By Yona M. Nonglang
I was your age when I realised there were two very different Jesus narratives in our world. Yes, there was the matrilineal indigenous Jewish narrative of Rabbi Yeshua who spoke truth to power and who taught and lived the compassionate way of life in the midst of ongoing culturicide and ecocide in the land of his birth by the predatory occupying Roman forces. Yes, the Jesus who was at loggerheads with the cynical religious leaders of his day, who were ingratiating themselves with the powers that be from Rome in the same way present-day Christian fundamentalists and state-sponsored church leaders cosy up to royalties, presidents and prime ministers in the imperialist “Christian” “world.”
Yes, unhappy with, and stung by the truth Yeshua spoke, and also threatened by the growing popularity of his compassionate teachings and anti-capitalist communitarian way of life, both capitalist imperial power and morally corrupt religious elite colluded in permanently silencing their “common enemy” by lynching him from that infamous tree.
But even though the colluding parties thought they had succeeded in permanently silencing this indigenous voice of truth and compassion through that very public execution and the locking away of his body in a sealed and heavily guarded tomb, his story, ironically, has its own way of surviving and reverberating through the centuries. What can be more inspiring than that?
Thus, this narrative of moral defiance, triumph and goodness in the face of cruel exploitation resonated far and wide with the oppressed people of the day in that part of the world. So much so, that, communities that modelled on its traditional caring and sharing communitarian ideals organically grew in that region. Their “love your neighbour as yourself” and “do unto others what you would others do unto you” “world,” indeed, was in stark contrast to the “not of their world” zero-sum thinking of winner takes it all that was representative of the predatory and hegemonic imperialist idea of life.
The growth of their movement was so phenomenal that the empire took notice and saw the need to take action against its members through punitive measures of all kinds, including their torture and capital punishment as public entertainment to amuse morally desensitised citizens of the empire who had developed a sanguinary taste for blood-sport. Yet, in spite of that, the community defied the odds, sustained itself for more than three hundred years and remained a thorn on the empire’s flesh by being a humanitarian force to reckon with.
Until imperial Rome under the wily Constantine decided to deal with the “Christian problem,” a la the Trojan Horse way. Unlike his predecessors who tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to quash the movement, with a deft stroke of Machiavellian policy, Constantine played the role of its benefactor instead. He lifted all sanctions against the movement, declared himself its member, conferred “divinity” status, albeit posthumously, on Rabbi Yeshua, institutionalised the movement into a state religion of the empire and used that new religion as his image softening catalyst that cemented his hold on the empire through “soft power.”
I often wonder how the communitarian Rabbi would have responded to the idea of being crowned “saviour” of the mighty capitalist empire that had a hand in his public execution. But he wasn’t there at that council where it happened, was he? (https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/council-nicaea-0010969). Because he was long gone by then. And because of that, the emperor and his team of loyal “bishops” who were handsomely rewarded for their subservience to the throne, succeeded in subverting the Jesus narrative of the non-proselyting Jews into a coercive religious conversion tool for the empire’s world domination agenda. How disingenuous was that?
Was the “divinity” conferment on the Rabbi unanimous? Apparently it wasn’t. The leaders who opposed that move were branded “heretics,” banished from office and rendered persona non grata. Such was the authoritarian ruthlessness of the new religion of the empire in its bid to forge “consensus.”
And so it’s been, that under machinations of both “Catholic” and successive breakaway “Protestant” European empires through the centuries, the indigenous Jewish Jesus was supplanted by an international “saviour” with imperial powers to eliminate other cultures across continents. Zealous carriers of the “gospel” of this imperial “saviour” used a hegemonic language that condemned perceived rival cultures as evil, demonic, uncivilised, and, deserving of annihilation.
One only has to also read through The Doctrine of Discovery, 1493 https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/04093_FPS.pdf & https://indigenousvalues.org/decolonization/doctrine-discovery/ to familiarise oneself with the hegemonic expansionist tactics of that empire and the ones that followed it. So expansionist, that during British colonial days, the imperialist religion that subverted the Jewish Jesus narrative came as far as our Khasi Hills too.
And it wasn’t long before my grandparents and their generation were condemned to imperial hell if they didn’t abandon their long-held indigenous understanding of the divine and the golden rule that came along with that understanding. And with that condemnation also came the divisive diktat to the “converts” of the imperial religion to steer clear of our traditional sacred rituals and customary festivities because they were deemed “demonic” and “uncivilised” while the imperial religion was promoted as “civilising.”
