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THE EMPIRE/SERVILITY
SYNDROME
by Daniel C. Maguire
(This is the draft of the first chapter of
a book to be published by Fortress
Press, entitled A MORAL CREED FOR ALL CHRISTIANS,
due out next spring or
Fall.)
  e
cannot shy from the possibility that
humanity is a failed and short-lived species
in the
perspective of cosmic history. It may be that
we are
strapped with a fatal flaw that has already,
at the
peaking of our technical skills, begun our
unraveling.
Even in the smaller scale of earth time, we
look unlikely
to match the longevity of the dinosaurs who
survived
some 200 million years. It is possible —
and has been
argued — that the two greatest disasters
to hit this
generous planet have been (1) the asteroidal
pummeling of 65 million years
ago banishing the dinosaurs and (2) the arrival
of the destructive species
that calls itself "sapiens."
Maybe the apocalyptic voices are the realists.
Georg Henrik von Wright
says with chilling calmness: "One perspective,
which I don't find
unrealistic, is of humanity as approaching
its extinction as a zoological
species. The idea has often disturbed people....For
my part I cannot find
it especially disturbing. Humanity as a species
will at some time with
certainty cease to exist; whether it happens
after hundreds of thousands
of years or after a few centuries is trifling
in the cosmic perspective.
When one considers how many species humans
have made an end of, then such
a natural nemesis can perhaps seem justified."
In other words, perhaps
of all the species that have died out in the
history of the earth, no
other species may have been more deserving
of extinction. Vaclav Havel
warns that if we endanger the earth she will
dispense with us in the
interests of a higher value—that is, life
itself. Lynn Margulis joins
the grim chorus saying that the rest of earth's
life did very well
without us in the past and it will do very
well without us in the future.
Not all religious scholars rush in with gospels
of consolation. Gerd
Theissen says that we have wasted much time
looking for the "missing
link" between apes and true humanity.
Call off that search, he says, and
admit we are that missing link. True humanity
could not indulge so
facilely and effectively in genocide and ecocide
nor would it be so rabid
with militarism or so comfortable with the
co-existence of glut and
hunger. In this view we are morally pre-natal,
and yet armed to the
teeth, with the end of the world stored and
ready in our nuclear silos
and species dropping around us like canaries
in a doomed mine.
Can hope, however bloodied and bruised, be
salvaged and can it be vibrant
enough to bring the radical and necessary metamorphosis?
Possibly. And
that is the challenge addressed by this book.
The first task is
diagnosis.
Empire as Original Sin
The Christian teaching on Original Sin arose
from a sense that something
is wrong with us. Though the theological dons
played with it to the point
of silliness—Augustine thought it was
caused by sexual pleasure—the basic
insight was correct. Something is wrong.
What's wrong? While speaking recently to a
group of Ford Foundation
program officers in Greece, I made reference
to "the common good." As we
stopped for a break, they asked me to return
to "the common good" and to
tell them what it is. For my break I took a
walk down a dirt path toward
the lovely Aegean Sea. Ahead of me I saw what
looked like a black ribbon
stretched across the dirt path. A I got closer
I saw that is was not a
ribbon, but two columns of ants moving back
and forth in single file.
Those in one row were carrying something; the
others were going back for
a new load. A real estate change was in process.
Every ant was committed
to the project. There were no shirkers or apostates
from the common effort
There were no special interest groups. All
these insect citizens were
bonded to the common good of that community.
How convenient for the insects! The needs of
the common good are
inscribed on their genes. Human genes have
no such inscription. We, like
the ants, have need of common good considerations,
since the common good
is the matrix of minimal livability within
which individual good can be
pursued. Pace Augustine, biblical wisdom would
point to that problem
rather than sexual joy as our potential undoing.
