“In Jerusalem, the fate of Jesus was very closely bound up with the Pax Romana: through his violent death he became its victim….[T]he central content of his proclamation, the imminence of the kingdom of God, amounts to a questioning of the Pax Romana: anyone who prays for the coming of the kingdom of God, expects it very soon, and sees the reign of its dawning in his own action, has no faith in the imperial good tidings of a pacified world and human happiness in it; he does not regard this situation as the peace God wants, but is certain that it will soon end.” — Klaus Wengst, Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus Christ (London: SCM Press, 1987),54.

Doug Jones

See also:
Jesus Shaped by Empire
The Myth of Pax Romana
The Book of Revelation as Satire and Subversion
John’s Counter-Empire Apocalypse
Early Christian Apologist Debunks the Roman Empire in Johannine Style
Roman Empire Terror
Exorcism as a Political Act
The Roman Empire Also Blamed Those They Invaded

“In the categories of ‘good guys and bad guys,’ Stalin was indisputably a bad guy in the Cold War. But he was also a bad guy during World War II and before it — and the West had gladly accepted him as he was….But [later] the West perceived him as bad, and Stalin felt threatened by this shift in attitude among his former allies….

“Stalin cast a long shadow of fear and uncertainty on his successors. Church and his American allies, [Stalin] wrote in his last published works, were unbending, mortal enemies of the Soviet Union. They ‘bear a striking resemblance to Hitler and his friends….Other warmongers are American billionaires and millionaires who regard war as a source of profit. These aggressive forces hold in their hands reactionary governments and guide them.’” — Vladislav Zubok, Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Krushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1996), 53, 76.

Everybody becomes a Hitler at some point in foreign policy discussions. There’s always a lot of that going around.

Doug Jones

Given all the Scriptural warnings about the temptations of wealth and the doctrinal distortions brought about by the rich (Amos 8:5-7; James 5:5; Acts 19:25ff; 1 Tim. 6:9), it’s fair to raise the question:

“How might the Reformers draw on the financial resources of their patrons in sixteenth-century towns and villages without succumbing to the acceptable norms and desires of those patrons?” — Joel Green, Mark Baker, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 210.

At the very least, why did the Reformers end up spiritualizing so many of the New Covenant passages on wealth and poverty, unlike the early church fathers?

Doug Jones

See also:
James’s Strange Impartiality
What If Knowing God is Doing Mercy and Justice?
John the Baptist — Evil Guilt Manipulator
The Book of James and Security Agencies

“Now an International Criminal Court prosecutor wants to bring charges against Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

“I have no sympathy for people who make others suffer. Nevertheless, I wonder at the International Criminal Court’s pick from the assortment of war criminals? Why al-Bashir?

“Is it because Sudan is a powerless state, and the International Criminal Court hasn’t the courage to name George W. Bush and Tony Blair as war criminals?

“Bush and Blair’s crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan dwarf, at least in the number of deaths and displaced persons, the terrible situation in Darfur. The highest estimate of Darfur casualties is 400,000, one-third the number of Iraqis who have died as a result of Bush’s invasion. Moreover, the conflict in the Sudan is an internal one, whereas Bush illegally invaded two foreign countries, war crimes under the Nuremberg Standard. Bush’s war crimes were enabled by the political leaders of the UK, Spain, Canada, and Australia. The leaders of every member of the ‘coalition of the willing to commit war crimes’ are candidates for the dock.

“But of course the Great Moral West does not commit war crimes. War crimes are charges fobbed off on people demonized by the Western media, such as the Serbian Milosovic and the Sudanese al-Bashir.

“Every week the Israeli government evicts Palestinians from their homes, steals their land, and kills Palestinian women and children. These crimes against humanity have been going on for decades. Except for a few Israeli human rights organizations, no one complains about it. Palestinians are defined as “terrorists,” and “terrorists” can be treated inhumanely without complaint.

“Iraqis and Afghans suffer the same fate. Iraqis who resist US occupation of their country are ‘terrorists.’ Taliban is a demonized name. Every Afghan killed–even those attending wedding parties–is claimed to be Taliban by the US military. Iraqis and Afghans can be murdered at will by American and NATO troops without anyone raising human rights issues.

