Resisting Babel: Allegiance to God and the Problem of Government

by John Mark Hicks

If the kingdom of God demands exclusive allegiance, how do followers of Jesus engage with a world shaped by political power?After the trauma of the Civil War, David Lipscomb, a Nashville farmer and church leader, advocated for allegiance solely in the kingdom of God rather than in human governments. Resisting Babel tells the story of Lipscomb’s compelling, coherent, and eschatologically grounded vision, which fostered deep and significant religious reform in the United States and led to missionary zeal across the globe. That vision articulated a way forward for Christianity amidst the world powers, though it was later subverted by those powers, both by its own implicit assumptions from within and the overwhelming forces of Babel without. What happened among Churches of Christ during that time serves as a case study and parable of both possibility and warning for the modern church.In this new book, Hicks has assembled the leading voices on David Lipscomb. Contributors • Richard T. Hughes, Scholar in Residence at Lipscomb University, is the leading historian of Churches of Christ and has authored the standard work on its history.• Richard Goode, professor of history at Lipscomb University, has written about and practiced Pilgrim political theology, which is indebted in part to David Lipscomb.• Lee C. Camp, professor of theology at Lipscomb University, is a leading ethicist among Churches of Christ.• Joshua Ward Jeffery, AP History teacher at the Orme School in Mayer, AZ, is a leading historian of the relationship between pacifism, the church, and World War I.

Genres: Theology

160 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 3, 2020

Reviews

[Ross Connors · Rating 5 out of 5]

Resisting Babel is a collection of six essays examining the political theology of David Lipscomb and Restoration churches generally during his lifetime (1831-1917):

