An Everlasting Dominion That Shall Not Pass Away
November 18, 2024
By Ron Hogan
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
that shall not pass away,
and his kingship is one
that shall never be destroyed.
(Daniel 7:14, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)
I’ve been following the cultural journalist Talia Lavin online for years. I’ve just finished reading her newly published book, Wild Faith, which digs deep into Christian nationalism’s blurring of politics and theology. She offers a sobering account of the effort, coordinated by members of various Christian denominations through one political party, to establish what she describes as “a Kingdom of Christ on Earth ruled by his elect” in the United States.
As a queer Jewish woman, Lavin finds the rise of that kingdom terrifying.
I understand her fear.
The Christ whom supporters of the incoming administration claim as their sovereign bears little resemblance to the Jesus I’ve found in the gospels or the guiding Spirit I’ve encountered through Quaker faith and practice. I don’t recognize what Friends often call “the blessed community” in their plans, as Lavin puts it, “to impose a nationally unpopular set of principles… and seal them into law; to purge the nation of undesirables; and to utterly dominate their inferiors.”
The outcome of the presidential election has clearly emboldened Christian nationalist forces—and provoked despair among many who sought to keep those forces in check.
The January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol had a strong Christian nationalist component. (Photo: Brett Davis/Creative Commons)I’ve been thinking about a recent sermon by Micah Bales, a Quaker pastor in northern California, reflecting on God’s instruction to conquered Jerusalem, as revealed by Jeremiah, to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
As Micah says, “This isn’t what I want to hear. This isn’t what I want God to say to me when I am feeling defeated.” I don’t want the people who are persecuting my friends now, and may eventually get around to persecuting me, to flourish. Not when we’re still sitting by the rivers of Babylon, metaphorically speaking, weeping over our own lost Zion.
Right now, I get why the author of Psalm 137 found solace in the fantasy of smashing their oppressor’s children against the rocks. I wouldn’t cast my feelings in those exact terms, but I understand the impulse—just as I understand why it wouldn’t help bring us any closer to ushering in the blessed community.
At the same time, seeking the welfare of our conquerors doesn’t necessarily mean wishing for their success. Friends still have an obligation to resist their machinations and to continue living out our testimony by working for the betterment of all life. Their true welfare does not lie in the fruition of their schemes. It lies in our ability to establish the blessed community without resorting to the violence of secular powers. God calls us to pray for our oppressors, not to obey them, nor to collaborate with them.
“When you search for me, you will find me,” God says through Jeremiah.
“If you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me.”
Over the centuries, Friends have often chosen not to go looking for God in the tumult of politics. As the first-generation Quaker preacher Edward Burrough put it in the late 1650s, as the Puritan hold over England began to weaken and the nation slid into chaos:
“What is a King? and what is a Parliament? what is a Protector? and what is a Council, or any other sort of men, while the Presence of the Lord is not with them, and while his Spirit and Authority is wanting to them? What can any of these bring forth?”
“It cannot be charged upon us,” Burrough continued, “that we have sided with one or another; for we have beheld all hitherto out of the Right Way.” While this faction or that faction might claim to have God on their side, Burrough and the Quakers remained skeptical: “The cause hardly yet appears carryed on by any among them, which can be said of it, This is of the Lord, and is perfectly right, and the Lord will prosper it.”
But the early Friends would not have accepted the thrust of modern Christian nationalism, which calls upon a faithful minority to seize control of social and cultural institutions and impose “God’s” will upon the masses. Burroughs and his peers believed that the “kingship… that would never be destroyed” Daniel prophesied would only become manifest on earth when people turned to the Inward Light (which they identified with Christ) of their own accord.
No political movement can force that into happening—and no religious movement, either. As Friends, we must continue striving to inspire rather than coerce—leading by example, and abstaining from any movement which aspires to rule by force.
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Christian nationalism
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Ron Hogan
Ron Hogan is the audience development specialist for Friends Publishing Corporation and webmaster for Quaker.org. He is also the author of Our Endless and Proper Work.
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