Book Interview with Andrew Garnett
I enjoy sharing new books and new authors on my substack. Below is a book interview with Rev. Andrew Garnett on his new book, Christians and the Roman Army.
Tell us a bit about yourself:
I’m a pastor in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, which has the largest concentration of military bases of any metropolitan area in the world. My ministry context, combined with my interest in the early church, got me very interested in the relationship of Christians to the Roman army.
You mention Christian nationalism right at the beginning of the book. What is it, and is it a problem for us today?
“Christian nationalism” is the combination of nationalism and Christian faith. The suggestion (explicit or implicit) is that to be Christian is to love one’s country, and to really love one’s country a person should be Christian. Faith and state are two sides of the same coin.
The early churches usually relativized all claims on human life. The Roman emperor was not the true lord; instead, they upheld as primary the claim that Jesus was Lord. Some Christians even felt so strongly about this that they preferred to die rather than acknowledge a lord other than Jesus.
Their example is a good reminder for contemporary Christians, who can often fall into the habit of speaking about “God and country.” The early Christians would have been shocked to see us put God and country on the same plane. From the early churches we can be reminded that good government is a blessing—but our ultimate allegiance must always remain with Jesus.
What is the significance of the Roman army during the time of Jesus?
The Roman Empire was fundamentally a military state. It’s estimated that 80% of all tax revenue went to the army, a proportion far higher most countries spend today. This is reflected by the widespread mention of soldiers in the New Testament. Jesus talked with soldiers, and of course soldiers tortured and executed Jesus. Peter’s first non-Jewish convert was a soldier. Paul had frequent encounters with the military.
The first Christians lived in a militaristic society where the army played a predominant role. If we think about big societal issues that the early Christians might have discussed, the army would be at the top of the list. And they did talk about this—they struggled mightily with the question of Christian soldiers. The early Christians talking about the army is like the equivalent of Christians today wrestling with climate change, racial justice, or another hot-button topic.
Today there are wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and many other places around the world. How are we to view these wars, especially when Jesus says that peacemakers are blessed?
Very rarely are there any “good” wars, and going to war almost inevitably involves us in sin. The conflict in Gaza right now is a good example of this. The October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel killed over a thousand people—the vast majority civilians—and saw hundreds of Israelis taken as hostages. This is heinous, and we should all want to see hostages freed. Yet the Israeli response has also been terrible: by their own admission, the Israeli Defense Force has killed two Palestinian civilians for every one Palestinian combatant.
To go to war is to be involved in sin, but it seems to me that war is sometimes the “least bad” of all possible sins. I think there are always choices that could avert war. But these are very complicated questions, and I’d encourage people who are interested to read the book to learn how Christians wrestled with this for the first few hundred years.
What is your hope for how Christians & the Roman Army might impact readers?
I hope that it might help with cultural polarization by allowing us to see our situation with fresh eyes. It can be a powerful experience to look at a contentious situation as an outsider. When we’re locked in a conflict, all we can see is how we are right and the other side is wrong. But if we can find a way to take a new vantage point, as “outsiders” as it were, the conflict suddenly looks different. We start to question our old assumptions.
When we explore the experience of the first Christians with the Roman army, we’re looking at that situation as outsiders. We can be a little more disinterested, and we don’t feel the need to be “right” because their fight isn’t really our fight. If we can practice by looking objectively at their experience, we may be able to carry some of that objectivity to our polarized society today.
***Listen to my recent interview on Ryley Heppner Podcast to discuss my book When God Became White
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