Indeed, all the moral
traditions of the world religions in their
distinct fashions point to
this soft center in our makeup. All of them
address our tilt toward moral
autism. Our genetic impulse seems more directed
to egoistic good in
opposition to the common good, and since the
common good includes the
good of all of nature, this fatal flaw in our
composition portends
planetary ruin.
With us humans, this need for which our genes
do not provide is met by
ethics and by religion. Ethics is the expression
of our natural need to
discern the good and diagnose what is evil,
and religion arises from the
discovery that at the core of the good is a
preciousness that we call
holy. A chastening look at our history shows
that ethics and religion
are no match for the efficacy of genetic inscription
when it comes to the
protection of our species and of our biological
and terrestrial
neighbors. Which brings us to
Empire
Normally we limit the word empire to the military
and economic domination
of weaker nations by stronger ones. However,
I submit that the exploitive
imperial instinct is pandemically present in
all the configurations of
human society. A passion for control is the
engine of empire in all of
its micro— and macro— configurations.
Controlling others for our
perceived advantage—the empire urge—is
not limited to international
affairs. It powers all the vicious "isms,"
that make life on a good earth
horrible: sexism, speciesism, racism, heterosexism,
nationalism,
militarism. The imperial temptation to control-as-the-
path-to-well-being
also drives patriarchy and hierarchy and the
myriad forms of royalty that
appear in families, corporations, professions,
churches, mosques,
synagogues, and governments.
The pharaohs had it right. Imperial power is
aptly symbolized by the
pyramid, with the privileged at the narrow
top and a massive base
supporting the imperially privileged few. So
insidious is the empire lure
that it can corrupt (and has corrupted) even
the gentlest (and most
anti-imperial) impulse to emerge from the Jesus
movement. Let me explain.
Jesus, Assassinated by Empire
Jesus was crucified by an empire. With all
deference to Mel Gibson, he
was not killed so that his suffering would
expiate for our sins, a very
bad piece of theology that would turn God into
a sadistic monster who
would feel he had to torture his son to death
in order to make up for
sins of other people. No, Jesus was crucified
as a rebel against empire.
He was part of the rebellious communities of
Judea and Galilee where
crucifixion was the regular Roman penalty for
rebellion. Around the time
of Jesus' birth, the Roman General Varus scoured
the hills of Judea and
Galilee searching for rebels and had 2000 of
them crucified. There was
a lot to rebel against. Empires, and imperial
occupiers then as now are
brutal. "Tribute to Caesar" meant
your grain was taken from your barn,
your animals were seized by Caesar so that
the people in the empire could
live gloriously and well. We in the United
States are really now the New
Rome, the Empire, living gloriously and well.
We are not in Jesus
territory, Judea and Galilee, colonies raped
by Imperial Rome. Rome in
Jesus' time had become the last remaining superpower
in that part of the
world Jesus fought the likes of us, and when
you do that, the lesson is,
the likes of us will crucify you.
The Roman empire had to kill Jesus, not for
any discoverable crime that
he committed; he did worse. He rejected the
assumptions of the Roman
Empire that was crushing him and his people.
He was a subversive, a
prophetic subversive, and for empires that
is worse than mere capital
crimes. As Walter Wink says: "It is impossible
to discover in the Gospels
an 'adequate' cause for Jesus' execution. Every
such attempt has
presupposed that he must have done something
punishable by death. But he
did not. That is the whole point. He was innocent
and yet executed. But
the [imperial] Powers did not err. He had rejected
their spirituality; he
had shaken the invisible foundations by a series
of provocative acts. He
was therefore a living terror to the order
of things. He had to be
removed."
The tenth chapter of Mark's Gospel shows Jesus
at his most subversive.
The whole passage reeks of empire-abuse, the
disintegration of community,
the persecution of women, of children, and
the poor. Scripture cannot be
read by just staring at the words. Text gets
meaning in context and the
context of Jesus' discourse here is the crushing
weight of Roman imperial
tyranny. Political empires are never just boots
on the ground. They are
counter-cultural intrusions into the hearts
and spirits and social
constructions of the subject people. As Richard
Horsley puts it, "Jesus
opposed the Roma imperial order and its effects
on subject peoples...."
