Speaker 1Welcome to Disarming Leviathan, a podcast designed to equip you to missionally engage American Christian nationalists. For more info on today's guest and our suite of resources,
Speaker 2visit disarmingleviathan.com. Matthew Taylor, welcome back to the Disarming Leviathan podcast. I'm so glad to be with you today. You thought to yourself after your last book, you know what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to walk right up to a hornet's nest and just punch it full fist. You've written a book that uses the language tyrant, defying tyrants, and then you throw in just for good measure, antichrist. These are big words that are scary and for many of us conjure up, you know, cosmically maniacal, malformed imagery. So A, as a person who put Leviathan in his book title, I give you props, sir. Second, why defying tyrants?
Speaker 3Yeah, good question. And it's always, it's always great to be with you, Caleb, as a fellow hornet nest kicker. So I genuinely think that defying tyrants is actually a very good encapsulation of the way that Jesus approached politics. In fact, my alternate title that the publisher rejected was defying Caesar, because that's actually a quote from the Bible. In fact, it's when the religious leaders in Jerusalem, the Jewish religious leaders in the gospel of John, are confronting Pilate about Jesus and saying, no, you need to do something about this. Part of their argument is, don't you know that anyone who claims to be a king is defying Caesar? And they're right. That is correct. Anyone within the Roman empire who claimed to be a king was implicitly and explicitly challenging the authority of Caesar. And Jesus was doing that. Right. And so I think we need to, we need to recover the radical politics of Jesus in this moment. We need to access those again, because I think if we look throughout Christian history, the early church was known for their anti-authoritarian views. Now they wouldn't have used that language, but they were persecuted by the Roman empire, not because the Roman empire was pagan and hostile to monotheists. I mean, they were persecuted by the Roman empire, not because the Roman empire was pagan and hostile to monotheists. I mean, Jews were monotheists. They existed within the Roman empire. They made about 10% of the Roman empire in the lifetime of Jesus. They had come to more or less an accommodation with the Roman empire. It was the Christians who kept getting in trouble. And I try to explain why in the book, but really it came down to they would not bow before Caesar. They would not bow and make obeisance before Caesar who claimed to be a god, what was called the imperial cult. And Jesus also spoke about this in the gospels and challenged it in the gospels. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that that is where we see the steely spine of the early church. And unfortunately, throughout history, Christians have found ways to accommodate empire, found ways to incorporate empire, found ways to ally themselves with empire, found ways to get in bed with emperors. And all of that, I think, is in profound violation of the teachings of Jesus. And so I'm calling people back to how did Jesus actually inhabit his own authoritarian moment? And what can that maybe teach us in our moment of incipient authoritarianism? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2they'll fight that you know basically using the weapons of this world to fight with one another when you talk about defying tyrants what does the defiance look like that jesus invited us to practice yeah that that's a very
Speaker 3important question because um i i think the temptation is always to say we can dismantle the empire using the tools of the empire you oh they have a bad kind of power if we just impose ourselves in the position of caesar then we can wield a good kind of power i think jesus calls into question all exercises of coercive all the ways that that human beings try to use hierarchy and pressure and coercion to force things on other people right how how does god come to us in the person of jesus god does if god wanted to god could have had jesus born in caesar's palace god could have put him on the throne problem solved roman empire is now christian if that was god's intention to christianize the roman empire that that could have been done in a heartbeat except that wasn't what god did instead god becomes the lowest god becomes the the the peasant preacher on the outskirts of the roman empire who is going around healing people who's going around speaking about this radical even illogical kingdom of god and inviting people into a different way of inhabiting their their circumstances and i think i i mean i i grew up evangelical and i i i've heard people preach these passages that you're referring to over and over and over and i feel like they always shade it wrong right because