new apostles: the lasting effects of paul’s reception among british missionaries

NEW APOSTLES: THE LASTING EFFECTS OF PAUL’S RECEPTION AMONG BRITISH MISSIONARIES  The ideological functions of Rome and Paul within British imperial thought and British imperial missionary writings, with a critique of anti-‐imperial NT criticism.

 November 22, 2014  Christina Harker

Rome & British Imperial Thought

The Roman Empire as Model to the British Empire

The Narrative of Cultural and Imperial Transfer

Colonization of Ireland in the Roman Style

New Barbarians: Ireland

Barbarism and Paternalism in the Age of Empire

Racial Hierarchies of Emprie

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Lessons from Rome “The man who studies the Roman frontier system, studies not only a great work but one which has given us all modern Western Europe. “

Source: en.numista.com

Francis Haverfield (1860-‐1919) was a British archaeologist who sought direct links between the Roman and British Empires, often using archaeological study to connect his contemporary Britain to the ancient Romans. In the half penny below, note the laureate presentation of Victoria, the Latin legend, and Britannia presented in a similar way to how Rome was on ancient Roman coin reverses (see next slide).

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 William Fynes Moryson’s An Itinerary (1617):

 The wise Romans enlarged their conquests, so did they spread their language with their laws, and the divine service all in the Latin tongue, and by their rewards and preferments invited men to speak it

 Francis Haverfield, a Roman archaeologist:*

 The greatest work of the imperial age must be sought in its imperial administration—in the organization of its frontier defences which repulsed the barbarian, and in the development of the provinces within those defences... In the lands that [Rome] had sheltered, Roman civilisation had taken firm root.

*Hingley, Roman Officers and English Gentlemen: The Imperial Origins of Roman Archaeology, 37

A bust portrait of Elagabalus facing right, with a laurel crown and full name in the Latin legend. On the reverse, his titles surround Rome who sits with her shield by her side, holding the goddess of Victory who offers her a wreath. This style was often copied in the modern period.

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 J.C. Stobart, The Grandeur that was Rome (1912):

 The modern reader, especially if he be an Englishman, is a citizen of an empire now extremely self-‐conscious and somewhat bewildered at its own magnitude. He cannot help drawing analogies from Roman history and seeking in it ‘morals’ for his own guidance. The Roman Empire bears such an obvious and unique resemblance to the British that the fate of the former must of enormous interest to the latter.

*Hingley, Roman Officers and English Gentlemen: The Imperial Origins of Roman Archaeology, 37 . Medal from Yale University Art Gallery. (2001.87.27595)

Other Modern European nations and monarchs also modeled themselves on the Romans. Notice below Louis XIV in a Roman style bust portrait, with a similarly Roman influenced portrayal of Public Happiness on the reverse.

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Cultural Transfer: William Cowper (1731-1800)

 ‘Princess! If our aged eyes  Weep upon thy matchless wrongs,

 ‘Tis because resentment ties

 All the terrors of our tongues.

 Rome shall perish—write that word

 In the blood that she has spilt;  Perish, hopeless and abhorred,

 Deep in ruin as in guilt.

 ‘Rome, for empire far renowned,

 Tramples on a thousand states;

 Soon her pride shall kiss the ground—

 Hark! the Gaul is at her Gates!


 Cowper was an English poet who wrote “Boadicea: An Ode” in 1782:

 When the British warrior queen,

 Bleeding from the Roman rods,

 Sought with an indignant mien,

 Counsel of her country’s gods,

 Sage beneath a spreading oak,

 Sat the Druid, hoary chief;  Every burning word he spoke

 Full of rage, and full of grief.

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The Narrative of Cultural and Imperial Transfer


 “Boadicea: An Ode” (cont.):

 ‘Other Romans shall arise,

 Heedless of a soldier’s name;

 Sounds, not arms, shall win the prize—

 Harmony the path to fame.

 ‘Then the progeny that springs

 From the forests of our land,

 Armed with thunder, clad with wings,

 Shall a wider world command.

 ‘Regions Caesar never knew

 Thy posterity shall sway,

 Where his eagles never flew,

 None invincible as they.’

 Such the bard’s prophetic words,

 Pregnatn with celestial fire,

 Bending, as he swept the chords,

 Of his sweet but awful lyre.

 She, with a monarch’s pride, Felt them in her bosom glow;

 Rushed to battle, fought, and died;

 Dying, hurled them at the foe.

 Ruffians, pitiless as proud,

 Heaven awards the vengeance due:

 Empire is on us bestowed,

 Shame and ruin wait for you.

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Cultural Transfer: The Cantata, “Caractatus”

 H.A. Ackworth libretto for Elgar’s cantata (1897-‐98) :

Do thy worst to me: my people spare

Whom fought for freedom in our land at home.

Slaves they are not; be wise and teach them there

Order, and law, and liberty with Rome.


Georgians, Victorians, and Edwardians understood ancient Brittania to have absorbed the virtues and strengths of its conquerors, the Romans. These virtues descended to the modern Britons, who identified deeply with Rome during their imperial expansion. In this gold sovereign produced for Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee, one of the first dies—or coin images—from her reign is reproduced with the new date. In spite of her modern 1950s hairstyle and dress, she is presented bust right (typical of Roman imperial portraits on coins), with a laurel crown in her hair and an olive branch below. The latin legend reads, “May God direct my steps.” The coin uniquely combines material evoking her role as Fidei Defensatrix and the legacy of British imperial sovereigns, linked back to ancient Rome through the iconography of Roman emperors in the presentation of British ones.