“The International Criminal Court is a bureaucracy. It has a budget, and it needs to do something to justify its budget. Lacking teeth and courage, it goes after the petty war criminals and leaves the big ones alone….” — Paul Craig Roberts (former Reagan administration official), “War Crimes Paradox”

Be sure to read Roberts’ whole essay.

Doug Jones

See also:
Inspirational Election Thoughts from Gore Vidal
Time to Excommunicate the President
When George W. Bush Pulled an Ahab

“In 1945 most parts of the world celebrated the end of the Second World War and, in order to prevent such a tragedy from reoccurring, established the United Nations Organization. Yet Greece remained a battlefield and already one year after the Second World War the Cold War started. As the frustration of the Greek left grew, a fraction rearmed and took to the hills and in the fall of 1946 started a civil war against the British and the local right. Britain exhausted by World War, could no longer control the country and in early 1947 asked the United States for support. CIA expert William Blum relates that ‘Washington officials knew well that their new client government was so venal and so abusive of human rights that even confirmed American anti-Communists were appalled.’ Yet as Communist Yugoslavia supported the Greek left with arms and the country seemed on the brink of turning red, President Truman with his ‘Truman Doctrine’ speech in March 1947 was able to convince Congress to openly intervene in Greece. Greece was the first country to be invaded by the United States during the Cold War according to its strategy of combating Communism globally. In the following decades Washington put forward the argument used in Greece to justify its open or cover invasions of Korea, Guatemala, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, Kambodscha, Nicaragua, Panama and several other countries.

“By some ideological alchemy, Truman labeled the corrupt right-wing regime in Athens as ‘democratic’ and dismissed its opponents on the left as ‘terrorists,’ as US forces with heavy military equipment landed in Greece. The left-wing partisan force of some 20,000 men and women, scattered in the Greek mountains, was outnumbered six to one as the US special units linked up with the Hellenistic Raiding Force and other units of the Greek right. When Stalin realized that civil war in Greece could lead to a superpower confrontation, Yugoslavia was excluded from the Soviet Bloc in 1948 where upon the arms supply for the Greek partisans ebbed away. The situation became desperate as the Hellenic Raiding Force operating under US command was excellently equipped and gained strength. The United States secretly started ‘Operation Torch’ and used chemical warfare to defeat the Greek partisans by dropping thousands of gallons of Napalm on Greece.” - Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (New York: Frank Cass Pub., 2005), 214,215.

“In early June two American Air Force officers and four enlisted men from the Military Advisory and Planning Group prepared to train the Greeks in [napalm] use. By the middle of the month the Americans made arrangements for moving the napalm equipment and crews from Eleusis Airfield to Kozani. Van Fleet agreed with Matheny that it was time to seek the American aid mission’s approval for napalm attacks. Orders went out for over 5,000 pounds of napalm from the United States and 200 drop tanks from Germany which could hold 75 gallons of liquid each. On June 20, ten Spitfires launched their first napalm raid on targets chosen by the army.” — Howard Jones, “A New Kind of War”- America’s Global Strategy and the Truman Doctrine in Greece (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), 293.

Doug Jones

See also:
When NATO Faked Terrorism
Bombing Guatemala for United Fruit
Churchill’s Call for Chemical Weapons Against Iraq

“A stunning miracle took place during the winter of 54-55 C.E. as Paul languished in his prison cell in Ephesus and fervently prayed for God’s intervention. The scattered communities of the saints across Macedonia, Galatia, Asia, and Achaia now joined together in an act of unprecedented unity that would leave its mark on Christian tradition for centuries to come. In the face of the power of patronage and the cold logic of everyday life in the Roman Empire, they threw themselves wholeheartedly into the great collection project that Paul had initiated among them, in an impressive, outward display of dedication to their shared conception of the Kingdom of God….

“The collection for ‘the poor among the saints in Jerusalem’…was meant to be both a practical and symbolic challenge to the dominant ethos. In withdrawing their material wealth from the potential grasp of the patron, merchant, land dealer, or tax collector and in giving it away to people with whom they had no blood kinship or political connection, the assemblies were demonstrating their commitment to the principle of radical self-sacrifice and focusing their exercise of that principle on effecting a particular social change. This project was far more ambitious than the injunction ‘to remember the poor,’ to which Paul had reportedly agreed at the Jerusalem conference so many years before (Gal. 2:10)….

