The Evils of Empire(s)

Soon after reading the striking words, “… every empire is evil,” in Ray Daniel’s book Grace Over Guns (my review of which some of you have seen here) I started working on this article. Rev. Daniel went on to assert that the U.S. is an empire. As such, it “shares the moral failings of all empires.” And now, the U.S. has a president who acts like an emperor (my words, not Daniel’s). 

When the U.S. Empire was Considered “Good”

There is a long history of the U.S. being considered an empire, and that was considered meritorious. In a 1785 letter, George Washington praised New York, calling it the “Seat of the Empire.”

According to my A.I. buddy Claude, this use of empire is “unambiguously positive—a term of pride tied to size, wealth, influence, and status as a center of commerce, culture, and innovation.” Consequently, after the U.S. defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898, Great Britain began to express pride that its former colonies had become a world empire.

After the U.S. acquired colonial possessions of its own, Britain no longer saw America as a resentful ex-colony but as a fellow imperial power with shared interests. That stance of the U.S. as an empire was justified by President McKinley and his supporters.

A little over three decades later, the Empire State Building was constructed, completed in a remarkable 13½ months in 1930-31. At that time, it was the world’s tallest building, and it was so named as a monument to the identity and global stature of the Empire State, New York.

But beginning in the 1960s, the word or concept of empire began to be called into question, and the glamor of empires became greatly tarnished.

When the U.S. Empire Became “Bad”

By the 1960s most of the 20^th century empires of the world had fallen. Empire had become morally discredited and anti-imperial movements were global. Thus, in the shadow of a global collapse of empires, to much of the world, the U.S. looked like the last Western empire trying to hold back Asian self‑determination (in Indochina).

Civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. linked racial injustice at home to imperial violence abroad. In “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” his April 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York City, MLK charged that the U.S. was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

Recently, in addition to Daniel’s negative views of empire (mentioned in the first paragraph above), last year Herald Press also published Kat Armas’s book, Liturgies for Resisting Empire. Ms. Armas was born in Cuba, so she knows something about the evils of empire because of how it affected the country of her birth.

In her first chapter, “Resisting Empire, Embracing Joy,” Ms. Armas cites words from “Christ in the Rubble,” Munther Isaac’s Christmas 2023 sermon that went viral. Rev. Dr. Isaac is a Palestinian Lutheran pastor, and in that sermon, he spoke with prophetic urgency against what he calls “empire theology.”

Isaac insists that Christ is found not in the triumphs of empire but in its ruins, among the wounded, the displaced, and the silenced. His witness turns lament into resistance, calling the church to stand where God stands: with those crushed beneath the weight of empire.

That is Ms. Armas’s position: standing against the imperialism of the U.S. and Israel and for the Palestinians who have suffered so much, and who are continuing to suffer although the media spotlight has now shifted to other matters.

What about the U.S. Empire Now?

The current POTUS seems to embrace an imperial mindset with he himself being the most powerful emperor in the world. We have seen what he has done in Venezuela, and how he has profited by his imperial actions. And we have heard his imperial musings about Greenland, Panama Canal, Cuba—and even Canada (the possible 51^st U.S. state!).

But regardless of when or where it is, as Dr. Diana Butler Bass posted on her Substack account on August 22, whenever or wherever it is, the evil of empire “is always the denial of the dignity of human beings, demeaning them, and treating them with no grace, mercy, or empathy.”

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Note: Next month U.S. Empire: A Handbook, edited by Mischa Honeck and Mahshid Mayar, will be released. It synthesizes recent historical scholarship on the U.S. as an imperial power and probes fierce contestations over the place and meaning of empire in US history at this time when the U.S. is renegotiating its position as a leading actor on the world stage.

Winning a Hearing / Losing a Hearing

A couple of weeks before Easter, a friend sent a link to an Easter sermon to me and others on his mailing list. He said it was one of the best Easter sermons he had ever heard. I listened to it, and it was all right—but I was unable to appreciate the sermon fully because of the preacher’s public political stance.

Winning a Hearing

Among “progressive” Christians, there seems to be minimal desire to share the “good news” of the Christian faith with those who are not Christians. That is a real problem, I think, and I am growing increasingly weary of progressive Christians eschewing anything thought to smack of evangelism.

For much of my ministry as a pastor and then as a missionary, one of my ongoing concerns was trying to win a hearing. By that I mean the desire to engage other people in such a way that they would give some active attention to what I wanted to share about the Christian faith, which I thought of as “good news,” literally. 

Winning a hearing was a real challenge in Japan where most people were reared with a worldview that was definitely non-Christian. Some were even anti-Christian, although most didn’t have what could be called a personal religious faith.