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H. C. Coote, A Neglected Fact in English History (1864)

 On theories positing a Teutonic origin of the English:*

 “[the idea] post-‐dates the English origines and dries up the springs of our early history, the merits and interest of which are by this supposition lavished upon a race of strangers. It disentitles a large proportion of the Britons of Imperial Rome to the sympathies of the present race of Englishmen, between whom and the Eternal City it leaves a gap without connection or transition. Provincial Britain becomes a lost nation, and four centuries of historical associations, with their momentous consequences are divorced from our annals.”

 According to Coote’s theory, Roman cultural and genetic heritage descended to the modern English from ancient times. The arrival of “Gallo-‐Roman” reinforcements in 1066 relieved the darkness of the Anglo-‐Saxon and Danish conquests, so that the British-‐Roman descendants of Roman colonists could become “the creator, under providence, of the medieval and modern greatness of England.”

*Hingley, Roman Officers and English Gentlemen: The Imperial Origins of Roman Archaeology, 69-70.

Rome, Italy. Trajan’s Column (113). Victory columns, like the iconography of coins, betray modern empires’ ideological debt to Rome. The most famous is probably Nelson’s Column in London.

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 In 1565, Sir Thomas Smith advocated a path of cultural extermination and settlement as the solution to the “problem” of Ireland in his letter to the Secretary of State, William Cecil:*

 ...it needeth nothing more than to have colonies. To augment our tongue, our laws, and our religion in that Isle, which three be the true bands of the commonwealth whereby the Romans conquered and kept for a long time a great part of the world.

*Raman, Renaissance Literature and Postcolonial Studies, 74.

The portrayal of the British as New Romans required the creation of foils that could be aligned with ancient Rome’s enemies. Ireland fulfilled this role, but with imperial expansion and colonial encounters with other civilizations, those new groups and peoples began to function as Britain’s ultimate others.

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 Sir FitzWilliam to Lord Burleigh:*

 This people...hath been long misled in beastly liberty and sensual immunity so as they cannot abide to hear of correction, no; not for the horriblest sins that they can commit. Till the sword have thoroughly and universally tamed...in vain is law brought amongst them: nay dangerously is the bridle thereof shaked towards them...this makes them all tooth and nail...to spurn, kick and practice against it.

 Sir Henry Smith, Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State to Lord FitzWilliam, Lord Deputy of Ireland. Smith proposed establishing settlements in Ulster based “almost entirely upon Roman methods of colonization”*

 This I write unto you as I do understand by histories of things past, how this country of England, once as uncivil as Ireland now is, was by colonies of the Romans brought to understand the laws and orders of the ancient orders whereof there hath no nation more straightly and truly kept the moulds even to this day than we, yea more than the Italians and Romans themselves.

 

*Raman, Renaissance Literature and Postcolonial Studies, 74.

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New Barbarians: Spenser, A Vewe of the present state of Irelande (c. 1598)

 Spenser advocates colonization based on a Roman model, but also connects the Irish to the Gauls genealogically through Spain:

 Mela, beinge himselfe a Spaniarde, yet saith to have descended from the Celtics of Fraunce, whereby yt is to be gathered, that that nacon which came out of Spain into Ireland were auncientlie Gaules, and that they brought with them those letters which they had learned in Spain, first into Ireland, the which some allso saye doe muche resemble the olde Phenicon carracter, beinge likewise distinguished with pricke and accent, as theires auncyentlie.

 Spanish descent is itself an insult, and Spenser writes before the decline of the Spanish Empire:

 Soe that all nacons under heaven, I suppose, the Spaniard is the most mingled, most uncerten, and most bastardlie; wherefore most foolishly doe the Irish thinke to enoble themselves by wrestinge theire auncestrie from the Spaniard, whoe is unable to deryve himselfe from any nacon certen.

Nominally a work aimed at discovering Ireland’s “malady” in order to cure it with “a diet with streight rules and orders to be dayly observed, for fear of relaps into the former disease”, Spenser expands on earlier chronicles and genealogies to create the needed contrast to the English link to Rome.

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New Barbarians: Spenser’s Links between Celtic Tribal Names and the Modern Irish

 Spenser links the Irish to ancient Celts through group names:

 Moreover there be of the olde Galles certaine nacons yett remayninge in Irelande which retaine the olde denominacons of the Galles, as the Manapi, the Cauci, the Venti and others; by all which and many other very reasonable probabilities, which this shorte course, will not suffer to be laid forth, it appeareth that the cheef inhabitantes in the Iland were Galles cominge thither first from Spayne, and afterwards from besides Tannius, where the Gothes, Hunnes, and the Getes sat downe, they allso beinge (as it is said) of some ancient Galles, and lastly passinge out of Gallia it self, from all the sea Coaste of Belgia and Celtica, into all the sotherne coastes of Ireland, which they possessed and inhabited, whereupon it is at this daye, amongst all the Irishe a common use to call any strange inhabitante there amongst them, Gald, that is, descended of [or] from the Gaules.

