Joerg Rieger - Christ and empire

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God in Christ is a different kind of lord who is not in solidarity with the powerful but in solidarity with the lowly.... This position—at the heart of the new world proclaimed by Paul—directly contradicts the logic of the Roman Empire.

Joerg Rieger

Paul refused to enter into patronage relationships with Corinthian elites; the system of patronage is problematic because it destroys the horizontal bonds of the common people—their solidarity with each other—and ties them to the powerful and the wealthy.

Joerg Rieger

The Emperor cult provided an alternative way of producing order and of ordering social relationships and thus an alternative to traditional politics. Without awareness of this context, Paul's writings might indeed be seen as nonpolitical. Paul is political in a different way, however, not by challenging the administration and official politics but by resisting three of the most powerful mechanisms of control of the Roman Empire: The emperor cult, the system of patronage, and the prominent themes of the empire's rhetoric.

Joerg Rieger

When Christians in a context of empire are unaware of the political implications of their faith, their Christ is likely to be co-opted by empire by default.

Joerg Rieger