This piece hits something I’ve been wrestling with for years—how quickly our culture reaches for labels that flatten not just our theology, but our moral imagination. What struck me most is the way you describe these binaries as “empire-shaped.” That feels exactly right. Because empire always needs categories to maintain itself: ally/enemy, progressive/conservative, safe/dangerous, pure/impure.
But the Christian tradition—especially as practiced from the margins—has never fit neatly inside any of that. Whenever I’m sitting with stories from the borderlands or refugee communities, I’m reminded that the virtues of mercy, solidarity, and justice aren’t progressive projects; they’re ancient Christian commitments. They predate the political imagination of the West entirely.
Your framing feels like an invitation into something older, truer, and harder: a faith that refuses the empire’s labels not out of neutrality, but out of loyalty to those who have always lived beyond the empire’s concern.
Thank you for articulating this with such clarity. It feels like oxygen.
This piece hits something I’ve been wrestling with for years—how quickly our culture reaches for labels that flatten not just our theology, but our moral imagination. What struck me most is the way you describe these binaries as “empire-shaped.” That feels exactly right. Because empire always needs categories to maintain itself: ally/enemy, progressive/conservative, safe/dangerous, pure/impure.
But the Christian tradition—especially as practiced from the margins—has never fit neatly inside any of that. Whenever I’m sitting with stories from the borderlands or refugee communities, I’m reminded that the virtues of mercy, solidarity, and justice aren’t progressive projects; they’re ancient Christian commitments. They predate the political imagination of the West entirely.
Your framing feels like an invitation into something older, truer, and harder: a faith that refuses the empire’s labels not out of neutrality, but out of loyalty to those who have always lived beyond the empire’s concern.
Thank you for articulating this with such clarity. It feels like oxygen.
Yes to all of this! Amazing.