20  EMPIRE

I WAS IN A CHAPEL IN CAMBRIDGE, surrounded by walls and pews and stained glass older than I can trace my family tree. I was unprepared for the grandeur of tradition that met me everywhere I went: the buildings and churches going back to the seventh century, the first bookstore in all of England, the plaques commemorating a famous scientist or theologian around every corner. A bright-eyed American in sensible shoes, I wandered the cobblestone streets gazing rapturously at all the glorious history I was experiencing.

There for a conference, I sat next to kindly old vicars who told me that less than 5 percent of people in England attend church, a drastic drop that had occurred in the last several decades. I was shocked to hear this, surrounded as we were on all sides by stately, ornate, historical churches. In every room we gathered, where we ate, where we worshiped even—large oil portraits hung on the walls. Famous men, men who were the academic deans or men who made great and important discoveries. Some of them with bushy white eyebrows and wild eyes, others sitting in severe armchairs, their hands clasped together. The Americans visiting like myself were puzzled by all the hagiography, slightly unnerved by the feeling of being watched by Great Men no matter where we went.

In the chapel at Magdalene College, I felt this connection at every turn. This is where Samuel Pepys went, this is the room where C. S. Lewis lived when he was a professor here for decades. The chapel was built in 1470, and I was in that room—I was connected to thousands and thousands of living, breathing, Christian witnesses. In front of me was an ancient Book of Common Prayer, musty and a little tattered looking. Upon opening the book, the first page showed it was published in 1754—terrified, I shut it quickly. Was I even allowed to touch something so ancient and hallowed?

But after a moment I opened the book again, and I prayed the prayers along with everyone around, thinking all the while about faith. My mind drifted to the beautiful stained-glass windows, their meanings inscrutable to me, the dust in the air catching the light. Mostly, I thought about what it means to thrive as a follower of Christ, even when by all accounts your religion has failed in the eyes of the watching world.

The Jewish people were primarily shaped by two stories: the exodus and the exile. Growing up evangelical in America, I was more familiar with the first story—Moses, the Red Sea, the wanderings in the desert, the Ten Commandments, the formation of a new chosen people. But Nick Page, a writer and theologian from the United Kingdom, says that many of us who are removed by both years and geography have largely forgotten about the exile part: how so many of the key works of the Old Testament were written in the shadow of trying to make sense of a terrible tragedy—Israel being taken into captivity by Babylon, the mark of a failed God and a failed religion.1 Instead of assimilating God into the Babylonian story, the Israelites did something different from their peers: they fiercely held on to their stories and their belief in God, even as they lost their land, homes, and people.

How can we who are not exiled read these important narratives of faith in the midst of failure? It starts with understanding where we are in the story. If the Israelites have been shaped by exodus and exile, perhaps it is time to take a look at the other players in the story: those who have been shaped by empire. All empires—both in the biblical times and now—have a few characteristics in common, primarily the consolidation of military, economic, political, and ideological power. Throughout history the variety and strength of each of these characteristics fluctuate, but they are all present. Of increasing importance to me is that last category, the ideological or social might of the empire: the beliefs that empires propagate to keep and retain power. For instance, the belief that the empire will use that power for good (think Pax Romana, the ultimate benevolent empire slogan). Or the belief that the empire will never die.

I see the tendrils of these viewpoints in my own mind. Today I can see fractures both big and local in the American evangelical church, and still I won’t believe in an ending. American evangelicalism will live on, it will weather the storm of attaching itself to the pursuit of power at the cost of loving their neighbors. It cannot end. This stubborn thought remains, and the quiet belief behind it is where the real power of empire lies: America, and more specifically White evangelical expressions of Christianity in America, cannot die because it is inherently blessed by God. This is ingrained in my brain, where this vicious myth has taken root and made itself true. This is how empire always works, by convincing us there is no other path forward except the one where we are always victorious. And this is how the narrative of empire is working, even now, in my own heart and soul and mind.

It isn’t that I am anti-American, not really. As James Baldwin said, “I love America more than any country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”2 Empires are complicated structures; no matter where we live on this earth, we live with some sort of relationship to empire—and we need to figure out how to live as disciples of Christ right where we are. As a middle-class White American female, the dominant culture of the United States has been pretty good for me, which is important to articulate. I am someone who benefits from the empire at work around me, which means I have a spiritual and moral responsibility to interrogate the narratives that surround me. I need to seek out those who have experienced exodus and exile, and I need to contemplate what life beyond or in spite of empire might look like: contemplating the end of how everything always has been and supposedly always will be. There is nothing in Scripture, nothing in Jesus, that says my proud and terrible and interesting country is particularly blessed, has some special favor, has some special reason for existence.

