The Liturgy of Babel

Last night (at the time of this writing) the annual State of the Union Address, or as it might be better referred to at least here, the high liturgy of the United States, aired on all the various news channels in the country. As is always the case the scene was one of a familiar congregation, in this case being a room filled with people held in bondage to the Principality known as America, listening to the chief prophet (or as fellow blog contributor Ethan Shearer refers to the office, America’s Public Theologian) offer his sermon on the state of the American Civil Religion.

Before you go any further, this article assumes you’ve listened to, or at least read the State of the Union address, and so if you haven’t I recommend you familiarize yourself with it.

As is always the case regardless of which particular figurehead is representing the Principality, the sermon was filled with half-truths, outright falsehoods, hyperbole, propaganda, cherry picked facts, veiled and open threats, and intimidation (the statement that the United States will “never be a socialist country” is a rather open-faced act of intimidation leveled at the various senators who identify themselves by their allegiance to the Principality known as Democratic Socialism).

This sermon though is always communicated in such a way so as to appear natural, to seem true and reasonable (and thus it seeks to paint those who disagree with it as unreasonable) and even one who may recognize this address as the liturgical act it is may find themselves at moments swayed by such reasonable and natural sounding phrases. This is the night of course when even the most staunch critics of Donald regularly recognize him as appearing presidential, and indeed, it’s a night where Donald looks less like The Donald and more like President Trump.

However the scene still reveals itself, in this case though it merely manifests through the scenes of applause and chants of USA from a supposedly dignified congregation. This is a chamber of chaos and disorder as the various Principalities represented (Liberalism, Libertarianism, Conservatism, Progressivism, and so on) all vie for recognition and proper representation. It’s a scene in which we see both friction on the floor and, at times, cooperation as those in the congregation are informed by their various Principalities when to either sit in silence or cheer and wildly applaud during various statements or declarations, effectively turning a 45 minute sermon into a two hour self-congratulatory affair.

In the same way we experience the same sort of “war is peace” language I mentioned in my last post when Donald, in the course of two minutes, goes from affirming the sanctity of human life, naming babies as being people made in “the holy image of God”, right before turning around and promising an increase in military spending and “rebuild[ing] the United States military” as well as issuing an open-faced threat that, should we need to reenter the arms race, we will do it more effectively and more readily than any of our adversaries, promising that we will “out-spend and out-innovate all others by far,” (never-minding that between the US and Russia, we still have a greater dust-gathering stockpile of nuclear weapons than the rest of the world combined).

What we find is that the Principality of the United States affirms the image of God, so long as that God looks and acts like us. We affirm the image of God found in our babies, but the babies and populations of enemies are either unfortunate collateral lost in our struggles with the opposing Principalities, or just outright beings not actually made in God’s image.

The Principality will of course expand on these ideas, after all there has to be some image of humanity held up as the example in these sermons. And so we will put out examples of some of our humans, look at this Person’s parents who were burglarized and shot by “an Illegal Alien”, or look at that Person, he was “shot seven times by The Killer.” In short, humanize some but dehumanize others, humanize those we think worthy of the status of human.

Which shouldn’t surprise us, after all, a characteristic of babel is that it dehumanizes those it seeks to other, it dehumanizes those it sees as having alternate allegiances to other Principalities, or in some cases it even dehumanizes those who pledge allegiance to it; after all the Principalities are first-and-foremost beings that demand sacrifice in order to preserve their status.

Perhaps the clearest moments of babel, which in this case turns to full-on blasphemy, come in the moment when Donald declared that, “if I had not been elected President of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea,” and that it is his relationship with Kim which saved us (nevermind that the earthquake and subsequent erosion of Mt Mantapsan’s nuclear site may have played some part in this decision and at least temporarily stalled North Korea’s nuclear program, encouraging them to approach the negotiating table; that detail isn’t important). What is important is that the Principality of the United States, or perhaps more specifically in this case, the Principality of the Office of the Presidency has saved us from Death!

“For you said, ‘We have sealed a covenant with Death, and with Sheol we have made a pact. No sweeping scourge that passes by will reach us, for we have made falsehood our refuge and in lies we have taken shelter.”
-Isaiah 28:15, Robert Atler’s translation.

Again, this is what the Principalities do, they call us to worship. Their aim and ultimate goal is to see us worship them, to see us name them as our hope for freedom from Death, and while most are too small to truly successfully demand worship from us, some, like the State, are large and powerful enough to attempt to “exalt [themselves] over everything called a god or object of worship,” going so far as to “proclaim [themselves] a god” (2 Thess 2:4)*. They declare themselves, not the Church nor even God’s people, as being the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21, the light and hope of the nations, the site of God’s renewed presence on earth.

