Biblical reflections on drift to authoritarianism
Introduction
Let me say at the outset that historically, Christian people have mostly lived under authoritarian rule. The early Jesus followers had to negotiate between the fact that they are ruled by despotic kings and equally oppressive religious leaders and the fact that their faith had to survive under colonial Rome, whose emperors deified themselves and bid them to bow the knee.
Today, we are seeing once again the rise of authoritarianism, not just in the traditionally totalitarian societies like China or Russia, but in countries that have embraced democracy and now seeing a decline in democratic values and the efficacy of its institutions.
The Philippines is one of them. There was a time when we thought we would return to democracy. Our People Power uprising enabled us to at least restore the institutions that collapsed under the Marcos dictatorship. But very quickly, the old faces of the regime recycled themselves, and the entrenched political and economic elites hijacked the people’s project.
We failed to restructure the political and socio-economic system such that political dynasties are dismantled and economic power is de-coupled from those who hold positions of power.
The return of authoritarianism in the shape of Duterte’s populism is in a way a ‘revolt of the poor.’ The three succeeding decades after People Power saw the tremendous growth of the 2% or so who are in the top rung of the economic ladder, and the massive slide into poverty of those left behind by the digital divide and globalizing forces.
Some months after our February revolt, social activists coming from the three main church traditions in the country — Catholics, the National Council of Churches and evangelicals — met together to reflect on what we did right and what we could have done better.
I spoke in behalf of evangelicals and said that there were two things that could have served the movement better in returning to democracy: the social insights of our faith, and the resources of our culture. Instead of reflecting a bit more on the social implications of our faith and culture, we very quickly embraced western theologies that de-mobilized Christians from responding to our political crisis, and allowed foreign ideologies like Marxism to frame our social analysis and action.
These days, we are once again struggling for insight as we grapple with the failure of our democracies and the looming shadow of China’s imperialism.
So how do we live and find the spaces where we can stretch the margins of what is possible given the narrowing democratic space?
First, some insights from Scripture.
Subverting structures
The Bible’s metaphors on what the church is about – salt, light, yeast – suggest that to give flavor and preserve the best of our cultures, to bring light to people who are in darkness, to penetrate the workings of a system like yeast so that the dough rises, transforming a lump of flour into life-giving bread, — needs only a small minority.
In this sense we are not so much revolutionaries – tearing things down so we can build our own vision of what society should be – but subversives, deep penetration agents who go softly, not attracting attention to ourselves, but quietly influence and transform our spheres of competence and responsibility. This is consistent with the way the Lord Jesus went about his messianic task:
“He will not argue or shout, or make speeches in the streets.
He will not break off a bent reed, nor put out a flickering lamp.
He will persist until he causes justice to triumph, and on him
all peoples will put their hope.” (Matthew 12.19-21)
This is a very Asian way of going about our business of changing things. Instead of a head-on confrontation, as is the usual western approach, we all tend to abide by the military strategist Sun Tzu’s advice to break the enemy’s resistance without fighting. We see China applying this in its thrusting to dominate East Asia through a policy of attraction and infiltration rather than conquest.
The Early Church also had to live and endure structures that were oppressive. The Greco-Roman civilization was borne on the backs of slaves. The few who were Roman citizens, like Aristotle, saw a slave as merely “a living tool.”
Under the absolutist rule of the Caesars, there was no way the colonized peoples of Rome could insert themselves into political space. This explains the so-called political conservatism of someone like Paul, who by and large accepted the existing structures and counseled restive Christians in Rome to be subject to authorities. Husbands and wives, children and parents, slaves and masters were merely enjoined to practice mutual submission and carry out their responsibilities out of reverence for Christ. (Ephesians 5.21-6.9)
This new social ethic, however, soon transformed not only the relationships within these structures but contributed to the eventual erosion of these hierarchies.
Today, in our time, while racism, gender and economic inequality continue to exist, they are at least considered socially anathema and morally unacceptable. This we owe to Paul’s vision that in Christ, ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.’ (Galatians 3.28)
Sociologists and social historians tell us that it only takes 2% to 5% of the population to turn a country around. You just need a determined minority, what sociologists call a ‘critical mass’, to impact a whole society:
“We should not underestimate the significance of the small group of people who have a vision of a just and gentle world. In Japan a very small minority of Protestant Christians introduced ethics into politics and had an impact beyond all proportion to their numbers. They were central in the beginnings of the women’s movement, labor unions and virtually every reform movement. The quality of a culture may be changed when two percent of its people have a new vision.”
— Robert Bellah, UC Berkeley
In other words, we need to have a strong missional sense in our vocations, a very intentional project of transforming the institutions where we happen to be. We are to be game changers, turning evil and unjust structures more towards the purposes of God for human society.
Change the narratives
It is not an accident that the first thing an autocratic government does is to muzzle independent media and let loose a flood of propaganda and fake news that will shape public opinion. It was Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels who said that if you repeat a big lie often enough people will eventually believe it.
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