Mission paradigms in the Pax Americana.

The apostle Paul tells us that Christ died for the ungodly "at the right time" (Rom 5:6). Quoting an early Christian hymn, Paul reminds us, "For 'there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all'--this was attested at the right time" (1 Tim 2:5-6).

Following Pompey's arrival in Palestine in 63 B.C.E., Roman law, culture, and military might ruled from Gaul to the sands of the province of Arabia, called Arabia Felix, and the Persian Empire. It was the right time. It was the time of Pax Romana.

Pax Romana took advantage of what Alexander the Great had begun some three hundred years before. By using the lingua franca of Greek and the road systems developed to hold the empire together, the Romans were able to communicate to the far reaches of the empire in ways previously unparalleled. Gone were the days of Phidippides' 26-mile run and subsequent death heralding the victory of Marathon. Now, given the advanced communication systems of the empire, not only could information be transferred more directly through quicker and safer public roads, but, because of the pervasiveness of the Greek language, information could be more easily shared and understood.

Edward Gibbon in his classic work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remarks on these two crucial elements of empire.

So sensible were the Romans of the influence of language over national
manners.... Whilst they acknowledged the charms of the Greek, they
asserted the dignity of the Latin tongue, and the exclusive use of the
latter was inflexibly maintained in the administration of civil as well
as military government. The two languages exercised at the same time
their separate jurisdiction throughout the empire: the former as the
natural idiom of science; the latter as the legal dialect of public
transactions. Those who united letters with business were equally
conversant with both; and it was almost impossible in any province, to
find a Roman subject of a liberal education, who was at once a stranger
to the Greek and to the Latin language....
   All these cities [of the Empire] were connected with each other,
and with the capital, by the public highways, which issuing from the
Forum of Rome, traversed Italy, pervaded the provinces and were
terminated only by the frontiers of the empire.... They united the
subjects of the most distant provinces by an easy and familiar
intercourse.... (1)

The development of this empire was built upon Roman aggression and occupation of foreign territories and peoples. This is the nature of building empires: domination and security of its interests. It was at this "right time," Scripture tells us, that Christ came and that his heralds could take to these same imperial roads, using the same imperial language to spread the gospel. Because of this, the gospel quickly spread first to the provinces at the Eastern edge of the empire and to the districts of Asia Minor, then to Alexandria and on to the capital of the Empire itself--Rome. The movement of the gospel also took place outside of the borders of the empire to the East, to the non-Greek-speaking communities of Asia. There developed deep and lasting traditions of Thomas and Thaddeaus, moving east to Edessa and further to the Arabian Gulf and India. The propagation of the gospel outside the confines of the Roman Empire has often been neglected in our general view of early days of Christianity and has only recently begun to interest Western audiences. (2) In any case, our Scripture developed from within the confines of the Roman Empire. Roman culture, language, and politics decisively affected the early formation of Christianity. It is from within the Empire that we have record of the first Christian communities and their evangelists. There is no clearer example of this than the work of Paul.

Given the "green light" by the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:1-35) to represent the faith to the non-Jewish, Greek-speaking world, Paul and Barnabas set off on their second and third missionary journeys to Asia minor. (3) It is from Paul's work and tradition in the Empire that we have received the bulk of our New Testament writings, the Pauline and deutero-Pauline epistles. Yes, Paul has been considered the Christian missionary par excellence. (4) Moving about the empire, sometimes living off the hospitality of others, usually supporting himself through his own tentmaking skills, Paul preached the gospel. His life has been used as a model for mission ever since. Theorists of global mission have looked to Paul for guidance in methods of spreading the gospel throughout the world.

Acts 21 records Paul's return to Jerusalem where he was beaten by a mob for defiling the Temple (21:26-30). The attempt to kill him would have succeeded if not for the intervention of the occupying Roman soldiers who, in an attempt to maintain public order, dragged Paul away (21: 31-36). Here Paul invoked his "get out of jail card" to the Roman authorities. "I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of an important city" (21:39). Taken away to the barracks to be disciplined and further questioned, Paul again invoked his international human right as a citizen of the Empire.

"Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who is uncondemned?" When
the centurion heard that, he went to the tribune and said to him, "What
are you about to do? This man is a Roman citizen" (22:25-26).

Through a series of legal maneuvers Paul made his case before the Roman Governor and then to the Emperor himself.

