Barack Obama and the Imperial Church

Maybe the Church will pressure the State to end the deadly and racist wars in the Middle East.

While the world was watching Barack Obama’s ascendancy to the White House and heralding it as a new era in race relations and peace, another epochal scene was occurring in the U.S. After meeting with presidential hopeful John McCain, Reverend Billy Graham announced an end to his Presidential Council, which has advised and anointed every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In some ways, the Church has never been good at blessing the State and being complicit in the raising of armies and fighting wars. When this happens, the Church has often lost its prophetic imagination and distinctive role in society. Because of this and over the centuries, the Church, at least in the West, has assimilated the values found in absolute monarchies, totalitarian states, and militant democracies. In some instances, it has behaved worse than the State and has become an Imperial Church.

At the beginning of the Cold War and when Russia tested its first atomic bomb (the U.S. already had over 300), Rev. Graham’s ministry was fledgling. Newspaper mogul William Hearst encouraged Rev. Graham to start preaching that “Communism was inspired by the Devil and its leaders were Antichrists.” (1) In 1953, even though President Eisenhower had helped bring an end to the Korean War and had warned the U.S. that “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed…it is humanity hanging from a cross of Iron;” millions of Americans packed stadiums for Rev. Graham’s Crusade for Christ rallies and heard “Communism wants to establish a totalitarian dictatorship in America…already there are over 1100 Communist organizations.” (2)

Rev. Graham became a national celebrity and helped pave the way for the rise of the Religious Right and Neo-Conservatives, that have dominated recent U.S. foreign policy. He also supported Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt against suspected Communists. Due to Loyalty Oath Review Boards.

Thousands of Americans lost their jobs and were jailed. Rev. Graham and the Imperial Church also sanctified the Cold War and the Vietnam Conflict, consecrated military actions against Iran and Guatemala, and warned Rev. Martin Luther King that he was going “to far and to fast.” (3) This time, though, in 2008, Rev. Graham’s blessing over John McCain was not enough for a presidential victory. Does this mark the decline of Rev. Graham’s Gospel of fear and America’s Imperial Church? Is the Imperial Church experiencing a leadership vacuum? And if so, who will now advise and counsel President Elect Barack Obama?

I can immediately think of Father Roy Bourgeois, who is working to close the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. Graduates have tragically tortured and killed thousands of innocent civilians in Latin America.

What about the hundreds of church workers whom are providing sanctuary to Conscientious Objectors and immigrants, and on any given night are sheltering and feeding the homeless? Would Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who questioned America’s lack of remorse in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki while also raising concerns about the causes of the attacks on Sept. 11, be a prophetic voice? If President Elect Barack Obama really wants to mend relations with the global community, should he appoint Jean Bertrand Aristide as an advisor? (A former priest and President of Haiti when George W. Bush kidnapped him and forcibly removed him from office.)

It is ironic that when Jesus asked for disciples, prophets, servants, peacemakers, and healers; he instead got national celebrities, reverends, televangelists, and chaplains. But maybe with the election of Barack Obama, it will be different.

Maybe the Church will proclaim and practice a Gospel of Forgiveness. Perhaps it will confront and transform the National Security State and Military-Industrial-Academic Complex, that President Eisenhower warned about.

Maybe the Church will repent of its involvement in massive rearmament programs, and pressure the State to end the deadly and racist wars in the Middle East. And finally, perhaps the Church will persuade Barack Obama to meet with Iran’s Supreme Religious Leader, who has anathematized nuclear war. In doing this, the Imperial Church and its leaders may possibly avoid a spiritual death and resurrect a new and just Prophetic Church.

-- Dallas Darling is the author of “The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Faith”. While a pastor and social-activist living in the U.S., he served the poor in rural communities and inner cities. Dallas teaches U.S. and World History and is a regular contributor to www.worldnews.com.

Notes:

(1) Newfield, Jack and Mark Jacobson. American Monsters. New York, New York: Thunder Mouth Press,2004. p. 141.

(2) Ibid., p. 142.

(3) Ibid., p. 143.