical Reality which of her grandparents had she known. In her and as a Concept response, she said that she had known only her maternal grandfather. In response to my question about whether her grandparents had had broth- In Day of Empire, How Hyperpowers Rise to Global ers and sisters and had she known any of them, Dominance—and Why They Fall, Amy Chua ar- she told me this story about her maternal grandfa- gues that Rome’s tolerance led to its greatness; it ther who, as a youth, had come to British Guiana was also what led to its eventual downfall, for it from India. One day, back in India (perhaps in the embraced ‘barbarians’ from the north and north- mid-1890s), when he and two of his brothers were west who were never assimilated into the empire. playing by the river, a ship came by and they could Christianity, for its part, was a persecuted sect be- hear music playing that was attractive and alluring. fore Constantine’s conversion in 312 C.E. and the He and one of his brothers were lured onto the promulgation of the Edict of Milan in 313 C.E. ship while the other brother ran home. It turned When it became the ‘official’ religion of the empire, out that the two boys were taken to the port of it practiced and promoted its own forms of intol- Calcutta from which they sailed with others to the erance against heretical Christians, other religions Caribbean, specifically to British Guiana. He and and sects. Whenever racial and ethnic-cultural iden- his brother were separated when they got there and, tities were not transcended by ‘Roman’ identity, or, as the story has come to us, they never saw each later, by the Church’s declaration that all are one other again.4 in Christ, those identities—Roman and Christian— that were de facto promoted by imperial interests and practices, the Christian faith came to be associ- 5 Power and Religion in Empire ated with violence against the religious other. This ambiguity leaves us with the unavoidable question: how do we find and lift up alternatives to that When we think about empire, we cannot but history of distortion of the gospel? notice its power to determine how the peoples Given this mixed history, Joerg Rieger argues it rules, conquers, and controls—including those that we are to look for “theological surplus” that is whose lives are spared—will live, where they will liberating. Writing about today’s context and the re- live, what opportunities for a better future for lations of Christianity and empire, Rieger declares: themselves, and especially for their progeny, will be offered, promoted or allowed, or denied. How What is new in this context is that we people are classified, divided and ruled reflect the are beginning to understand that the rela- power of empires, even the power of life and death. tions of Christianity and empire are more The Evangelical Necessity of Creedal Confession in the World of Empire • Winston D. Persaud 359 complex than has been acknowledged to possible on a long-term basis only so long as subject date. Christianity does not easily escape peoples remained alien and inassimilable. The ques- empire—understood as massive concentra- tion of identity, what determined who was a subject tions of power which permeate all aspects and who was a citizen, is essential to understanding of life and which cannot be controlled by the true nature of empires, and to their history.”10 any one actor alone. This is one of the basic Parsons is not convinced by the use of the terms marks of empire throughout history. Empire seeks to extend its control as far as possi- empire and imperial rule to describe new global net- ble, beyond the commonly recognized geo- works of power and transnational sovereignty. He graphical, political, and economic spheres, to writes: include the intellectual, emotional, psycho- logical, spiritual, cultural, and religious are- Yet the nation was not the end of history. nas. The problem with empire is, therefore, Indeed, the accelerated expansion of global that no one can escape its force field com- networks of culture, commerce, investment, pletely. Nevertheless, the good news is that and migration in the second half of the at the same time empire is never quite able twentieth century provided a powerful coun- to extend its control absolutely. Whatever terweight to the nation-state. Some scholars the extent of its influence, no empire has have gone so far as to argue that global cap- ever managed to co-opt Christianity entirely. ital now constitutes a new, more powerful Mindful of this fact, we embark on a search form of sovereignty that has eclipsed the na- for theological surplus in the Christian tional variety. Transnational forces have also tradition that resists empire and provides created new forms of pan-national identity alternatives.6 that give like-minded groups of people ad- ditional means to challenge, if not thwart, the agendas of national governments, multi- In his illuminating work, TheRuleofEmpires, national corporations, and would-be empire with its suggestive sub-title, Those Who Built Them, builders. Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall, Timothy H. Parsons rejects the notion found Although the era of formal empire is con- among “critics [today who] often link imperial am- clusively over, policy debates, particularly af- bition with capitalism.” Parsons points out that ter the terrorist attacks of 2001, frequently “the most stable and long-lived empires belonged revolved around imperial themes. Critics on to the pre-modern era, when local communities the left indicted the United States for behav- were more isolated from imperial demands for trib- ing imperially in adopting an aggressive for- ute and labor after the initial phases of conquest eign policy, while right-wing revisionists and 7 neoconservatives sought to rehabilitate em- and plunder.” Here Parsons notes a critical dis- pire to demonstrate that military force was tinction between pre-modern empires and mod- the most effective way to impose order and ern European empires, when he writes, “This also stability on a global scale.

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