GREAT COMMISSION RELIGION VERSUS THE RELIGION OF JESUS

 

GREAT COMMISSION RELIGION VERSUS THE RELIGION OF JESUS

©Wendell Griffen, 2023

 

In a February 2019 article a Roman Catholic religious studies professor named Matthew Smaltz who teaches at Holy Cross College in Massachusetts published a short article titled What Is the Great Commission and Why is It So Controversial (https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-great-commission-and-why-is-it-so-controversial-111138#:~:text=Briefly%2C%20the%20Great%20Commission%20is%20a%20concept%20that,%E2%80%9Cdisciples%20of%20all%20the%20nations%E2%80%9D%20and%20%E2%80%9Cbaptize%E2%80%9D%20them). In the article, Smaltz shared some interesting observations.

 

·      A 2019 survey indicated that a majority of church-going American Christians are unfamiliar with the term “the Great Commission.

·      Of the minority of church-going American Christians who recognized the “Great Commission” term, 25 percent could not explain what it was.

·      Only 17 percent (meaning fewer than 1 in five) of the people who participated in the survey and were familiar with the term “Great Commission” knew what it means.

 

The “Great Commission” is an interpretation of what Jesus said to his closest early followers at the end of Matthew 28. Briefly, Jesus told them to go to “all nations,” make disciples, baptize them, and teach them to follow his commandments.  The Greek word for disciple (mathetes) means “pupil” or “follower,” as in “follower of Jesus.” Baptism is a Christian ritual where new Christians are either immersed, sprinkled, or have water poured on them to mark their entrance into the faith.

That’s not controversial. Every religion or creed has a ritual for new people. Every religion or creed expects its adherents to follow the teachings of its founder(s). It is not unusual for followers of a creed to spread the message of their creed and invite others to embrace it. 

However, we should understand that the term “Great Commission” does not appear in the Bible. Jesus didn’t use it. So, what is “the Great Commission?” How did that term become associated with the religion of Jesus? And why should anyone be troubled if the “Great Commission” is mis-identified with the life and ministry of Jesus.

The term “Great Commission” did not appear until the 17^th Century of the Christian Era when an Austrian member of royalty who was Lutheran, Baron Justinian Von Welz (1600s), preached and argued that all Christians, rather than only the closest followers of Jesus, were required to spread the faith. Baron Von Welz created a missionary organization called the Jesus Loving Society for the purpose of spreading Protestant Christianity throughout the world. Two hundred years later, an English missionary named Hudson Taylor, inspired by the Great Commission idea, founded the China Inland Mission in 1866 to bring Christianity to China’s inland provinces.

The New Testament contains accounts about Jesus traveling to different areas in Palestine to teach and preach, sending his followers (including seventy persons on one occasion), the missionary journeys of Paul in Acts, and letters attributed to Paul and other apostles to Jesus-followers in various communities across the Mediterranean Region. That happened hundreds of years before the “Great Commission” term arose. In each of those experiences, the teaching, preaching, and missionary work became a new aspect of religious diversity.

At Acts 2 we read that the early followers of Jesus practiced a religion that emphasized communal learning, worship, sharing meals, and sharing resources. They studied together. They worshipped together. They shared meals together. And they pooled their resources as a community of like-minded souls to care for one another. That is how their numbers grew as followers of Jesus appeared in new areas.

The early followers of Jesus were peacemakers. They were not using the religion of Jesus as a way to get business. They were not using the religion of Jesus as an excuse for going to war, invading other societies, and oppressing people in other societies. The Jewish majority argued among themselves about how to treat Gentile followers of Jesus. But they were not trying to overcome or stamp out other religions. They did not try to conquer other religions, let alone other societies.

In the beginning, the religion of Jesus was not complicit with an empire. In the beginning, followers of Jesus did not collaborate with an empire. They did not seek favor nor solicit benefits from any empire. Instead, they were trying to be a community of God-loving and neighbor-loving people in the world without trying to be identified with “the kingdoms of this world” for centuries before the term “Great Commission” arose.

But from the time that Constantine declared Christianity to be the religion of the Roman Empire and himself to be the head of the Church, the name and religion of Jesus has been perverted – yes, I used that word – as a cover for expanding systems of European empire. The Christian “discoverers” and “pilgrims” who undertook sea voyages to what they called “the New World” did not come to establish community with other children of God. They came to establish colonies for commercial and political despots. They viewed the indigenous people of Africa, Asia, and the Americas as “godless.”