1) Richard Hughes begins with Barton Stone’s worldview and the impact this would later have on Lipscomb through his mentor Tolbert Fanning. Stone, one of the fathers of the Restoration movement, believed the Bible to be an ongoing drama of struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the world. As Stone understood the truth that the “biblical topic is politics”, he was able to read American culture through the biblical lens rather than construing the Bible Americanly. He gradually accepted an apocalyptic worldview that led he and his followers to “act as though the final rule of the kingdom of God were present in the here and now.” This worldview led to Stone’s condemnation of American slavery as an “abomination in the sight of God.”
2) John Mark Hicks surveys David Lipscomb’s political theology in chapter 2. He traces Lipscomb’s original advocacy for Christian participation in government in 1855, calling it “the duty of religion, working through individual faith, to guide, guard and foster the civil institutions to a free and vigorous growth.” The growing war clouds and subsequent bloodshed of the Civil War caused a radical reassessment for Lipscomb. By 1866, Lipscomb saw civil powers and the kingdom of God as “essentially antagonistic” that must “forever remain distinct”. Both entities seek sovereignty over the earth and the hearts of human beings but sharply differ in their “origins, missions, spirits, weapons and destinies”. When Christians participate in civil government, Lipscomb believes they “drink in another spirit [separate from the Spirit of God]” and “bring that spirit into the church of God to secularize and demoralize it” such that the church becomes ineffective in its work. Until his death in 1917, Lipscomb advocated for Christians living among the world powers to “submit, but not support” and resist by embodying the “nonviolent, gentle and meek spirit of Jesus.”
3) Hicks then offers a case study of Lipscomb’s theology, looking at his views on slavery, segregation and the mission of the church in the post-war South in chapter 3. Lipscomb envisioned the church as the embodiment of reconciliation, peace, unity and healing by incorporating all races and nationalities into one community ruled by God. Though Lipscomb inherited five slaves from his family (he would free them shortly before the war), he believed slavery to be an evil institution that would be abolished by nonviolent means over time. However, because the South sought to extend and strengthen slavery, God determined to accomplish the divine “end by the hand of violence.” Lipscomb advocated for integrated churches after the war, claiming anyone who refused blacks equal participation in the gospel was “not a child of God.” While few white men garnered the same respect from Southern blacks as Lipscomb, he exhibited a paternalistic racism characteristic of his time. While flawed in practice, his clear message was that God desired to bring all people, regardless of race, into one “peaceable, fraternal, and harmonious body in Christ.”
4) In chapter 4, Richard Goode considers Lipscomb’s political theology in the context of three main historic Christian political theologies. Christians advocating for the “realist” position believe disciples must, at times, use the world’s fallen ethics and politics while remaining conscious that they are inconsistent with the ways of the kingdom. “Transformationists”, by contrast, believe it is the duty of Christians to steer the redemption of the world through civil government, legislation and nation-states. Finally, “radicals” reject participation in civil government, believing the will to power is fallen and misguided. Instead, Christians must practice a nonviolent, kenotic, agape love for the world modeled by Jesus’ example and teachings, with particular emphasis on the Sermon on the Mount. While adherents of the radical perspective are not uniform in their approach, Goode identified Lipscomb as a “radical pilgrim”. For Lipscomb and other pilgrims, the call is not to be defined by the political contexts they are surrounded by, but rather to live out their “peculiar kingdom commitments regardless of how nonsensical, irrelevant and ineffective they appear in the world of civil governments.”
5) Historian Joshua Ward Jeffery explores the loss of the apocalyptic worldview in the Churches of Christ in chapter 5. By the time the US entered WWI in 1917, the fellowship of the Churches of Christ was the largest peace church in the country. The chief US Army officer responsible for conscription for the war expected all 132,755 draft-eligible males in the Churches of Christ to apply for Conscientious Objector status. Jeffery claims that no event had a greater effect on the apocalyptic worldview in the Churches of Christ than WWI. The reasons for this include “the widespread propaganda by the US government in favor of the war and against those who opposed it; the co-opting of the populace to surveil opponents of the war and report dissidents; the passing and enforcement of the Sedition and Espionage Acts; and ultimately, the surrender of moral authority provided by the apocalyptic worldview of thought leaders in the Churches of Christ in the face of such opposition.” Through the events of WWII and the Cold War (including the Korean and Vietnam wars), little trace of the apocalyptic worldview existed in the Churches of Christ by 9/11.
6) In the final chapter, Lee Camp repackages Lipscomb’s worldview for contemporary application. Expounding on the “Good News of the Church as Political”, the “Good News of Nonsectarianism”, the “‘Not Yet’ of the Good News”, the “Nonutopian Realism of Bringing Good News to the World” and the “Good News of Nonviolence”, Camp offers the reader principles to creatively live out Lipscomb’s theology in our modern context. Camp then critiques or revises four aspects of Lipscomb’s theology. These include Lipscomb’s belief in the moral culpability of voters for politician’s actions, the hermeneutic of “flat” or “plain” meanings of Scripture, the myth of the two kingdoms (kingdom of God and kingdoms of the world) remaining universally distinct and a overly narrow view of the “powers”. The chapter calls readers to learn from Lipscomb in bearing faithful witness to the kingdom of God and pray for the consummation of all things—that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I have a newfound appreciation for David Lipscomb and the rich history of his political theology in the Churches of Christ. He offers a profound vision for disciples of Jesus living out the kingdom of God in the midst of the kingdoms of this world. For those currently in the Restoration movement exasperated with the partisanship of the American Left and Right, Resisting Babel is a must read.

[John Frias · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love John Mark Hicks and the voice he is to the Churches of Christ Movement. Here, he is an editor with many voices from the movement as they address the movement's relationship with the government. You can definitely tell that it was written in response to 2020 and the rise of Christian nationalism.

The big point: The Churches of Christ Movement has a history being pacifist and standing apart from the government. The Government and surrounding culture pressured the movement until these principles were stripped away from it.