Empire focuses on ideological sameness: make the narrative easy, make it clear. Pharaoh will save you. Caesar will put bread in your belly. The president will make our country great again. This leads to small, deformed imaginations—I see it in how White evangelical Christianity has been tangled up in the same pull toward greatness, toward power, toward viewing ourselves as specially anointed by God to rule the world, to hold and be in charge. This leads to a sense of scarcity, a hallmark of pharaohs throughout the centuries: the all-consuming fear of losing power. I have seen it in the fights for religious liberty that exclude those who aren’t Christian, in the narrative that says we are losing the culture war and must fight with every tooth and nail to hold our ground, in scaring people to vote for certain candidates in order to maintain control. Undergirding these tactics is the belief that failure is not an option, that our ways will never die. But most important is the belief that exile is a reality to be ignored and feared at all costs, a strange ideological position for those who claim to follow the God of the Israelites.

The lovely Christians I met in Cambridge were true believers. Connected to the old ways, forging something new in the shadow of tradition and history. They had “lost” the culture, by most accounts, and yet they still remained a vibrant gathering of Christ-followers: smaller in number, perhaps, but with a bone-deep commitment to God’s kingdom coming on earth as it was in heaven. Well-read, committed to studying Scripture and theology, we gathered together to pray as our ancestors did, all the good and the bad jumbled up. Ours was a history of marrying Christ with monarchies and empires and colonialism and imperialism; it was also a history of slouching toward Jesus that continues to live on to this day.

Perhaps more than ever Christians in the United States, especially those who come from dominant-culture backgrounds, are seriously starting to consider if their world really is going to change, of what it might look like to lose the coziness of partnership with empire. As we become ever more in the minority, as the locus of fresh and vibrant Christianity is found Latin America, Asia, and Africa, those of us who have been influenced by Great Men and Great Books and Great Theology of the mostly Western civilization kind will be experiencing a death of sorts. A failure that pales in comparison to Israel being captured by Babylon but feels like the pressure to assimilate or disperse all the same.

Many of my neighbors and friends are actual exiles—women from Muslim countries starting afresh here in my own neighborhood. Their faith is a constant for many of them, a space of solace and strength—for some, their faith actually grows stronger, richer, because now they are the minority. They need to know what they believe and why, because there are no cultural forces supporting them—in fact, oftentimes it is just the opposite. They have experienced the ending of their worlds and now show me what it is like to be in exile, to be faithful people in the midst of the apocalypse.

In an ancient chapel halfway around the world, I thought about these neighbors: their prayer rugs, the way they grieve with each other when life gets too hard, the way they show up to English class and birthday parties, how they have fresh-baked bread and spicy noodles for nearly every occasion. I held them in my mind in a chapel built in 1470, dedicated by a king who wanted all of his actions to be baptized by God. I thought about them as I ran my finger over the ancient Book of Common Prayer, as I sat in a seat in a chapel that for most of its history only let men inside, most of them White and European.

In 1988 Magdalene College was the last university in Cambridge to finally allow women to study in their hallowed halls. What feels like dying to some perhaps feels like the fresh winds of the Spirit to others. Tradition is beautiful but it is also five hundred-plus years of the doors to this hallowed space being only open for a few. It is me sitting in the chapel but surrounded by portraits hanging up in every hall of men who do not reflect me in my full humanity, nor the world in how it was designed to reflect the wondrously creative image of God.

In five hundred years what will my own people say? Where will we gather, and how will we worship the God who created us, loved us, died for us, resurrected for us? It’s hard for me to say because my mind has been formed in the fear and longing for power that characterizes empire. I have little imagination for what life in exile could truly look like, I have little vision for a world in which faith flourishes even as church buildings crumble into disuse, or condos, or coffee shops. But I do know this: the world is changing, and we don’t have to be afraid. We just might have to start looking elsewhere for where to go forward. We just might have to start learning to pray and sing and live in exile from those we have barred from entry for far too long.