Even to this day, such condescending colonialist language still exists. I was in the same room with a group of people when a pastor, who seemed sure of the superiority of his imperialist “Christian” “culture,” condemned our matrilineal system as “unbiblical.” It made me doubt if the gentleman had ever made his own in-depth study of Jewish history of matriliny.
“Kill the Indian, save the person,” is a well-known victimising imperialist saying familiar to the indigenous people of the Americas. As the original inhabitants of their Turtle Island, did they not experience genocides at the hands of the “Christian” European occupiers who looked down at them as savages and treated their revered land as mere resource to be exploited and commercialised? Were those who survived the genocides not exiled to the refugee camp “reservations” and their children forcibly taken away from them and kept in the so-called residential schools where they were stripped off their “Indianness” by their high-handed “Christian” school masters who were tasked with the duty of “saving” “Indian” “souls” in the name of the empire’s “Jesus?” (https://un-aligned.org/human-rights/residential-schools-in-canada-and-the-us/).
So the question we need to ask ourselves is if the empire’s “Jesus” really saves, or, is “Jesus saves” just a “soft power” empty cultural marketing slogan of the white supremacist empire? So that the empire can further its cultural subjugation of the world it seeks to dominate by selling its most potent opium that renders its consumers impotent to reason and reasoning ability? Just look at the different levels of delusion among the Jesus saves people. How many are aware enough to question the futility of white supremacy “spiritual pursuit?”
Indeed, imperial Christianity’s absurd understanding of the divine has been manifesting itself in many troubling forms. From mindless followers of self-enriching millionaire celebrity healers/preachers who hunger not for righteousness, but for power, money, and emotional wild rides (https://www.britannica.com/topic/televangelism), to angst-ridden political culture warriors who rage against soft targets of their culture wars (https://youtu.be/cnG-B198-_0).
And, indeed, some, literally lost on their bloodthirsty dispensationalist doomsday cult spiritual path of fixed certainties where the road map to their heavenly realm is already paved all the way through bloody “Armageddon” (https://youtu.be/NahTjAsDThs). While some, of course, smug and snug as bugs in the rugs of their spiritual ivory tower echo chambers of highbrow pretentiousness as they pontificate and regurgitate what’s fed to them by the self-proclaimed “intellectuals” of the fundamentalist variety (https://crossexamined.org/christian-apologetics). Which, of course, begs the question of whether militant imperial religious fundamentalism and “intellectual” can ever compatibly cohabit in the same mindscape, no matter how impressive the paper qualifications are. Because, as you know, at the end of the day, they still pray at the altar of the same “saviour” of the empire, anyway.
Also, have you ever come across the politically motivated hegemonic doctrine of Dominionism that is gaining more and more popularity among adherents of imperial Christianity? (https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/quiet-rise-Christian-dominionism). Truly disturbing, isn’t it?
But it’s a habit of “Christian emperors,” to create a hegemonic god who is the mirror image of themselves? (https://youtu.be/QS03EBbNB_4) That neurotic, toxic male chauvinist who wants to conquer the world through divide and rule while he inflicts the same delusion on those who render loyalty to him?
Isn’t he the reason behind all the confrontational belligerence against “unbelievers,” the “just” wars against “undemocratic” “enemy” countries for the sake of grabbing their wealth, the biblical justification for environmental destruction in the name of “development” that enriches a few and deprive millions of their land, and the moral corruption evident around us, all the holier-than-thou “Christian” claims notwithstanding? It, therefore, goes without saying that imperial Christianity is as vacuous as its “Jesus saves!” slogan in spite of its relentless demands from its adherents for self-sacrifice in matters of time, devotion and money?
If the most often asked question is how can “Christian” nations be so violent to countries they want to lord over, so disrespectful to the human rights of “non-whites” (https://youtu.be/tcw9W2iy4pY), so unrestrained in their proliferation of deadly weapons even as they cynically pay lip service to “world peace,” so indifferent to the plight of the poor and the downtrodden, so resistant to the idea of man-made climate crises (https://youtu.be/614mtpocA48), perhaps, it’s time, to let imperial Christianity own up to its lack of effective moral imagination and moral conscience? Again, let’s go back to Yeats’ poem,
Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer/Things fall apart, the center cannot hold/ Mere anarchy is let loose upon the world/ The blood-dimmed tide is loosened, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned.