In Jason Mahn’s Becoming a Christian in Christendom, we are presented with a vision of Christian life which is deeply needed, most particularly in our post-election world. It would seem, on the face, that we are living in an America which is on the other side of Christendom, for in the recent election, religious convictions scarcely registered as a campaign issue or as a prevailing reason for voting. For the first election cycle in recent decades, a candidate’s religiosity or lack thereof was scarcely mentioned in this election cycle, though voting patterns remained relatively stable.1 The significant intergenerational fights among conservatives not withstanding, overtly religious aspects of the election hardly registered.

But Mahn perceptively points out that the overt prominence of Christianity as a public good is only one of the faces of Christendom. One might very well avoid the sorts of crass appeals to “Christianizing the social order” which vex one form of Christendom, be they in the form of moral appeals or overtly confessional ones, but fall prey to a much more subtle version. The other form, accommodation, hosts Christianity within the limits of certain habits of mind of a liberal democracy—choice, taste, “sphere sovereignty,” to name a few. In either case, whether by overlaying Christianity maximally on top of our world, or by framing the terms of the faith within the habits of the state, Christendom constitutes the temptation for Christians in both overt and covert ways. No sooner do we retreat from imposing the faith than we are confronted by the opposite side of Christendom: Christianity as one option among others.

The conundrum that Mahn identifies here is put thus: it does not matter in one respect which direction you choose with respect to your resistance to Christendom, for Christendom is no longer the superstructure of American society; it is the seedbed, the soil, the water, and the wind, making opposition as such determined by the totalizing form of Christendom. For me to engage in some form of Christian witness which seeks to be “not world” is still to be living out witness by taking “world” as the pole against which witness is articulated.

There are many virtues to Mahn’s work, most notably his diagnosis of Christendom, but the one I want to lift to the surface now is precisely how I think he points to a resolution of a common problem for those of us invested in the questions he raises here: how to have a Christian witness without ressentiment. As Nietzsche famously argued, Christianity made a virtue of suffering, of humility and of rejection precisely because it found itself on the brunt end of cultural rejection; in framing Christian witness in this “negative” kind of way, Christian witness repeats the doctrinal ressentiment which Nietzsche saw in an ethical key, as a mirrored image of that which it opposes. The negative trope is certainly faithful to Scripture, for Christians are to be those who seek “another city” (Heb 13:14), who are in the world, but not of it, children of the light and not darkness, named by life and not death. The concern that is raised here, though, is that if Christian witness is solely framed in terms of “not world,” “resistance,” or being “against,” Christian witness offers nothing but a parody of that which is already a pathology.

In different ways, the two major varieties of Christendom critics employed by Mahn (the Lutheran trajectory of Luther-Kierkegaard-Bonhoeffer, and the “anti-Constantinian” neo-Mennonite trajectory) both come into view only as negations of world. The Lutherans, working within the context of two-kingdoms theology, affirm God’s providential work through the state, with the common ground of a governed world the setting for Christian witness; the positive, identifiable Christian statements about Christ are situated within the ineffable limits of state authority. The Christian in this situation is called to “work diligently against the sacralization of nation-states—against the glorification of abstractions such as ‘freedom,’ ‘patriotism,’ and ‘political necessities’—and maybe, even against the church itself” (119). Having distinguished between the two kingdoms in order to desacralize the state, the Lutheran trajectory finds itself now forced to articulate Christian witness as a kind of negation of that state.

A similar dynamic emerges in the “anti-Constantinian” work of the neo-Mennonite trajectory. Long criticized by the magisterial Protestants as “sectarian” (to use James Gustafson’s famous charge), the new-Mennonites posit their recovery of the Christian life over against the corruption of the church by political power and privilege. As Mahn notes, “the persistence of Constantine’s trap also makes it difficult to imagine what a successful disavowal of Constantine might look like . . . if the ‘free church’ model for Christian community is to contribute to a solution, then it must designate more than the lack of coercion, more than the official uncoupling of state-church communions, more even than an endorsement of believer’s baptism” (153). Negation, more prominent as an ethical theme in these writers, posits positive Christian behaviors as “not-Constantinian,” such that Constantine is always lingering in the church parking lot, as without his ghost, these churches would lose their orientation. The prevalence of “nonviolence,” for example, among the writings of both Yoder and Hauerwas is perhaps the best example, for “nonviolence” tells us nothing positive about an ethic other than it is not characterized by violence, ambiguously defined.

The figure whose writing is situated within both of these groups is the person of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His presence, both among the explicitly Lutheran figures of Luther and Kierkegaard, and among the “anti-Constantinian” writers is telling: while Bonhoeffer shares features of both of these camps, he ultimately, I think, works in ways which pulls their strengths out of a negative frame.

Mahn notes rightly that Bonhoeffer, though unreservedly Lutheran, in his Discipleship and Life Together, bears many resemblances to the work of the “anti-Constantinian” theologians in his emphasis in these works on the nature of the church. Consonant with the work of Yoder and Hauerwas, Bonhoeffer identifies in these two books in particular that it is in the cloister of the church that Christians learn how to be Christians. At times, in the hands of the neo-Mennonites, this language of church identity tends to give credence to Gustafson’s charge of withdrawal and quietism, but this is not what Bonhoeffer has in mind. By being pulled into the life and language of a common life of worship, Bonhoeffer is suggesting that in order to be scattered into the world for witness, the church must first be gathered, that the Christian must have the “day together” (ch. 2 of Life Together) before it can have its “day apart” (ch. 3 of Life Together). This first move toward Christian community, Bonhoeffer suggests, is necessary, for it is the same way that Christ calls—drawing them together into fellowship with one another, so that they might be sent out again. Likewise, as Bonhoeffer details in Discipleship, the call of Christ, which breaks apart natural communities, establishing a new fellowship of discipleship, but not as a monastic withdrawal from society. Rather, Christ’s call to fellowship is a moment in the ongoing trajectory back into the world as the witnesses of Christ.2

What happens in this formative space is that, in relinquishing their place in the world, the Christian also relinquishes the impulse toward opposition as a first movement. For as a member of the world, the Christian’s field of vision is dictated—as Mahn suggests—by the totalizing gaze of Christendom, which encompasses both east and west, both choice for and against it. By dropping out of that contest entirely, a new vocabulary is able to enter in, one which first operates by unlearning. In the Christian community, Bonhoeffer suggests, we do practical things like submitting to common song, common prayer, common meals—activities which resituate the self into a different sociality than the state, namely, the body of Christ. Subsequent to being introduced to this new kind of corporate life, the Christian is able to reengage their life in the world under new terms.

The new terms under which the Christian engages the powers of Christendom do not then look to the dominant culture to take their cues (as indicated in the very name “anti-Constantinan”), but will look alien to those who are unwittingly forming Christian witness as a matter of reaction. Rather, the Christian way into the world will be one of anticipation, of expectancy and Advent. As Clark Elliston has suggested, Bonhoeffer’s vision of prayer is akin to that of Simone Weil’s, emphasizing attention, waiting, anticipation, as opposed to imposition. In that anticipation, the Christian will look strange, even to a Christianized culture which knows the words of Scripture but not their mode of living.3 By living by anticipation, the Christian will be led down a diagonal road of discipleship, looking here like accommodation, there like withdrawal, for the Christian cannot know in advance what public form their witness will look like until Christ calls.