“Paul’s farflung network of assemblies were now engaged in a coordinated act of leitourgia that emphasized their character as a worldwide movement of prophetic action. Although the Greek word leitourgia – whose English form is ‘liturgy’ — is usually narrowly translated as religious or cultic activity, the term in antiquity referred to any political-economic service rendered for the common good by the citizens of a city, the subjects of a king, or the devotees of a god. It was an active demonstration of power. And in offering funds to help communities of the saints in Judea survive without dependence on wealthy patrons or surrender to the normal economic networks of the empire, the collection for Jerusalem could be seen as a profound political act.” — R. Horsley and N. Silberman, The Message of the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World (New York: Penguin Putnam, 1997),184,185.

Doug Jones

See also:
The Didache on Ownership
Ignatius: Heretics Shown by Their Lack of Concern for the Poor
Palm Sunday as Political Parody

“It’s been a difficult time for American families,” Bush said at a press conference. “We must ensure we can continue providing credit during this time of stress.” — cited in “Bush Touts Mortgage Plans, Offshore Drilling,” CNN

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“Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel” — Matthew 23:24.

In Luke 18:1-8, “a desperate widow is caught in the usual power play accompanying her husband’s death, and she is further enmeshed in the complexities of a Torah court. At first glance, her case appears hopeless. Everyone knows that the court will decide in favor of the party offering the most ‘appropriate’ emolument, that is, bribe. One less widow in Israel! One more ‘righteous’ verdict for the court! Unaccountably, the widow refuses to quit and threatens to blow the cover off the whole system. Her reward is justice at the gate….

“At some fundamental level, the oppressed must collude in their oppression for the system to work. Usually the collusion grows out of a sense of fatalism and despair that anything will change….The deck is stacked against the widow; she does not even have a male relative to represent her in the Torah court. She should just stay out of sight in a manner appropriate for a widow in mourning - out of sight, out of mind. Then the parties in the case can work out their arrangement, undisturbed by the widow’s claims. The refusal of the widow to accept her predestined role breaks social barriers and crosses forbidden social and gender boundaries. The result of her shameless behavior is a just verdict.” — William Herzog, Parables as Subversive Speech (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), 231,232.

Doug Jones

See also:
Unjust Predestination

The African resource wars “are already well under way. In mid-June, a Shell facility was attacked by local militants, disrupting production and sending the already sky-high price of oil to further heights before coming back online a week later. Attacks like those have increased in frequency, as Nigerian factions have fought for control of the nation’s lucrative petroleum resources, which are the largest in Africa….

“‘The United States has been concerned with its own post-1945 global oil strategy, involving Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela….But this strategy has fallen apart, and now Africa plays a key role at a time when oil is beyond $100 a barrel.’

“President Bush’s 2006 plan to establish the United States African Command (AFRICOM), an ominous Department of Defense program to network operations and combatant command across the African continent, is another such example, especially since not one African country has come forward to offer America permission to build a base on its territory. For now, AFRICOM is on the outside looking in on Africa from a base in Germany, an arrangement that can be seen both as a geopolitical reality and as a suitable metaphor for U.S.-African relations throughout history.

“But the United States won’t be outside Africa for long….And when it comes calling, it will most likely call on Nigeria first.” — Scott Thill, “Africa: The Next Victim in Our Quest for Cheap Oil”

Doug Jones

See also:
8 — Church and Genocide in Rwanda
Zimbabwe’s Mugabe Was Our Corporate Man
Is the ‘Save Darfur’ Campaign a Scam?
Western Complicity in Congo’s Wars
Uppity Poor Turning the World Upside Down

“Lets face it, making war is fast superseding sports as the American national pastime. Since 1980, overtly or covertly, the United States has been involved in military actions in Grenada, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Liberia, Sudan, the Philippines, Colombia, Haiti (again), Afghanistan (again) and Iraq (again) and that’s not even the full list. It stands to reason when the voracious appetites of the military-corporate complex are in constant need of feeding.” — “If You Build It, They Will Kill,” Nick Turse, LewRockwell.com

Doug Jones

See also:
End of the American Empire
Defense Spending is Hollowing Us Out
When the Purse Opened