The Myth of the Domination System
I am continuing my re-read of Walter Wink’s book: Engaging the Powers. I had hoped to find more time over the weekend to read more but some of this stuck me hard.
Wink in his first chapter entitled ‘the myth of the Domination System’ states his view that the religion of Babylon holds sway in American (Wink is American, I would say this is true for Australia as well. Wink writes:
Violence is the ethos of our times. It is the spirituality of the modern world. It has been accorded the status of a religion, demanding from its devotees an absolute obedience to death. Its followers are not aware, however, that the devotion they pay to violence is a form of religious piety. Violence is so successful as a myth precisely because it does not seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It is what works. It is inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts. It is embraced with equal alacrity by people on the left and on the right, by religious liberals as well as religious conservatives. The threat of violence, it is believed, is alone able to deter aggressors. It secured us forty-five years of a balance of terror. We learned to trust the Bomb to grant us peace….
Jesus taught the love of enemies, but Babylonian religion taught their extermination. Violence was for the religion of ancient Mesopotamia what love was for Jesus: the central dynamic of existence.
Powerful stuff and I think an accurate critique of the common wisdom. Have we lost the ability to critique the powers and principalities? Have we been fooled into believing that Jesus teachings are only for our private sphere, segmented away from impacting our wider life?
Wink goes on to challenge me further with this:
But it was Jesus who revealed to the world, for the first time since the rise of conquest-states, God’s domination-free order of nonviolent love. His message was not wholly new; much of it was already contained or foreshadowed in those portions of the Hebrew Bible congruent with a partnership society. But, says Eisler, that new order “was obviously most forcefully-indeed, in the eyes of the religious elites of his time, heretically-articulated by this young carpenter from Galilee.” For although the liberation of women was not his central focus, if we look at what Jesus preached from the perspective of a critique of domination, we see a single, unifying theme: a vision of the liberation of all humanity through the replacement of androcratic with partnership values.
Even more striking-and all-pervasive-are Jesus’ teachings that we must elevate “feminine virtues” from a secondary or supportive to a primary and central position. We must not be violent but instead turn the other cheek; we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us; we must love our neighbors and even our enemies. Instead of the “masculine virtues” of toughness, aggressiveness, and dominance, what we must value above all else are mutual responsibility, compassion, gentleness, and love…. What he was preaching was the gospel of a partnership society.’In his beatitudes, in his extraordinary concern for the outcasts and marginalized, in his wholly unconventional treatment of women (speaking to them in public, touching them, eating with them, even with harlots, above all, teaching them), in the seriousness with which he took children, in his rejection of the dogma that high-ranking men are the favorites of God, in his subversive proclamation of a new order in which domination would give way to compassion and communion, Jesus overturned the most rigidly upheld mores of his time.
But the Domination System proved too strong. Soon sinners were being excluded from the church, women were being squeezed out of leadership, and the wealthier, educated males were taking over authority from the poor and unschooled. The Roman Empire joined the Jewish leadership in attempting to crush this nonviolent movement of compassion and equality. From within and without, enormous pressures forced the church ineluctably toward precisely the kind of hierarchical and violence-based system that Jesus had rejected. The rest is all too painfully evident: heretics and “witches” hunted down and burned, inquisitions, crusades, emperors and kings settling doctrinal disputes with armies, wars of Christians against Christians, pogroms against Jews. The dream of the New Reality of Jesus has long since turned into the nightmare, first of Christendom, then of our more recent secular totalitarianisms. In all this, the conquest of women went hand in hand with exploitation of the poor, the conquest of weaker nations, and the rape of the environment.
The bolding is mine. The statement that ‘the dream of the new reality of Jesus has long since be turned into nightmare” struck me as apt and a powerful critique. How do we recommit and recreate this dream of Jesus for a new reality where the powers and principalities are overcome and followers of Jesus usher in a new way? A way that doesn’t buy into the myth of redemptive violence but also doesn’t buy into the myth that Jesus teachings were simply pacificism… more on that later.
March 29th, 2004 at 3:29 am
Wow. I’d be interested to hear more about the “myth of redemptive violence.”
Thanks for posting so extensively on this. When was the book written?
March 29th, 2004 at 3:29 am
Wow. I’d be interested to hear more about the “myth of redemptive violence.”
Thanks for posting so extensively on this. When was the book written?
March 29th, 2004 at 3:30 am
Sorry that last comment posted twice. The first time I got this error:
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March 29th, 2004 at 9:26 am
Wink’s series on the Powers have been summarized in one volume, The Powers That Be.
I found his comparison of the Babylonian myth of creation and the Genesis version fascinating. I think he’s definately on to something.
I quoted quite a bit of his comparison last month, http://frjakestopstheworld.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_frjakestopstheworld_archive.html#107725445293019700“>The Myth of Redemptive Violence, if you would like to read more. There’s also a link to a web page.
March 29th, 2004 at 9:36 am
Hmm…my archives are messed up for some reason.
If you use the above link, you have to scroll down about 6 entries to find Wink’s quote.