The majority of the students I taught in a Japanese university were negative not only toward Christianity but to all religion—and quite often more negative toward Shinto and Buddhism than toward Christianity.

My constant challenge was to win a hearing, to spark people’s interest and desire to learn more about Jesus Christ and his life and teachings. Such matters were, I thought, for their personal benefit and for the benefit of the society/world in which they lived.

Losing a Hearing

Back in the late 1960s and early ’70s, more than winning a hearing for the Gospel, some of my missionary colleagues in Japan lost a hearing for the “good news” of Jesus because of their support for the Vietnam War.

There were student protests against that war in Japan just as there were in the States, and missionaries who were vocal in their support of the U.S. war efforts in Vietnam mostly lost any possibility of sharing about Jesus to the many Japanese students who strongly opposed the war. Their political position destroyed their opportunity for Christian witness.

As a pacifist, it was not hard for me to agree with the students in opposing the war in Indochina. My anti-war stance was not a ruse to curry favor among the students but a position I took because of my belief in Jesus.

That position, happily, made it possible for me to win a hearing from many of the students I taught and talked with on campus.

The Case of the Preacher

The preacher of the Resurrection sermon mentioned in the beginning was one of the earliest widely-known Christian pastors publicly to endorse Donald Trump for President. 

I first thought that was probably because of his choosing the “lesser of two evils.” As a strong conservative Christian, he was/is adamantly opposed to abortion and LGBT rights, so he doubtlessly thought he had to oppose Hillary.

But this pastor has continued to be one of DJT’s most vocal supporters in spite of all the charges of political, financial, and moral charges of impropriety. Since his continuing support has given him access to the White House, perhaps an underlying motive is a desire for power and prestige.

So, sadly, while the noted pastor’s sermon on the Resurrection may have been a good one, it is not likely to be heard with appreciation by those who strongly disagree with his blatant political stance.

The Inconvenient Hero

Today (Jan. 15) is his birthday, although the national holiday celebrating it will not be until next Monday (Jan. 21). I’m writing, of course, about Martin Luther King, Jr., about whom we will be hearing much this year. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech was delivered 50 years ago, in August 1963. And then it was 45 years ago, in April 1968, that he was assassinated.

“I Have a Dream” is one of the best, most powerful speeches of all time. I get chills down my spine every time I listen to it—the last time being only last month. And it is the King of 1963 that is most remembered in the celebrations of his birthday.

But I have just read an essay that focuses on King’s talks and activities during the last five years of his life, the years after his famous 1963 speech in Washington, D.C. That essay is titled “The Inconvenient Hero,” which is also the subtitle of Martin Luther King (1996), the book in which it appears. Both the essay and the book were written by Vincent Harding.

King at Riverside Church, 4/4/67

Harding, born in 1931 in Harlem, taught at Iliff School of Theology (in Denver, CO) from 1981 to 2004. Early in his career, though, he was a friend of and co-worker with King. Harding, a Mennonite, even occasionally drafted speeches for King, including his noteworthy anti-Vietnam speech, “A Time to Break Silence,” which he (King) delivered at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated.

Not long after his “I Have a Dream” oration, there was an escalation of racial violence in the nation, and King himself talked about his dream turning into a nightmare. “Four beautiful, unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered” (King’s words) when the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed in September 1963, an act of racially motivated terrorism.

Then in the summer of 1964, twenty African-American churches were firebombed in Mississippi and in June of that year three civil rights workers were murdered in that same state. (The latter is the subject of the 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning.”) And then the terrible Watts Riots in Los Angeles took place in August 1965.

King also wrote (in 1967), “I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched the war in Vietnam escalating.” So in his last years, he began speaking out more and more in opposition to the war, seeing it as an extension of the same type of injustice and violence being done to African-Americans in the U.S.

King’s speech at Riverside Church was a powerful one, and it is not hard to see why it is not quoted more often—or why the one who gave that speech is referred to as “the inconvenient hero.” He referred to the U.S. as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

King understood that violence as being linked partly to our nation’s refusal “to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.” And so he spoke out strongly against the “giant triplets” of racism, materialism, and militarism.

Being the Baptist preacher that he was, near the end of that 4/67 speech, King quotes 1 John 4 and calls for “an all-embracing and unconditional love” for all people.

Inconvenient or not, here is a hero still worth our serious consideration.

Remembering the Summer of 1972

Do you remember the summer of 1972? I assume that most of you who read this do have memories that go back forty years. At the same time, I hope some readers are younger than 45 and will enjoy reading about things before they can remember.

One of the main events in June 1972 was the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Thus began the Watergate scandal, which culminated with President Nixon resigning in August 1974, the first and only time a President has resigned.

