Christians are Globalists, Not Nationalists
Christianity is, by definition, globalist in its perspective. In a world in which nationalism and anti-immigration policies are on the rise, Christianity offers an alternative narrative. However, Christianity is challenged to compromise at every step by the civil religion of the nation.
Jesus, whose message was “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17), reminds us that this message is to be proclaimed to everyone, to all nations/foreigners/people/ethnicities (Matthew 28:19). He tells us that the kingdom of God is to extend, “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). One of Jesus’s closest disciples, Peter, would further articulate this truth when the city of Jerusalem was filled with god fearing people from the known world, and it is truly an eclectic crowd, “Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:9). Peter stood before this group and proclaimed the gospel for all of them to hear, every one of them is invited to find their place in the kingdom of God as he tells them, “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39).
The apostle Paul would follow their lead and remind us that in God’s kingdom, “there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all” (Col. 3:11). If Paul had been writing to the church of “big city” U.S.A. he might have written something like this, “Here there is no black, white, or hispanic, mainline, evangelical, or Roman Catholic, alien or Arab, woking class or upper class, our identity is defined by Jesus alone and none of the aforementioned.”
Jesus, Peter, and Paul all undermine nationalist theologies.
When we read these texts we miss a lot because we don’t appreciate the original context. When we read that there were Parthians and Romans in the same group, we are probably not aware of the wars being fought between these two empires at the time of this being written. There were enemies in the crowd and all were being called to a new way of living together as citizens of God’s kingdom.
Paul, writing to the people of Colossae in the Roman province of Asia, speaks of barbarians and Scythians. What, you might wonder, is a Scyhtian? The term barbarian was given to those who lived outside the Greco-Roman culture and within that group the Scythians were considered to be on the extreme end of the barbarians. They were often mocked for their accents and approach to life, they were considered unsophisticated in every way. Scythians were foreigners that had no place in the Greco-Roman world of the day.
Even though the wider culture maintained and even held high the divisions between people - economic, social, cultural, and national - the Church does not. Indeed the Church must not, for do so would be to undermine the gospel.
Christians necessarily embrace a global community, because the kingdom of God, in which we claim our citizenship, is a global community.
