13 minute read
Interview
Insights Editor William Greenway Interviews Professor Bridgett Green
What made you choose “kingdom” and “kindom” as your topic for this essay?
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When you teach Greek New Testament, like I do, you see that fluidity comes with interpretation. Language shifts. Words mean one thing today, something different tomorrow, and they have different connotations for different communities. Many of us are familiar with “kingdom” from the Lord’s Prayer and scripture. But most of us have no experience of a tyrannical king or queen, so important elements of “kingdom” escape our notice.
And then we have Ada María Isasi-Díaz’s “kindom.” For many in theology, biblical studies, and the church, “kindom” is preferred because it helps us see one another as sisters and brothers in Christ. But not all “kindoms” or families are ideal. Moreover, Jesus wasn’t just talking about familial relationships, he was talking about socio-political realities, and “kingdom” far more obviously than “kindom” is political language. So, while I applaud the use of “kindom,” I think “kingdom” is still relevant. For the reasons I unfold in the essay, I think it is vital that we think in terms of both “kindom” and “kingdom” if we are to meet the social and political challenges of our day wisely and effectively.
What would have been the dominant understanding of “kindom” in Jesus’s time?
Matthew and Luke incorporate genealogies, so bloodlines are important in Jesus’s day. But for Jesus, family extends beyond blood relations and includes shared values—this is the sense in which he asks rhetorically, Who are my brothers and sisters? Remember that Paul in Romans speaks of ways in which other peoples have been grafted into the family of Abraham, and in this sense, kinship was understood in relation to religion. In Jesus’s day, then, understanding of kinship is expansive. I should note that Jesus mainly speaks in terms of siblings, brothers and sisters, with God as our Father.
What was new to me in reading your essay were the political connotations of “kindom” in Jesus’s day, so that when he’s speaking of God as Abba, Father, he’s speaking of family in ways that are radically different from what people were used to.
Yes, the dominant understanding in the Roman period is of paterfamilias, the title the Roman senate gave to Caesars, which Augustus Caesar played up as part of his propaganda machine, portraying himself as the idealized father of all Roman subjects, including the colonized peoples of Palestine. There were layers of sub-paterfamlilias under him, from kings like Herod on down through a hierarchy of wealthy to poor families. Every family is economically dependent upon and indebted to the family above it for their very survival, and as you can imagine this often played out in highly abusive ways. One’s place in the world was really precarious, especially if you were poor—and in Jesus’s day 90% of the population lived at subsistence level or below. Jesus and his audience would have been quite aware of all this. So Jesus is really turning it on its head by calling us all together siblings, not under Caesar, but under God—this would have been clearly heard as a rhetoric of resistance. So Jesus’s “kindom” talk has radical political implications for the Roman empire and the kingdom of Herod.
Today we tend to think “kindom” is private, about family, while “kingdom” refers to the political realm, but you explain that that’s a modern dichotomy that does not apply to Jesus, for in the first century “kingdom” and “kindom” are overlapping modalities, so Jesus’s “kindom” talk is not just transforming what people understood about families, it is simultaneously transforming what they think about “kingdoms.”
Yes. The celebrated reigns of David and Solomon were a millennium before Jesus’s day. Most of the kingdoms the Jewish people had known since were the empires that conquered and exploited them over the intervening centuries—Babylon, Persia, Syria, Greece, Rome. They’re very aware of the dangers of kingdoms. If you look at I and II Kings, and I and II Chronicles, even Jewish kings more often than not did not obey God. In I Samuel, the people say, “We want a king,” and Samuel says, Are you sure about that? Because then your sons and daughters are no longer yours, your land and livestock will be confiscated, you will lose your independence and agency. And sure enough, by Jesus’s day, as I said, 90% of the people in Palestine are living at or below subsistence level. Even people’s bodies are not their own, for Rome could draft people into forced labor.
