Winston Hottman

In preparation for a summer course on early Christian political theology, I have been reading the Latin panegyrics, which comprise speeches of praise delivered on behalf of Roman emperors during the third and fourth centuries. They are a fascinating read and particularly helpful for illustrating the political resonances of the gospel in late antiquity. To take one example, here are some highlights from the Panegyric of Constantius, written by an anonymous orator around AD 297:

• Constantius’s accession to the throne is described as a divine birth
• Constantius is lauded for subduing raging seas in his reconquest of Britain
• Constantius’s victories are said to spread the “light of Rome” and the “true light of empire”
• The consolidation of Roman power in Constantius brings peace to heaven and earth
• Constantius’s victories are described as bringing a rebirth to the world (new creation), especially evident in the fecundity of the land now cultivated by Constantius’s captive barbarians

The upshot of such parallels is not to reduce the distinction between early Christian conceptions of Christ’s kingship and imperial royal ideology. Rather, they help to illuminate the concrete political dimensions of narratives of the life of Christ and beliefs about his person and work, dimensions that are often overlooked by contemporary readers.

You can read Dana Gioia’s latest poem at First Things here: Psalm to Our Lady Queen of the Angels.

Central to the poem is the theme of Mary’s association with the exiled and dispossessed, a word of comfort in our Herodian age:

She has been homeless with a hungry child,
A refugee fleeing a brutal warlord.
A mother, she held her murdered son.
Her crown is jeweled with seven sorrows.

Where did the notion of religioius liberty come from? In his recent book, Liberty in the Things of God, Robert Wilken challenges the prevailing narrative that religious liberty originated in the modern era as a result of fatigue induced by the wars of religion and secular philosophy. Instead, he argues that the modern concept of religious liberty has deep roots in early Christian thought. His historical account is structured around three themes: “first, that religious belief is an inner conviction accountable to God alone and resistant to compulsion; second, that conscience is a form of spiritual knowledge that carries an obligation to act; third, that human society is governed by two powers.” (4) Wilken traces these themes through the fusion of early modern intellectual development and the Christian inheritance to demonstrate how religious freedom, used synonymously by Wilken with “liberty of conscience,” came to be understood as a universal, natural right. The book is a valuable—and, like all of Wilken’s writings, exceptionally written—historical examination of an often neglected element of the Christian tradition.

St. Ambrose:

Let our enemies not be jealous of our properties; let them confiscate them, if such be the emperor’s pleasure. I do not give them, but I shall not refuse them. They seek gold; I can say, I do not seek silver or gold. I do not fear this jealousy. I have my bankers and they are Christ’s poor. That is the treasure I have amassed. May they always reproach me for the crime of distributing money to the poor! If they object that I must seek my defense from the poor, I do not refuse this, but even court it. My means of defense are the prayers of the poor. The blind and the lame, the weak and the aged are stronger than the most robust warriors. Gifts to the poor put God under an obligation, as it is written, “He who gives to the poor lends to God” [Prov. 19:17]. On the contrary, a garrison of soldiers often does not merit the divine favor.

~From “Sermon Against Auxentius,” in The Early Church and the State

Conor Friedersdorf:

Watching footage of unjust police killings is enraging and traumatizing. It’s also enraging that Americans paid so little attention to such killings before ubiquitous video forced them to confront the issue. No wonder some feel that achieving meaningful reform through the civic process is impossible (a feeling that is understandably heightened in communities where long voting lines, felony disenfranchisement laws, or gerrymandering make democratic organizing more difficult).

But Obama is right, and that feeling of impossibility, however understandable, is demonstrably incorrect. Just look at the mountain of evidence that change through the civic process is not only possible, but a recurring reality, and that it began long before Floyd’s death.

Alan Jacobs:

Reading those figures from the past, even when he disagreed strongly with them, gave him some perspective on his own moment, and, because they left this vale of tears, some tranquility as well. After all, the dead don’t talk back to us—unless we invite them to. We control the encounter. We decide whether to pay our ancestors attention.

When we make that payment, when we turn aside from the “dire hose” and take a few deep breaths and enter into the world of the past, we can calm our pulse a bit, take time to think. No one demands anything of us. Those figures from the past are willing to speak to us when we are willing to listen. They may sometimes speak words of offense, but they may also speak words of wisdom that we either never knew or have forgotten.

J. Brandon Meeks: Traditional Country Music was an exercise in fearless self-revelation. It specialized in the sort of disconcerting transparency that would get a respectable man or woman fired from a job. But at the same time, it is just the sort of candor to which honest souls aspire as they listen to these old songs in their garages and kitchens.