Empire and Christianity

Empire and Christianity: Weekly Summary

Saturday, October 24, 2026

Sunday

Whereas Descartes said, “I think, therefore, I am,” the American mind now says, “I win, therefore, I am.” That is not an exaggeration. “I win, therefore, I am” is at work in our economics, politics, global policy, social media, religion, and even our personal relationships!

—Richard Rohr

Monday

These empires handed on a reading of the gospel that did not threaten top-down power, war-making, or the accumulation of wealth, but was presumably perfectly aligned with it.

—Richard Rohr

Tuesday

The path forward must be about stripping away the imperial distortions to reveal the Jesus who heals rather than conquers, who restores rather than erases, who empowers rather than overpowers.

—Randy Woodley

Wednesday

To belong in the empire is to dress the part. But the gospel invites us to clothe ourselves instead in compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and above all love.

Thursday

Jesus doesn’t legitimize human nation-states and their dominating systems of top-down control. In word and deed, Jesus exposes and inverts the whole pyramid.

—Brian McLaren

Friday

Have the courage to shake the foundations of your spiritual world. When you examine and create awareness around your entitlement, your privilege, and your position of power in communities, you can ultimately rediscover your true understanding of self, others, God, and the planet.

—Joanna Arellano-Gonzalez

Week Forty-Two Practice: Liberated from Empire

Father Richard emphasizes how Jesus modeled a path of descent and woundedness in radical opposition to the religion of empires:

Just because we’ve recited the right creed or saluted the right flag doesn’t mean that our heart is pure, open, free, or even in love with anybody.

If our religion isn’t finally creating loving people, then what good is it? I don’t think Jesus or the world needs it. I also don’t think the world cares about it anymore.

We have to make sure that we’re coming to faith not because we’re better, but because we’re wounded. If I were allowed to name the Christian religion, I would call it the religion of the wound.

Do we even realize that we follow a wounded man who carries his wounds even after the resurrection and shows them off? This is the way we come to God—not by doing it right, but by being wounded. That is not what empires teach!

I’m sure empires are going to continue until the end of time, trying to divide the world into winners and losers. But we who follow Jesus have been liberated from that!

Let’s not waste another second of our lives deciding who’s up and who’s down, who’s a winner and who’s a loser. Jesus made the losers into the winners, and it turned the history of religion on its head. That is not an overstatement. That’s the meaning of the cross. He was the ultimate loser, shamed by church and state—and he is the one God raises up. This is the icon of transformation for all of history.

We don’t come to God by denying our shadow or by projecting our fears onto other races, religions, classes, or genders.

We come to healing and salvation by owning our shadows and our wounds as our own greatest honor and glory. This is, for me, the only thing worthy of being called the gospel, and it still has the power to save the world