A Great Multitude From Every Nation

Christian Nationalism and Revelation 7

Like you, I’m holding in heart the families under siege in Ukraine. For people in Ukraine, the sixth seal vision of an earthquake, full moon becoming like blood, stars falling from sky, and land being moved from its place is not apocalyptic vision, but apocalyptic reality. Yet again, this strange and scary biblical book contains metaphors shocking enough to help us tell the truth about suffering and injustice.

This month’s Revelation deep dive covers Christian Nationalism in the United States and what John of Patmos envisions in chapter seven as a great, international worshipping multitude. But even as I focus on religious, ethnic nationalism in the U.S., it’s worth mentioning in the context of Putin’s imperial conquest aspirations that international religious nationalisms are very much rising. Religious historian and commentator Diana Butler Bass helpfully provides a missing religious context to Putin’s grievances and invasion: “The conflict in Ukraine is all about religion and what kind of Orthodoxy will shape Eastern Europe and other Orthodox communities around the world (especially in Africa).” I pray this prayer with Jacqui Lewis:

God, be a fierce peace. May peace be more resilient than those who wish to shatter it. God, wrap your arms around the terrified. Disarm those pursuing war. —Middle Collegiate Church email, February 24, 2022

But the vision of Revelation is multiracial, international, and counter-imperial. It’s really a basic point. Yet given the recent rise of religious, ethnic nationalism in the United States (white Christians seeking to return America to an imagined Christian nation), and Revelation’s notorious abuse in the hands of extremists, it’s worth remembering that the Body of Christ is made of up a “great multitude from every nation, all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9).

The sociologists Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead have found that—contrary to some popular assumptions—being white and evangelical was not the leading predictor of voting for Trump. Christian nationalism was. That is, those who identify America as a Christian nation and believe the government should enforce accordingly were more likely to vote for Trump than white evangelicals who did not share those Christian nationalist beliefs. And while we’re at it, Christian nationalists were more likely to support xenophobic immigration policies like the border wall and patriarchal beliefs like opposing women entering the workforce. (See chapter one, Taking America Back for God). And then there’s the international conservative Christian coalition that Steve Bannon hopes will unite against Islam—which led to a bizarre cozying up of Christian nationalist leaders like Franklin Graham with Russia.           

But religious nationalism is not new, Yale historian Philip Gorski tells. Ever since America’s founding, there has been a religious, ethnic nationalism latent and sometimes manifest in the American vision. In times of deep division and war, this vision—or what I think of as an archetype—gets activated. And perhaps it’s no surprise that such Christians in those times also lean hard on apocalyptic texts like Revelation to bolster their cause. For example, Gorski writes, during the early 1700s, as New England Puritans battled Native peoples amidst French and England territorial disputes, Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather studied the biblical apocalyptic texts. Similar to Trump’s “American carnage” assessment, Mather viewed New England’s conflicts as evidence of inherent moral decline. For Mather, the white Puritan Christians were the New Israel, the real America, and he saw his Native and European enemies alike as the embodiment of evil. He predicted, “Christ would descend upon the earth in smoke and fire with his angels. And the fire would rain down on degenerate men everywhere, and the heavens would be set on fire to torment the devils there” (Quoted in Gorski, An American Covenant, 57).

Religious nationalism is not the main story Gorski narrates, but it is a significant subplot in the struggle for a democratic country. He traces its impact in the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, which is when the South’s “Lost Cause” mythology developed—the belief (Wikipedia teaches me) that the Confederacy’s cause was just, having to do with state’s rights and so-called Northern aggression instead of slavery. Gorski explains how the “Lost Cause” false history was bound up in distorted Christian faith:

American religious nationalism’s. . . sacred center was removed from New England to the Old South. . . In the Puritan version of religious nationalism, blood sacrifice propitiated an angry God. In the new Lost Cause version, such sacrifice redeemed the nation. In this formula, the nation was quietly set in God’s place. Religious nationalism had become wholly idolatrous (Gorski, An American Covenant, 106).

One detail from the Wikipedia page jumped out at me: “throughout the South, the Democrats who overthrew Reconstruction were frequently called Redeemers”—as in, redeeming the nation. There it is, as Gorski says: the nation supplanting God. It’s striking to me, thinking about this history through this week’s tragic headlines, that such “Lost Cause”-like grievances are exactly what leads to violence and war (read this opinion piece on Putin’s mythical justifications).  