Rome, Italy. Justinian’s Column (543)

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Spenser and Apocryphal stories of Irish “barbarism”

 The possession of their Bardes was, as Caesar writeth, usuall amongst the Gaules; and the same was also common amongst the Brittans, and is not yett altogether left of with the Walshe, which are ther posterity. …The longe dearts came also from the Gaules, as ye may read in the same Caesar, and in John Boemius. Likewise the said Jo. Boemius wrighteth, that the Gaules used swordes, a hanfull broad, and soe doe the Irish nowe. Also that they used long wicker sheilds in battell that should cover their whole bodyes, and soe doe the Northerne Irish. But because I have not seen such fashioned targettes in the Southerne partes, but only amongst those Northerne people, and Irish Scottes, I doe thinke that they were brought in rather by the Scythians, then by the Gaules. Alsoe the Gaules used to drincke ther enymyes blood, and to paynte themselves therewith: soe alsoe they wright, that the ould Irish were wonte, and soe have I sene some of the Irish doe, but not theire enymyes but frendes bloode. As namely at the execution of a notable traytor at Lymbricke, called Murrogh Obrien, I saw an ould woman, which was his foster mother, tooke up his heade, whilst he was quartered, and sucked up all the blood running thereout, saying, that the earth was not worthy to drincke it, and therewith also steeped her face and brest, and tare her heare, crying and shriking out most terribly.

 But he also links them through cultural practices he ascribes to them:

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Theodore Mommsen (1817-1903), The History of Rome

 We may be allowed to call attention to the fact, that in the accounts of the ancients as to the Celts on the Loire and Seine we find almost every one of the characteristic traits which we are accustomed to recognize as marking the Irish. Every feature reappears: the laziness in the culture of the fields; the delight in tippling and brawling; the ostentation—we may recall that sword of Caesar hung up in the sacred grove of the Arvernians after the victory of Gergovia, which its alleged former owner viewed with a smile at the consecrated spot and ordered the sacred property to be carefully spared; the language full of comparisons and hyperboles, of allusions and quaint turns; the droll humour—an excellent example of which was the rule, that if any one interrupted a person speaking in public, a substantial and very visible hole should be cut, as a measure of police, in the coat of the disturber of the peace; the hearty delight in singing and reciting the deeds of past ages, and the most decided talent for rhetoric and poetry; the curiosity—…no trader was allowed to pass, before he had told in the open street what he knew, or did not know, in the shape of news—and the extravagant credulity which acted on such accounts, for which reason in the better regulated cantons travellers were prohibited on pain of severe punishment from communicating unauthenticated reports to others than the public magistrates;

 

 Mommsen echoes Spenser’s belief in the endurance of racial characteristics he identifies in his ancient sources and ascribes to the Irish.

Theodor Mommsen, The History of Rome (London: Richard Bentley, 1867), 286-287.

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Theodore Mommsen (1817-1903), The History of Rome

 …the childlike piety, which sees in the priest a father and asks him for his advice in all things; the unsurpassed fervour of national feeling, and the closeness with which those who are fellow-‐countrymen cling together almost like one family in opposition to the stranger; the inclination to rise in revolt under the first chance leader that presents himself to form bands, but at the same time the utter incapacity to preserve a self-‐reliant courage equally remote from presumption and from pusillanimity, to perceive the right time for waiting and for striking, to attain or even barely tolerate any organization, any sort of fixed military or political discipline.

 It is, and remains, at all times and places the same indolent, poetical, irresolute and fervid, inquisitive, credulous, amiable, clever, but–in a political point of view—thoroughly useless nation; and therefore its fate has been always and everywhere the same.

Hildesheim Cathedral, Germany. Bernward Column (ca. 1000) This is one of many medieval Christian columns, depicting victories of spiritual rather than earthly powers, but note how these columns co-‐opt the presentation of Roman ones. This column copies the helix pattern of Trajan’s column with its individual scenes of the subjugation of unruly peoples.

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Barbarism and Paternalism in the Age of Empire

 Émile Faguet:

 The barbarian is of the same race, after all, as the Roman and the Greek. He is a cousin. The yellow man, the black man, is not our cousin at all. Here there is a real difference, a real distance, and a very great one: an ethnological distance. After all, civilization has never yet been made except by whites. . . If Europe becomes yellow, there will certainly be a regression, a new period of darkness and confusion, that is, another Middle Ages.

 J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England (1883):

 We do not now read ... [history] simply for pleasure, but in order that we may discover the laws of political growth and change ... We have also learnt that there are many good things in politics beside liberty; for instance there is nationality, there is civilisation. Now it often happens that a Government which allows no liberty is nevertheless most valuable and most favourable to progress towards these other goals.

As European empires expanded, the colonial encounter with civilizations comprised of individuals of very different races led to a re-‐evaluation of what being a “barbarian” might mean and the value of sharing “civilization”.

 Francis Haverfield, “The Romanization of Roman Britain”, Proceedings of the British Academy (1905):

 Uncivilized Africans or Asiatics seem sundered for ever from their conquerors by a broad physical distinction.

