Thread by @gwensnyderPHL

One thing I came to appreciate while working in interfaith organizing was the subversive power of sacred scriptures embedded with condemnation of empire.

Those narratives pose an inherent risk to imperialism, which is why emperors from Constantine on have worked to defang them.

https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/1290265634727591940

MLK and Malcolm X both located anti-imperialism within Abrahamic faith tradition and spread a message rooted in those truths within an empire that very much still uses Abrahamic faith tradition to justify its imperialism and colonization of lands and bodies here and abroad.

I think this is an aspect of faith that a lot of Marxists (including me, for a long time) miss when we think about religion.

Religions of state are absolutely opiates of the masses.

Religious tradition is much more complicated.

The history of nearly every faith tradition is a history of struggle for control of narrative between the oppressed and their oppressors.

Religious scripture nearly always reflects that. It's one of the central reasons there are so many internal inconsistencies in the texts.

Genesis is packed with stories of refugees fleeing tiny rotten empires, and also with stories of how those refugees became violent patriarchs imposing their own harsh will at great cost to the vulnerable.

Exodus is the story of enslaved immigrants becoming refugees once again, and also the story of a priest caste that endorsed ethnic cleansing and went on to create an elaborate legal system with rules like "survivors of rape have to marry their rapists."

Religious history-- like all history-- is very much an ongoing material dialectic still in progress.

Ancient Hebrews once had a narrative tradition that affirmed slavery.

Then they themselves collectively experienced the material condition of slavery, and the narrative changed.

Mircea Eliade's legacy is mixed and problematic, but he was spot on in saying that religion tends to center itself around the liminal, around thresholds, around the space between the divine and the material, between the knowable and the unknowable.

Religious tradition centers around that space with a mixture of fascination and horror, simultaneously proscribing it as taboo or unkosher or untouchable and centering it as the only space where knowledge and interaction with the divine can occur.

Mystics see that space as beautiful, as a transformative space beyond rule of mundane authority and social norms, as a space where the rules of man cease to matter and no authority matters except that of the divine.

That is exactly why empire sees that threshold space as such a threat, and works unceasingly to keep it off-limits to all but a small, state-loyal priestly caste.

Empire sanctions this priest caste, gives it some level of authority and political capital.

In exchange, that priest caste fences off the threshold and tells the masses to focus on the scriptures that reinforce empire and priestly hierarchy.

They demonize the mystics and tell their flock that the divine is accessible only through state-sanctioned priestly mediation.

The Roman Emperor Constantine was responsible for taking the story of a defiantly mystic colonized subject executed by Roman empire and turning it into the most persistent religion of state in written history.

He understood the threat the story of Jesus posed, so he co-opted it.

Roman empire spent the rest of its time on this planet eliminating any book or mystic that dared say that the emperor had no clothes on the whole "Jesus was pro-empire, actually" routine.

At first it seems deeply ironic and implausible that the last 2000 years of western history are largely a story of empire brutally enforcing worship of an anti-imperial mystic.

In actuality, it's a story of 2000 years of trying to defang that mystic's subversive message.

Here's a dirty secret of mainline seminary: most of them really do teach their students about that history and subversive message.

Then, they explain to them that it's just too spicy for the laity, and teach them to just keep up the work of the priestly caste.

The vast majority of the contemporary Christian priestly caste in this country very explicitly understand that their scriptures are mixed bag of mysticism that emperors and priest castes couldn't quite manage to suppress, and texts written by those who wish they could have.

Leftists raised outside of Christian religious tradition (and also those raised with fundamentalist literalism) tend to assume that the state-sanctioned version of Christianity is an accurate representation of Jesus' message.

If you aren't familiar with the difference between mystic religion and priestly religion, it's easy to look at the Christianity we see propped up by empire and the priestly caste and assume that the imperial, priestly Christianity they promote is true to Jesus' teachings.

Even within the state-sanctioned gospels, Jesus is the bane of the priestly caste and the state.

He's in temples toppling tables and making fun of priests for praying ostentatiously for audiences while showing pure contempt for the empire-widowed and empire-impoverished.

(There are a *lot* of other gospels beyond the 4 in the bible, btw. Some were very successfully suppressed, others were persistent enough that they were included in the Bible as apocrypha so the priest caste could reference them when decrying them to the illiterate masses.)

