Wondering about Dissidence

 I haven't yet read the 3rd chapter of McKnight & Matchett's Revelation for the Rest of Us, but I wanted to pause for a moment to consider the question, Is a Christian a dissident?

To this question the authors answer an affirmative, "Yes, by definition, a Christian is a dissident."

And of course we have a long history of Christian dissidence. I was just reading yesterday in Tom Holland's Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World about a fellow named Benjamin Lay. He was a Quaker who spent much of his life campaigning against slavery. A noteworthy, colorful, and heroic figure, and a certainly a dissident!

Christian dissidence is real, and it is constant, for we will always be crosswise with the world (the system, the governing authorities, the powers (Eph. 6:12). I'm with Stanley Hauerwas in believing that Christians are  resident aliens in whatever country they finds themselves. The ideal is, we are in but not of, isn't that right?

But none of this means--or does it--that a Christian is by definition a dissident. Wikipedia says a dissident is a person who "actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy or institution." And all of McKnight's examples in chapter 1 are true activists in this regard, as are Wikipedia's. None of this "they also serve who stand and wait." 

I think the case is well made that many Christians will be called to active non-cooperation with Babylon (along with, of course, many non-Christians), and even at times civil disobedience. We all have to wonder about the hidden degrees of complicity with evil that just being participants in a market society involves us in. The Amish, for example, have drawn that line in a very different place than most other Christians. And many of us have probably not thought deeply enough about where that line should be. What shall we boycott? When shall we march? When do we move from prayer to activism? And is "activism" a requirement of the faith?

When do we move from a personal "no" to an active coaxing of the people around us to also say "no"?

And have we not seen many examples of activism seeming to supplant faith? Is there a way that activism can come to seem as worldly as happy complicity? 

We are resident aliens in Babylon. Wherever we live, we are not truly at home. Babylon is here, around us, infiltrating and shaping us more than we know. We are less in and more of than we care to admit. In John's Revelation we have a call to remain strong and endure, even if by being crosswise with the world we may provoke the world's anger against us. 

I look forward to reading more of what McKnight and Matchett have to say about these things. 

Well, I'm just wondering aloud here. Perhaps I'm "kicking against the goads!" Faith is not simply in inward disposition, it is walked out. 

Here we might look to the Amish, who are certainly actively trying to maintain their separateness from the world, but are they in fact dissidents? Their lives embody a critique of the world as it is, but they are not really activists trying to change the world, only to remain untainted by it.

Notes on Revelation for the Rest of Us (part 2)

 

Moving on to chapter 2 of McKnight and Matchett's Revelation for the Rest of Us. This chapter is called, "For Whom Was the Book of Revelation Written? (Take a Deep Breath)."

At the start of the chapter the authors explain that John was a leader in the churches of western Asia Minor (the "seven churches"). It seems that "the Roman way of life was penetrating these churches," and John was speaking out against that, so the authorities put him in prison/exile on the island of Patmos.

The Revelation is John's response. So it is John "speaking out" (a phrase that is going to recur here). It was intended for the churches, and so everything in it would have been, though at times difficult, comprehensible to his audience.

The authors say that as a result of Rome's destruction of the temple at Jerusalem in 70AD, Rome became the epitome of evil in Jewish eyes. Then there would come the persecution of Christians under Nero, and in response "a tradition of dissidence begins to take root."

My response: I don't think the author's do a particularly good job of describing just what was going on in the churches that the authorities had a problem with. These things are well-known, after all. I'm also not sure they make a convincing case that the Jesus-communities in Asia Minor were, by worshipping Jesus, practicing a kind of dissidence against Rome akin to the Jewish dissidents at Masada. 

On page 17 the authors give us this:

In the book of Revelation Jon instructs the seven churches of western Asia Minor on ow to live as Christian dissidents in an empire racked by violence, power, exploitation, and arrogance... This is a book that calls us to civil disobedience.

 The authors go on to define dissidents as people of hope who imagine a better future and then begin to embody it in the world. They speak out against injustice. Then we get a list of modern dissidents as examples: Gandhi, Fannie Lou Hamer, Mandela, King, etc.

Having tutored the reader on just what a dissident is and does, McKnight and Matchett then explain that John was a dissident also, or as MLK said of Christians, a "transformed nonconformist." His "speaking out" is in response not only to the power of Rome but to the churches who have let themselves be infiltrated by those powers. "[John] saw too much of Rome in the church and not enough church in Rome."

The authors say that one key to understanding Revelation is to understand that John is speaking out both against Rome and against the churches (p.23). It's a "dual critique." And finally, it "speaks a powerful encouragement to be dissident disciples.

My response: Although I do think Christians are to be nonconformists, as King said, I'm not convinced we're all called to be dissidents like Gandhi, etc., or that such is the main thrust of John's Revelation. I'm still waiting for the book to convince me.

Notes on Revelation for the Rest of Us (part 1)

 

I've started reading Revelation for the Rest of Us by Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett. I'm going to take notes here on the blog as I read. These will just be raw notes, attempts to capture the main points along the way, as well as my own occasional responses, questions, bafflements, etc. 

The subtitle of the book is "A prophetic call to follow Jesus as a dissident disciple." Those last two words jump out at you, right? I mean, there are many books on discipleship, but dissident discipleship? 

The description on the flap might help us understand it a bit:

John designed his book of Revelation to disciple readers into dissidents of the ways of the world and empire, describing the empire with the term "Babylon"--a timeless image of empire, militarism, economic exploitation, injustice and oppression. John's disciples can discern the presence of Babylon in our world and learn to speak up, speak out, and walk in the way of the Lamb.

This is the part that really resonated with me and it's why I bought the book in the first place. You sense right away that McKnight and Matchett are providing a counterpoint to the rampant Americanism and Christian Nationalist in the church today.

In the first chapter the authors talk about the typical ways in which Revelation has been interpreted. He quotes G. B. Caird: Revelation as become "a paradise for fanatics and sectarians."

This is not a book that is going to map contemporary world events against the blueprint of Revelation. McKnight and Matchett are not treating Revelation as a predictive text that readers should mine in search of the date of Christ's return or the true meaning behind the headlines on our news feeds.

They call tis the "speculative approach" and much of the chapter is devoted to explaining the weakness of the speculative reading of Revelation. It leads people to read the text predictively, literally, premillenially, and vindictively. But this is not how the church has read Revelation throughout history!

But many of us are so used to thinking this way about John's mysterious book, we can think of no other. Here's a quote from Nelson Kraybill: "The last book of the Bible is not a catalog of predictions about events that would take place two thousand years later. Rather, it is a projector that casts archetypical images of good and evil onto a cosmic screen."

Getting back to that word "dissident." When I think of that word, dissidents, I think of Russian dissidents in the 70s, like Sholzhenitsyn. They were dissidents against "the powers that be." The authors say we need dissident disciples, willing to dissent against corruption in both church and culture.

The book of Revelation, when read well, forms us into dissident disciples who discern corruptions in the world and church. Conformity to the world is the problem. Discipleship requires dissidence when one lives in Babylon.

 As I said, this resonates with me. A Christian is, as the tagline of this blog says, not at home in this world. This world is our Babylon. But I have some hesitation with thinkin of myself as a dissident. I want to be a quiet Cristian, following Jesus were I live, not shouting from the rooftops (or in my dissident samisdat). We'll have to read on to see what McKnight and Matchett have to say to hesitators like me!