Put differently, the Christian witness will advance in opposition to even a Christianized situation, but not because it first seeks out a specific program of opposition. For if opposition is the first word, then Christian witness operates as a subsidiary of world, but if Christ is the first word, then Christian witness in the world will be one which embodies a different source than the state, deriving its energy and center from the call of Christ and not opposition to the world. In this way, the Christian response to Christendom is one which, in the words of Dorothy Day, “begin now in the shell of the old, to rebuild society,” and which will let the angles of opposition and conflict emerge on that basis.4

Mahn’s work, in using Bonhoeffer as the focal figure whose work figures into both wings of the opposition to Christendom, signals that this Christian witness will likewise be an ecumenical work. Reading Kierkegaard alongside Hauerwas, and the magisterial Reformers alongside the radical ones, has the effect of filling out the twin aspects of Bonhoeffer’s vision. Lutherans, emphasizing the inseparability of church and world under a single governance by God, dovetail with the Radical Reformers’ emphatic sense of ecclesiological priority. In this, the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, a growing chorus of thinkers have revisited the hard lines of the Reformation with an increasing sense that old divisions are simply that—old—and that fresh positive rethinking of Protestant identities is needed. In that sense, though Sattler and Melanchthon might recoil at the notion, it is conceivable that this dynamic of retreat-and-engagement found in Bonhoeffer might be the dynamic which can pull these divergent strains into a single movement. This is not to diminish all ecumenical difficulties as mere sociological oddities: as Mahn notes, the Radical tradition tends to work out of a low Christology emphasizing the repeatability of the life of Christ, while Lutherans center on a high Christology, in which discipleship is a penitent, frail venture of grace. Here, as well, the ecumenical exercise of receptivity leads these two readings to recognize that these are twin emphases within a common canon: the Jesus who sends his disciples out to do and teach as Jesus did and taught is the same Jesus whose grace makes this life of discipleship possible.

The deformations of Christendom will not be undone by reacting against them, for in this way, Christians only become a mirror to Christendom, not an alternative to it. In a society which finds itself in the paradox of simultaneously having lower church attendance and increased identification with Christian-y values, Mahn’s work is a welcome, ecumenically-attuned invitation into rethinking how Christian opposition might not be rooted in opposition so much as in something entirely new, built not in reaction, but in anticipation of the work of the Spirit among the people.

One of the most stinging claims that Jason Mahn levels in Becoming a Christian in Christendom is that “for Americans in the present moment, there is very little difference between identifying with Christianity (as our culture conceives it) and identifying with nothing at all” (27). While I appreciate Mahn’s attention to the themes of spiritual formation and Christian particularity, and his Kierkegaard-inspired critique of the shallow expression of a diluted Christian faith that gets lost in the crowd, I would like to emphasize or at least uphold the alternate Kierkegaardian option of a seamless Christianity in which modern knights of faith imitate the incognito of Christ, the strange ordinariness that marked his extraordinary appearance on earth.1 To be clear as well as fair, this is compatible with Mahn’s own project; indeed, in various places including “The (Hidden) Visibility of the Church” and following sections (233–38), Mahn touches upon some of the ideas that I will address here.

On my proposed view, Christians are genuinely different from “the world,”2 but theirs is a reconciled difference, a difference that blends in. Importantly, the type of distinction that I am envisioning does not leave its bearers immune to suffering or persecution; perhaps, in this schema, such Christian suffering will be subtly borne rather than obnoxiously fought as, say, in some of today’s culture wars. In the language of Kierkegaard’s existential framework, the mostly elusive goal is a rare religiousness in which common aesthetic values—the values that characterize the life of the masses—are canceled and elevated, repudiated and redeemed. In part, this dialectical recuperation explains how, even in her genuine individuality, the knight of faith (the church of faith?) can slip into the crowd of aesthetes, exhibit a jolly gracefulness, and act as if she belongs there. Such a way of life hinges, precariously perhaps, on the paradox of Christ, who is described in Colossians 1:15 as the image of the invisible God. (What does the image of something invisible look like? Is it a visible image or that oxymoron of an invisible image? An imprint that may be traced? Hands and feet with the negative space of nail marks?) Without excusing the forms of contemporary Christianity that are unhealthily conflated with the dominant values of the dominant culture, such as “Christian supremacy,” in all its parallels to white supremacy (see Mahn, chapter 2), Christians’ Constantinian capitulations (witness the 2016 election), and what Jeff Sharlet unveils as worse than superficial secularity in his Esquire article, “The Ministry of Fun,”3 I wish to point to the somewhat hidden advantages of a quiet Christianity alongside the sometimes all-too-clear disadvantages of displays of faith that are overly proud of their distinctiveness. In short, I would like to venture a micro-vision of what it would look like for the church to live both meekly and rigorously. We might have to squint to see such meek rigor and rigorous meekness, and not only because my space here is short.

In reading the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, do you ever get the sense that God enjoys playing hide and seek? Is God toying with Moses (even in a kind way) in those famous Exodus episodes (in chapters 3, 33, and 34), sometimes revealing, sometimes obfuscating the divine identity? As in, you may see me, but only my back? You may know my—unpronounceable, untranslatable—name? Or what about the implication of Jeremiah 23:23–24, that in being omnipresent, the LORD may see all things without being perceived? Moreover, back on the mountain of God in 1 Kings 19, why does God use “sheer silence” (kol demamah dakkah) to speak to Elijah, and why is that questionably audible revelation preceded by mountain-splitting wind?

It may be said that one way in which Jesus Christ resembles the LORD is that Jesus hides in plain sight and is apparent in absence. Thus, the perspective of the people in Luke 4:22 (“All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’”) is counterbalanced by the story of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, where Jesus “came near and went with them [two of his followers]” while “their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (vv. 15–16). As a reader, I find Jesus’ concealment in this scene torturous, especially given his physical closeness to the men. Is there a lesson that twenty-first-century followers of Christ can collectively learn about how to comport themselves—how to walk alongside others—from this curious episode where Jesus seems to conceal himself willfully—though not lastingly—from his companions? (See Luke 24:25–27 and then vv. 28–32 for the continuation of the story and Jesus’ “slow reveal.”) Are there times to be invisibly distinct and when should those moments be punctuated with particularity that is visible, costly, and achieved? Lastly, in allowing for visible differentiation at all, we are breaking from de Silentio’s picture of the person of faith as commensurate (or not incommensurate) with das Man. What is the cost of that departure?

The advantages of a quiet, servile Christianity may themselves be difficult to discern, either because there are not many instances to which to appeal or because the examples that do exist are overlooked precisely in their gentleness. Two positive aspects of imitating the self-emptying meekness of Jesus (on the personal or institutional scale) are in not brashly drawing attention to oneself or one’s church, not even in times of service, and in inviting attention by paying attention to others for their own sake. One gives others a substantive reason to be interested in one’s faith by, surprise, following the biblical commands of magnifying God, practicing counterintuitive ethics (such as forgiveness), and living peaceably, even in hostile lands. The avoidance of pride and the beckoning to closer consideration are intertwined, as a healthy lack of self-interest is an attractive trait.