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The Racial Hierarchies of Empire

 The regeneration of the inferior or degenerate races by the superior races is part of the providential order of things for humanity. With us, the common man is nearly always a déclasse nobleman, his heavy hand is better suited to handling the sword than the menial tool. Rather than work, he chooses to fight, that is, he returns to his first estate. Regere imperio populos, that is our vocation. Pour forth this all-‐consuming activity onto countries which, like China, are crying aloud for foreign conquest. Turn the adventurers who disturb European society into a ver sacrum, a horde like those of the Franks, the Lombards, or the Normans, and every man will be in his right role. Nature has made a race of workers, the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual dexterity and almost no sense of honor; govern them with justice, levying from them, in return for the blessing of such a government, an ample allowance for the conquering race, and they will be satisfied; a race of tillers of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness and humanity, and all will be as it should; a race of masters and soldiers, the European race. Reduce this noble race to working in the ergastulum like Negroes and Chinese, and they rebel. In Europe, every rebel is, more or less, a soldier who has missed his calling, a creature made for the heroic life, before whom you are setting a task that is contrary to his race—a poor worker, too good a soldier. But the life at which our workers rebel would make a Chinese or a fellah happy, as they are not military creatures in the least. Let each one do what he is made for, and all will be well.

 Ernest Renan (1823-‐1892) wrote at length about how 1) certain races were destined to particular forms of labor according to a racialized hierarchy and 2) that “inferior or degenerate races” would be regenerated by the “superior” (read: European) races. This passage from Le Reforme Intellectuelle et Morale is peppered with Latin phrases that evoke justifying discursive role of the Roman Empire.

British Imperial Missionaries

A Christian British Empire

Paul as Model Missionary where Rome is Model Empire

Paul as Exemplar in Death and Suffering

Christianity v. Heathenism

Equating Ancient “Heathenism” with Colonial “Heathenism”

Language of Light, “Heathen Darkness”, and Race

Racism and Paternalistic Appropriation in Missionary Thought

The Compatibility of Mission and Empire

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A Christian British Empire

 Rudyard Kipling and C.R.L. Fletcher, A School History of England (1911):

 The justice and mercy, which these countries had not known since the fall of the Roman Empire is now in full measure given them by the British.

 A popular poem from Victorian Christian circulars:

 The earth with all its fullness is the Lord’s. Great things attempt for Him, great things expect, Whose love imperial is, Whose power sublime.

 Richard Hakluyt the Elder (c.1553-‐1616) to Sir Walter Raleigh:

 Nothing more glorious or honourable can be handed down to the future than to tame the barbarian, to bring back the savage and the pagan to the fellowship of civil existence and to induce reverence for the Holy Spirit into atheists and others distant from God.

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 Sam Stevenson, “The Source of Missionary Enthusiasm,” in The Lightbearer, vol. 8 (1912), 78

 “The love of Christ is our incentive” II. Corinthians v. 14. This passage of Scripture is St. Paul’s answer to his enemies who charged him with being mad. His movements and methods of work were so much out of the ordinary as to appear extravagant. His zeal in Christ’s service was untamed by opposition, his interest unflagging.

 He is the unique Missionary. The need of to-‐day undoubtedly is—men and women consumed with the love of God, men and women ready to emulate the apostle’s example. The only hope for this coming about is to get people to go to the source of the apostle’s inspiration. And what that was, is told us in the passage quoted above—“The love of Christ”

Florence, Italy. Colonna di san Zanobi (before 1333). This simple column is crowned with a cross.

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 Stevenson, “The Source of Missionary Enthusiasm,” 78

 His missionary tours are marvels of accomplishment. They put to shame our feeble achievements in the Mission field. His writings too are marvellous. They are all the product of that fiery ardour. They are not mere memoirs; they are his spirit and his life. And the explanation of all his accomplishments is given in Galatians ii.20—‘I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live by the power of the indwelling Christ.’

 Paul was in union with Christ and shared the value of Christ’s death and the power of His resurrection.

 The love of Christ created in Paul a fire of love that acted like the sacrificial fire on the altar consuming the sacrifice, for Paul was consumed as he spent himself in sacrificial service. This, then—the love of Christ—is the dynamo of spiritual power. It is the cure for the manifest apathy shown toward Missions to the heathen.

 

Munich, Germany. Mariensäule (1638). This column features Mary with the infant Christ; she appears as the Queen of Heaven standing on a crescent.

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The Indian Female Evangelist (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1875), 60

 And so it has been, not only with Abraham and Paul, but with all God’s people—with the teachers of our own day; with the founders of the most successful missions, both at home and abroad.

Blenheim Palace, England. Column of Victory (1730). This column marks a return to victory columns that celebrate military heroes and victories.

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Paul as Exemplar in Death and in Suffering

 The Missionary Papers, 1816-‐1878, Church Missionary Paper, No. CCX. June, 1868

 I passed by the place in a boat, but severe illness prevented my remaining. In a day or two after, the catechist and a few of the Christians came all the way to ascertain the nature of my illness, and to assure me that, from the moment they heard I had been ill, continual prayer had been made by them all for my speedy recovery. I need not say what real pleasure this assurance afforded me. The joy thus felt can be realized, I believe, only by the Missionary under similar circumstances, and the feelings of the Apostle St. Paul are better understood from such experiences than from the most learned disquisitions of all his commentators. I visited Ming-‐ang-‐teng for the first time three years ago: I was then hooted and laughed at. There was not a Christian there at that time, nor one who knew any thing of Jesus Christ. Now, when I am weak and sick, from the very place, and from among the very people, comes a message of affectionate sympathy, and an assurance that continued prayer is offered on my behalf at the throne of grace by a goodly number of, I believe and hope, earnest and sincere brethren and sisters in Christ.