In Revelation 13 we see what this looks like from an apocalyptic perspective with two beasts, the first being the beast from the sea who is described as a great and terrible, carrying on its heads “blasphemous names” (v1). The beast receives its power from the dragon, and is given “great authority” (v2), and the great act of blasphemy is uttered as it declares itself God and the people of the earth wonder and worship it saying, “who is like the beast, and who can wage war on him?” (v4). The second beast is described as rising from the earth, it

“exercices all the authority of the first beast… and brings it about that the earth and those dwelling in it shall [worship] the first beast… and it performs great signs… and by the signs it has been granted to perform before the beast, it leads those dwelling on the earth astray, telling those dwelling on the earth to make an image for the beast.”
- Revelation 13:12–13, David Bentley Hart’s translation.

The second beast, the prophet or high priest to the first, makes its grand statements, “I alone can fix it!” Put us first in your heart! We “must be the hope and the promise and the light and the glory among all the nations of the world” (forever and ever, hallelujah! amen).

These are statements that are eschatological in scope, spoken in regards to Jesus, voiced by the Church, and yet here they are, repeated as the mantra of the Principality of the United States by the high priest himself, and when this happens blasphemy is made manifest. These statements of glory and light and salvation are promises of God and Christ, not the Principalities, and the constant trouble with the Principalities, the moment they resemble less the created beings we interact with and more the great beasts of Revelation, is when they declare themselves to hold the vocation of God, to be objects worthy of worship, all while asking you to sacrifice to them. Give your life and your resources and your obedience and especially the lives of your own soldiers and your enemies’ soldiers to me and I will save you!

Because of course they, unlike any other Principality that has ever existed, will be the one to save you; this time, for real.

Recognizing the Nation’s Place

“This is my song, O God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.”**

One of my favorite hymns in the United Methodist Hymnal is the wildly underappreciated, “This is My Song” a hymn which, as one initially begins to sing it (or in this case read it) sounds not all that unlike the other patriotic hymns. After all it shares the references to my country, my homeland, however in the latter lines of each verse it successfully subverts the tendency towards over-patriotism by reminding those singing that hey, the rest of the world feels the same way towards their nations, and that’s okay, so long as we remember where our nation stands in the created order. Love of nation isn’t necessarily bad, after all our ethic and call especially as Christians is to love and hope for the redemption and restoration of all things (pas, in the Greek referring to the sum total, the whole); and so the love of country actually encourages us to hold out hope for its redemption as a subject and creature of God’s own making.

Throughout Scripture, the common vocation of all things, all creatures, is that they will worship God (Ps 148, 150:6, Lk 19:40). And we recognize that the nations themselves are included within this language of “all”, the nations themselves are to be redeemed and restored. What that means seems in part to be found in the repeated vocational language of the prophets, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God (Mic 6:8, Pr 21:3, Is 56:1, Jer 22:3, Hos 6:6, Zec 7:9), in short, to serve God, who is light and life itself, who is The Word, incarnate and present in all things (Acts 17:28 & Eph 4:6), and who gives us meaning and purpose (John 1). This incarnate and ever-present Word (Jesus Christ) offers us a way to look at others, not as being opponents, or enemies, but rather as being fellow creatures with the same spark of God present as is present in each of us; ie. brothers and sisters, neighbors.

All this is done while remembering that said nation is not the world’s (or even the self-same nation’s) final hope, rather it is God alone that is “the hope and the promise and the light and the glory among all the nations of the world.”

And so while I may continue to refuse to sing the National Anthem, the patriotic hymns, or even recite the Pledge of Allegiance, I still see it appropriate to hold love for one’s country so long as we remember and likewise seek to remind said nation where it truly ranks, what it truly is, who it ultimately is subservient to; and that it is ultimately no different than any other nation, any other Principality, any other creature.

Lord, we pray to you, restore your servant America to its place, reminding it that it is your servant and that it is not you, it never was you, it cannot become you. Its authority has been given to it by you and without you it cannot exist. Remind it that it too is merely a being, not immortal, not without an end, standing in need of redemption. Restore it and redeem it, as you redeem and restore all things, that in so doing it might be reminded of its call to serve you, to serve life, to serve the presence of your Son, the living, incarnate, and ever-present Word, in this world; not so the nation may be mightiest or first but so that it, like your servant Israel, might be a blessing and not a curse, a servant and not a blasphemer, humble in its own place as a creature in your Kingdom, even should that place be least among all creation. Amen.

*Unless otherwise noted the Scriptural quotations use either Robert Atler’s Hebrew Bible translation or David Bentley Hart’s New Testament translation, sources below.

**Stone, Lloyd. This is My Song. Lorenz Publishing Co: 1934.

• Atler, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, vs 1–3. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2018.
• Hart, David Bentley. The New Testament: A Translation. New York: Yale University Press, 2017.