Jesus’s good news is the proclamation of the kingdom of God. It is the antithesis of the oppressive kingdoms which are simultaneously hierarchical “kindom” systems that the people knew under Roman rule. In the kingdom of God, Jesus proclaims, it would be different. We would bring together our resources and uplift one another. And Jesus isn’t just preaching this message to the poor. Jesus’s crowd also includes rulers, religious leaders, and tax collectors. And he is saying to everyone that in the right kind of kingdom, in a godly kingdom, no one has to beg. And all this is in stark contrast to what is actually happening in Jesus’s day.
The prophetic message that Jesus is offering is powerful. We tend to think about resistance to oppression in terms of armed resistance, but the power of rhetoric is deeper, and folks understood that what Jesus was preaching was deeper and longer lasting than what could be achieved by force—and that is part of the reason the violence of the cross did not obliterate the gospel.
We tend to think about resistance to oppression in terms of armed resistance, but the power of rhetoric is deeper, and folks understood that what Jesus was preaching was deeper and longer lasting than what could be achieved by force—and that is part of the reason the violence of the cross did not obliterate the gospel.
That means that when Jesus prayed “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” after seven hundred years of oppression, he is praying for a major disruption of the existing socio-political order, so his message is clearly anti-Caesar, antiHerod. This is what gets Jesus crucified. Thanks to you, I’m now going to hear the radicality of that “thy” in “thy kingdom come,” much more clearly. You also talk about the peril of “kindom.”
I tried to talk about “kindom,” that is, about families, with sensitivity, because for a number of people there is trauma attached to family. In seminary we talk about how constantly referring to God as Father can be a problem because for some the experience of fathers has not been good, and that’s something we should be careful always to bear in mind. The same is true with “family” or “kin” or “kindom,” for some family dynamics are dysfunctional and hurtful. In addition, kinship language can be “inner circle” language, including only other Christians—and as I point out in the essay, there is some biblical precedence for that interpretation. But that gives us too narrow a view of who are our kin, who are our brothers and sisters, and that plays into why today people can get a bad taste in their mouths about Christians.
Also, we can use kinship language as an excuse not to be political. Today, kinship language is often focused upon what happens in my family, but not what goes on in the world, and that’s why I’m also a huge proponent of “kingship” language, because you cannot deny its political dimension. So when we say the Lord’s Prayer and “thy kingdom come” we have to ask, What does that mean socially and politically in our context right now? Are we envisioning how praying that prayer calls for disrupting elements of our society that are oppressive? We have to ask ourselves, if we strove to align our society with the teaching of Jesus and the Prophets, what would that really look like? I do not want to conflate being partisan and being political, we should not align God’s will with the politics of one party or another. But kingdom language is about being involved on a societal and political level and not just on an ecclesial level; it calls us to see all people as beloved children of God and to be sure that informs how we organize ourselves socially and politically.
I’ve heard “kindom” versus “kingdom” argued stridently from both sides— sometimes people get really enraged about one term or the other. I was wondering if you were making a move here that is not just about this debate, but about all sorts of debates that end up focusing upon one term or another. When you unfold the full meaning of these terms you unveil an understanding whereby people who disagree may find a large area of shared concern. That has implications not just for this issue, but for how we engage in these sorts of debates generally.
I am aware of the strident viewpoints on either side. The reason I am a proponent of both terms is because I do think they both have their strengths. “Kingdom” language is understood to be sexist and hierarchical. Well, that is certainly true, it is sexist and hierarchical, and those problems must be frankly and explicitly named, especially as they had, have, and will continue to manifest in the life of the church. But “kingdom” is also helpful because it compels us to think about our call to help transform society in a way “kinship” does not. My family isn’t necessarily called to be this huge force in transforming society, so kinship can be insufficient in this regard, and kingdom better makes us think about what the kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus calls us to do at a societal and even global level. What we lose if we do not use “kingdom” language at all is this sense of responsibility to transform society. In general, I think that we do a disservice when we think that one word or phrase best describes what God is doing. And as long as we explicitly keep track of both strengths and weaknesses, I think that there is definitely space for both kindom and kingdom language.
