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🌠 Commentaries on Revelation

C. Wess Daniels
C. Wess Daniels
@cwdaniels
Greetings Friends,
We are all busy around here wrapping up the semester, getting ready for Guilford’s commencement, and getting ready for summer. We’re enjoying the breaking in of spring here in North Carolina and hope that, despite the many challenges we face right now, that you are finding peace and grace surrounding you. 
We are in the midst of finishing up the semester and I’m teaching a 3-week class that meets daily on the subject of “Religion and New Media.” I am loving the class because it hits all the things I enjoy, including talking about fandom, participatory culture, and religious overlays in our culture that may or may not be explicit. I will likely share more on this subject after the class is over. 
For today, I have a short newsletter because I have some writings that are out that I wanted to share with you. These are four new essays commenting on the book of Revelation draw from my work on the book Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance published by Barclay Press in 2019.
Thanks for reading and sharing,
Wess Daniels
Greensboro, NC (Haw River Watershed)

Commentary on the Book of Revelation
Recently, I had the opportunity to do some writing for the website “Working Preacher” building on some of my previous work on Revelation. Revelation falls as the second reading in the lectionary during the four Sundays right after Easter and I was asked to write this section which was pretty awesome.
With these essays I hope to:
  1. Revive interest in Revelation as a handbook for radicals rather than a text used for end-times, paranoid fantasies that we have become so accustom to in the U.S. Revelation is radical in its diagnosis of the problems of the Roman empire, while painting a picture of how the early church, made up of people who were themselves marginalized and living under imperial occupation, resisted assimilation and acquiesce to the religion of empire. With history in our rearview mirror, we know that by the 3rd century they had done just this (See Wes Howard Brooks book “Empire Baptized” for a fuller analysis). These essays on Revelation attempt to, in a fairly short amount of space, lay out this alternative reading.
  2. Galvanize further the work of church’s supporting anti-poverty work in our country by connecting this theology rooted in a “reading the Bible with the poor” methodology developed by Rev. Liz Theoharis and others through the Kairos Center (here is a short overview I did of a chapter from Theoharis’ book on the subject).
  3. Reach out beyond my Quaker community to a broader Christian context in the hopes of hearing feedback and potentially expanding the connections of this work.
If you end up reading these essays, using them in your personal or small group study, or using them to preach from Revelation in the near future I would love you feedback as well. I am continuing to teach and develop this material with the hopes of another book in the not-so-distant future.
With all of that said, here are the four passages covering Revelation 1:4-8; 5:11-14; 7:9-17; and 21:1-6.
Commentary on Revelation 1:4-8
Commentary on Revelation 1:4-8
Images and symbolism are ways to pass notes under the nose of the authorities without getting caught.
Highlight from the essay:
Something very strange happens when this text is appropriated by readers in a comfortable, powerful, majority community: it becomes a gold mine for paranoid fantasies and for those who want to preach revenge and destruction. - Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
www.workingpreacher.org
Commentary on Revelation 5:11-14
Commentary on Revelation 5:11-14
The scapegoat mechanism is one of the main ways that empire creates social control.
Highlight from the essay:
The religion of empire is bound up by protecting power, monopolizing violence, casting suspicion on the other, focusing on destroying enemies, and stockpiling resources for the few even if it means the rest must go hungry. The other religion, the religion of creation, is rooted in an economy of gift, set on making strangers into neighbors, peace, and laying the groundwork for love of all: enemy, neighbor, stranger, and even love for the more-than-human world.
www.workingpreacher.org
Commentary on Revelation 7:9-17
Commentary on Revelation 7:9-17
Community that both centers the Lamb as well as all other victims of empire.
Highlight from the passage:
The multitude is countless and made up of “every nation, all tribes, all people, all languages.” This tells us that the vision is that the community formed around the lamb is not formed by borders, nation-states, militaries, ethnicities, or any other human category or distinction we put on others. The binding feature of this new community is that the people stand before the lamb, robed in white, holding palm branches.
www.workingpreacher.org
Commentary on Revelation 21:1-6
Commentary on Revelation 21:1-6
A fierce diagnosis of the disease of empire
Highlight from the passage:
Revelation 21 is a visionary weaving together of the old and the new in the face of what has been unmasked; this is not some gradualist approach. A new city, a new kind of “empire” overtakes the old; one not only where God is present among the people but “where he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (See also Revelation 7:17; 21:4).
www.workingpreacher.org
📚Book Plug: If you are interested in digging deeper please check out Resisting Empire: The Book of Revelation as Resistance.
Tweets
Wess Daniels
This #sketchnote shows tactics needed to read the book of Revelation in a liberatory way, revealing the religion of empire & how to resist it.

These points subvert the "evacuation theology" used by many Christians to abdicate all responsibility for imperial Christianity. https://t.co/gEUlwyVflJ
Links of Interest
Links both serious and fun for your review.
10 Christian Women Shaping the Church in 2022 | Sojourners
10 Christian Women Shaping the Church in 2022 | Sojourners
These women are leading the church to become a more inclusive, bold, accessible, creative, and action-oriented community of believers.
sojo.net
Opinion | Can William Barber Reignite the Religious Left?  - The New York Times
Opinion | Can William Barber Reignite the Religious Left?  - The New York Times
This is a man on the grandest of missions: to save this country from itself, to insist that morality ought to decide policy.
www.nytimes.com
Five Lessons in Creativity From Metallica
Five Lessons in Creativity From Metallica
Metallica’s “Sad but True” is one of the metal canon’s great statements.
www.theatlantic.com
Love Thy Neighbor
Love Thy Neighbor
LAST year, Óscar Romero, martyred Salvadoran archbishop and renowned figure of the Catholic left, was canonised by Pope Francis in a ceremony in the Vatican.
christiansocialism.com
A Final Thought from Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Thank you,
Wess
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C. Wess Daniels
C. Wess Daniels @cwdaniels

Old and New (Spiritual) Technologies For Life Today in the Face of Empire. Renewal and change in the hopes of mobilizing communities for love & liberation.

Wess Daniels
Director of Friends Center and Quaker Studies at Guilford College

🔆 More info: https://gatheringinlight.com

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