Stowe Park, England. The Grenville Column (1749)

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Paul as Exemplar in Death and in Suffering

 Richard Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society, vol. 2 (London: Henry Frowde; Oxford University Press, 1899), 136.

 Throughout his life [Mr. Hay] kept the thin, spare, erect frame he had when he came to the country. Looking at his well-‐poised head, his clear-‐cut face, and his lofty, dome-‐like forehead, you felt the presence of an old warrior-‐saint, such an one as Paul the aged, whom no opposition could daunt and whose indomitableness no obstacle could conquer.

Dublin, Ireland. Nelson’s Column (1809)

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Christianity v. Heathenism

 …their feet have been swift to shed blood, and human sacrifices have been almost universally practiced. Such was Corinth, when St. Paul first preached the Gospel there, and established a Christian Church. He then addressed them, Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto dumb Idols, even as ye were led. Such were Greece and Rome, with all their boasted refinement; such are Pagan Countries and Idolatrous Islands to the present day.

 Such once was Britain! Is it possible, that an inhabitant of this favoured Island can look at the Altar of Human Sacrifice without horror; without gratitude to God, who has redeemed him from such horrible cruelties; and without sympathy and compassion to the many thousands, yea, millions, who are now remaining in darkness and the land of the shadow of death?

 The Missionary Papers, 1816-‐1878, no. LIII. Lady-‐Day, 1829

 For this detestable impiety, this contempt of the pure and holy worship of JEHOVAH, the One Living and True God, the Almighty hath, in righteous indignation, given them up to follow their own devices. Idolatry has

proved the fatal source of crimes the most flagrant and abominable nations which worship Idols have been, and now are, distinguished for pride and cruelty, intoxication and lust, indolence, tyranny, and revenge:

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Equating “Heathenism” in the Colonies and Ancient Heathenism

The Church Missionary Quarterly Token: “A Book of Missionary Incident and Instruction” (Church Missionary House, 1856-‐1865), no. 11 October 1858

 But what can one expect from those who have been born and brought up in heathen darkness? ‘Unmerciful’ is one of the terms St. Paul applies to the heathen in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. They were so in the Apostle’s days, and they are so still.

 The Missionary Papers, 1816-‐1878, Missionary Papers, No. XXXIX. Michaelmas, 1825

 This is the testimony of these Heathens against themselves: and it proves that the awful description of the Gentiles given by St. Paul in the latter part of the First Chapter to the Romans is true of these miserable men. They celebrate with feasting and shouts the acts of Falsehood and Impurity of their pretended god [Krishna], and to Falsehood and Impurity they are themselves devoted!

Paris, France. Colonne Vendôme (1809). This column recalls the helix pattern of Trajan’s column. Napoleon stands at the top, above a series of bronze reliefs made from the captured cannons from his victory at Austerlitz.

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Equating “Heathenism” in the Colonies and Ancient Heathenism

 Robert Ward, Life Among the Maories of New Zealand: Being a Description of Missionary, Colonial and Military Achievements (Canada: G. Lamb, 1872), 98-‐99

 We cannot conclude this chapter in more appropriate language than that used by the apostle Paul in describing the effects of heathenism eighteen centuries ago; only remarking that the inspired expressions were applicable to the people of New Zealand, and of Polynesia in general, in an intenser degree than they were probably applied, at least, in some respects, to the heathen of ancient times:“God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves. . . to vile affections. . . to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all unrighteousnessness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affections, implacable, unmerciful.

Great Yarmouth, England. Britannia Monument (1819). Britannia tops this column and stands on a globe of the world, supported by caryatids.

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Language of Light, “Heathen Darkness” and Race

 Mary Gaunt, Alone in West Africa (New York: Scribner, 1912), 78-‐9

 Now most settlements along the Coast [of West Africa] are busy, prosperous, and above all, sanitary. Only in Liberia, the civilised black man’s own country, does a different state of things prevail; only here has the movement been retro-‐ grade. . . Who shall say that some ultimate good may not yet come for beautiful, wealthy, poverty-‐stricken Liberia. That the civilised nations, sinking their own jealousies, may step in and save her despite herself, I think, is the only hope. But it must be as Paul would have saved, not as the pitiful Christ...to me Liberia seems to be stretching out her hands crying dumbly to the white man the cry that came across the water of old, the cry the missionary girl listened to, the cry of Macedonia, ‘Come over and help us.

Nantes, France. Column of Louis XVI (1823).

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 William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of the Christians: to use means for the Conversion of the Heathens. In which the religious state of the different nations of the world, the success of former undertakings, and the practicability of further undertakings, are considered (Leicester: Printed / Sold by Ann Ireland [etc.], 1792), 10

 Alas! the far greater part of the world, as we shall see presently, are still covered with heathen darkness! Nor can we produce a counter-‐revelation, concerning any particular nation, like that to Paul and Silas, when forbidden to preach to those heathens, went elsewhere, and preached to others. Neither can we alledge [sic] a natural impossibility in the case.