they're like well the the there were people in jesus's time who believed in radical overthrow of the roman empire physical violent overthrow and that's that was the kind of messiah that people were expecting at the time but jesus came and he was preaching a message of the kingdom of god of an otherworldly kingdom that that does not inhabit these kind of political times it was a spiritual kingdom and so that's why they killed him was he wasn't the right kind of messiah as if those were the only two options right jesus in the incarnate way that he lived cared deeply not only about souls not only about minds and convincing minds he cared deeply about bodies what does jesus do in his entire ministry he's always touching and healing and caring for bodies feeding serving raising from the dead bodies right that that is that that is a very embodied ministry that jesus has which is is the very definition of what incarnation is right to be embodied and i think that we need to be concerned about the way that governments and institutions treat bodies treat people and so i i don't think it's all about the body it's all about the body it's all simply about violent rebellion you cannot find any justification of violent rebellion against the empire in any of jesus's teachings as far as i can tell and that was obviously not what he and his followers practiced but what you can find is a theological dissidence a resistance to the mindset to the vision of power that existed within the roman empire and when jesus i mean quite explicitly in mark chapter 10 points to the rulers of the gentiles right points to the roman authorities and says hey look they they love to be tyrants he uses that word that they they are tyrants over each other but it is not so among you speaking to his disciples it's not so among you instead whoever wants to be the greatest must be the slave of all whoever wants to be the the one who who is most honored in the kingdom of god needs to be the one who is the the servant of all because that's who jesus is right and so jesus teaches us a model of divesting ourselves of power of confidently accepting who we are in god and then giving up the coercive power that we might wield over other people that power to dominate that even the desire to dominate and instead to care and love for people as fellow human beings created in the image of god and so i i do think that it and we see this even in mary's magnificat right that she is calling for god to tear tyrants from their thrones for the ultimate day of the lord as they say in the hebrew bible but she is not taking up arms against the empire but there there is a deep subversive vision that she has against the hierarchical nature of the roman empire in that
Speaker 4in that little poem reminded of that scene in the garden where the soldiers
Speaker 2come to take jesus and haul him off and you know some of his disciples are there and peter is like uh-oh they're gonna take jesus from me who's very precious to me who i love dearly so i what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna you know take out the sword and then he strikes you know one of the dudes cuts his ear off malchus's ear and jesus in that scene says no no like we don't do that here the one who's gonna live by the sword dies by the sword so he subverts that that type of power and then he heals the dude's ear which shows a reconciling or redeeming power that's greater than the power of the sword and the part The part that you mentioned, right, the leaders of the nations, you know, dominate over others. May it not be so with you. There's the foot washing thing. I mean, all of these, Paul in Philippians is meditating on this thing. Jesus did not consider this, you know, type of equality with God a thing to be, you know, grasped onto to dominate over others, but laying it down for others. So there's just all through Christian scripture, these calls to a use of power that's a cruciform power, not a sword power. Then the church spreads. People's lives are changed. The gospel goes forth, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, ends of the earth. And, you know, a couple hundred years go by. Then all of a sudden, some people in power, namely, like in and around that big town in Italy. Rome, I think, you know, they start getting some, some, some sniffs of Christianity. In fact, one of the emperors says that he became a Christian. He had a dream, I think, or a vision. What's that dude's name? They named a town after him. Constantine. Yeah. I have this vague memory from like Western Civ class in high school that there was a like a cross drawn. And he had all those soldiers draw the cross on the shield and in this symbol conquer, I think, is what the idea was. First of all, like, how did we get from may it not be so with you to in this symbol conquer? And, and what do you make of all that Christendom stuff?