The “Great Commission” is controversial because the religion of the Great Commission is about Eurocentric – meaning white – Christian conquest, commerce, colonization, domination, and superiority. It is the religion of missionaries and preachers funded by commercial and political tyrants as a way to further notions of empire, not embrace and become a Beloved Community of all persons and the creation in God’s love, peace, generosity, hope, and justice. The religion of the Great Commission is the religion of briars, scorpions, thorns, and thistles, not grapes, olives, joy, and healing.

That is why the “Great Commission” has a troubling meaning for many people, including myself. It seems that wherever Great Commission people have established a foothold in a society and advanced their notion of the religion of Jesus (notice that I said “their notion”), those societies have not become more loving and peaceful.

Instead, other religions have been disrespected. Land and minerals have been seized and stolen. Government practices have become brutal. Dissent has been outlawed. People who hold different beliefs and different visions of life and love have been marginalized, persecuted, and even massacred. That is not only the history of previous generations. That is the reality now wherever the “evangelical” efforts of Great Commission religionists are gaining acceptance.  Nowadays even in Africa, South America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands, when Great Commission notions of evangelism have been successful, systems of oppression, injustice, wealth, health, and educational inequity, and authoritarian government are surging.

I am not asking us to read Matthew 28:18-20 out of the New Testament. I am challenging the idea of spreading “the gospel” as a “mission” and mandate from Jesus for refusal to follow the teachings of Jesus to live as part of Beloved Community with God, others, and the creation.

There is something wrong – as in harmful – about a movement that would rather boast about calling other people “converts” than live with them in community.

There is something harmful – as in sinister - about a movement that uses the name and ministry of Jesus to “convert” others as a pretext for stealing their land, their labor, their minerals, and belittling their ancestry.

There is something sinister – as in diabolical – about taking the identity and ministry of Jesus, a man devoted to non-violence who was murdered by the Roman Empire at the behest of religious nationalists and profiteers, and using it to sacralize premeditated and systemic imperial violence, political violence, commercial violence, personal violence, physical violence, sexual violence, moral violence, environmental violence, racial violence, domestic violence, social violence, religious violence, and global violence.

There is something diabolical -as in hateful – about claiming a “Commission” from Jesus to treat immigrants as “illegal,” blame them for societal woes, separate immigrant children from their parents, and refuse to grant migrating people asylum from violence, war, and poverty.

The religion of the Great Commission is not a religion of love, community, peace, and justice. It is not a religion of truth, repentance, reparation, and reconciliation. It is a religion of white supremacy, manifest destiny, imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism. The religion of the Great Commission is not a religion of Jesus.  It is a religion that pimps the name and ministry of Jesus to advance empires.

“Great Commission” people produced poisoned water for Flint, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi.

Great Commission people support profiteering gun manufacturers and their lobbyists over the health and safety of other persons.

Great Commission people are bearing false witness about Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality, demonizing LGBTQI persons, and preventing women from exercising the freedom to choose whether to bear children.

Great Commission people are mis-using the name of Jesus to support a Zionist apartheid regime in Israel that steals land, water, and life from Palestinians, and discriminate against people who criticize it, condemn it, and boycott it.

“Great Commission” people celebrate chambers of commerce as forces for “economic development,” but condemn labor organizations as “greedy.” They love industries that pollute the air, water, and ground, but condemn environmentalists as “tree huggers.”

Great Commission people did not speak up after Black people were massacred in Tulsa, Elaine, East St. Louis, Omaha, Rosewood, and elsewhere in service to white supremacy.

Great Commission people are supporting white nationalist and capitalist policies, voting for right-wing politicians, and getting their information from right-wing media outlets, including some that call themselves “Christian media.”  

Now “Great Commission” so-called “Christian” politicians such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas, Ron DeSantis in Florida, Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, and Greg Abbott in Texas lead efforts to prevent students from learning about the history of racial injustice in the United States and across the world. In Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is dismantling public education and promoting mass incarceration at the same time. 

Great Commission “evangelical” voters are the backbone of a neo-fascist movement that threatens democracy and justice in the United States and across the world. 

I want no part of that religion. I bear in my memory and ancestry the proof of its hatefulness. I see its greed and lust for power every day in the faces of people who live with their backs against the wall where I live and across the world. Jesus told his followers to embrace and follow his nonviolent, loving, communal, and generous life in God’s name, not use him as a license to lie, steal, murder, and destroy other cultures in service to political, commercial, personal, and religious empire.

I love the nonviolent, inclusive, communal religion of Jesus. That is why I chose to follow the nonviolent, inclusive, communal way he lived and called on his early disciples to practice and teach others. We should practice, teach, and invite others to share that religion, not a “Great Commission” religion bottomed on a vision of white supremacist global empire and enterprise.