His whole mission was to "communities
disintegrating under the impact of
imperial order."
Jesus' solution was a return to the Mosaic
covenant with its strong
emphasis on economic justice. His conviction
was that the Power that
moved the stars was returning to remake society,
that the reign of Caesar
was going to yield to the Reign of God. This
was the hope he purveyed,
and there is nothing more subversive—or
threatening to empire—than
hope. (Modern feminism was excoriated by the
patriarchy precisely because
it gave hope to the hopeless and opened doors
that patriarchal
controllers thought they had copper-fastened.
So too for other liberation
movements.)
Back to the wild, upending words of Jesus in
Mark 10.7 Jesus seems to
have been out to subvert everything that he
saw the Roman Empire
corrupting. He recognized that empire poisons
seep even into the most
intimate relationships of life. He started
with, of all things, divorce
and marriage. Divorce, never pleasant in any
time, was brutal in Jesus'
time. It devastated wives who could be "put
away" with a mere
"certificate of dismissal," and divorce
and remarriage was used freely by
the wealthy in their schemes to monopolize
the land. Like all prophets,
Jesus was alert to the scent of exploitation
in economics and in
politics. (Religion, politics, economics were
only distinguished and
separated as concepts in modern times. In Jesus'
time they were of a
piece and he was in the thick of it. Economics
and politics were his
religious business.)
Jesus turned next to children, not in the sentimentalized
sense of modern
affluent "childhood." In Jesus' Palestine,
"as in most traditional
societies, children were, in effect, the persons
with the lowest status
in the village community." They were the
ultimate symbol of the weak and
the vulnerable. Saying the Kingdom of God "belonged"
to such as them was
a radical status-challenge, elevating the rejects
and downsizing the high
and the mighty.
Jesus then went on to tackle greed—the
natural enemy of justice—saying
with peasant's irony that wealth and its securities
harden the heart,
making it easier to get a camel through the
eye of a needle than to get
those basking in unearned or purloined privilege
to unite to the
justice-passions of Jesus' God. Empire builders
cannot indulge in
compassion, much less justice. They cannot
ever confess to this, and so
imperial intentions always wear a greed-covering
mask.
The Masks of Empire
Empire speak: "Wives, be subject to your
husbands" as if they were
divine, says Paul the Apostle. He spells it
out: "So must women be
[subject] to their husbands in everything."
Everything! That is hard
news. Better put a mask on it. Empire Mask:
"Husbands, love your wives,"
small consolation for wives who have just been
defined as slaves.
(Ephesians 5:22-25)
Nations building empires for their own economic
and political advantage
must always wear a mask, always put a noble
face on their rapacity,
whether it be: "to exercise une mission
civilatrice," to assume in
Kipling's phrase "the white man's burden,"
"to make the world safe for
democracy," " to promote freedom,"
"to promote the revolution of the
proletariat," "manifest destiny."
Never the raw truth of exploitation:
always the mask.
Back to Jesus: this radical rabbi next honed
in on domination and
hierarchy, the heart and soul of empire. Some
of his followers (showing
the seductive power of empire) thought he was
going to set up a
hierarchical kingdom patterned on Rome and
they were politicking for
better postings. They were slapped down in
a hurry. Scripture scholars
see sarcasm and a terrible lack of reverence—even
scorn—for Roman
authority in Jesus' reference to the "seeming
or so-called rulers" of
Rome, the hoi docountes archein. These
people lord it over their
subjects, he said, and "their great men
make them feel the weight of
authority." Those in authority should
not pattern themselves on the Roman
model of exploitative and over-privileged overlords,
but on servants and
slaves. But, to empire-ists, this is heresy!
Empire lives on enslavement.
