Defying Tyrants: Following Jesus in a World of Christian Antichrists
About this ebook
Christian antichrists (noun): Those who use power to harm others in the name of Jesus
In this powerhouse book, an expert on Christian extremism issues a profound and biblical rebuke to all who would claim the name of Jesus but disdain his way.
Christian fixation with political power is the theological emergency of our time, and in Defying Tyrants, Matthew D. Taylor, author of The Violent Take It by Force, traces the origins of Christian supremacy. Jesus directed his followers away from the race for power, but somewhere along the way, many Christians turned Jesus into a mascot for imperial domination. Where did it all go so wrong?
A trenchant reckoning with the murder, mayhem, and monsters of Christianity--from the early church and the Crusades to colonialism, slavery, and the Holocaust--Defying Tyrants demonstrates how imperialism has infected the body of Christ. With cogent argument and moral precision, Taylor excavates scriptural texts and unpacks the notion of Christian antichrists. When the term antichrist occurs in the Bible, it's frequently plural--not "The Antichrist" who populated the nightmares of fundamentalism's young people. Antichrists originate within the church and abuse people in the name of Christ. Christian antichrists justify harm and vengeance theologically, pointing people away from the God who entered humanity as a colonized peasant in the hinterlands of the Roman empire.
Both searing polemic and lyrical meditation, Defying Tyrants challenges us to put steel in the spine of Christian resistance to tyrants and reprimands the Christian leaders who bless them. It also spotlights a countertradition of Christians who have lived generous lives of sacrifice and stood up to authoritarians through the centuries. The gospel of Jesus pulls the rug out from under all human hierarchies, Taylor argues. In this brilliantly conceived and scrappy quarrel with Christian supremacy, he calls us to find in the teachings of Jesus and the witness of the early church a model of rebellion against tyrants of all kinds. Because if Jesus is Lord, Caesar isn't.
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About the author
Matthew D. Taylor is the author of The Violent Take It by Force, Defying Tyrants, and Scripture People, and his work has appeared or been featured in the New York Times, Weekend Edition, On the Media, Rolling Stone, The Bulwark, Politico, Sojourners, and Religion News Service. A religious studies scholar who specializes in American Islam, Christian nationalism, and Christian extremism, he is also the creator of the Charismatic Revival Fury podcast series. Taylor holds a PhD from Georgetown University and an MA from Fuller Theological Seminary. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University.
