Can America's Soul Be Redeemed?

Submitted by Ryan Dowell Baum on April 16, 2008 - 6:10pm.

As a member of the United Church of Christ, I have found myself unintentionally embroiled in the recent controversy sparked by Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. We have seen clips of his sermons played over and over again on the evening news, the angry Black preacher waving his arms in the air cursing the “US of KKK” and shouting, “God damn America.”

In my conversations with friends and colleagues, I have found that one’s sympathy with Rev. Wright largely depends on one’s point of view. To my friends from the inner city, members of America’s underclasses, Rev. Wright’s critiques seem right on target. The United States was founded on the genocide of the original inhabitants of this continent, grew to economic power with the kidnapping and enslavement of the inhabitants of another continent, and maintains itself as the world’s greatest imperial power through the continued exploitation of poor people in its own backyard and in the farthest-flung reaches of planet Earth.

Others, friends and family living reasonably well in this country, members of America’s middle- and upper-middle classes, find the Reverend’s tirades extreme and more than a little alienating. Sure, America has its problems, but we are founded on the principles of liberty and justice for all, on the notion that all people are created equal. We’re not perfect, to be sure, but we’ve come a long way since the days of slavery and Jim Crow, and America comes closer every day to “living out the true meaning of its creed.” This is what our national hero, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., died for—the sacred mission to redeem the soul of America.

This dissonance between the America that is and the America that most of us want it to be, is expressed beautifully by the poet Langston Hughes:

“O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

“O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!”

But will America be? Can America be? Can the soul of the Empire really be redeemed?

Looking to the Scriptures, we find that the people of God have always had a somewhat ambivalent relationship to Empire. The Hebrews were enslaved by Pharaoh and were brought out of Egypt through Pharaoh’s defeat and the destruction of his armies. Later, they were exiled and led away in chains to Babylon. And yet later, they are brought out of exile and allowed back into the Promised Land by King Cyrus of Persia, who they call a moshiach, an anointed one, the same title later used to describe Jesus.

The New Testament is equally ambiguous. New Testament writers are clear that Jesus died for sinners in order to reconcile them to God, and yet there seems to be some disagreement on whether the “powers and principalities,” as Paul terms the governmental and imperial structures, are included among those for whom Christ died.

According to John of Patmos, the author of Revelation, the answer is a resounding “no.” At the end of history, the angels will proclaim, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great,” and the Empire will go down in fire and smoke to be replaced altogether by the Empire of God.

On the other hand, Paul asserts in his letter to the Colossians that all things in heaven and on earth, “visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers,” have been and will be reconciled to God.

So where does this leave us? In something of a quandary, I think.

As my friend Dr. Webb Mealy defines it, empire is a system in which resources from outlying areas are funneled to a central location for the benefit of elites. Such a system is, of course, never in line with the liberating purposes of God, whose will is Shalom, wholeness, for all of God’s creation. Such a system, as utterly contrary to the redemptive purposes of the Almighty, can never endure.

But the question is this: is the exploitative system of empire essential to the identity of Babylon, of Rome, of America? Can these entities, these “powers and principalities,” be brought into rhythm with the gracious and saving will of God and still be Babylon, Rome, or America?

After all, America is many things. She is a place. She is a people. She is a culture. And she is an empire. As a place and as a people, America’s fate is bound up with mine. America is the land of my ancestors, the land of my birth, the land of my family, my friends, and my community of faith. Her history and her culture, for better and for worse, have formed me and molded me into the person I have become.

And yet as an empire, America is an idol, a fallacy, a perversion of God’s intentions for human relationship. She is everything I as a Christian am called to oppose. As American Christians, we are faced with an almost maddening collision of identities. We are at the same time citizens of the empire and subjects of the Reign of God. How, then, are we to live?

Jeremiah’s message to the elders of the exiled Jewish community in Babylon is instructive. Shortly after they are carried away into captivity in a foreign land, Jeremiah prophecies to them, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

What is striking is what Jeremiah does not tell them to do. He doesn’t tell them to escape, to fight off their captors and run away to the land of their ancestors and their God—after all, Jerusalem is occupied; there’s really nowhere to run. He doesn’t tell them to curse the Babylonians, to pray for their ruin. He reminds them that the welfare of the cities to which they have been brought is bound up with their own welfare, and therefore to take an active role in the cities’ improvement. At the same time, Jeremiah does not tell them to participate in the exploitative and idolatrous economic system of the Babylonian Empire. He doesn’t tell them to go to the market and buy up the delicious and exotic Babylonian cuisine or to eat of the sacrificed meat in the Babylonian temples. “Plant gardens,” he tells them, “and eat what they produce.” Become self-sufficient, establish your own economy. Be in the world and not of it, but by all means, be a blessing to your oppressors.

Perhaps Jeremiah’s prophecy can be taken as guidance for our own situation. While we cannot condone the genocidal and ecocidal practices of the American Empire, we can become lights unto the nations, multiplying in number and blessing the land in which we find ourselves, knowing that our welfare and the welfare of our cities are one. Through all this, God is in our midst, working in us for the renewal and restoration of our cities, in communities like YEAH! in Berkley, an emergency assistance hostel for homeless young people between the ages of 18 and 25, like Catholic Worker Houses, which provide ministries of radical hospitality to the urban poor, and like the People’s Seminary, an organization in Washington State which provides biblical and theological study, as well as a simple ministry of presence, to those at the furthest margins of society, like migrant workers, inmates and gang members. Such communities are, as Jesus said, like yeast that leavens a whole loaf of bread, like a tiny mustard seed that grows into a wild and brambly bush that will take over a whole garden. They are the small signs of hope that God is indeed working with us and in us.

Can the soul of the American Empire ultimately be redeemed? Perhaps that is a question to which only God knows the answer. But we have our marching orders from on high: we shall be a blessing to those who seek to do us and our brothers and sisters harm, pray to the Lord on our cities’ behalf, and work for the redemption of the soul of our nation—or die trying.

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