Empire-sanctioned priestly Christianity teaches that Jesus' message affirms imperialism.

Jesus' *actual* message was an extremely sharp and angry condemnation of empire and the priests who enable it.

Empire's version of Christianity is premised on one of the most obvious, massive, and long-lasting lies ever told, and overwhelming imperialist violence and priestly complicity are the only things that have kept people from collectively realizing the deceit.

Priestly complicity in the lie of imperial Christianity operates a bit like the mob.

It only works if no one talks.

If even one relatively respected priest starts having doubts or second thoughts or pricks of conscience and starts hinting that the emperor has no clothes, that Jesus actually condemned empire...

Then, well, that priest has to be eliminated to protect the lie.

The history of Roman Catholic heretic hunting is a history of systematic elimination of priests who went rogue and named the lie.

United States-supported Latin American fascism is littered with the bodies of Roman Catholic priests who made that fatal error of telling the truth.

The United States might be nominally secular, but it absolutely derives its claim of moral and therefore legal authority from its roots in and relationship with its own form of imperial Christianity.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a priest who named the lie.

Empire allowed Malcolm X to live as long as his message was that Christianity was incompatible with liberation.

He may not have been one of the priests, but the moment he began to suggest that empire Christianity was not just anti-liberatory but fraudulent, he had to go.

I'm not Christian-identified and I'm certainly not trying to suggest that getting us some religion is the answer to imperialism, but I do think it's critically important that leftists stop trusting that the priests of empire are telling the truth about the message of Jesus.

We have to understand that we exist in an empire that uses a lie about Christianity to justify its imperialism, and we have to understand that if that lie were understood and named, its claim to authority would be de-legitimized.

We have to learn to tell the difference between the complicity priests who prop up empire out of self-interest, and liberatory defector priests like Romero and King.

We need to understand the power of those who couldn't live the lie, those who have both the courage to say the empire has no clothes and the trappings of priestly authority that allow that message to be heard and listened to.

We need to listen to fascist empire when it uses assassinations of these priests to tell us that it understands them to be an existential threat to its authority.

We need to understand that empire's Christianity is not the defector priests' Christianity.

When empire and its enablers try to defang the message and legacy of a defector priest like King by re-casting him as a martyred imperial priest, we need to call it out and refuse to let them institutionalize another lie casting those who tried to undo them as like-minded allies.

Defector priests are complicated comrades.

They are, after all, people who once at some level actively sought the trappings and authority of imperial priesthood.

The assumptions desires that drove those ambitions can emerge in other forms, and we have to hold them accountable.

At the same time, they are people who found the courage and bravery to listen to their conscience and walk away from those trappings, to let go of a core part of their identity, to name a lie in a way that will (if enough people listen) get them killed.

United States empire has long sought to use priestly Christianity as a bribe to undermine Black resistance.

Empire has long held out a watered-down but real version of priestly authority to Black church as a carrot for compliance and subversion of Black liberatory struggle.

This was the dynamic Malcolm X named in his earliest days of political struggle.

United States empire has long selectively and violently worked to eliminate liberatory Black Christianities, trying to make sure that only those that reinforced imperial orthodoxy could exist.

It speaks to the enduring power of Black liberatory struggle that despite this sustained persecution, so many Black religious leaders kept realizing the risks of naming the lie, understanding the enormous material benefits of complicity, and choosing liberation anyway.

There's a reason "Deus Vult" ("God wills it") is such a popular phrase among far right fash.

It isn't just a random video game meme.

Empire has depended on the idea that its existence and dominance is divinely ordained and willed by God.

Always.

The reality is, Jesus said the exact opposite.

Empire has spent 2000 years trying to suppress that truth, killing those who named the fact that their authority is premised on the worship of a man whose core message was a condemnation of empire itself.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X both named that truth.

People listened.

They were true to Jesus' message, but heretics to state Christianity.

They wouldn't take the bribe of priestly capital and named the empire and its lies for what they were.

MLK and Malcolm X were priestly heretics to imperial religion.

So, empire did what it's always done to priests who preach the heresy of liberation, the heresy of Jesus' actual core message.

It understood them as an existential threat.

And it made sure they stopped existing.