The inverse holds for displays of faith that read as overly proud or self-aware of their distinctiveness. That is likely why some Christians have the reputation for being obnoxious or arrogant. Their holiness gets lost in their “thou.” By drawing attention to their separation from others, even inadvertently, they distract people from the savior to whom they should be pointing. For example, I once had Christian neighbors who were very eager to proclaim their belief to me, so much so that their zealousness seemed to be more about them than about Jesus (or me).

What is a model writ small for an uncompromising-yet-compassionate church? How can readers, adorers, and scholars of Kierkegaard cast a constructive vision of what single individuals do when gathered together? Can the unseen knights of faith ever see each other? In Fear and Trembling, after briefly analyzing recognition and hiddenness aesthetically in modern drama, de Silentio posits the examples of two lovers who are willing to suffer silently in their unrequited love. He then writes, “What a pity that here two persons, both of whom are hidden from their respective beloveds, are also hidden from each other; otherwise, a remarkable higher unity could be brought about here.”4 That higher unity of hiddenness is what we are to seek and unfold. If I had to use a single image to represent such collective hiddenness, I would point to behind-the-scenes women in churches—those womanning the kitchens and fellowship hours, and faithfully overseeing ministries on the margins, as well as, of course, the pervasively seen-but-unseen wives of prominent pastors. When do they ever make a fuss about themselves?

Mahn tackles the issue of visible church politics, and does so with Kierkegaard in mind. Presenting the Anabaptist opposition to Constantinian Christians, he writes:

Anabaptists emphasize the visibility of the church against those church traditions (Lutheranism is one) that think of the “real church” as a heavenly, invisible reality, and “real Christians” as known only to God’s inscrutable judgment. Even Kierkegaard, who critiques his earlier avowal of hidden interiority as the locus for authentic Christianity, gives little indication of what a visible, counter-Christendom community of Christians might actually look like. Instead, he largely portrayed real Christians in images of individual renunciation, anguish, and martyrdom, which are repeated mantra-like through his latest newspaper articles and attack essays. (235, original emphasis)

This passage and similar discussions that highlight fissures within the Church caused me to think of the need for visible distinctions among Christians, especially in contemporary America. It is not only that Christians can serve as witnesses to those outside the faith tradition by being different from them; it is that they stand to spur one another on by being different from one another. But are we to expect a resolution between the Anabaptists and the Constantinians, and if dissonance remains, is the overall Christian witness diminished?

Having addressed visible church politics, Mahn turns in the following section to hidden church politics. There, he examines Bonhoeffer’s critique of a merely purported theology of the cross:

Bonhoeffer lampoons that so-called Reformation theology that calls itself a theology of the cross but “whose signature is that it prefers a ‘humble’ invisibility in the form of total conformity to the world.” Without a distinctive political shape, one that takes up space in the world, and so, offers a visible alternative to politics as usual, the church quickly becomes indistinguishable from dominant society as such. (237)

These two passages on the tension between ecclesiastical visibility and hiddenness form the greatest challenge to the position that I am upholding. True meekness in the manner of Christ may be legitimate, while nominal meekness may function as a protective strategy, covering up an easy conformity. The trick, I believe, is not to use nominal meekness to excuse the call to true meekness!

Even more than on the road to Emmaus, the way forward may be unlocked in the cross. Continuing to reference Bonhoeffer, Mahn writes, “Bonhoeffer (again, as a theologian of the cross) knows that God remains hidden the very moment that God discloses Godself in the cross and among the oppressed. He follows Luther in confessing to God: ‘Truly, thou art a God who hidest thyself.’ Bonhoeffer’s true church is not invisible, but it is still hidden, glimpsed only in unlikely places, and some that seem irreligious” (237–38, original emphasis; cf. 104). Much more needs to be said to describe what the hiddenness of sacrificial service looks like, and how such hiddenness should be achieved;5 or perhaps silence is more useful for approaching Christian visibility. Stuck somewhere in the paradox, I will salute a church that is hidden but not invisible, a church that thrives in unlikely places, even culturally dominant ones.

No one knows for sure how or why Donald Trump got elected, but one thing we do know is that evangelical Christians had something to do with it. It’s by now common knowledge that 81 percent of self-identifying evangelicals voted for Trump, even if many of those held their noses while doing it. And they weren’t alone: the majority of white Protestant and white voters also cast their lot a candidate whose xenophobic, misogynist, racist, and nationalist tendencies were no big secret.

Jason Mahn’s Becoming a Christian in Christendom is an important and timely book for this strange and strained political, religious, and ecclesiological season. His book isn’t about Trump, but he does address the problem of white supremacy and its relation to conservative American religion. That 81 percent kept banging around in my head.

Mahn’s thesis is that, despite numerous reports to the contrary, the cultural and religious situation of the United States is still rightly described as Christendom. Our Christendom differs from Constantine’s Roman Empire or Kierkegaard’s Denmark. We’ve got the formal separation of church and state, for one thing—though that tradition stands on thinner ice these days.

Mahn explains that our version is “Neo-Christendom,” one in which Christianity becomes “an acculturated and accommodated faith, something that offends no one because it has such little substance” (xxv). Christianity, in this setting, is no longer a “distinctive and discernible subculture in its own right.” Instead, it is “little more than a cipher, an empty adjective that can be added to nearly any aspect of mainstream culture” (8).

Our Christendom is a thinned-out version. It’s been dissipated and disseminated through the forms and institutions of culture, but it’s still there. In short, Neo-Christendom is what happens when you take a very thin, superficial version of Christianity and marry it to right-wing political ideology, neo-liberalism and unbridled global capitalism, extreme libertarian impulses, triumphalist nationalism, and white supremacy.

This blending of religious, political, and economic ideologies drives our collective identity, our social anxiety and conflicts, and our religious and political life—and of course our religion and politics are notoriously difficult to disentangle.

To take a psychological turn, one could surmise that the context of neo-Christendom allows the use of traditional Christian language to mask more insidious motivations. It’s a context where Donald Trump cannot recite a single Bible verse, and yet he can be extolled as the clear candidate of choice for Bible-believing Christians.

Neo-Christendom is a social, cultural, and religious structure that creates the conditions for righteous self-deception; for many of those who are swept along the current, their more insidious motivations may be buried beneath conscious awareness.

In Mahn’s analysis, the theology that undergirds this thinned-out Christendom is a theology of glory; a theology that proclaims with relief that we’re on the other side of the cross, that the death of God is long past, the dark night of the soul is over, and Holy Saturday is a faint and distant memory. A theology whose Jesus is not a demanding prophet and suffering servant, but a confirmation of blessing for the already-blessed and the promise of eternal security for the elect. Surely now God desires to bless his beloved with prosperity, material comfort, security, in short, to give them the desires of their hearts.