The pinnacle of the pyramid cannot survive
without the slave base. Jesus,
however, was pioneering a stunning reversal:
the substitution of service for
dominance, of community for exploitation, of
a social order without a
slave underpinning-an ideal no nation has even
to this day fully
achieved.
Small wonder hearers of this message about
a slaveless world thought the
speakers drunk. (As an Irishman I may be permitted
to note that Peter
offered a surprisingly weak defense: "These
men are not drunk, as you
imagine; for it is only nine in the morning."
(Acts 2:15) He didn't
pretend that they were total abstainers.) But
the shocking message from
Jesus was, as Peter pointed out, an old and
neglected one, going back to
the very origins of Israel. The powerful poets
of Genesis wrote not of a
Paradise that once was—not of a Golden
Age past—they sang of a Golden age
possible, not a back then, but a could be.
Life on this earth could be a
Paradise, marked by harmony and by just, poverty-destroying
modes of
sharing. The Bible's opening vision of what
life in this privileged
corner of the universe could be has haunted
the ages. We could be in
Paradise, but we're not. We're in exile with
Adam. We could be clothed in
the wonder of peace, but we're not. We're naked,
like Adam, and exiled
from our true possibilities, and yet the scent
of Paradise still teases
our noses.
Professor Laurie Zoloth says that "Adamic
exile" is a symbol of the
condition of all of humankind. With poetic
strength, she puts it this
way: "Adamic exile is a nakedness beyond
naming, a stripping of all but
the scent of Paradise, carried on the animal
skins of Adam and Eve, later
in the skins of Esau that Jacob steals, later
on the coat of Joseph, a
scent that will reemerge again and again...as
a hint of the infinite
possibilities of a world healed." Knowing
that we could be more, having
been eloquently called to be more in our scriptures,
we are stubbornly
mired in less. Yet we are uneasy exiles. We
have sniffed the
possibilities, and so we stumble on, "bearers
of the scent of Paradise
and lovers of the pleasure of the desert, easily
seduced by idols, losing
track of the dangerous column of Fire in the
night." Zoloth suggests
that the purpose of the 40 year trek of the
Israelites in the scorching
desert was "to burn out the slave in the
bone."
The servility syndrome—sadly—is not
yet burned out of the human bone.
Slaves, not yet morally mature enough to be
angry are easily seduced into
voting against their own interests or into
not voting at all. The
American Catholic bishops called the United
States military budget
spending ten thousand dollars a second on kill
power "a war against the
poor,"and no indignation rises from the
victims of this crime.
Servility, the Underwriter of Empire
Mark's chapter 10 ends with a man who "recovered
his sight," but,
actually, the whole chapter is concerned with
curing blindness, the
blindness that keeps victims compliantly and
passively in place, whether
they be soldiers led to their death by official
lies, or whether they be
citizens, women, poor nations, sexual minorities,
religious clergy and
laity, or any others subjected to the many
and tangled forms of empire.
Physical and active resistance to superior
power is usually futile, but
attitudinal change in the victims that slowly
pries loose the iron grip
of control is the first stratagem of successful
subversion. Empires
require unquestioning servility. Slaves comply.
The slave mentality
leeches down into our innards. Attitudinal
change is crucially needed and
was actually the first keynoting mandate out
of Jesus' mouth as he began
his mission. Metanoiete, (Mark 1:15), often
lamely translated "repent,"
calls for a total flipping of the mind-set
that is in us. "Every ravine"
in our minds " must be filled in and "every
mountain and hill leveled."
And the purpose of this restructuring, so that
"all mankind shall see..."
(Luke 3:5) Sight and insight cure enslaved
minds, cleaning out their
cataracts, and filling them with the clarifying
elixir of possibility.
This is the only thing that will "prepare
a way for the Lord, clear a
straight path for him." (Luke 3:4)
Just by looking at Jesus' discourse in Mark
it is clear why he did not
die in his bed at a ripe old age. This was
dangerous stuff he was
talking, a revamping of the "world's"
view of rule and order and control.