Baltimore, Maryland. Washington Monument (1829)

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C. F. Pascoe, Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G: An Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, vol. 1 (London: Published at the Society’s Office, 1901), 316d-‐e

[The Church] trying to do her duty to the natives— ‘to give them the best we can, to train them. . . that we may use them for carrying on the light which they gain here to the darkest corners of South Africa’— and the Bishop’s charge contained a stirring appeal to Churchmen to take up their share of ‘the white man’s burden’; doing what we can to spell out this mystery which is being unfolded to us, as great as was the mystery seen by St. Paul—the place of the native of Africa in the Christian Church of the world. God has set us our task, we must bear it.’

London, England. Nelson’s Column (1843). This is probably the most famous modern victory column. Admiral Nelson appears at the top, surveying Trafalgar Square below.

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 H. R. Fox Bourne, The Claims of Uncivilised Races: A Paper Submitted to the International Congress on Colonial Sociology, Paris (Aborigines Protection Society, 1900), 7

 It may be true not only that enlightened Europeans have a right, but it is also their duty, to aim at the overthrow of barbarism and at the improvement of regions which have hitherto been insufficiently or improperly used, as well as of people who have hitherto been the victims of their own or others’ faults. But the economic, as well as the ethical, principles which our modern civilisation boasts that it has firmly established, in theory at any rate, forbid the perpetration of a crime in order that other and even greater crimes may be averted. Condemning, with St. Paul, the doctrine, “Let us do evil that good may come,” those principles support the Christian rule. “As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” The abominations indulged in by ignorant savages are no excuse for any approach towards imitation of them by people claiming to be civilised and to be engaged in civilising work. ‘Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods,’ are commandments more binding on educated white men than on benighted blacks.

Berlin, Germany. Siegessäule (1873). Victory appears at the top of this enormous column. She carries a victory wreath and a staff with a cross and fillets.

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The great service which the European nations and peoples of the Western civilisation can render to the Asiatic, African, American, and Oceanean peoples is the imparting to them the fullest knowledge of the arts and sciences which have matured in Europe. . .

 In exchange the Asiatic, African, American, and Oceanean peoples will cheerfully and heartily co-‐operate with the European peoples in the great work of developing to the uttermost degree the vast economic resources of the tropical and sub-‐tropical regions wherein the European variety of the Genus Homo endowed with an ‘unpigmented skin’ can neither work nor fight in the open continuously and simultaneously continue their own variety of the Genus Homo. . .

 The Christian principles and methods of Federal Government were enunciated by St. Paul in the following paraphrased or adapted quotations from chapter 12 of his first epistle to the Corinthians, which are applicable not only to the organisation of spiritual power, but are applicable, also, to the organisation of temporal power.

 ‘Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. . . Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit of scientific and artistic excellence. . . And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord of emotional and sympathetic devotion. . .

 Jas C. Smith, “Now We Are The Body of the British Empire”, in The African Times and Orient Review, ed. Duse Mohamed, vol. 1 (London: African Times / Orient Review, 1912), 14-‐15. (Cont.)

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 And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God of truth and righteousness which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the spirit “of patriotism” is given to every man to profit withal. . . But all. . . worketh that one and the self-‐same spirit “of patriotism,” di viding to every man, severally, as he will. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is the one body of the British Empire.’

 For by one Spirit of Patriotism are we baptised into one United Empire, whether we be Europeans, Asiatics, Africans, Americans, or Oceaneans; and have been all sworn to bear faithful and true allegiance unto one Sovereign King-‐Emperor, according to one law of the devolution of the Crown.

 …Nay, much more, those peoples of the British Empire, which seem to be more backward, are equally necessary for executing the work of the development of the resources of territories situate within the tropical and sub-‐tropical regions of this planet, and, also, for the military and naval protection and defence of these territories, as are those nations and peoples, of the British Empire, which are now the most advanced, which execute the work of development of the resources of our territories within the temperate regions, and for the military and naval defence of these territories.

 Jas C. Smith, “Now We Are The Body of the British Empire”, in The African Times and Orient Review, ed. Duse Mohamed, vol. 1 (London: African Times / Orient Review, 1912), 14-‐15. (Cont.)

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The Compatibility of Mission and Empire

 Rev. Barde:*

 [if global resources] remained divided up indefinitely, as they would be without colonization, they would answer neither the purposes of God nor the just demands of the human collectivity.

 Rev. Müller:*

 humanity must not, cannot allow the incompetence, negligence, and laziness of the uncivilized peoples to leave idle indefinitely the wealth which God has confided to them, charging them to make it serve the good of all.

* As cited by Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 17

 Richard Hakluyt the Elder’s (1553-‐1616) “Reasons for Colonisation” (c. 1585), written to support English expansion into Virginia.

The ends of this voyage are these: To plant Christian religion. To traffic. Or, to do all three. To conquer.

Anti-Imperial Biblical Scholarship

An Anti-‐imperialism with No Threat to the Status Quo

Paul’s Lasting Significance as a Model to Christians

Binary Divisions of Ancient Society Based on Allegiance to Paul

Paternalism

Paul’s Imperial Language as a Positive

Imperial Language Used as a Positive

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 Joseph B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1866), 1-‐2, 64.

We may expect to have light thrown upon the broad features of national character which thus confront us, by the circumstances of the descent and previous history of the race, while at the same time such a sketch will prepare the way for the solution of some questions of interest, which start up in connexion to the epistle.

 (64) He is dealing with a thoughtless half-‐barbarous people. They have erred like children, and must be chastised like children. Rebuke may prevail where reason will be powerless.