Mahn makes clear his indebtedness to Charles Taylor. The Christendom of the United States can best be understood as a by-product of the current stage in our Secular Age. In this contemporary era, transcendence and mystery are squelched by immanence and pragmatism. Regarding Christianity, the riches of the long, winding, and binding theological, doctrinal, and moral traditions are replaced by the values of the Enlightenment: freedom and liberty, individual rights and individual expression, justice (as fairness), equality at all costs, progress at all costs, and the priority of “authenticity.”

This last one, authenticity, captivates Mahn’s analysis and fuels his critique of progressive Christian movements, such as the postmodern or emerging church (now passé, in terminology at least) as well as liberal mainline Christians that seek a Christianity After Religion.1 On Mahn’s analysis, progressive Christianity, at least those expressions that pine for “authentic” spirituality and existential meaning, contribute equally with fundamentalists to our superficial religious situation called Neo-Christendom.

Mahn subjects progressive Christianity to Taylor’s weighty analysis of the secular (and secular religious) age. Taylor argues that the Enlightenment valorizing of authenticity emerges from a shift to individualism, to inwardness, and to freedom of expression. The turn to authenticity, even when well-meaning and perhaps even when necessary, overlooks, ignores, or even suppresses the particularity of religious traditions and the binding cohesive effect of shared morality and ethico-religious authority.

For Mahn, Christianity After Religion forms of Christianity capitulate to the desires of individual religious consumers. Progressive churches may set aside the rigorous requirements of Christianity to gain the attention, respect (and tithes?) of religious seekers. Their religiosity corresponds to their desire for self-realization. More traditional or authoritarian forms of Christianity that saddle them with regulations, expectations, and demands, and that put forward a high cost of discipleship, risk alienating these spiritual questers. But the cost of capitulating to the quest for authenticity is a superficial faith and, cumulatively, a religion susceptible to commandeering by sinister forces. And so, many progressive Christians cheer the “death” of institutional Christianity, insofar as it signals the arrival of an age of authenticity.

In his chapter on “The Age of Authenticity” in A Secular Age, Taylor offers a “double assessment” of the turn to authenticity, one in which he urges caution in either damning the interest in authenticity or uncritically endorsing it:

It is tempting for those out of sympathy with this turn to see it simply in the light of its illusions; to see authenticity, or the affirmation of sensuality, as simply egoism and the pursuit of pleasure, for example: or to see the aspiration to self-expression exclusively in the light of consumer choice. It is tempting on the other side for proponents of the turn to affirm the values of the new ideal as though they were unproblematic, cost-free and could never be trivialized. Both see the turn as a move within a stable, perennial game. For the critics, it involves the embracing of vices which were and are the main threats to virtue; for the boosters, we have reversed age-old forms which were and are modes of oppression.2

Taylor’s careful articulation of the two ditches in terms of coming at the question, or the problem, of the “age of authenticity” helps me formulate a question as I read Mahn’s assessment of progressive Christianity.

Put most bluntly, I wonder if Mahn is guilty of succumbing to one side of the double-temptation that Taylor articulates. In Mahn’s analysis of the forces that lead to the superficial, thin veneer of Christianity in Neo-Christendom, a trivializing of authenticity could quickly lend itself to the mocking of important gains in modern society and in much of the Christian church, too: affirmation of LGBTQ rights being an obvious example.

If we are to understand the quest for authenticity in the most generous sense, I cannot help but appreciate the many ways this Enlightenment value has contributed positively to the human experience. Authenticity can be easily mocked for its linkage to individualist self-expression (as many conservatives are want to do). But it is conceptually tied to other modern values like tolerance, epistemic humility, appreciation of genuine diversity, respect for an individual’s understanding of sexual identity. It should also be understood in the broader context of attempts to dismantle systems of patriarchy, sexism, homogeneity, exclusivism, epistemic certitude, trenchant and legalistic moralism, and so on.

Mahn laments the loss in our Neo-Christendom of tangible, covenantal communities, particularized, “thick” theologies, and deeply shared moral codes. But it’s at least worth noting that authoritarian institutional religions (churches, denominations, etc.), whether through embedded hierarchical structures, deep and unflinching creedal traditionalism, or biblical authoritarianism (i.e., inerrancy), are often the modes of faith best known for promoting particularity. And they are often (though not always) the modes of faith whose moral codes, patriarchal policies, and exclusivist soteriology are the most oppressive.

It seems reasonable to suggest that the surest way (though not the best way) to sustain an expression of faith rooted in the particularities and depths of Christianity, such that they are able to be countercultural, is through the wielding of authority, whether that authority is funneled through tradition and doctrine or through Scripture.

If the answer to the religious superficiality of neo-Christendom is to become more deeply Christian—and I do agree with Mahn in this—then the solution should not be to become more authoritarian and to disregard the more individualized quest for spiritual meaning and for authenticity.

It seems to me that Mahn is at least implying that authority is the best antidote to the superficiality of “authenticity.” But I wonder if the two, authority and authenticity, don’t work better as a necessary dialectic? And I wonder if we should be careful, in the attempt to regain a deeper and thicker Christianity, not to dispense with hard-won Enlightenment values, including epistemic humility and the recognition that Christian particularity is only one version, even if we think it might be the best one, of meaningful religious life.

Insofar as authenticity is an expression of consumer capitalism, or extreme political libertarianism, and so on, then it is to be rejected and countered with a deep theology that generates tension or friction with those cultural temptations and that can help withstand the temptations.3 But insofar as authenticity is itself a countercultural expression, perhaps we ought to learn to harness it in the service of a better, more epistemically honest and vulnerable Christianity?

Early in his book, Mahn references Kierkegaard’s point that genuine, New Testament Christianity does not simply happen as a “matter of course” (as in cultural Christendom). Mahn then suggests that forms of progressive Christianity (referring to my book on Kierkegaard, as an example) are guilty of conflating Christianity and cultural progress in the very way that Kierkegaard warns against.

But in this Trump era, progressive or liberal Christianity and progressive politics is no longer evolving “as a matter of course.” It may be that progressive Christianity, including the sort that has disconnected from ecclesial traditions, may be well-suited to play a new role of generating friction against a cultural backlash that is increasingly polarized, alarmingly hostile to minorities and immigrants, xenophobic, homophobic, fear-mongering, and pandering to authoritarian impulses. It will take an effort of theological, political, and ecclesial resistance to ensure that several crucial social values, many of which find their source in the Enlightenment shift, do not slip away from us too easily.

I agree with Mahn that diving deeper (though critically) into our theological traditions is a necessary response to the religious superficiality of neo-Christendom. But we dare not dive so deep that we can’t come up for air, or that we get irrecoverably lost in the weeds of our particularity.

