A Republic and an Empire

Conservative Christians in political discussions commendably emphasize that historically and constitutionally the United States is a republic and not a democracy. Our political leaders are not as careful or precise with the terms “republic” and “democracy.” The key emphasis on a republic is that it is a government of laws and not of men; whereas, the emphasis on a democracy is that it is a government hinging upon the “will of the people.” The 2000 election settled that issue when the constitutional electoral college process declared George Bush the president over the will of .5% of the voting population. In effect, the election of 2000, in its affirmation of the electoral college and of state’s rights, declared that this is indeed a republic and not a democracy.
Some conservatives find the concept of an empire to be as disturbing as the concept of a democracy. “We are a republic and not an empire,” they say. An empire exists when you have a single centralized governing authority ruling over a host of lands and peoples.
Why not have a republic and an empire? Why not face the providential circumstances that the United States enjoys and takes on this role? Obviously, our past century of empire building has had many flaws, but if historical flaws argue against an institution, then the Church is doomed. We would take note that there are many examples of evil empires in history. The phrase “evil empire” was coined and used by the great Postmillenial empire builder Ronald Reagan to describe one of the worst of the 20th centuries wicked empires, the Soviet Union. But have there been good and great empires in history?
Yes, and this and subsequent articles will deal with three of them: The American Empire, the British Empire, and the Byzantine Empire. In each case, and others could be sited, each empire did great good in this world of woe and vale of sorrows. In defending empires consider these three lines of thought. First, empires are either favorably viewed in Scripture or accepted without criticism, excluding those times when the empires were persecuting God’s people. (The Scriptures are critical of evil rulers, especially idolators, but is not critical toward monarchial and imperial forms of government as such.) Secondly, history has shown providential benefits to empires. (The portions of the world that have been parts of the Roman, British, and American empires come to mind.) Third, empires are keys to fulfilling the Great Commission. (Most of the evangelization of the world has come about on the heels of imperial conquest or in the aftermath of imperial rule.)

