To paraphrase Tertullian: “What hath Zuccoti Park to do with Jerusalem?”
The uprising of protest movements that began on September 17, 2011 in this country (partly inspired by the Arab Spring, partly instigated by Adbusters) has found a life of its own. This May’s G8-NATO summit in Chicago will become another prominent site of resistance. Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has passed new city laws deploying unlimited surveillance, restrictions on public activities and parades, and has authorized the hiring of contract law enforcement for the Summit—and beyond. On February 7, 2012, the U S Congress approved the use of drones in domestic airspace. If more drones were already available one can be certain Mayor Emmanuel would be using them as well. Will it be a Chicago Spring or only the late, brutal arrival of a long Chicago winter?
Many Christians of course are suspicious of and opposed to the Occupy Movement. They suspect its motives, its financial backers, and its subversive agenda. They are uneasy about protests against economic inequality, which seem to take some of Jesus’ words too literally. They are frustrated that all of this activist energy is not being directed into the current political system (where it can be controlled, redirected, manipulated, and eventually pacified). Some Christians feel that the Occupy Movement is just another distraction from our obligation to preach the gospel and grow the church. Other Christians might legitimately ask, “What gospel?” and “Which church?”
For many other Christians participating in the Occupy assemblies and protests has been an exhilarating process. I know clergy who seem to have undergone another conversion experience. Occupy gatherings remind them of what the early churches must have been like: spontaneous, energized, pulsing with hope and expectation—provoking increasing conflict with the powers.
I’ll confess my own excitement about both the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement. I don’t expect that long term the Occupy Movement will lead to a new world order that is less oppressive, more just, or more democratic. In my cynicism I don’t expect that Occupy will change much of anything. I live in the tension of suspecting that my actions are finite and yet absolutely essential. My hopes are utopian but not my expectations. But I do believe that as long as we can still dissent, organize, and protest, we can continue to unsettle and crack the hardening carapace of globalization that threatens to cover and consume this still beautiful planet. Every time I dissent from the reigning order I proclaim Jesus’ death until He comes.
Augustine wrote that the joys of empire are as fragile as glass. This is a metaphor of anxiety for those seduced by empire’s illusions and hope for those crushed by empire’s heel. That the Occupy Movement will not introduce the commonwealth of God announced by Jesus does not stifle my enthusiasm. In a totalitarian corporate capitalist order we must seek to create fissures and occupy spaces that can then be widened into “temporary theonomous zones” where true human life can be renewed and flourish once again. In this way the parallels between the Occupy Movement and the early churches are worthy of comparison.
On the day of Pentecost as narrated in Acts 2 we see the Holy Spirit initiating a secession movement from within the Roman Empire. Weekly gatherings began to develop and these gatherings spread rapidly across the entire empire. When they needed a word to describe these gatherings they did not draw upon religious parallels but adopted the political language of ancient Athenian democracy. They called their gatherings “assemblies”—ecclesia in Greek.
Their general assemblies initially had standard practices that developed a common life together. There seems to have been only a minimal plan or program to their activities. They tried to embody their ongoing reflection upon the life and death of Jesus. They practiced corporate discernment and decision-making and radical economic sharing that nurtured unity and minimized differences between rich and poor. These assemblies were clearly “political” entities; and yet unlike other political entities they were not formed by any decision, covenant, or social contract. They were birthed by the Spirit.
They did not appeal to the Roman Empire for recognition or reform. They were not concerned with making the Empire work better or with installing an alternative “Christian empire” [sic] in its place. A loyal Roman citizen declared “Caesar is Lord”; but every member of these alternative assemblies declared that “Jesus is Lord”. Rather than live as good imperial citizens these early followers of Jesus lived as much as possible as if the Empire did not exist!
When they gathered to hear “the apostle’s teaching” they were rehearsing and expanding an alternative political narrative; a narrative not determined by pollsters, media moguls, or commercial advertisers. When they met for meals and worship they sought to disregard social stereotypes, class and gender distinctions, economic disparities, and ethnic divisions. Sometimes they succeeded.
The New Testament accounts of these assemblies are undeniably romanticized in many places, although brutally honest in others. A developing “canon” of writings became a means of regulating some communal excesses and providing a degree of uniformity and unity to their expanding movement. Nevertheless, for an intentionally political entity they remained remarkably nonpolitical. What were their demands? Who were their leaders?
Theologian Dwight Hopkins has argued that globalization (what I call “military neoliberalism”) functions as a religion. 1 The accumulation of the world’s resources under the control of a privileged elite embodies a deity (Mammon), a telos (wealth), a priestly class (global financiers), and religious institutions (the World Bank, the WTO, the IMF, and multinational corporations). Globalization has a theological anthropology that defines humanity as capital resources and consumers. Neo-liberalism is an economic “doctrine”, a colonizing theology, and a missionary religion.
When seen in this way there is an inevitable and necessary conflict between the politics of Pentecost and the religion of Empire. Pentecost provides an alternative view of globalization to that of Empire. Jesus proclaimed that another world was possible. This belief in an alternative future animated by the resurrection life of Jesus mobilized the early churches.
To the degree that the Occupy Movement continues to open up public space for alternative communities to form and develop I will continue to support it. Sometimes we cannot immediately do the things that we would eventually hope to do. Sometimes we must focus on doing those things that prepare the way. “What hath Zucotti Park to do with Jerusalem?” It makes other things possible.
Perhaps Christians suspicious of the Occupy Movement can legitimately argue that the politics of Pentecost do not coincide with the Occupy movement at all points. But they can only argue that if they themselves are adherents of the New Testament’s pentecostal politics and not merely capitalist collaborators seeking to serve God AND Mammon. Christians enthusiastic about the Occupy Movement must keep reminding ourselves of how and why we can continue to ally with its trajectory. Christians must oppose globalization’s assault upon the poor and the planet. Christians must defend the integrity of our own Christian faith when we see it being muted, mutated, and mutilated by the church’s alliance with Mammon and Molech.
The Occupy Movement threatens to develop some of its own divisions as debates about direction, method, and leadership begin to emerge. It is easy for me to imagine that by this time next year (2013 – after the next Presidential election) the Occupy Movement might be a dissipated ghost. But that is a feeling more rooted in my own cynicism than in any realistic assessment of political possibility. In times such as ours I suspect “possibility” is always a subjective projection rather than an objective evaluation. Who can read the signs of the times? As the church learned on the day of Pentecost (and keeps learning again and again) our God keeps surprising us. Even the gates of hell will not prevail – nor perhaps the forces of globalization.
Notes:
- Dwight N Hopkins. “The Religion of Globalization” in Religions/Globalizations: Theories and Cases, edited by Hopkins, Lorentzen, Mendieta, and Batstone (Duke, 2001), pp 7-32. ↩