Empires crucify those who would lift the scales
from the eyes of victims
and stir them to action. And so they did.
The biblical prophets were impatient with our
stupid refusal to see.
"This people's wits are dulled, their
ears are deafened and their eyes
blinded, so that they cannot see with their
eyes nor listen with their
ears, nor understand with their wits, so that
they may turn and be
healed." (Isa. 6:10) Peace through justice,
the biblical formula, is not
nuclear physics. (Isa. 32:17) Any fool should
be able to see it. Peace is
quite simply "the outcome of a just social
order." No wonder Jesus
wept. He looked at that city, symbol of us
all, and said, "If only you
knew the things that make for your peace, but
you don't." And he broke
down sobbing. (Luke 19:41-42)
Let us update that text. The newly forming
United States tellingly
fancied itself "the new Rome." Let
us have Jesus say to the Roman
Empire of today, "the last remaining superpower:"
"America, America, if
only you knew the things that make for your
peace, if only you could see
that the answer is not in your weaponry or
your economic muscle. If only
I could, like a mother hen, wrap my wings around
you, wings of justice
and peace and compassion, if you could use
your great talent and wealth
to work to end world hunger, world thirst,
world illiteracy, no one would
hate you, you would know Shalom." That's
the promise of Isaiah 32:17.
Then you could burn almost all your chariots
in a holy fire and you would
be secure. But no. And Jesus weeps.
The Art of Servility Maintenance
Empire counts on servility and has divers ways
of nurturing it. The Roman
Empire at its expansive peak, could not maintain
law and order only by
violence and the threat of violence. Rome at
its peak occupied everything
from the Middle East to England. They did not
have enough soldiers to
occupy all that land and they didn't need to.
Rome deployed no troops at
all in the "civilized" areas of Italy,
Greece, and Asia Minor. Their
formula for control was simple. It involved
three things: cult, bread,
and circus. The bread and circus keep the people
passive, but it is cult
that locks the chains.
In Rome, it was the cult of the emperor. As
Richard Horseley writes:
"Statues of the emperor were erected beside
those of the traditional gods
in many of their temples. Shrines to the emperor
were placed at
intermediate points between the temples in
city centers, and temples were
erected to Augustus at the most prominent points
in those city centers.
...The presence of the emperor thus came to
pervade public space in the
cities of the empire."
Add to that the importation of massive amounts
of grain suctioned out of
the less fortunate parts of the empire and
given to the peoples in Italy
and the major urban centers. Add some games
and festivals for distraction
and voila!, a people pacified and exploitable.
Thus do empires win their
temporary success...and their success is always
temporary. The worm
turns.
How is this formula playing out in the American
empire? Arnold Toynbee
that it might well be that "nationalism
is 90 percent of the religion of
90 percent of the people of the Western World
and of the rest of the
World as well." He traces out how the
human race moved from nature
worship to state worship as communities became
more organized and more
impressive 5000 years ago. Nature gods suddenly
became state gods as we
began to worship the power that came with collectivizing
as simple
Neolithic villages gave way to such as the
towering Sumerian city-state.
Nature worship was humanity's first religion.
There were wind and water
and sun gods and olive godesses as well. But
as we formed the first
city-states, these became moreimpressive than
nature itself and we
transferred our worship there. Suddenly Enlil
the iwndo-god becomes the
deifcation of Nippur; Nannna the moon-god is
the deification of Ur;
Athena the olive-goddess is now the deity which
is athens just as the
water-god Poseidon becomes the deification
of the state ofCorinth. In
Toynbee's words: "The local communities
have become divinities, and these
divinities that stand for collective human
power have become paramount
over the divinities that stand for natural
forces. The injection of this
amount of religious devotion into nationalism
has turned nationalism into
a religion, and this a fanatical one."
