VULNERABLE MISSION

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UNVEILING EMPIRE sions. Paul quite clearly describes living among the Thessalonian disciples and working hard to do so. In contrast, many missionaries even today live in luxury in comparison to their target population—walled compounds, expensive vehicles, and imported foods are indicators of loyalty to empire rather than signs of solidarity with fellow disciples. From the beginning, include converts and local disciples in decision-making. 2. Practice downward mobilization in the pursuit of an economics of poverty. Plant a garden, and eat from it. In doing so, one rejoins the agricultural cycle of the energy that sustains us, and slashes the umbilical cord of empire that nourishes us with its mass-produced food. This undercuts the empire’s myth of timelessness that feeds us with tomatoes that are available year-round. As the global migration to cities continues, it will be more and more difficult for urban communities to practice self-sustainability, as land is the base for such an economy. Therefore, as missionaries help those in cities to learn urban gardening, they must also attempt to persuade those still in the countryside not to give up the “gift of good land,” 61 a phrase coined by Wendell Berry. Use public transportation. This is inconvenient, but puts the missionary in closer contact with the population she is allegedly serving. Use the internet café to communicate with home. This alerts one to the real costs of technology, and at least diminishes one’s participation in it. 3. The practice of chastity is a matter of boundary-keeping. Make it a practice to examine the rhetoric of advertisements; find out the ways in which the corporations are trying to capture the consumer’s imagination. Similarly, examine the myths undergirding national holidays and events. These cultural rituals, often thought of as benign, propagate subtle messages about empire. In the United States, the patriotic holidays such as Independence Day and Veterans Day portray the nationstate and its subjects as the prime benefactor, vying for disciples’ loyalty over their commitments to Christ. Chastity means looking askance at the propaganda inherent in the midst of such holidays. I conclude this essay with a joke. There is an old psychoanalysis joke about a man who thinks he is a seed of corn. After visiting his therapist for many sessions, the therapist tells him he is cured, and can now go about his life free of this delusion. A week later, to the therapist’s surprise, the man returns to the office. “What happened?” asks the therapist. “I thought you had finally concluded you were not a seed!” “Yes, yes,” the man replies, “the therapy worked for me. My problem is that I still don’t know how to convince the chickens!” Like the psychological ailments of the man in this joke, the roots of empire run deep, and resist easy conversion. My reading of 1 Thessalonians suggests that the gospel call is not to convince the proverbial chickens, but rather to create communities who model submission not to the empire of the day but to the cosmic lordship of Christ. David Pritchett lives in North Manchester, Indiana, and works as a Physician Assistant. He spends free time reading and growing vegetables. 61 Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays, Cultural and Agricultural (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 1981), 267. 45
MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 33–48 BIBLIOGRAPHY Agence France-Presse. “Another Foxconn Worker Falls to Death in China.” November 5, 2010. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ ALeqM5gVpxURLNdLO4j2Cw6pfmQBl-_66g?docId=CNG.ac8be947f82 5bdf62b039d0d552a4bc4.b1. Berry, Wendell. The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays, Cultural and Agricultural. Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 1981. Boseley, Sarah. “WikiLeaks Cables: Pfizer ‘Used Dirty Tricks to Avoid Clinical Trial Payout.’ ” The Guardian. December 9, 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/09/wikileaks-cables-pfizer-nigeria. Cavanaugh, William. “Killing for the Telephone Company: Why the Nation-State Is not the Keeper of the Common Good.” Modern Theology 20, no. 2 (April 2004): 243–74. Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre. Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel. Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2011. Coleman, Sarah. “Pfizer Scandal.” World Press Review 48, no. 4 (April 2001): http:// www.worldpress.org/Africa/1190.cfm. Deissmann, Adolf. Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978. Donfried, Karl. Paul, Thessalonica, and Early Christianity. New York: T&T Clarke, 2002. Elliott, Neil. The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire. Paul in Critical Contexts. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010. ________. Liberating Paul: the Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006. Foxconn. “Business Philosophy.” About Foxconn. http://www.foxconn.com/ManageConcept.html. Georgi, Dieter. Theocracy in Paul’s Praxis and Theology. Translated by David Green. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009. Hallett, Christopher. The Roman Nude: Heroic Portrait Statuary 200 B.C. to A.D. 300. Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and Representation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. “Afterword.” In Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo, edited by Bruce Ellis Benson and Peter Goodwin Heltzel, 307–14. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008. ________. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. 46
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BOOK REVIEWS
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