Speaker 3Yeah. So, I mean, I think the temptation to access and utilize worldly power. Was always there for Christians and Jesus talked about this, right? He talked about, uh, one of the central, uh, metaphors or images from my book is the parable of the wheat and the tares, right? That they're, uh, that, that, that sewn into the field of good wheat are these poisonous weeds that will poison people. They don't poison their, the, the, the fellow plants, they poison people, right? They're dangerous to the outside world. And Jesus says, that's what it will be like to be a part of the kingdom of God, to be one of my followers. Is that you will be a, a, a life-giving wholesome crop surrounded by poison looks like you that is indistinguishable from you until the harvest, right? He talked about false prophets and false messiahs and people who come doing miracles in his name saying, Lord, Lord, and he doesn't know who they are, right? Jesus warned us that many of the people who follow him would be awful. And he was saying this long before. And he was saying, Lord, Lord, and he doesn't know who they are, right? But then Constantine comes along and really proves Jesus, right? I mean, Constantine's dream, this dream that he has is explicitly about doing violence in Jesus's name. That, like that, that, that is his conversion story is he had a dream and Jesus told him, go and use the symbol of the cross. And some versions of the Cairo, another ancient Christian symbol as, as, as a, as a mode of conquest, as a powerful conquest over your enemies and go and slaughter people in my name. It sounds a lot like Jesus, right? But that is what happens when you start blending empire with the way of the cross. When Jesus is tempted by the devil, right? One of the things the devil offers him is all the kingdoms of the world. Again, if he had wanted it, he could have had it. But he didn't go that route again, because he wanted to teach us a way outside of dominating others, a way of, of inhabiting humanity that cares for our fellow human beings and serves them. He loves their interests before our own, that loves our enemies. Empires don't love their enemies. They conquer them. That's, that's the whole point of being an empire. So when, when Constantine is along and, and, and really we, I think we need to put a lot of the onus on Constantine, but we also need to recognize there are a lot of Christians who went along with him and, and the emperor who actually proceeded Constantine at the end of the third century. Diocletian was one of the worst persecutors of Christians. And so you have this head snapping experience of going from. Awful persecution of Christians in the empire to suddenly the emperor is Christian, right? And all these Christians started saying, Hey, isn't this great? And by a few decades after Constantine, about half or more of the empire is identifying as Christian, as far as we can tell. Right? So you had this mass conversion to Christianity, but what were they converting into? They were not converting to be a part of the persecuted church. They were converting to join the bandwagon. They were converting to become. To be the persecutors, right? To be on the side of the emperor. There's all these new incentives. And so part of the point I'm trying to make in the book is Christianity has always been a mixed bag. It's always been a weedy garden to use Jesus's image. And that, that's just the nature of Christianity. And so that means that the expansion of Christianity is not always a good thing. And when people talk about revival and the need for revival, I always want to ask, because there are real revivals, I've witnessed when the Holy Spirit moves in a community and people are transformed and become more Christ-like and become people who serve and care for their neighbors, who care for the poor. That is the work of God. That is the fruit of the Spirit. But there are a lot of powerful communicators out there who can stir up a lot of emotion and use very spiritual language. But all that they're trying to do is revivify the empire. All they're trying to do is bring back a model of Christianity. Christian power and invite people into that. And to me, that is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus.
Speaker 4Yeah. Yeah. If you want to know if there's a revival, ask the poor. Yeah. Great point. Great question. The conflation of Christian power, or at least Christian influence with the power of the state,
Speaker 2goes back hundreds
Speaker 4of years.
Speaker 2We see it, certainly Constantine, you see it in, you know, different parts of the world at different times. It takes on different forms. In Northern Africa, there were, you know, Christian kings and they said to their kingdom, we're all Christian now. Okay. And it is this idea that you could spread allegiance to Jesus. And all that that means, right, fruit of the Spirit, confession, repentance, life transformation, 1 Corinthians 13, love, all of that is expression of allegiance to Jesus, at least according to the New Testament. But the idea that you could spread that through coercion, domination, pressuring, it starts, it's a contradiction in terms, a categorical error. And when governments start using God. God. Talk. Usually, Matthew, I think you might agree with this. Usually, it's to take the power of the God talk to justify their own actions that they find difficult convincing people to do otherwise. So, for instance, if I'm an emperor and I'm having a difficult time getting my constituents to go along with a war that I want to do, I might say, gang, you love God. You have, you know, spirit. You have a lot of spiritual, you've got a lot of emphasis on spirituality. Aha. God wants us to go to war. Not just against the people I tell you are my enemies or our enemies, but against God's enemies. And it leverages that desire that people have to, you know, be in touch with the spiritual or follow God or give allegiance to Jesus. And the emperor gets to use it to, you know, force people to do something they may not do otherwise. So, is that happening today?