Christians today, then—and not only evangelicals—activate this longstanding religious, nationalist vision of a Christian America when they:

• View Muslims as a threat to social order and subsequently strip them of rights (Harris and Perry, chapter 2)

• Falsely perceive American Christians as a persecuted minority group under siege

• Seek federal legal support or “exemption” to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people

• Lobby for privatized schooling, stemming from the belief that public schools that teach science and history are corrupting “our Christian” children. (See Katherine Stewart’s The Power Worshippers, chapter nine.)

• Center abortion as a foundational ethical issue, when it was white supremacy and the fear that government would desegregate fundamentalist schools that ultimately coalesced the religious right. (See Randall Balmer’s latest book).

In Revelation chapter 7, John interrupts his litany of disasters, stemming from six opened seals, to share a vision of worship. (That’s how the book of Revelation unfolds: some disasters here, some celestial visions there). First, John hears a number spoken: he says, “I heard the number of those who were sealed” (7:4). The number he hears is a specific number symbolizing symmetry and wholeness: twelve tribes of Israel times the same number twelve for each tribe, multiplied by a thousand. 144,000. End-times fundamentalists have had a field day with this detail, with some persuaded that 144,000 is the number of Jewish people who will be converted to Christianity in the “last days.” The irony of Christian nationalist support for the state of Israel is that they do not support the Jewish faith on equal terms and in its own right.

After hearing a verbal roll call of the tribes of Israel (oddly leaving out Ephraim and Dan, for those into those sorts of details), John sees a far larger crowd: “There was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9). First John hears the smaller, tribal and ethnic-based number; then John sees a larger, multiracial coalition of people worshipping God, once again at the throne. What’s going on, and how are these two revelations related?

Just like the narrative arc of the Bible, God starts with blessing one particular people and then ends blessing all people. In John’s mind, the promise God made to Abraham all those years ago is finally happening. All people on earth are sharing in divine blessing and grace. God told Abraham in Genesis 12: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you. . .so that you will be a blessing” (12:2) and “Count the stars. . .So shall your descendants be” (15:5). John’s multitude sure does look like such a starry number.

But contrary to religious nationalists, the particular “chosenness” in the Bible is never self-referential; it is always to be a blessing to others—until all others belong. God chooses us, each of us, in our individuality and uniqueness, to discover our vocation to bless the world. God’s choice of one people or nation gives rise to God’s choice of all peoples or all nations. So, whenever people within a country such as the U.S. claim that their country is uniquely chosen by God, well, there are at least two questions to ask: 1) Is that country or people acting as a blessing to others outside their own group? (The answer is typically a resounding no; and 2) Are they/we willing to grant that God is also uniquely choosing all other countries, groups, and peoples in their particularity? Such an ethic of particularity and universality undercuts all imperial and exclusive claims.

Of course, the imperial claims John and his community are countering are those of the Roman Empire, not Christian nationalists in the U.S., Putin’s territorial ambitions, or anyone else’s hegemonic dreams. John’s multitude cries out in a loud voice “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb” (7:10). Salvation, as feminist biblical scholar Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza describes, is a holistic vision of total physical and spiritual well-being. And the multitude is directing praise to the source of their well-being, namely, God. But to praise God for well-being and salvation is also to refuse praise to other rulers claiming to offer such. As Schüssler Fiorenza puts it:

The official source of such total well-being, peace, and salvation, according to the political ideology of the time, was the Roman Emperor. In contrast, those who stand before the throne acknowledge God and the Lamb as the ultimate source of well-being and salvation. —Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Revelation: Vision of a Just World

Heralding that salvation belongs to God is to declare that salvation does not belong to the Caesar or to the President. That’s why when any country initiates war, I believe one of the most compelling Christian responses is nonviolent, active resistance in the way of Revelation’s slain Lamb.

Amidst so much disaster, chapter seven ends with a gorgeous vision of a new reality and new world. The praise at God’s throne leads one of the heavenly representatives to issue a poetic prophecy. Those who have been through what John calls the “great ordeal” (7:14)—Revelation’s apocalyptic strife, or really any great ordeal that shakes our worlds—have John’s peaceful, holistic vision to look forward to as a future reality that is also available in the present moment. We can embrace it as our prayer or intention this week to hold such a vision in heart for all facing crisis, from Ukrainian citizens to angered Russians against war, from sudden and shocking griefs to the daily battles that each of us wage:

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;

the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat;

for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,

and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. —Revelation 7:15-17

Apocalyptic Culture Corner: “The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole order of the universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky.” —Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood

Apocalyptic quote of the month: “The idea of Kyiv being invaded, with tanks and aviation—it’s like preparing for an apocalypse.” Ukrainian journalist Angelina Kariakina, Public Seminar

Image credit: Colorful Hands Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash, free use.