"I am appealing to the emperor's tribunal; this is where I should be
tried. Now if I am in the wrong and have committed something for which I
deserve to die, I am not trying to escape death; but if there is nothing
to their charges against me, no one can turn me over to them. I appeal
to the emperor." Then Festus [the Roman Governor] after he had conferred
with his council, replied, "You have appealed to the emperor; to the
emperor you will go" (Acts 25:10-12).

The Apostle Paul, a Roman citizen, was able to invoke the rights and duties of a legal member of the Roman Empire. He was able to move about the Empire relatively freely and engage in conversation with citizens throughout the Empire. He was within his own linguistic and political culture of the Empire.

Much of the Western missionary endeavor throughout the twentieth century has assumed methods of operation similar to Paul's. At the height of the colonial period (1880s-1920s), Western missionaries were able to access much of the known world with much more ease than previously known. Because of this, Western mission has been labeled as "imperialist." Stephen Neil's classic work A History of Christian Missions, however, clearly demonstrated that the often cited missionary collusion with imperialistic powers is quite often overstated and sometimes downright wrong. There are many examples of Western missionaries who had arrived prior to the colonial powers and who worked to defend the rights of the indigenous peoples against the colonial powers. (5)

American Presbyterians working in the Near East, especially in Armenia, Persia, and Lebanon/Syria, established their mission posts long before there was any American interest in the area. In fact, it was the missionaries who begged the U.S. to step in to stop the Armenian massacres of 1915-1916 in Turkey and to protect the minority communities of the Caucasus. The American government ultimately reneged on its original designs to step into the quagmire of the international debate over what to do with the territories of the former Ottoman Empire. (6)

Another important example would certainly be the work of the Arabian Mission of the Reformed Church, which began its work in the Arabian Peninsula long before there was any hint of petroleum. Communities in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman still speak highly of the American missionaries who were present before the Gulf became a strategic place. (7)

The perception among the general populace in the Middle East to this day, however, continues to uphold the idea of missionary collusion with imperialism. The mere fact that during the colonial period Western missionaries were citizens of foreign nations that were involved in the international power struggles of the day has been enough to undermine their credibility--in retrospect. The British are still disparaged by the Egyptians for their 74-year occupation of Egypt. Even though the Church Missionary Society of the Anglican Church was working in Egypt long before British occupation, and even though the British government was actually accused by the Coptic population of favoring the Muslims, the perception persists that Christian mission abetted British imperialism. Brian Stanley's The Bible and the Flag reminds us that missionaries, regardless of their piety or social-political leanings, were members of particular nation states; and those nations were involved in international power struggles. The missionaries' "vision was frequently clouded by national and racial pride." (8) By their very nature, then, the missionaries were citizens of two cities--the city of God and the city of humankind; their higher calling and their legal citizenship.

As missiological studies have shown, history is quite harsh on the missionaries who, simply by virtue of their citizenship, were involved in cross-cultural ministry in places where their own countries were involved because of international politics. Their work was mixed up in the nationalistic projects of the world. It is more than likely that in the current geopolitical climate North American church workers, regardless of their vocational goals, will be painted in the same light as the previous "imperialist" British missionaries.

Today we have entered into a dangerous Pax Americana for North American missions. Regardless of whether Americans are willing to conceive of ourselves as the new imperial power in the world, we are certainly perceived that way. And perception breeds its own assumptions on how to respond. Much of the world, and especially the Middle East, has already begun thinking of the U.S. in terms of Empire. (9) North American missionaries cannot afford to assume either that their roles are above and beyond the projects of the world or that their ministries will be beneficently viewed apart from such "signs of the times."

After World War I, Americans moved out of their isolationism and began entering the mission fields in greater numbers than previously seen. Even before that War, the Presbyterians and Congregationalists struggled nobly for various causes of the Christian faith and for the minority communities of the Near East. Since that time, the U.S. passport has allowed American missionaries access to places that are denied to many other nationalities. The blue passport became an entry card into virtually any mission field.

During the Cold War, the Communist countries provided the most substantial obstacle to this. Post-1979 Iran provides another example where American missionaries were kept out or denied access not primarily because of religious reasons but rather for political reasons--because they carried the blue passport.

The Pax Americana of today is somewhat similar to the Pax Romana of the first century. The cultural, economic, and military might of both empires dominated international culture. Whereas Greek provided the lingua franca for most of the Roman Empire, English now provides the setting for international business and information. Whereas the roads and sea lanes of the Roman Empire facilitated communication and military transport, the Internet, satellites, Disney, and Hollywood provide for the exportation of American culture and values.

