Putting Iraq into biblical perspective

John Dominic Crossan is that unusual academic who crossed the border between ivory tower and media celebrity. A member of the Jesus Seminar, a group of mostly liberal scholars controversial for trying to separate the wheat of historical truth about Jesus from the chaff of pious fiction, Crossan appears every Easter on TV documentaries about Christianity. With his snowy hair and Irish brogue (he was born 70 years ago in Tipperary), he has become familiar to many viewers. Recently, the former Catholic priest and emeritus professor at DePaul University in Chicago pulled more than 200 people from a balmy spring day into a lecture hall at Cambridge's Episcopal Divinity School.

He wanted to put America's role in the world, especially its occupation of Iraq, in a biblical perspective, to ponder "what it means to be a Christian in the most powerful nation on earth." The topic, in pop parlance: If he were an American, what would Jesus do?

Jesus and his contemporaries lived under the Roman Empire. Two millennia later, there are "close parallels between Rome in the first century and America in the 21st century," Crossan told his audience. The United States, like Rome, is the military, economic, and cultural superpower of its time, he noted, and like Rome, it has some cheerleaders who insist that power is divinely ordained.

While this comparison got grunts of approval from his listeners, Crossan insisted that he wasn't peddling facile anti-Americanism.

"Civilization has always been imperial; that is, unjust and oppressive," he said. "We are the normalcy of civilization."

Christians can't divorce themselves from their environment, he said in an interview after his talk. "It's not like, `We're Christians and out there is America.' It doesn't work like that."

The funny thing about empires is that they often construct the avenues by which their opponents come at them. Crossan said St. Paul evangelized Christianity by traveling the roads Rome built and converting communities established by Rome. "He's using the empire to criticize the empire," Crossan said. "That's part of what we have to do."

Unlike Rome, the United States has democratic institutions through which Christians and others can criticize their government. Crossan thinks they failed in the run-up to war, posing a question in the interview that believers have wrestled with: "Do you think what we're doing in Iraq is the will of God?"

Against the Roman Empire, whose theology Crossan described as "victory and peace," with Rome the victor over others, Jesus preached justice and peace -- the kingdom of God. Wading into one of religious scholarship's most strident debates, Crossan argued to the Episcopal Divinity School crowd that Jesus was not referring to a heavenly kingdom -- "Heaven is in excellent shape, very well run." Rather, he was making the argument that the kingdom of God had already begun on earth, and that we are all called to bring it and its justice into this world. Rome crucified Jesus precisely because it understood that his teaching was meant as a challenge to its oppressive rule, Crossan said.

" `Kingdom' sounds political. `God' sounds religious. And `of' can get you killed," he said.

The biblical story of the miracle of loaves and fishes is a case study of how the church sometimes drops the ball in the pursuit of justice and the kingdom, according to Crossan. The crowd is hungry after Jesus finishes his teaching, yet the apostles suggest that he send the people away; it is Jesus who insists on feeding them. As Crossan reads the story, the church, represented by the apostles, is content to teach but wants nothing to do with feeding the hungry.

Which brings the discussion back to Iraq, a case in which he believes too many American Christians failed justice by failing to condemn the run-up to war more vigorously. Crossan is no pacifist; had the United Nations asked the United States to depose Saddam Hussein, "a genocidal monster, I would be in favor of it," he said in the interview. But with a majority of nations having lined up against the invasion, "that's one of the ways the spirit works. We get a message that way.

"If you look behind you and there's nobody following you, you're not a leader anymore," he added in the interview. "Not even Jesus went it alone. Jesus had some followers."

Other Christians have come to different conclusions about the validity of the war, but they might agree with Crossan on one point. In a candid show of humility, he admitted he's stumped about how Christians might translate Jesus' theology into a realistic plan for justice in Iraq.

"We are in deep now," he said, "and I don't see an easy solution."

Rich Barlow can be reached at rbarlow.81@alum.dartmouth.org.