Back to the United States which saw itself
from the start as both "the
new Zion" and "the new Rome"
religious cultic nationalism,
nation-worshiping patriotism is fully ablaze.
Here the flag is as sacred
as the shrines to Augustus. Burning that flag
would be a "desecration"
comparable to trashing a statue of Augustus
or an effigies of Caesar, or
the burning of the Qu'ran or the Catholic Eucharist.
This symbolic
sacralization of power befogs the optic nerve
of citizens and stifles the
obligation of citizens to be the attentive
consciences of their nation.
This gives undue immunities to the powerful
few that we call government.
"The worst of madmen is saint gone mad,'
said the poet Alexander Pope.
And the worst of "saints" is a nation
that feels itself divinely
appointed to remake the world in its image.
Empire is a religious feat. Gott Mit Uns
on the buckles of Hitler's
soldiers, Manifest Destiny as the writ for
genocide and imperial plunder.
As Walter Wink says: "Evil never feels
safe unless it wears the mask of
divinity." At the end of the 19th century,
Senator Albert Beveridge
claimed without fear of contradiction that
God had "marked" the American
people to lead in "the redemption of the
world." President Woodrow Wilson
said that upon America "there rests nothing
by the pure light of the
justice of God," a light he said which
first dawned with "the Christian
Era."18 (Christianity bears no slight
guilt in the idolatries that infuse
American patriotism.) George W. Bush joins
the pious chorus even while
waging undeclared war: "Our nation is
the greatest force for good in
history."(Crawford, Texas, August 31,
2002)
So the American Empire does not lack for the
binding power of cult, the
first of the cult-bread-circus trio. Given
the wealth that accumulates at
the imperial homeland, bread and circus arrive
in quantity. . (The modern
American equivalents would be pizza, consumerism
and football.) Thus is
achieved the passive base and detachment from
politics that empire
requires.
But this induced passivity is sick. It's an
illness, one that could be
called ICS: Imperial Comfort Syndrome. When
you are resting on a bed of
unearned privileges as the affluent elite in
the United States are, we
become very comfortable. But it is not a comfort
born of health. Imperial
Comfort Syndrome does not result in fever or
in cold chills. It's
symptoms are tepidity and a dull, crippling
kind of depression. This
shows up in elections where 6O% of eligible
American voters didn't even
show up. It shows up in an electorate that
is contentedly ignorant of
what political and corporate power-holders
re doing tl them and to the
world. All this is ICS at work.
Interestingly, Scripture saw the syndrome,
in chapter 3 of Revelations, a
book that was obsessed with the evils of empire.
The author puts these
biting words into the mouth of God. "I
know all your ways. You are
neither hot nor cold. How I wish you were either
hot or cold. But because
you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will
spit you out of my
mouth... Hear, you who have ears to hear, what
the Spirit says to the
churches."
The same ingredients-especially the divine mandate
to subject-are found
in other forms of empire. The divine right
of men to rule women, the
subjection of people of color to whites, the
dominance of rich over poor,
of heterosexuals over homosexuals, and more.
This book is not written as a wail of despair.
It is written in the
conviction that in those flawed but powerful
classics that we call "the
world religions," there are renewable
moral energies that can heal a
dangerously sick humanity, a humanity that
might have been better called
homo insipiens. Sapientia is the cure for that.
The focus will be on the
wise bursts of light that came out of the Jewish
and Christian moral
traditions, though frequent reference will
be made to helpful moral
breakthroughs achieved in other religious traditions.
There is no one true religions but all those
that classify as classics
have practical visions of what life on this
planet could be. Some say the
biblical religion hasn't really failed; it
just hasn't really been tried.
That is a bit too much. It has been tried and
has helped history turn
some salubrious corners. It has had victories,
some enduring, many lost.
To discover or recover the energies of the
biblical tradition and apply
them to a world in grim condition is the work
of the following pages of
this book.
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