I can hardly imagine a timelier book than Jason Mahn’s Becoming a Christian in Christendom. As I wrestled with the reality of a Trump presidency in its early months, reading Mahn’s book was no less than a balm to the soul. I do not exaggerate. Two factors combined to make it such: its content and its form. Regarding content, Mahn is as astute in his diagnosis of the problems plaguing North American Christianity as he is inspiring in the vision of discipleship he paints. Perhaps even more importantly, he manages to communicate all of this in clear, fluid language, avoiding unnecessary academic jargon, and making his work accessible to undergraduate students and beyond. (At one point, he even defines “reify.” I nearly broke out in applause.) At a moment when the division between the more and less educated feels especially acute, the thought that I could give a chapter of this book to read to some of my non-theologically educated, conservative evangelical family members felt like a gift and a reason for hope. Hope for academic theology, hope for the church in the United States.

One of the primary theses undergirding Mahn’s book is that despite appearances to the contrary, we are still living in Christendom here in the United States (i.e., all of those books with the word “post-Christendom” in their title may have been a bit premature). It turns out that Christendom can shape-shift to take increasingly subtler forms, such that what looks like secularization turns out to be the other side of an accommodated and acculturated Christianity. Or to put it another way—as Mahn does—the relationship between secularization and Christianity is not a zero-sum game, where more of one means less of the other. And Constantinianism, like unfettered capitalism, seems to co-opt even the best efforts at resisting it.

So what are we to do? The first step is to recognize that we are not the first to encounter these challenges to Christian discipleship, and we will not be the last. Mahn deftly moves between Luther, Kierkegaard, and Bonhoeffer, drawing them into conversation with modern day “anti-Constantinians” like Yoder and Hauerwas, as well as “radical” Christian communities (such as those associated with New Monasticism). Sixteenth-century Wittenberg, nineteenth-century Denmark, and Germany in the 1930s each offer an important perspective on what it means to “become Christian” in the midst of Christendom, in its varying forms. (As a side note, one contribution Mahn’s book makes—almost an incidental one—is his pithy summary of insights from such complex thinkers as Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer.)

I begin my commentary, hoping to invite further discussion, by examining the two categories that serve as a heuristic lens for Mahn in engaging the thinkers listed above: “anti-Constantinians” and theologians of the cross. The first group, which includes Yoder and Hauerwas and a certain side of Bonhoeffer, emphasizes the life and teachings of Jesus and their “followability”—the fact that disciples of Jesus are actually called to live like him. Mahn loosely associates this view with a “low Christology”: the emphasis here is on the human Jesus, where the cross is seen as the paradigmatic moment of Jesus’ nonviolent resistance to the empire. On the other hand, theologians of the cross—including Luther, Kierkegaard, and another side of Bonhoeffer—emphasize the scandal of the cross and the revelation of God in such a lowly and unexpected place. This view can be associated with a “high Christology,” as it underlines what Jesus reveals to us about who God is. Each group has its corresponding critiques, then, of accommodated and acculturated Christianity. I cannot list all of them here, but briefly: anti-Constantinians critique a view that would limit Jesus’ social ethic to certain elite groups or to a particular historical context—or any other theological approach that mitigates our need to follow in his footsteps; theologians of the cross critique a theology of glory that attributes to God the characteristics of power and prestige valued by society and the inability to see God in humble and even scandalous places.

One way to view the common thread in these two approaches is that they resist a faith that merely comforts Christians in the struggles of this world, instead pushing toward a faith that confronts not only the world, but also how Christians are living in the midst of it. In my studies on suffering and death, I have often wrestled with these two sides of the gospel, which reflect two aspects of Jesus’ death (and resurrection) itself. On the one hand, there are consistent calls throughout Jesus’ life and ministry, as well as the witness of apostles like Paul and Peter, that direct us to “take up our cross,” to lay down our lives, and to identify with Christ in his suffering. On the other hand, there is a real hope and comfort communicated by both the Evangelists and by Paul, one that promises resurrection from the dead and God’s defeat of sin, evil, and Satan—not to mention death itself—through Christ’s death and resurrection. More pointedly stated: does the gospel comfort (and bring life)? Or does the gospel confront (and bring suffering)?

Engaging this tension becomes even more important when we consider the significance of the gospel as “good news to the poor.” There is a saying in liberation theology: if our gospel is not good news to the poor, then it is not the gospel. It is not good news. Some questions, then, that come to mind: in what sense do the visions of the gospel presented by anti-Constantinians and by theologians of the cross, respectively, offer good news to the poor? Does one hold more promise for this than the other? Or do they somehow complement each other in this area if we hold them together? In other words, can an emphasis on a faith that confronts be good news to the poor? Do we preach a faith that comforts or a faith that confronts? And does audience matter? I invite Mahn’s response to these questions, even as I offer some of my own thoughts here.

I do think that audience matters, and one of my own critiques of Yoder and Hauerwas is the lack of acknowledgment of audience and thus engagement with thinkers beyond their own context. Certainly, Hauerwas understands himself as a theologian and ethicist working in a particular community on concrete issues. Hence, the ad hoc nature of much of his writing. However, when asked how Christians ought to regard the poor, I have personally heard Hauerwas say—in a classic quotable one-liner—“What you’ll find is that the poor are just as big of SOB’s as the rest of us!”

While I understand the impulse behind these words—to resist a romantic idealization of the poor—and am sympathetic to it, they also betray a denial of the power and privilege central to Hauerwas’s take on the gospel. I do not mean here that Hauerwas is unaware of his own power and privilege. Rather, I contend that in order to speak of giving up power and submitting oneself to suffering as central to the gospel, one must assume that there is power to give up and that one can choose to submit to suffering. This assessment is reinforced by Mahn’s own summary of Hauerwas’s unique take on resistance to Constantinianism, which ought to include “coping with tragedy, enduring pain, abiding in silence, trusting God, remaining patient, and knowing how to die well” (Mahn, 139). I agree wholeheartedly with Hauerwas that white American Christians resist these kinds of formations. My question remains, how is a gospel that emphasizes “enduring pain” and “abiding in silence” good news for the poor?

To illustrate my point, I offer an example from the preaching of Monseñor Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Romero preached of the need for ongoing conversion (much like Mahn’s characterization of Luther on repentance) and preached conversion for all. That is, even as he confronted the power structures and violence of the powerful, he also called on the poor to personal repentance. At the same time, he understood the suffering of the poor and took that into account in his preaching. In a sermon on the significance of the cross in the Christian life, he spoke of penance and the different forms it will take in different people, speaking specifically of fasting as a form of penance:

Fasting in developed countries where people eat well will be different from the fasting that takes place in the underdeveloped countries where people live their whole lives in fasting. In the one situation, penance is lived by adapting an austere lifestyle when one is surrounded by wealth and also by living in solidarity with those who suffer. In the other case, penance is lived by working for a more just world in those places where people live their whole lives fasting. This is penance—this is doing the will of God.1

Romero was specifically concerned that the poor would think that living into the will of God meant passively accepting their own suffering and the injustice that perpetuated it. Thus, he made a distinction: the wealthy and comfortable are called to penance via austerity and “giving up,” while the vulnerable—who have little materially to “give up”—are called to turn toward God by working for God’s justice.