[James Hallmark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays focused on David Lipscomb and his thoughts/teachings on pacifism and resistance to government. Lipscomb didn’t just resist “bad” government; he resisted ALL government. The very concept of government is counter to God’s will according to Lipscomb. His opposition was centered on his belief that one’s loyalty to government competes for loyalty to God, a common “Anabaptist” foundational belief we’ve abandoned in most modern American faith communities. Lipscomb lived mostly in the 1800s in Tennessee, passing away when what we now know as World War I was heating up. During the Civil War he irked leaders on both sides, informing the Confederacy that he would not serve in war, and then doing the same to the Union forces when they took control of Tennessee. I have long known of Lipscomb’s pacifist beliefs, although I did not know before reading this book that he was a “Pilgrim” (a descriptive term for non-violent opposition to government actions). I’m pretty sure he would not like his home church today, given how intertwined that fellowship’s members are with Republican politics and are generally pretty hawkish. An interesting chapter or two for me focused on how this church migrated from its pacifism of Lipscomb’s day to being so hawkishly supportive of war today. At the onset of “the Great War” the War Department listed the Churches of Christ as the largest “Peace church” in the country. The U.S. Government—seeking to squelch opposition—arrested the faculty and closed what was then the largest Church of Christ college in the country (Cordell Christian College) due to their conscientious objection to the war. My how times have changed. I’ll close with a few great quotations. Interesting book!
—-“Be in society, but always and only as a small candle in the midst of overwhelming darkness, trusting that the darkness cannot overcome the Light.”
—“...the church has too often succumbed to and become part of the kingdom of noise.”
—“...the discipline of standing still yet resilient in the face of life’s social and political storms, even while fully cognizant of the storm’s destructive capacity.”

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who has read other books on Christian political theology, this by far is the best introduction to a figure who's often neglected. David Lipscomb, a theologian of the Stone-Campbell tradition and a founder of Nashville Bible School, now Lipscomb University, is hardly known outside his association with the Churches of Christ.

What this book does is bring together essays that highlight his "pilgrim" politics. Similar to Christian Anarchism, this pilgrim political message is one of distrust in human institutions and a supreme loyalty to Christ. The biggest difference (at least in Richard Goode's view, the author of chapter 4) is that Lipscomb doesn't call for a revolutionary response, rather a resistance of peaceable tolerance.
Quoting, "Through some 150 pages, Lipscomb developed a concentrated argument that might be summarized as follows:
All civil governments are in themselves evil and rebellion against God.
It was the mission and work of Christ to defeat all rival powers and governments.
Christian participation in, or cooperation with, civil governments is fornication, adultery, and harlotry.

Thus disciples must:
Separate from the systems and structures of any and all civil governments.
Stand aloof from the principalities and powers of civil governments.
Tranquilly, quietly, and steadfastly practice the kingdom ethic that the world will not fathom and cannot appreciate."

Overall, each essay highlights a different nuance of Lipscomb's political theology (ranging from slavery to apocalypse) and really should be read by every Christian interested in politics.

[Jared Greer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have felt torn on how to rate this book. I thought the historical survey was fascinating and wonderfully insightful. John Mark Hicks and co. carefully trace both the origins and ultimate extinction of the Church of Christ’s once fundamental pacifism and “pilgrim” political philosophy. It’s clear that David Lipscomb (though far from perfect) had a great deal of wisdom to offer Christians today regarding political allegiance. Nevertheless, I felt that the practical applications provided toward the end of the book were fairly minimal and vague. Additionally, I wasn’t sure that I agreed with Lee Camp’s views on “the powers” (though I’m not sure that I disagree with him either; it’s a topic in which I’m not well-versed, and I’d like to study it more). If you are at all interested in learning more about historical theological views on civic engagement (particularly within the Restoration Movement), I would certainly recommend this book. It also serves as a worthwhile polemic against modern Christian Nationalism, which has become all too prevalent.

[Jon Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who comes from the Restoration Movement and also believes in pursuing Christ's Kingdom rule as the alternative to this world's forms of governance, I deeply appreciated and was challenged by this book. While there was much here I was already familiar with, there was also quite a lot I did not know; new details and nuances that already seem to add further and deeper dimension to these ideas and enriches their potential to help frame Jesus's kingship as good news.