"Our Citizenship is in Heaven": Negotiating Contesting Citizenships
By Nick Megoran on 23 June 2006
Our earthly citizenship, which the vast majority of people are simply born into, influences the contours of our existence and tells a story about who we are. If we have the “right” citizenship we can expect to live 70 or 80 years with advanced medical care, a good education, full stomachs, and the ability to cross international borders easily. If we are born with some other citizenship, we may consider ourselves fortunate to reach the age of 40, and life may be a permanent struggle for basic survival. We may even end up as one of the hundreds of would-be immigrants drowned on Europe’s shores or parched to death in Arizona’s deserts each year, trying to sneak over tightly-controlled borders to get a “slice of the cake”. Some scholars have therefore compared modern citizenship to medieval inherited feudal privilege because of the benefits citizens receive merely by birth.
Citizenship is not only about privilege, but also allegiance. When tens of millions of otherwise rational people scream and cheer in front of the television at eleven overpaid young men, whom they have never met, just because they kick a football past a similar group of men, it demonstrates just how significant citizenship is. When those millions cheer on armies of such young men as they engage in mortal combat against others similarly unknown to them in battle, we are reminded how fearfully important national citizenship is in this life.
But what does the Bible say about “citizenships”? If debates about citizenship continually confront us in our modern world, even a cursory reading of the Bible reminds us that we cannot escape them in Scripture either. After the Babylonians destroyed the Jewish states, they brought the cream of the Israelite population into exile in Babylon. Jeremiah wrote to them that God would deliver them in his time, and as they waited they should throw themselves into life in the place of their sojourn, seeking its peace and prosperity without losing sight of their ultimate allegiance to God (Jeremiah 29). Because New Testament writers see Christians as exiles and pilgrims on the earth (for example, 1 Peter 1 and Hebrews 11), Jeremiah’s letter has been read by the church as an attractive ethic of negotiating competing citizenships.
According to Peter, the church is a “holy people,” which means “ethnic group.” In the words of Hebrews 11, Christians are citizens of “a better country,” a heavenly homeland: they have different codes of conduct and, supremely, they have an allegiance not to any head of state, but to King Jesus. It is little wonder, then, that the Roman authorities persecuted early Christians for “defying Caesar’s decrees, saying there is another king” (Acts 17:7). The early anti-Christian philosopher, Celsius, condemned the church as politically subversive precisely because of this dual allegiance and concomitant refusal to serve in the Roman army.
Celsius was right insofar as he perceived that the Christian notion of “kingdom” is a different kind of kingdom. The citizens of this Kingdom share their wealth freely with those in want, confident that their King will provide all they need. They do not jealously protect their borders, but welcome all who seek citizenship. They do not fight their enemies — not only do they refuse to harm them, but they love them and pray for their good. They do not blindly line up behind their tribes when they go to war, however allegedly noble the cause, but mourn over violence and injustice and actively seek to be peacemakers.
21st-Century Citizens of Heaven
In a world torn by misconceived notions of citizenship, the world that I study as a political geographer, these kinds of Kingdom Christians are much-needed global citizens.
Unfortunately, the church has a very spotty record of raising up such citizens. In his autobiography, the late Lord Hailsham wrote that “the civil wars … the pogroms, the crusades, the sackings, the holy wars, are not, one would think, good advertisements for the divine society, inspired by the Holy Spirit, against whom we are expressly told the gates of hell shall not prevail.”
I did my graduate studies at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Above the inner entrance to the college chapel was a statue of St. George, the archetypal armed Christian warrior — in armor with the cross on his shield, killing for God’s cause and his country. It symbolizes what happens when we try to merge our heavenly and earthly citizenships. Sadly, it is the story of so much of church history. But at the other end of the chapel stood a statue of St. Francis. He was converted from his earlier days as a warrior in the fourth crusade when he heard God’s voice challenging him: “You have misunderstood the vision. It will have a different fulfilment.” This inspired St. Francis to found an order of monks that worked for the peace of Christ by refusing to bear arms. He opposed the Crusades, even going to see Sultan Al Kamil in 1219 to show Christ’s love in acts of humble service. Apparently, the testimony of this lone man deeply impressed the Sultan. St. Francis grasped Paul’s sense of citizenship more keenly than any crusader.
What would St. Francis’ example mean for us today? Although different Christians may reach different conclusions, here are two examples of inspiring people who have negotiated the claims of the competing citizenships of their warring nation-states and the kingdom of heaven.
In the 1980s, a network of U.S. Christians disapproved of the Reagan administration’s support of a number of right-wing governments and paramilitary bands in Central America. These brutal groups tortured and murdered people whom they thought were sympathetic to mobilizing the poor, including trade union organizers, doctors and teachers, and many Christians. Many of these people fled Central America to the U.S., but the Reagan government deported them to its allies — and they were often murdered on arrival at the airports. After protests fell on deaf ears, these U.S. churches were faced with a dilemma: to follow along with their earthly government or to be loyal to the values of their heavenly kingdom. Many chose the latter, setting up an underground network to smuggle people into the country and give them sanctuary, leading a campaign that eventually forced changes in government policy.
It might be objected that this would not work against a ruthless dictatorship. That generalization is belied by a second example, that of Andre Trocmé, a French pastor during World War II. Because of his keen sense of what citizenship in Christ’s kingdom actually meant, he led the area where he was pastor in resisting first Vichy France and then the Nazis. But this was not by joining the armed resistance, whose methods he also considered contrary to the laws of God’s kingdom. Rather, moving from passive resistance to active organization, he helped to create an extensive system to protect and conceal Jewish refugees. Jews came to them from all over France, and even from occupied Europe, including Germany itself. Trocmé and his supporters saved the lives of hundreds, possibly thousands. Despite time in a prison camp and in flight from the Gestapo, Trocmé survived the war and became an important figure in post-war Franco-German reconciliation.
Conclusion: God in History
These are just two examples, but there are countless more. None were perfect, and few found it easy to swim against the tide. Their secret was not moral courage, optimism, will-to-power, or any other inner human reserve of strength. Their common bond is their belief that their citizenship in the heavenly kingdom was more important than their citizenship in any earthly polity, and they believed that their King would help them live out the Kingdom ethics of sacrificial love.
And that is the crux of the matter: the King. A God who is a king is a very uncomfortable thought, and so often we instead invent more comfortable images of God. A God who, in the words of the Nanci Griffiths song, lives “at a distance”? Splendidly convenient! A God existing in each and every human, vaguely coterminous with our higher moral and creative instincts? Even better! A God who is merely a “personal savior” that we can take around with us like an iPod and turn on and off at will? Best of all! But a God who is a king, the Lord, a sovereign?: now that is something else. That is a God who rules and reigns, who interrupts and interacts, who will change our lives and our worlds if we dare to accept citizenship in his Kingdom and take that citizenship seriously.
There are no quotas limiting citizenship in this kingdom: all are invited to enter freely by faith in the merits of Christ alone, who was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification (Romans 4:25). To take up that passport is the beginning of a royal adventure, more real and more glorious than the drama of any great nation-state. May God grant on that last day that all of us may be found as citizens of the only Kingdom that will endure forever.
Last updated 12 January 2009