The American Empire

America is the classic case of a country that is ambivalent toward its parent—the British Empire. Americans fought to retain their rights as Englishmen, but we flinch from some of the British institutions, such as monarchy and empire, that contributed to the development of those rights. The Americans waged a war against the British Empire that began with protests and threats and then grew to armed hostility at such places as Lexington and Concord. Paul Revere never rode through the countryside yelling, “The British are coming,” for that would have been foolish. He and those living in Massachusetts were British. The War for Independence followed, and after years of hardship, the confederated thirteen North American states broke from the British empire. But America developed an uneasiness about empires that hindered this country even as it fulfilled its “Manifest Destiny” of establishing an empire.
In the conquest of east and west Florida, the purchase of the Louisiana territory, the annexation of Texas, the conquest of the Mexican Cession, the settlement of the Oregon territory with fellow-empire builder Great Britain, and in the purchase of Alaska, the United States established an ocean to ocean empire. Each section, rather than being looted for its resources, was opened up to settlement by the ever-expanding American population. That very population contained large numbers of non-British people who found it advantageous to adopt English language and American folkways.
Rather than establishing a political polyglot, such as that which hamstrung the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the United States created an environment where the English language, the American Constitution and system of laws, and the opportunity for economic achievement weaned the foreigners away from the old world and won their hearts to the land of plenty. Rather than establishing a hierarchy of ruling class Anglo-Americans running roughshod over thick-accented Southern European serfs, America created a world where immigrants stumbled to speak English with continental European accents, but their children sounded “just like us,” and their grandchildren won Senate seats or started major American companies. Rather than stifling any hope of economic and social advancement toward other races and peoples, such as that which hamstrung the Spanish empire in Mexico, America opened the door for advancement for all peoples in its empire. Yes, sometimes the door opened too slowly; yes, sometimes, the door opened, then shut, then opened again only a little bit. But in the American empire, middle class white people pay big money so that the descendants of African slaves can be established in the upper classes after spending a few years shooting hoops on a basketball court.
Rather than pillaging its territories for their goods, such as the Soviets did in eastern Europe after World War II, the United States has taken the various portions of its geographical empire and turned it into 50 confederated republics, with each having a voice in the national government.
America sometimes reacted against the concepts of empire to its own hurt. During World War I, the United States, with its Wilsonian heresy of self-determination for all peoples, salivated at the chance to make the world safe for democracy by ridding it of the Hapsburgs of Austria, the Romanovs of Russia, and the Hohenzollerns of Germany. The empires of Europe became democracies, and the world was made safe for the rise of Communism, Nazism, and Fascism.
During and after World War II, Franklin Roosevelt, infected worse by his stint of service to Woodrow Wilson than by infantile paralysis, yearned to dismantle the British and French empires as much as he yearned to defeat the Axis powers. The wish hastened the end of the older traditionally Christian European empires, and the spread of Bolshevism from “Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” as eloquently stated by that great man of the British Empire, Winston Churchill.
America’s empire building beyond its own territories has included successes and failures. South Korea, a largely Christian peninsula with a basically free society, testifies to our success. South Vietnam, still a communistic rice paddy, haunts America from its solemn memorial in Washington to its effects on foreign policy today. The tiny speck of an island in the Caribbean called Grenada provides our own version of “the empire strikes back” as the first successful assault against Communism. Along with that, the successful war of the turbaned Afghanis against the Soviet Union, made possible by anti-tank and anti-air weapons supplied by the American empire, gave the Bolsheviks their own version of Vietnam.
One of the most successful aspects of the Empire was the defensive protectorate America established over Western Europe from 1945 to the 1990’s. Under the wings of a massive American eagle, the sons of Montgomery stood side by side with the sons of Rommel and many other sons of European free countries ready to checkmate Soviet expansionism.
Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980’s, and like an imperial emperor, issuing a decree, with frightening sober force, said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The anti-empire American left, shaking with ecstasy anticipating coexistence with the Communists, were shocked. The American conservatives, nervous over the role empires play in history, were not sure. The Communists, yearning for an American isolationist or one willing to accept Communism, trembled whenever the Cowboy President strayed from his scripts and joshed about bombs and tearing down walls. But one thing for sure did happen, the wall came down and so did Gorbachev and a host of other lackeys, puppets, and petty tyrants.
America needs to face the fact that when we sneeze, the world catches a cold. We have a mission in this world as the only 21st century superpower. Look at a globe and note the differences between the location and size of that chunk of land called the United States and that chunk called Switzerland. As Mordecai told Esther, “Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” God knows why America is so strong, so rich, and so poised to call the international shots. For whatever reason God may have in His ultimate providential purposes, the United States is, on God’s cosmic chessboard, the king, the queen, the bishops, the knights, and the rooks. The pawns will move at our command.

Bradford Pear Blossoms

Winter’s last and only certain snow
Banks the pear branches white with blooms,
Trumpeting royalty to follow
On flowered grass from earthly looms.

Bare limbs hopeful with clutches of flowers
Dance like bridesmaids before the sun,
In rhythm to the tune of showers
As birds sing that winter is done.

As buds melt the last snow into green,
Warm sirens draw us out to the trees,
Seeking a corner of grace to glean,
Like the repentant heart trying to please.

Appearing in air from the cold;
On pear branches, drifts bank and grow,
As the chilled hand lets loose its hold:
Winter’s last and only certain snow.

THE SUDDENESS OF ASCENSION

The suddenness of ascension—shadowed
by a flight of birds against the stained glass—
as winter afternoon sun hinted warmth—
in dusky rays against bare wood cold pews—
where wingless prayers shivered in dreary nests.

The suddenness—for fear, for food, for love
Of flying—turned me—as creed turned to
poetry. Images darted against
the words spoken, slowly the tinder heart
felt an older fire, warming like monks’chants.

The suddenness of grace’s wings lifting
a soul barren—with a harvest unsown,
but fed, even fatten’d, after a willed fall,
a true image restored with flecks of blood,
warmed, healed under wings of refuge covered.

The suddenness of ascension—shadowed
by a flight of birds against the stained glass—
interrupting the winter’s close of day,
the ascending saviors, with light soaring,
from Olivet, lifting up downward gaze.

This poem grew out of an experience on a January afternoon several years ago at a pastor's conference. The church was filled with that hazy afternoon, slightly drafty feeling. Someone was laboring away in the pulpit at that point in the day where the mind was drifting in and out, weary with the day and worn with the cares of life. Against the stained glass windows on the side of the church, a small flock of birds suddenly arose in flight. All I saw was the sudden shadows. God reaches out to shake us sometimes through the power of the pulpit; sometimes through the creation.