Sorry about that.
March 29th, 2004 at 10:29 am
Another person who has no idea of understanding Genesis 3.
Why is it ALWAYS called the sin of ADAM and not Eve.
It is Adam that had the responsibility of ruling the Garden. Eve assisted but never had that responsibility.
When God Condemns Adam , Eve and the Serpant they get different punishments.
This means they were guilty of DIFFERENT crimes.
It is this Paul talks of in 1Tim 2 which of course leads on to chapter three.
March 29th, 2004 at 11:05 am
wow, big call labelling a professor in biblical interpretation as having “no understanding of Genesis 3″. Of course it could be that he, like me, disagrees with your interpretation of the Genesis story.
If the eating of the fruit in the garden was the woman’s fault alone, why would God give punishment to the serpent, the woman and the man. As a fair and just God I would hope he would only punish the person/s responsible. Maybe he does!
March 29th, 2004 at 1:21 pm
Regarding Wink, I finally gave it some thought and realized at last what Jake’s been trying to get through to me for some time now. The fact that Tiamat symbolized the feminine principle is of course interesting, but there’s more to it than that…it’s any system that needs to destroy in order to dominate. And I think that Wink’s paradigm can be connected with things like bullying and school violence, as well. That’s something that’s been on my mind lately.
March 29th, 2004 at 1:51 pm
Phil,
Unfortunately he like you does.
How do you explain the different punishments?
March 29th, 2004 at 3:49 pm
Homer: Let me answer a question with a question which is always fun. If the serpent and adam are innocent of any guilt and it is all Eve’s fault, why then are the serpent and adam punished?
Demi: I think you are correct - it has wider ramifications
March 30th, 2004 at 7:10 am
Homer is managing to derail the conversation from Wink’s ideas to who “really” got punished in Genesis. This is a classic middle-schooler tactic: divert, distract, gain control of the situation, and waste a lot of time by getting the discussion off-topic and into a meaningless argument. After dealing with this kind of thing all day, I’m not about to do it all over again online.
March 30th, 2004 at 7:48 am
You are again right Demi. As Wink says “The domination system prooves too strong” and “the new reality of Jesus turns into a nightmare”
What can we do as Jesus followers to re-orient Christianity from a legalistic, proof texting stale religion into a vibrant, life-giving vision that will take on the powers and principalities? That is the question that keeps ringing in my ears.
March 30th, 2004 at 8:39 am
I think a good part of the answer is in the works of the mystics, who saw the “oneness” and the interconnection between all things.
Including Homer. As an example. He’s a part of me as much as I’m a part of him.
March 30th, 2004 at 9:55 am
Phil, I have already said they were guilty of different crimes that is why there are different punishments.
Your problem like that of Dan and the like is that you crave the world view too much and so find any way to avoid the biblical view.
This is why you stray from liberalisnm to heresy.
Take a good ead of Genesis 3. It is intergral to the whole bible.
March 30th, 2004 at 11:08 am
It seems that even in threads where I make no comment, I am accused of heresy. If such a low standard of proof is required, no wonder I end up on the wrong side of that accusation.
March 30th, 2004 at 11:51 pm
Christianity in it’s “nice” non-dominating form? Yuck! Same old rubbish. The religion has had 2 millenia to get it together and still fucks up. Thank God for the division between church and state! Now that it’s teeth have been pulled we don’t face jail or execution for putting its pundits in their place. The whole shaky edifice rests on some rather questionable assumptions. As Epicurus put it:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
or, as “Star Trek’s” Gene Roddenberry opined:
“We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.”
Grow up, you silly deists.
March 31st, 2004 at 8:24 am
Homer: Why thank you, it is always nice to be labelled a heretic. It means I am still following Jesus to the extent where my views and actions are challenging the conservative mainstream of religiousity. But, I think as has been pointed out a discussion on Genesis 3 is a sidetrack to Wink’s line of reasoning. Maybe, shortly we could post up something about Genesis and have a discussion there.
Colin: I am a Christian and I agree with Gene Roddenberry’s question it is a good one. I might post that one up too.
March 31st, 2004 at 10:27 am
Phil, I have no doubt you like Geno’s comment as you plainly have no idea of what Genesis 3 is about.
That is why you are so confused about the cross and the ressurection.
March 31st, 2004 at 2:21 pm
Homer: actually I said I liked Gene’s question. I think it is a good one because it makes one think.
So, telling us how you respond to the question would make for a positive contribution rather than simply telling me that I am confused and have no idea. If you do want to post up your response to the question, it would be great if you could do it under the quote’s thread - I created it today.
September 19th, 2004 at 7:36 am
On Sunday, September 19th, 2004 Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC, on Prospect Street near Schields in Fort Collins, Colorado, USA is starting an adult forum series of five Sunday Morning session on “The Powers That Be”. The meeting are starting at 9:30 a.m. and run to about 10:30 a.m. It should be an interesting series of 5 weeking discussions of Wink’s very interesting book “The Powers That Be” Paul Smith