Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down

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Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down
Brian Zahnd

Yesterday I heard Attorney General Jeff Sessions attempt to defend the deliberately cruel practice of separating immigrant children from their parents and placing them in separate detention camps by citing the Bible. This outraged me. This is not a partisan political issue, but a human rights issue. The United Nations human rights office, the American Psychological Association, Catholic Bishops, the Southern Baptist Convention, and Franklin Graham all agree. But using the Bible to justify this repugnant policy…well, that sent me over the edge.

Here’s what I had to say about it last night on Twitter.

Today I sat at my writing desk for seven hours working on the “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down” chapter for my next book, Postcards From Babylon, and I thought I would share with you the last paragraph I wrote before calling it a day…

My proposal to the Western church of the 21st century — the heirs of a now defunct Christendom — is to participate in the overthrow the kingdom of Satan by reclaiming the resurrection as the announcement and embrace of the new way of being human inaugurated by Jesus Christ and his Easter Empire. And make no mistake about it, it is a re-claiming of resurrection. Since the catastrophe of Constantine and the emergence of the imperial church seventeen centuries ago, Easter and Christianity have been commandeered to serve the interests of empire. Though Christendom as a viable project is mostly dead, its ghost still haunts the aspirations of post-Christian superpowers. As the horrors of the Trump administration policy of separating children from asylum seeking parents apprehended at the United States border and placing these children in separate detention camps fell under heavy criticism, Attorney General Jeff Sessions attempted to defend the abhorrent practice by saying, “I would cite to you the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.” But the top Justice Department official failed to cite the thirteenth verse of Romans 13 where the Apostle Paul says, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” Love that fulfills the law looks like welcoming the stranger, not taking away their kids and imprisoning the traumatized children in detention camps. But I realize the last thing an empire wants is a risen Christ judging their anti-life policies and practices.

BZ