You speak of Ada María Isasi-Díaz, a Cuban American theologian who to a large degree is the mother of mujerista theology and did a lot to popularize “kindom.” But it is not clear precisely how her identity plays out in a pivotal way that makes a difference for this discussion. And today, when there’s so much emphasis on the role identity plays in our scholarship and preaching, it’s impossible not to notice that you, a Black woman New Testament scholar dealing with language, do not address these issues in a way that is specifically informed by your identity. I’m wondering if that is intentional, and if we are meant to make something of that?
I did not write this from a womanist perspective, or use a particular African American hermeneutic. The issues of class, politics, economics, family, and their relation to “kindom” and “kingdom” are not rooted in my gender or ethnicity in any particular way that would not also be true for other people. People can lose track of the argument because they’re so focused on the personal, identifying elements. With regard to the issues in this essay, I try to be attentive to how the key dynamics play out in all the communities of which I’m a part. This definitely includes the Black community, it definitely includes communities of women, and it includes being part of a city that is slightly below 50% white.
Carl Rogers said that what is most personal is most universal. So my personal story still speaks to a more universal conversation, and this universal conversation speaks to my personal story—all without me explicitly saying that I speak as a Black woman. I hope what people see is a budding scholar who is deeply interested in the message of the biblical texts, who is shaped and formed by the life of all the churches that she has been a part of, and who recognizes that her discipleship is not just one that happens within the context of a congregation, but in my lived experiences outside the walls of the church. This is what I think some of the conversation needs to attend to. And so it’s from that perspective that I write.
I’m very grateful for the particularity through which Isasi-Díaz articulates her mujerista theology, but I also know that her description of family isn’t exclusively Latinx. Now, let me say that to be a Black American in the United States today is political in and of itself in so many ways, and in many ways I am compelled to engage society as a Black woman, but at the same time that burden shouldn’t be exclusively mine. Wanting to have justice for everyone should not just be a burden for those denied justice and privileges, rather it should also be a burden for those who are privileged and have the freedom and power to engage in the struggle for justice. I don’t feel like I have to write explicitly as an African American woman when dealing with a topic like “kindom and kingdom” because the issues and most especially the responsibilities at hand in this discussion are not specifically indexed to my identity. In this discussion we are speaking to problems we all have a responsibility to engage, to issues the prophets and the gospel of Jesus Christ call upon all of us to engage.
Bridgett, thank you for a wonderful essay. You’ve taken a debate which can be fraught in the church, and through good and patient and passionate scholarship and reading of the New Testament, you have found a way to let us see a place for common ground which is profoundly prophetic and profoundly consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let me close by asking, what do you hope people will take away from this essay?
First, I hope those who have never heard “kindom” language will be introduced to it, will come to understand its strengths and its weaknesses, that they will sit with “kindom” and consider it seriously as a term to include in their sermons, Bible studies, and their lives. I hope people will do deep dives into “kindom” and come to understand it as fully as possible. I hope for the same with “kingdom” language.
Some of us are so far removed from what “kingdom” meant in Jesus’s time that we can be deceived as to its true meaning. We should be sure we understand why first century Christians would want to ask for God’s kingdom to come and what would that look like. We should also understand the peril of “kingdom,” realize that it may reinforce sexist and hierarchical dynamics in both society and in the church, and take steps to acknowledge and mitigate its sexist, hierarchical dimensions. My hope is that further study and conversation about these terms and how they apply in our lives today would help people to think in new ways about God’s activity and God’s call to us. These theoretical questions that we’re asking and reflecting upon have real life implications. It’s a true gift and privilege to be able to have these types of conversation, and at the same time it is vital that we recognize the actions the gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to in our familial, social, and political lives.