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There are two important distinctions between Pax Romana and Pax Americana, however. The first is that, according to modern international law, independent nation states are (or should be) guaranteed autonomy and sovereignty by the signers of the United Nations Charter. A modernday Paul traveling from Jerusalem to Asia Minor to Rome in Pax Americana would have to deal with immigration regulations, customs duties, taxes, work permits for his tentmaking business, and language barriers in his attempts to communicate with locals. His confrontations with local communities would now involve local security forces. His appeal to citizenship rights would be subjected to the jurisdiction of the national laws in whatever state he was residing. The tentmaking business just isn't what it used to be.

Second, Rome during the first century was not Christian. The United States, despite its separation of state and religious powers, is a culture that has been based upon Western Christian traditions and literature and is perceived as another Constantinian state spreading the Gospel of Prosperity and Power. While Paul utilized the Pax Romana, the early Christian community remained aloof from the identity and civil religion of the Empire up until the fourth century. Not until Constantine did Christianity become the dominant cultural religion of the Empire, bringing with it concepts of Christendom and conquest. Today, even if the United States is not legally a Christian state, its cultural identity and civil religion are certainly built upon a Christian historical legacy. Recent religious rhetoric from publicly elected officials has underlined this view of the American Christian state in the Middle East. For American Christian missions to ride the coattails of the civil religion of Pax Americana, even unintentionally, is a detriment to the gospel.

As a citizen of the Empire, Paul was free to take advantage of Pax Romana. North American missionaries, however, who live out their vocation in the towns and villages in Egypt often find themselves facing restrictions because of their blue passports. The Egyptian government, desperate to keep track of all foreigners outside of Cairo, goes to great lengths to make sure that additional tourist tragedies do not happen. This often means that foreigners in Upper Egypt are escorted by security forces. The government also wants to maintain the delicate balance of feelings between the strongly nationalistic Copts and a poor Muslim community sympathetic to Islamist designs. Many Evangelical North American Christians interpret this reality as a Muslim state's prohibition of the freedom of religion. In response, some "evangelists" flout security laws and defy government rules by surreptitiously and secretly working behind the backs of the local law enforcement. In the end, when they are discovered, it is usually the local Egyptian communities that are brought into the police station for questioning. Long after foreign church workers have left, the local communities must suffer the consequences of foreign incursions. Because North American missionaries reside in two cities (the city of God and the city of humankind), their earthly citizenship in this Pax Americana cannot be overlooked.

The case of two American short-term missionaries serving in a Christian "relief agency" in Afghanistan in 2002 provides us with the most dangerous example. In August 2001, Americans Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer, who were working for the organization Shelter Now in Afghanistan, were arrested by the Taliban along with six other Westerners and sixteen Afghans on charges of illegally proselytizing under the strict Taliban regime. Curry and Mercer were what most mission agencies would call short-termers: individuals who spend from a few months to two years in a foreign country or a particular locale, which gives them barely enough time to learn the culture or even the language. These usually are the individuals who are the most enthusiastic about spreading the gospel and can do the most damage in very complex social situations. "They were women in a patriarchal society, didn't know the language (well), didn't know the culture and were counseled against doing this by other Christians," offered one critic. (10)

The two Americans, along with the other Christian workers, were held captive by the Taliban for three months, but after September 11 and the buildup of American forces toward an invasion of Afghanistan the pair were rescued by American special forces. Brought home to cheering crowds as near-martyrs for the faith, their congregation pledged to send out more mission workers. (11) The signal in the Middle East was clear: the U.S. government would use every means available to protect its Christian missionaries. Certainly, the government acted to protect its own citizens, regardless of their vocations. But that is not how it is perceived by most in the region. Not only did the episode paint a picture supporting Osama Bin Laden's version of America's Crusade--Evangelists backed by American military might--but the event jeopardized all relief agencies regardless of their affiliation. These relief agencies were closed down, denying much needed support to the local Afghans. In addition, no one has followed up on the family involved in the arrest or the community that had been associated with Shelter Now. (12)