Discourses Present in Imperial Biblical Scholarship

 Joseph B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1866), 187.

 The life of the greatest and best of English kings presents so close a parallel to the Apostle's thorn in the flesh, that I cannot forbear quoting the passage [from Jowett] at length, though the illustration is not my own.

In J. B. Lightfoot’s writings, we find (1) Paul compared to English kings, (2) his audiences derided as stupid barbarians (the Galatians) or vicious Greeks (the Corinthians) , and (3) Paul’s activities evaluated through a paternalistic lens: his great spiritual gifts are lost on his audiences because of the inherent failings of their race(s).

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Discourses Present in Imperial Biblical Scholarship

 Joseph B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1866), 30.

 These errors found in Galatia a congenial soil. The corruption took the direction which might have been expected from the religious education of the people. A passionate and striking ritualism expressing itself in bodily mortifications of the most terrible kind had been supplanted by the simple spiritual teaching of the Gospel. For a time the pure morality and lofty sanctions of the faith appealed not in vain to their higher instincts, but they soon began to yearn after a creed which suited their material cravings better, and was more allied to the system they had abandoned. This end they attained by overlaying the simplicity of the Gospel with Judaic observances. This new phase of their religious life is ascribed by St. Paul himself to the temper which their old heathen education had fostered. It was a return to the `weak and beggarly elements' which they had outgrown, a renewed subjection to the `yoke of bondage' which they had thrown off in Christ. They had escaped from one ritualistic system only to bow before another. The innate failings of a race `excessive in its devotion to external observances' was here reasserting itself

Surprisingly, some aspects of these discourses—these ways of framing history, identity, and the contemporary—continue to resonate in contemporary “anti-‐imperial” biblical scholarship.

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An Anti-Imperialism with No Threat to the Status Quo

 Wright, N. T. Paul: Fresh Perspectives. London: SPCK, 2005, 78

 Precisely because of all the counter-‐imperial hints Paul has given not only in this letter and elsewhere but indeed by his entire gospel, it is vital that he steer Christians away from the assumption that loyalty to Jesus would mean the kind of civil disobedience and revolution that merely reshuffles the political cards into a different order.

 Wright, N. T. Paul: Fresh Perspectives. London: SPCK, 2005, 76-‐77

 [On Paul’s message in Romans] Jesus is the world’s true Lord, constituted as such by his resurrection. He claims the whole world, summoning them to the ‘obedience of faith’, that obedient loyalty which outmatches the loyalty Caesar demanded. …Through the gospel, in other words, the one true God is claiming the allegiance of the entire world, since the gospel itself carries the same power which raises Jesus from the dead, unveiling the true salvation and the true justice before a world where those were already key imperial buzzwords.

New Haven, Connecticut. Soldiers and Sailors Monument (1887). The soliders at the base represent diferent wars (Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, and Spanish-‐American War). It is topped by the Angel of Peace.

40 |Barcelona, Spain. Columbus Monument (1888)

Paul’s Lasting Significance as a Model to Christians

 Horsley and Silberman. The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World. New York: Grossett/Putnam, 1997, 231

 The movement that began with Jesus of Nazareth was primarily concerned with the way that people could somehow resist exploitation by the rich and powerful, without either surrendering their traditions or resorting to violence. Likewise, the Apostle Paul-‐-‐-‐in his wide-‐ranging travels throughout the lands of the Eastern Empire-‐-‐-‐engaged in a career of confrontation with the forces of patronage and empire and died in the attempt. Time and again over the succeeding centuries the same struggle would be waged. Whether in the heretical Christian sects of Asia Minor, the mystical brotherhoods of the Middle Ages, the radical religious groups of the Reformation, the utopian communities of nineteenth-‐century America, or the visionary, idealistic political movements of the present, the quest for the Kingdom of God lives on. To many scholars, the often-‐failed protests of common people are merely footnotes to the mainstream history of Christianity, which is traced through the official chronicles of church councils and the respectful biographies of church leaders and kings. Certainly the words and deeds of the rich and famous should not be ignored or neglected, but they are only part of a great, complex mosaic of social and religious change.

Photo by David Iliff. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

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 Richard Horsley,. "1 Corinthians: A Case Study of Paul's Assembly as an Alternative Society." in Paul & Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society, edited by Richard A. Horsley. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997, 244.

 …In 1 Corinthians his gospel, mission, and the struggles of his assembly are part of God’s fulfillment of history in the doom and destruction of Roman imperial rule.


 Richard Horlsey, “1 Corinthians”, 244.

 But it is through the despicably crucified Christ and now his lowborn, weak, and despised followers, the Corinthian believers themselves, that God has shamed the pretentious elite questing after power, wealth, wisdom, noble birth, and honorific public office (1:21-‐23, 26-‐29; 4:8,10). These terms, of course, in their literal meaning, describe not simply a cultural elite but the provincial (Corinthian) political elite.

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 Richard Horsley, “1 Corinthians”, 245-‐6.

 Second, beside urging group solidarity, Paul insisted that the Corinthian assembly conduct its own affairs autonomously, in complete independence of “the world”, as he writes in no uncertain terms in 1 Corinthians 5-‐6. That did not mean completely shutting themselves off from the society in which they lived. The purpose of the mission, of course, was to bring people into the community. The believers should thus not cut off all contact with “the immoral of this world, or the greedy, and robbers” (5:10). The assembly, however, should not only (a) maintain ethical purity and group discipline in stark opposition to the injustice of the dominant society, but also (b) it should handle its own disputes in absolute independence of the established courts…

The assembly stands diametrically opposed to “the world” as a community of “saints”.

