Bethlehem, Rome, and the Politics of Christmas

John Richards links us to this nice column, titled "The Politics of the Christmas Story" by James Carroll. Opening graph:

The single most important fact about the birth of Jesus, as recounted in the Gospels, is one that receives almost no emphasis in the American festival of Christmas. The child who was born in Bethlehem represented a drastic political challenge to the imperial power of Rome. The nativity story is told to make the point that Rome is the enemy of God, and in Jesus, Rome's day is over.

Rome's day may be over, but two thousand years later, "imperial power" lives on, centered not in Rome but in Washington.

One can certainly argue that the American empire, by historical standards, has been relatively benign. But it's still weird that the religious right is so willing to cater to the powerful, so eager to promote itself as the official cult of our contemporary Caesars, and so happy to bless their military adventures--and to do all this in the name of Jesus, spokesman for the poor, the homeless, the hungry, and the oppressed.

Culpable, willful blindness is the only possible explanation--because, to describe the values that rule today's Rome as "Christian" values, you have to blind yourself to the plain meaning of the Bible. I guess that's the price you pay for power.