The following is an updated repost of an article from January 2024 that expresses several reasons why it is so important for folks in the United States to hold fast to an inclusive vision of multiracial democracy—and to support the No King rallies that took place this weekend.
The vision of the book of Revelation is multiracial, international, and counter-imperial. It’s a pretty basic point, yet one we easily forget. Yet given the rise of white Christian nationalism in the United States, with its myth of restoring a “Christian nation,” and Revelation’s long history of extremist misuse, it’s worth remembering that the Body of Christ is made up of a “great multitude from every nation, all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9).
The sociologists Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead, in their book Taking America Back for God, 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. Christian nationalists were also more likely to support xenophobic immigration policies and patriarchal beliefs like opposing women entering the workforce.
But religious nationalism is not new, Yale historian Philip Gorski reminds us. 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. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that in such moments Christians have leaned heavily 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. Echoing Trump’s infamous “American carnage” rhetoric, 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, 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, when the South’s “Lost Cause” mythology developed—the belief that the Confederacy’s cause was just, having to do with state’s rights and so-called Northern aggression, rather than 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, American Covenant, 106).
Christians today, then—and not only evangelicals—activate this longstanding religious, nationalist vision of a Christian America when they:
Scapegoat immigrants as a threat to social order and strip them of rights
Falsely perceive American Christians as a persecuted minority group under siege
Seek federal legal support or “exemption” to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people
Defund public schools, ban books, or lobby for privatized schooling, stemming from the belief that public schools that teach science, history, and literacy 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—six opened seals of divine judgment—to share a vision of worship. (That’s how the book of Revelation unfolds: calamity followed by celestial visions). First, John hears a number spoken: he says, “I heard the number of those who were sealed” (7:4). The number symbolizes symmetry and wholeness: twelve tribes of Israel multiplied by twelve thousand each, or 144,000.
End-times fundamentalists have had a field day with this detail, claiming it represents 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 authentic Jewish belief in itself).
After hearing a verbal roll call of the tribes of Israel, 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 a smaller, particularized number; then he sees a larger, multiracial coalition of all tribes and people worshipping at God’s. What’s going on? Hearing yields to seeing, and the particular expands to the diverse and universal.
Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash
Just like the narrative arc of the Bible, God starts with blessing one particular people and then ends by 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 is a starry number.
But contrary to religious nationalists, “chosenness” in the Bible is never self-referential; it is always to be a blessing to others—until all others belong. God chooses 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, 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 no); and 2) Are they 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 were countering are those of the Roman Empire, not Christian nationalists in the U.S. 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 it, is a holistic vision of total physical and spiritual well-being, and the multitude is directing praise to God, who is the source of their well-being. 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. Revelation: Vision of a Just World
Heralding that salvation belongs to God is to declare that salvation does not belong to Caesar or the President.
Amidst so much disaster, chapter seven ends with a gorgeous vision of a new reality and a 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.
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
Previous posts that may be of interest:
Several updates:
Harvard Divinity School, November 4, 5pm, Divinity Hall 114: I’ll be speaking at Harvard Divinity school as part of an alumni authors series. If you are in the Boston/Cambridge area, I would love to see you! More information here.
Off the Page Podcast from Franciscan Media: I had a lot of fun talking with Stephen Copeland of Franciscan Media about my book The Holy Ordinary.
Thank you for your strengthening words. Reminding me that my life giving prayer is to be in the Kingdom of God every moment. Hearing the Divine heartbeat.
“Christian nation” myth
makes many souls suffer, fear.
Betrays Christ’s message.
...
In true prophecy
there are no faith favorites.
Everyone belongs.