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 Richard Horsley, “1 Corinthians”, 248.

 In contrast to the dominant society in which many overlapping social bonds were established in sacrifices to multiple gods, however, the assembly of sharers in the body of Christ was exclusive. It was simply impossible and forbidden therefore for members of the body politic established and perpetuated in the cup and table of the Lord to partake also in the cup and table of demons.

 Richard Horsley, “1 Corinthians”, 249.

 In his concern to “build up” the assembly of saints over against the networks of power relations by which the imperial society was constituted, he could not allow those who had joined the assembly to participate in the sacrificial banquets by which those social relations were ritually established.

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Paternalism

 Horsley and Silberman. The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World. New York: Grossett/Putnam, 1997, 169

 The idea that villagers of the Galatian highlands should abandon their own village traditions and adopt the festivals, laws, and ceremonies of Israel in order to gain a share in God's kingdom struck Paul as a direct challenge to all the work that he had been carrying out for the previous years. Having grown to understand the economic and political plight of the Galatians during his sojourn among them, Paul believed that he knew far better than the newly arrived apostles how the Galatian peasantry could best survive under the new conditions of empire and so inherit—on their own terms—the Kingdom of God.

Saint-‐Denis, Réunion. Colonne de la Victoire (1923)

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Paternalism Richard Horsley, “1 Corinthians”, 243.

 Populated by the descendants of Roman riffraff and deracinated former slaves, Corinth was the epitome of urban society created by empire: a conglomeration of atomized individuals cut off from the supportive communities and particular cultural traditions that had formerly constituted their corporate identities and solidarities as Syrians, Judeans, Italians, or Greeks. As freedpeople and urban poor isolated from any horizontal supportive social network, they were either already part of or readily vulnerable for recruitment into the lower layers of patronage pyramids extending downwards into

the social hierarchy as the power bases of those clambering for high honor and office expanded.

Coin of the British Museum (1857, 1221.20).

A napoleonic coin claiming the Bourbon Isles (later Réunion) for “France et Bonaparte”. Note the laurel wreath on the reverse and the Napoleonic eagle, evocative of and based on the Roman eagles.

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 Wright, N. T. "Paul and Empire." In The Wiley-‐Blackwell Companion to Paul, edited by Stephen Westerholm, 285-‐298. Malden, MA; Oxford: Wiley-‐Blackwell, 2011, 292.

 Often, in fact, such allusions [to “the structures of power and those who embodied and enforced them”] are the only way, or perhaps the best way, to get the point across. But in the case of Paul, the echoes of imperial language (not necessarily explicitly “cultic” language, though as we have seen the cult merges into, and flows out from, the wider ideology) are strong: “good news,” “son of God,” universal allegiance, Jesus as part of an ancient royal family and as kyrios (“lord”), and then, in what is generally reckoned the thematic statement of the letter [to the Romans] (1:16-‐17), this “good news” as being the means of “salvation” and “justice” (dikaiosynē, “righteousness”). The fact that these notions have been given very different and essentionally non-‐political, meanings in some Christian theology ought not to make us deaf to the echoes they would almost certainly have awakened in Rome.

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 Horsley, “1 Corinthians”, 250-‐251

 In his explanation of why he did not accept [financial] support, he simply resorted to the imagery of household administration (“commission,” 9:17), with the implied image of God as the divine estate owner and himself as the steward. Such imagery fits with similar controlling metaphors, such as God as a monarch, Christ as the alternative emperor, and himself as the Lord’s “servant” or “slave”. He used his overall controlling vision of the “kingdom” of God as a basis for rejecting the patronage system, but remained within that traditional biblical vision.

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 For Paul, Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not… if Jesus is Israel’s Messiah then he is the world’s true Lord.


 In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul describes the resurrection of Jesus as inaugurating that period of history which is characterized by the sovereign rule of Jesus which will end with the destruction of all enemies, putting all things under his feet.

Washington, D.C. The Capital Columns (1985)

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 Wright, N. T. "Paul and Empire”, 289.

 When we consider “Paul and Empire”, we are not talking about a political slideshow, a subcategory of “Pauline ethics” (“What about the State?”). We are talking about the kingdom of God and the lordship of Jesus the Messiah.

 Wright, N. T. "Paul and Empire”, 290.

 Paul’s gospel, arguably, remained firmly rooted in the soil of ancient Jewish expectation. He believed that in Jesus, and particularly in his death and resurrection, Israel’s god had been true to his promises. It was therefore time for the world to be brought under the lordship of this god and his anointed king.

Silver medal (1783) of American Liberty. Here she appears with flowing hair and her pileus, the hat of a freed slave, on a pole. On the reverse, Artemis with the fleur-‐de-‐lis of France shields the infant Hercules (the US) from the lion of the British monarchy as he strangles two snakes representing British forces at Saratoga and Yorktown. The legend reads, “non sine diis animosus infans”, a quote from Horace. “The infant is not bold without (the help of ) the gods”.

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new apostles: the lasting effects of paul’s reception among british missionaries

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