Thus, while I agree with Hauerwas (and Mahn) on the mal-formation of white American Christians in their willingness to suffer, I want to resist any notion that Christians are called to suffer just to suffer, or even called to suffer merely for the sake of resisting empire (or other political configurations). I submit that we resist empire—and are willing to undergo suffering as we do so—specifically in order to resist the suffering inflicted on the vulnerable by empire and to be in solidarity with them. That is, we suffer in order to liberate the vulnerable—to take the “crucified peoples” down from the cross, in the words of Jon Sobrino—and to witness to the God who is on the side of the vulnerable.

Now, to direct the question to Mahn: how does he see his own vision of discipleship—and concomitant critique of Christendom—as good news for the poor? I raise the question in part because there is little distinctive in the vision Mahn lays out that would indicate a particular commitment to the poor and marginalized. The four aspects of Christendom he emphasizes include an “exploitative economy that cheapens human giftedness,” but in summarizing the flipside of these four in a constructive vision, he characterizes the Christian community as “a distinctive and alternative social politic, where it commits to cruciform nonviolence, appreciates gifts by giving them away, and knows its boundaries well enough to acknowledge and learn from those on the other side” (Mahn, 325–25). In other words, no direct commitment to the poor is articulated as central to the identity of these communities. One possibility is that there is no general or abstract way these views offer good news to the poor, but only concrete communities in their particular contexts that make such commitments. That seems to me a Hauerwasian kind of answer, but one that does not fully satisfy me.

I have primarily focused on the anti-Constantinians, but I want to briefly acknowledge the contributions of a theology of the cross in our understanding of the gospel as good news to the poor. While Mahn rightly points out that more is shared between liberationist theologies and anti-Constantinians than is usually acknowledged by either side (Mahn, 130n19), there is also interesting overlap between Latin American liberationists (my particular area of interest) and theologians of the cross. The central point I want to highlight is an understanding of God as revealing Godself in humble and lowly places. Both theologians of the cross and Latin American liberationists understand this peculiar form of revelation as not incidental to its content. Revelation through that which is humble and despised in the world is not an accident, nor is God somehow constrained to reveal Godself to us in this way. God does not stand neutral, but chooses this particular way precisely because it corresponds to God’s character. In Latin American liberation theology this is known as “the preferential option for the poor.” Luther’s views on the peasant revolts notwithstanding, a theology of the cross has a similar trajectory.

I would like to conclude with a quote from Mahn and word of thanks to him. He sums up what I take to be a primary motivating force behind the book with the following words:

The danger of Christian accommodation to ill-fitting politics and cultures is perpetual. To become Christian in the face of this danger demands vigilance and ongoing negotiations, rather than the good luck of being born at this time, followed by the straightforward selection of an untarnished tradition. (Mahn, 323)

Being immersed in academic theology, I see continual evidence of the temptation to think that choosing an “untarnished tradition” can solve all of our problems—whether this “untarnished tradition” be postcolonial, Barthian, Anabaptist, or Thomistic. Mahn does not let any of these traditions escape the difficult call to become a Christian, nor does he allow them to underestimate the temptations they will encounter along the way. In short, Mahn’s book gifts each of us with the challenge to become a Christian: to recognize that task as a lifelong one, requiring patience and courage, and to be vigilant of the ways any cultural or political configuration can co-opt our Christian discipleship and Christian communities for its own purposes. And for that, we can be grateful.

On January 20, 2017, President Donald Trump offered the following summary statements in his Inaugural Address:

We gathered here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first—America first.

And later:

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your hearts to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

The Bible tells us how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity. We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity. When America is united, America is totally unstoppable.

There should be no fear. We are protected, and we will always be protected. We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement. And most importantly, we will be protected by God.1

If Jason Mahn ever was looking for a terse display of the deep problem of American Christianity—“the easy blending of Christian discipleship and mainstream American values” (ix)—he would have no trouble finding it in President Trump’s Inaugural Address. Yet, if Mahn is correct, the boldness of President Trump’s demand for total allegiance to America may also be quite healthy for American Christianity: it openly forces the question of the relationship between Christianity and America because it brashly proclaims in the light of day what is practiced surreptitiously by the majority of American Christians every day. And it is these everyday economic, political, and social practices of American Christians—regardless of who occupies the Oval Office—that Mahn is seeking to reform, to bring in line with the countercultural faithfulness of a people seeking to follow a God willing to die on the cross.

I. Preliminary Orientations

As is already evident by my frequent adjectival use of American to modify Christian, this is a book fundamentally focused on and concerned with the idiosyncratic Christian embrace of America. To that end, the first two chapters argue that America is neither secular nor post-Christian, but exists as a form of Christendom in which Christian privilege is extended even to those who hold Christianity at arm’s length . . . as long as one does not overtly choose another religious allegiance (especially Islam). For those who have read John Howard Yoder’s The Priestly Kingdom, Mahn’s argument evokes echoes of Yoder’s argument concerning the “ever new shape of establishment,” with its various evolutions of Constantinianism into “neo-neo-neo-neo-Constantinianism.”2 As it stands, Mahn draws directly from the work of Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and Dorothy Day among others for some of his basic theological postures. What is unique and fascinating about Mahn’s argument, however, is that he attempts to illuminate and interpret Lutheran resources (especially but not exclusively Luther, Kierkegaard, and Bonhoeffer) and familiar Lutheran theological themes (e.g., grace and theology of the cross) in a way that resonates with the kind of discipleship that has been associated most closely with radical Catholics and Anabaptists (and neo-Anabaptists) in recent years.

There are two aspects of Mahn’s argument that I will engage in some detail below but, before doing so, I offer a quick comment on the structure of the text itself. As already indicated, the initial chapters outline why Mahn believes calling America a form of Christendom is still appropriate. Here, he makes the case that it is nominally Christian in diverse ways, including its unreflective repetition of rituals, its uncritical faith in free-floating individual choices, and its general cultural captivity. The second part of the book then introduces three kinds of theological resources for addressing the prevailing problems with American Christianity: Kierkegaard’s critique of nineteenth-century Danish Christendom; Bonhoeffer’s resistance to nationalist ideology; and Yoder’s and Hauerwas’s critiques of Constantinianism. By the conclusion of this second part, it is clear that communal formation—the kind advocated by groups like the Ekklesia Project and Jesus Radicals and practiced by communities like the New Hope Catholic Worker Farm and Rutba House—is also constitutive of the therapy required to heal American Christianity. The third and final section of the text then moves to examine how these resources can be marshaled against four specific challenges to Christian identity and discipleship in America today—economics, politics, war, and Christian supremacy. By the end of the argument, Mahn has called for nothing short of a Re-formation of American Christianity that is both profoundly ambitious and bracingly honest about the challenges involved.

As one might expect, Becoming a Christian in Christendom is a sharp provocation. To use Kierkegaard’s terms, it elevates Christianity’s minor premise—works—in order that its major premise—grace—is not taken in vain. There is much that is both challenging and constructive here; it is a genuinely good book with which I have profound sympathy. All that said, there are two insightful moments in the text that I want to address: Mahn’s claims that (1) American consumers are “not nearly materialist enough” (170) and (2) Christians must learn to understand themselves “to be adopted into God’s own family” (317). Each of these moments are radical but, to my mind, not yet radical enough. I want to press each of these moments just a little further in order to open up vistas on three further issues—the global violence entailed in American consumption, the global nature of the church, and the problematic nature of a fixation with Constantinianism—that do not yet receive sufficient attention in Mahn’s argument.