Speaker 3I can't really. Oh, oh, I can think of maybe a couple examples of that. I mean, yeah, this is the idea of Christendom. Many people, when they hear the word Christendom, they think that that's a synonym of Christianity. It's a related concept. It's not the same thing. Right? Christianity is all of the people who have identified as Christian or a part of Christianity. Right? Whether you're the majority or the minority, you are part. You're part of Christianity. Christendom is the idea of the lands and the peoples who are ruled over by Christian rulers. It has physical boundaries to it. Right? And that's the conversion that happens with Constantine. It's not, oh, Constantine becomes a Christian. Well, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I don't, I'm not going to weigh in on the eternal destination of Constantine's soul. But what did happen was the invention of this idea of Christian empire. And suddenly when the empire has boundaries that are Christian boundaries, those boundaries need to be policed. And when the empire has enemies that are non-Christians, well, Well, then the Christian empire needs to inflict pain upon its enemies because that's what empires do. They can't forgive people. It can't love its enemies, right? And so suddenly it becomes this institutional cooptation of Christianity around the will of empire and the emperor himself. And there's all kinds of other people who collaborate with the emperor. I mean, the Crusades are originally announced by Pope Urban II, and he's saying a lot of things that we hear today. He's saying these Muslims, these heathens, these pagans have taken over the Holy Land where Jesus lived. Now, he forgets to mention that Muslims happen to have been living there for about 300 years at that point, right, and ruling over those areas. But no, they are devastating the kingdom of God is what he says. And so this is where we get the idea of a Holy Land that we need to go and fight a holy war to conquer. I mean, like, have you heard any crusades? Have you heard any Crusader language lately? Our Secretary of War, who wants to be our Secretary of Holy War, is going around all the time talking about how he is enacting God's mission, right? And there's these Christian nationalists who go around saying they'll hold conferences with titles like Blueprints for Christendom 2.0. Yeah. As though version 1.0 was such a good idea that you just need to tweak a few bugs, right? Right, yeah. Christendom is one of the worst ideas in human history. One of the most. Damaging ideas in human history. Christendom has given us crusades. Christendom has given us pogroms. Christendom has given us European colonialism that was done in the name of expanding Christianity and conquering the world for Jesus. Christendom has given us the enslavement of African and Caribbean peoples. Christendom is a horror. And it has produced horrors throughout history
Speaker 4because it is a bastardization of the gospel.
Speaker 3We'll be right back. we have good news. A God walks among you. A God has been made ruler over you. Good news. You're pacified. You're conquered. You're dominated. Now bow in worship. And so when the Christians start adopting this term euangelion, even that is a mode of defying the empire, a mode of challenging the empire. But too often, and this is what the Antichrist do, they take the gospel of Caesar, the gospel of power and domination, and substitute it for the gospel of Jesus, of love and liberation, and claim that it's the gospel of Christ. And that is how they become
Speaker 2Antichrists. So those of us who take on the name of Christ, how might we then live now in a land of tyranny and Antichrist, which is also the same land that Jesus was kicking around in?