I fear that history will judge North American missionaries with the same harshness that it has judged British and Dutch missionaries. The earthly citizenship of a foreign church worker is something that cannot be denied, and it is ultimately this citizenship that will determine how their ministries will fare in their chosen field of occupation. To be an American missionary in the Middle East, the land of Paul's sojourns, is to live and work in a very different world than Paul's. The blue passport is a reality with which all U.S. citizens must deal. It is their legal identity. At one point in the history of Pax Americana the passport was a benefit; now it is a liability in many places. Even long-term church workers who gain the trust and respect of local indigenous communities struggle with this. For example, life-long Presbyterian missionary Rev. Benjamin Weir, despite his social-political sympathies with the Palestinians and the Arab cause of the post-1967 era, found himself in the middle of an international conflict in which he greatly suffered. His spiritual, social, and political views and his vocational goals were irrelevant to the kidnappers. His life and witness following the event of his captivity, and his careful attention to maintaining a distance from the Pax Americana, is a great testimony to his perception of the needs of protecting the gospel from nationalistic voices. (13)

In Egypt, Western church workers increasingly face deportation or do not have their visas renewed under the claim that they are endangering the "security of the country." Christian organizations may argue that this is unfair and inhibits the international rights of freedom of religion. Yet, the restrictions of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have denied foreign citizens entry under the claim of "national security" as well.

So, what are we to do? Abandon the Great Commission altogether under the claim that it no longer addresses the issues of modernity? No, of course not. Christians cannot abandon the missiological aspects of the faith. To believe in Christ is to share the gospel--this is part and parcel of our faith. But as North American Christians we must conform to the dramatically changed geopolitical situations through a renewal of our mission paradigms so that we might "discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rom 12:2). There are many ways churches and North American Christian organizations can work in the world with a sense of integrity in the new world (dis)order. The reality is that we must realize we have entered a new paradigm, unlike Paul and unlike Pax Romana, and respond accordingly. Otherwise, like the British (imperialist) missionaries before us, we too will be judged as having imperial designs. As Stanley says, "Their perceptions of the demands of justice were too easily moulded to fit the contours of prevailing western ideologies. In this respect, our predecessors reflect our own fallibility more closely than we care to admit." (14)

We Americans are often blessed with a sense of idealism. This certainly carries over into our faith and has been the basis of our strong witness in foreign missions (in its variety of forms). At the same time, we can be burdened by the curse of naivete about the complexities of the world. This can lead to what Charles Kimball calls "American Christian triumphalism." (15) By recognizing what is at stake in our decisions regarding foreign missions in the new Pax Americana, and clearly thinking through mission paradigms, we will do ourselves, the world, and the gospel a great service.

David D. Grafton

Coordinator of Graduate Studies

Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, Egypt

[e-mail]

1. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, abridged ed. (New York: Dell, 1963), 50, 52, 56.

2. See, for example, Samuel Moffet, A History of Christianity in Asia: Vol. 1: Beginnings to 1500 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998).

3. The fact that Paul and Barnabas's first journey (Acts 13:1-14:28) raised the concern of the early Jewish Christians, including the community of James in Jerusalem, should be enough to confirm that the first movements of the Christian community were rooted in Eastern soil and identity. The movement west, toward the center of the Empire, was not a foregone conclusion. Much research needs to be done still, building upon the early nineteenth-century studies of early Syriac literature. See for example the recent reprints Ancient Syriac Documents, ed. W. Cureton (New York: Kessinger, 2004), and Adolf von Harnack, Expansion of Christianity in the first Three Centuries (New York: Wipf and Stock, 1997.

4. It is clear that Paul "the missionary" has been "unparalleled in the profound way in which he presents a universal Christian missionary vision." See David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991), 170.

5. Stephen Neil, A History of Christian Missions (New York: Penguin, 1990), esp. 414ff.

6. See Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy: 1810-1927 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971).

7. Lewis Scudder III, The Arabian Mission's Story (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 417-19.

8. Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag (London: Apollos, 1990), 184.

9. See Rashid Khalidi, Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (New York: Beacon, 2004), and Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2002).

10. David van Biema, "Should Christians Convert Muslims?" Time (June 30, 2003). See also Deann Alford, "Entrapment Suspected," Christianity Today (February 4, 2002).

11. Deann Alford, "Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry Go Home to Waco," Christianity Today (December 11, 2001).

12. Their story can be read in Dayna Curry, Heather Mercer, and Stacy Mattingly, Prisoners of Hope: The Story of Our Captivity and Freedom in Afghanistan (New York: Doubleday, 2002).

13. Benjamin Weir, Carol Weir, and Dennis Benson, Hostage Bound, Hostage Free (Louisville: Westminster / John Knox, 1987).

14. Stanley, The Bible and the Flag, 184.

15. Quoted in van Beima, "Should Christians Convert Muslims?"