II. In Search of a Materialist Christianity

When assessing America’s consumer culture, Mahn notes that it is common to hear critiques that suggest Christians are too attached to material things, too “materialistic” (169). Rejecting this critique, Mahn suggests that consumerism is driven by the addiction to purchasing, not to the things themselves. He continues:

Consumers seem not nearly attached enough to the materiality of God’s good creation—they are not nearly materialist enough. Indeed, Christianity in America has become a largely spiritualized faith where the faithful too readily abandon care for the earth and its “material goods” for the promise of some heaven light years away. Such a spiritualization of the Christian faith only exacerbates our proclivities to buy and discard, while providing a convenient cover of being spiritual, not materialistic. (170)

Mahn’s observation here seems entirely correct to me. This “neo-gnostic” form of Christendom fails to recognize that caring for creation is an essential element of Christian discipleship. Yet, I want to press Mahn’s insight in two directions.

First, to preserve the materiality of creation from the ravages of American consumerism, Mahn turns to Norman Wirzba and a strongly Lutheran description of creation as gift, as part of a “gift economy on all sides” (189). This turn is an important but also insufficient step toward caring for the materiality of God’s creation. What I mean is that, aside from the manifold difficulties with the notion of a gift economy that Derrida has raised in various ways, I worry that the notion of gift is insufficient to resist American consumerism, since its greatest achievement is maximizing and capitalizing on the gift of God’s own son, the greatest gift to humanity.

My instinct here is to resist an emphasis on the notion of gift, or at least a sole emphasis on gift, simply because it tends to foreshorten the horizon of creation’s materiality to my reception of the gift. Rather, I want to highlight the recognition, noted in Genesis 1, that all the rest of creation is good in the eyes of God before humans arrive on the scene—that is to say creation is not merely God’s gift to us, it has its own integrity and relationship to God apart from humanity. Glibly, one might say that if a tree falls in the Canadian taiga and no one is there to hear it or cut it up into fire wood, it still matters (and one may also reference two sparrows to the same effect). Less glibly and further to the point theologically, creation is not merely a gift to me, but a gift to all that exists—both other humans around the world and all non-human life. Appropriate reception can only be understood within this comprehensive context. Genesis 1:29–30 intimates the extent to which the non-human world is a co-recipient of God’s gift exceptionally well:

God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” (NRSV)

In effect, what I want to suggest (and I recognize that I can merely suggest in this context) is that contextualizing human materiality within the broader materiality of creation requires thematization beyond gift alone. When speaking about God’s relation to creation, for example, Aquinas places God at the center of the discussion in a different manner:

God imprints on the whole of nature the principles of its proper actions. And so, in this way, God is said to command the whole of nature, according to Ps. cxlviii 6: He hath made a decree, and it shall not pass away. And thus all actions and movements of the whole of nature are subject to the eternal law. Consequently, irrational creatures are subject to the eternal law, through being moved by Divine providence; but not, as rational creatures, through understanding the Divine commandment.3

Aquinas’s narration has its own difficulties, but at least it refuses to let creation be gifted and subjected to the whims of humans alone. Again, the language of gift should not be purged, but it must be honed in such a way that the materiality of creation leads organically to disciplined existence within one’s appropriate place in the world (and this is analogous to what climate and environmental scientists have been trying to say in their own way for decades already).4

One further note on American consumption and the destruction of creation is in order—American consumption and its global environmental consequences are deeply intertwined with American politics and war in a manner belied by the neat divisions in the third part of Mahn’s text (and I suspect Mahn is fully aware of this as well). Let me illustrate: although there is no doubt that environmental degradation has been occurring at an increasing pace since at least the Industrial Revolution, it is undeniable that there is a profound acceleration of human stress on the environment post-1945: “the human enterprise switched gears after World War II.”5 Upon closer examination, it is not the entirety of the human enterprise that switched gears; rather, only a small fraction of the world’s population switched gears. Specifically, the post-WWII acceleration was driven almost entirely by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.6 To provide some background: the OECD is the organization that replaced the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), which was formed to aid in the implementation of the Marshall Plan, the US-led plan to rebuild Europe after WWII and to secure Europe against communist expansion. Much later, alongside the collapse of the USSR, late-twentieth-century neoliberal economic policies led to a twenty-first-century globalization of consumption patterns already well-established among the OECD countries. In effect, the bulk of the anthropogenic environmental impacts we have come to understand as constitutive of the current era emerged in about thirty-five US-led countries during a mere half century in an attempt to counter the threat of communism.

Therefore, in a not-too-subtle irony, it turns out that the American attempts to create a peaceful postwar world have yielded a kind of violence just as calamitous as—and certainly more comprehensive than—WWII. This violence is a slow, structural violence, “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all . . . a violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales”7—climate change, acidifying oceans, toxic drift, and the list goes on. In current discourse, the Anthropocene is also the name given to the era defined by this slow violence, this “long dying” that is claiming the lives of humans and nonhumans alike with increasing efficiency.

The second extension of Mahn’s insight concerning the materiality of Christian existence I want to press builds upon what I have already noted above. In short, because of its focus on and concern with American Christianity, the book lends itself well to emphasizing the turn to virtuous communities as the sources of moral formation and social change. There has been much excitement about this turn post-MacIntyre, whether in the writings of Hauerwas8 and friends or in the more recent and much ballyhooed “Benedict Option” offered by Rod Dreher.9 What is often lost in this self-cultivating turn, however, is (a) attention to the extensive material consequences of one’s everyday actions and/or (b) recognition of the global nature of the church and its interconnectedness. Both demand more attention than most particularly American-focused arguments can offer. For example, no American community made up of Christians that wear clothes which are sourced in a manner that toxifies soil and laborers, are fabricated in sweatshops, or are constructed of non-biodegradable/non-recyclable materials can be virtuous in a holistic sense. The same can be said of the consumption of food, electronic devices, building materials, and the list goes on. Yet, because most of these destructive and exploitative activities that serve us frequently occur beyond American borders, they are rarely part of the calculus of American moral virtue. Many of the exemplary communities mentioned by Mahn are, in fact, conscious of this reality to some extent and I wish he would display how they address these challenges for the purpose of bringing his argument to its logical conclusion.

In this vein, one more element of Mahn’s re-formed American Christianity needs additional attention: the Christian responsibility for addressing a significant amount of the economic, political, and military oppression experienced around the world that has been brought about through an America First foreign policy that goes back to colonialism in its original forms (and here one might think about Manifest Destiny, the slave trade, gunboat diplomacy in the Pacific, the frequent CIA interventions in Central and South America, or the far-reaching Cold War economic policies noted above as examples). Yes, Mahn notes that Christians must confess their complicity in social sin. This is great, but a more radical materialist Christianity is needed because (a) confession is merely the beginning and it provides little constructive guidance for moving forward in light of having already accrued the economic and social benefits of our sins and the sins of those who came before us and (b) the calculated hiddenness of so many of our social sins—especially on a global scale—can all too easily lead to omission. American Christians have benefitted from surreptitiously sanctioning an America First ideology in international relations (even in the absence of open conflict) for decades; any attempt to cultivate virtuous communities that ignores not only the global nature of the suffering church but also the global reach of American oppression is merely polishing the inside of the cup while the outside of the cup is coated with the blood and tears of the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, and the naked.