Speaker 3I agree. I do think what's different now, is in Jesus's time, the persecuting empire was pagan. And so, and I don't think that there was at any point in the New Testament that you can find the early church even conceptualizing the idea of a Christian-dominated society. It's just not there, because that was not their political circumstances, and I don't think they were imagining that becoming their political circumstances. So it's a bit of a new problem, at least from the perspective of the early church that we now have Christian tyrants, right? That started with Constantine about 200 years after the completion of the New Testament. And so, but I think we can think about the principles that Jesus taught us and the way that he lived. And what I look at in the life of Jesus, the way that he defied the empire, the way that he challenged it, was one, caring for the people who were suffering at the hands of empire. I mean, that is what the ministry of Jesus, is doing, right? He's caring for the outcasts and the people who are suffering. I mean, part of the reality of the Roman empire was most people, probably close to 60, 70% of people, could barely get enough calories to sustain their bodies. It was mass impoverishment and starvation. And so when Jesus is going around with these mass feedings, feeding the 5,000, feeding the 4,000, he is challenging the economic system of the empire. When Jesus is healing the bodies of these people who are outcasts and people who cannot work, who cannot provide for themselves, he is challenging this economic system around him. So I think we need to be doing that. We need to be paying attention to the people that are being pushed to the margins, in this case by Christian nationalists and Christian governments claiming that they are doing in the name of Christ. Those are the people that we should be most concerned about caring for. The least, the lowest, the prisoner, the people who are starving, the migrant, the naked who need to be clothed. I mean, that is what Jesus taught us. But I think even that is a form of challenging the empire. Second, I think we need to hold up the mirror to the empire. And when our government or cabinet secretaries or our president or the horde of pastors who surround him and propagandize him claim that they are doing these things in the name of Jesus, I think those of us who are loyal to the way, of Jesus need to speak up and say, no, that is wrong. Actually, that is not the way of Jesus. And then the third thing is the hardest, but it's the one that Jesus lived. And that is some points. I mean, we don't take up arms in the name of Jesus. To me, there is no holy war in the way of Christ. I cannot find any justification in the New Testament for any sort of holy war. But I think the way of Jesus is the way of Jesus. The way that Jesus did directly challenge the empire was to put himself between the empire and the people, to stand between the lynching mob and its victim, to stand between the colonizing army and the people of Judea, his own people. And so what Jesus is doing when he goes to the cross, and I would argue when he's staging this confrontation with the empire and its power and challenging the whole mode of the way that the temple was being used in his lifetime, that is all he's doing. And so I think that is the way of Jesus. It's also a mode of confrontation, but it's a mode of confrontation through sacrifice. Of putting ourselves in a position where we might actually receive the violence of the empire. I'm not saying that we go and try to become martyrs, but I think we look throughout history, many of the people who have been martyred as Christians, many of the people who've been persecuted as Christians, they've been persecuted by Christians, right? It's not pagans and Muslims, and Buddhists who are doing the persecuting. It's often the Christians who are doing the persecuting. And we see that today as well, because Christian nationalism and Christian imperialism and Christian supremacy are all about privileging one kind of Christianity. Whatever the person who holds that view is trying to push, it's not about including all Christians, because all Christians are pretty messy and open category. They want to enforce their vision of Christianity, their version of harmful Christianity. And I think those of us who adhere to the path of Jesus, the narrow path of Jesus, we need to resist authoritarianism. We talk so much about imitating Jesus, and what would Jesus do? That's a really good question. Why is it that we apply that to all these questions of personal piety and morality and all these sorts of things? We never think about Jesus's politics, how he actually inhabited his political moment. Right? And I'm not saying that that cashes out, no, oh, it's this clear partisan agenda, and therefore we should all vote Democrat. No, no, no, no, no. Like, don't make this simplistic. I am as opposed to left-wing tyranny as I am to right-wing tyranny. I feel obligated to that by my belief in the gospel. But right now, we are inhabiting a moment where right-wing Christians are claiming the mandate of heaven to do violence. Against people made in the image of God.
Speaker 4And therefore, I think we have to oppose that out of our commitment to the gospel. Matthew, you've given us some
Speaker 2deeper insight into an often overlooked portion of Jesus' ministry, his methods, his way, his life, his death, his resurrection. And so thank you for your work in shepherding us. And this way, where can people find you and your work?
Speaker 3So most of where I'm writing contemporary reflections is on Substack, Matthew D. Taylor's Reckonings. People can sign up and follow me there. I'm going to be doing some speaking around the new book. So the book, Defying Tyrants, gets published on October 6th. You can pre-order it now if you haven't already. But I'm going to be doing some speaking around. So you can go to my website, drmatthewdtaylor.com. And request me as a speaker or bring the book tour to your town if you want. And but I live in Baltimore and I do a lot of kind of media commentary as well. So if you just kind of keep track of my social media, you'll see what I'm up to.
Speaker 2Matthew, thank you so much for being with us.
Speaker 4Thank you, Caleb.
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