Of much less national significance, on June 9, 1972, fourteen inches of rain fell in six hours in western South Dakota, bursting a dam near Rapid City and drowning 237 people. (I am glad a similar thing did not happen last week when June and I spent two nights in Rapid City.)

In July 1972 the Democratic National Convention, held in Miami, nominated Senator George McGovern to be the Democratic nominee for president. I was delighted with McGovern’s nomination, for he was one of the first and strongest congressional opponents to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

McGovern, who turns 90 next month, grew up in and still lives in Mitchell, South Dakota, the town where we spent the night of May 26. One wonders how much different (and better off) the nation would be now if McGovern had won the election of ’72. (The election this fall will also make a great difference in what this nation will be like four years, or forty years, from now.)

In August 1972 the last U.S. ground troops were withdrawn from Vietnam. I don’t know how much that was related to the candidacy of the anti-war Sen. McGovern, but in November Nixon was decisively re-elected President. The end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was not until 1975, though.

All of us remember the past not just because of significant national and world events, such as those mentioned above, but perhaps primarily for personal and family reasons. That is certainly true for me, as the summer of ’72 was an eventful one for my family.

The main event of the summer was the birth of our fourth (and last) child on June 3. (You know you are getting up in years when your youngest child celebrates his 40^th birthday!)

The summer of 1972 was also the end of our first missionary “furlough.” We went to Japan as a family of four in 1966 and came back to the States for the first time in August 1971. We went back to Japan as a family of six, for our second daughter had been born in Japan in 1970.

Not long before leaving for Japan the second time, we had a family gathering at my folks’ farm northeast of Grant City, MO. One of the precious pictures taken that day is of my grandfather (J. Ray) Cousins holding our new baby, Ken. That weekend was the last time we saw Grandpa Cousins, for he died in 1974.

It wasn’t in the summer, but not long after arriving back in Japan, partly in protest to the continuing war in Vietnam (in spite of the withdrawal of ground troops), I began to grow a beard. So this year is, for me, the fortieth anniversary of my beard, which I couldn’t shave off now or I wouldn’t look like me anymore!

A Fiery, and Futile, Protest

Roger LaPorte may be a name you never remember hearing. And you may not even remember the tragic incident associated with him. Just like me until a few weeks ago.

I write this, though, in memory of Roger, who died of burns, self-inflicted. He poured gasoline over himself in front of the United Nations Building in New York City and set himself afire. He died the next day, on November 10, 1965.

Why in the world would a young, 22-year-old man engage in self-immolation? In his case it was in protest over the Vietnam War, in which the U.S. was becoming increasingly involved.

Roger LaPorte, a former seminarian, was a volunteer worker with the Catholic Worker community in New York. He had also met and talked briefly with Daniel Berrigan, about whom I posted recently.

Father Berrigan was asked to officiate at a memorial service for Roger, and he did so in spite of being advised by his Catholic superiors not to do so. Shortly afterwards, Berrigan’s Jesuit superior and New York’s Cardinal Spellman ordered him to leave the country at once. He was exiled to Latin America, unable to return to the U.S. for several months.

Among other things, Berrigan questioned whether Roger’s act was a suicide. Rather, he suggested the young man’s fiery protest should perhaps be seen as an act of “misguided heroism,” the giving of life rather than the taking of life. Shortly before he died, Roger reportedly had said, “I’m against war, all wars. I did this as a religious action.”

Roger’s self-sacrifice in opposition to the Vietnam War was actually the third which occurred in the U.S., all in 1965. Earlier that year an 82-year-old woman died by self-immolation in Detroit. And just one week before Roger’s deadly protest, Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, had set himself on fire right below Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s Pentagon office.

Unfortunately, these drastic protests failed to bring the war to a halt.

And so, three years later the shameful My Lai Massacre occurred. Five years later (in 1970) the U.S. began the questionable invasion of Cambodia. And then in 1972 Kim Phuc, “the girl in the picture” about whom I posted in July was napalmed.

Finally, eight years after Roger’s extreme protest, the war officially ended, although it was not until April 1975 that the last U.S. soldier was killed in Vietnam and the last troops left that country--largely with a loss of face for the United States. There was almost nothing positive to show for the war being prolonged all those years after the fiery protest of Robert LaPorte. What a tragic waste of lives and resources!

Now there are few protests about the U.S. war activities, which by next month will (we hope!) be only in Afghanistan. But there are significant protests continuing in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

So in addition to the war on terrorism that continues in south Asia, domestically we now see what some call “class warfare.” (And the upper class clearly seems to be winning.)

Let us hope and pray that the protests now occurring will be heeded before there is an escalation of violence, and before some protesters resort to more extreme measures.