III. Constantinianism and Christian Supersessionism

Mahn’s book is full of brilliant surprises and—shifting gears considerably from the above—one of them is its attention to Jewish-Christian idiosyncrasies within the broader conversation about interreligious relations. Of course, Luther and the Lutheran tradition are historically tied to some pretty terrible anti-Semitic activities across the past centuries. Mahn does not sidestep this history and there is much in this conversation I would like to engage. In this context, I will limit comments to extrapolations from his concluding position:

Christians also come with a stronger, more paradoxical truth claim—namely, that the Christ in whom Christians see God and to whom they commit themselves and bear witness himself models radical openness to others. . . . When Paul describes non-Jewish Christians as new shoots grafted onto an older tree, as guests in the house of Israel, he likewise teaches what being good guests entails: “But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you” (Rom 11:17–18). Those who want to be good hosts must first learn to be good guests. Christians encounter those of other faith traditions and no faith tradition with humility, awe, and graciousness because they understand themselves to be adopted into God’s own family. (317)

Again, I fundamentally agree with Mahn’s conclusion. This is the Pauline text that must be at the center of any Christian identity claim and its humility must course through all Christian theological claims. I think it is also telling that these are the final words in Mahn’s argument that then set up his conclusion. Against this background, the comments that follow are suggestive at best and what I want to propose on this basis may seem petty to some. Qualifications aside, I believe the assumption that Constantine stands as the watershed moment for Christian political reflection—an assumption affirmed implicitly in Mahn’s book—may be self-referentially problematic. If this is true, it is a recognition that would fundamentally reframe how Mahn and many of his allies conceive of political theology. In short, I have begun to wonder whether framing the options of Christian faithfulness in terms of the binary implied in the contest between Constantinianism and anti-Constantinianism is itself a form of Christian supersessionism, even if expressed negatively.

What I mean is simply this: if Christians are guests in the house of Israel, perhaps they also ought to recognize that desires for a divinely sanctioned king are not new to Christians and neither are resources for internal resistance to the temptations entailed in these desires. Looking back to a pivotal moment in the biblical text, one finds Israel struggling with the desire for greater unity and strength. They wanted to be just like every other people; they demanded a king to govern them and fight their battles; they were dreaming of a future David. In this context, the following answer is attributed to God in 1 Sam 8:11–15:

These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day. (NRSV)

This is, at the very least, a critical response that crystalizes the costs of seeking to rule the world on its own terms (an axiomatic entailment of the Constantinianism epithet). I take much of the rest of the Old Testament narrative—especially 1 and 2 Kings and the prophets—to be a critical examination of the consequences of embracing these costs. This narrative, however, is no mere morality tale; it is a polyphonic dialogue, complemented and complexified by the wisdom literature, that seeks to cultivate ways of serving God faithfully in the midst of varying circumstances, including and perhaps especially exile. Christians are grafted into this story and are a continuation of this story. Embrace of “Constantine”—whether in the form of Theodosius, Charlemagne, Ben-Gurion, Winston Churchill, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, or Vladimir Putin among others—is merely a manifestation of an old temptation, namely, the desire for a king among the nations to fight our battles. The answer to Constantine is not, therefore, merely an anti-Constantine position, but a constructive and necessarily polyphonic dialogue about how to “seek the peace of the city”10 in ways tested and explored long before Constantine arrived on the scene. Sometimes that allowed serving in the Babylonian court; sometimes it meant settling down, building houses, planting gardens, etc. Sometimes it even meant returning to the land of one’s ancestors.

Yoder, himself probably the greatest contributor to the elevation of the language of Constantinianism in the twentieth century, eventually came to see that Judaism and Christianity shared—and continue to share—more in common here than usually recognized.11 In this light, I want to suggest that fixing the theological and ethical dispute around Constantine is a kind of historical and ethical Marcionism that attempts to discard the root to which Christians are grafted. Further, to fix the theological and ethical dispute around Constantine simplifies a rich history into a binding dualism: either pro-Constantine or anti-Constantine. To this end, Mahn’s text itself spends dozens of pages making the case that the name “‘Constantine’ names the deeply seated assumption that God is directing history through civic authorities” (152). I want to agree with Mahn (and I have in the past), but does not the Christian canon provide both a no and a yes to this claim? It would certainly feel very strange to read the Genesis account of Joseph convincing Pharaoh to store up food for seven years in preparation for the impending famine with the underlying assumption that God does not work through civic authorities. On the other hand, it would certainly feel very strange to read the brief account of King Ahaziah—“He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, because he followed the ways of his father and mother and of Jeroboam son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin”12—and assume that God always works through civic authorities.

To follow Jesus is to accept considerable prescriptions and proscriptions specific to Christianity. Yet, to crystallize Christian political options around Constantine effectively simplifies what radical discipleship means by suppressing the constructive visions of social existence cultivated through centuries of Jewish struggle. Yes, the power of empire with its “chariots and horsemen” is a tremendous temptation, not merely to Christians and Jews, but to all people. Yet, there are occasions—at least according to Walter Rauschenbusch, John Ryan, Martin Luther King Jr., and many other faithful Christians—when civic authorities have been appealed to precisely because they can serve as agents of God’s kingdom. That is, it is through their laws that the poor, the over-worked, and the oppressed can be preserved from the ravages of capitalism, greed, and racism that Christians themselves covertly participate in. Certainly, this is not the only way that God’s work is accomplished in the world, but the healthy sense of Christian humility urged by Mahn would have to acknowledge that these attempts to “make history turn out right,” to use a familiar Yoderian phrase, may be neither Constantinian nor anti-Constantinian. They may simply be prudential and integrally coherent Christian attempts to seek the peace of the city.

IV. Concluding Affirmations

Stepping back from the specific engagements discussed above, I again want to affirm the tremendous insightfulness and usefulness of Mahn’s book. It is a text that I used in my upper-level undergraduate Christian ethics course this year and I have absolutely no regrets. It is not merely accessible and intelligent, it is a healthy mix of provocation, encouragement, and exhortation. And, even if my critique of the false binary implicit in the Constantinian claim is correct, Mahn is still right to argue that Christians are social animals that are formed by their communities . . . so those communities better be intentional about their role in forming Christians impervious to the temptations of national idolatries. It is my hope, however, that those communities are also sufficiently humble in their theological and ethical self-understanding. And, it is also my hope that this humility will allow those communities to see beyond the usual American horizon, to see and work to alleviate the rich cocktail of suffering and oppression served in their backyards and across the globe, the cocktail poured out indiscriminately on humans and the rest of creation by the world now caught up in the American dream.