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Hello, and welcome to Humanities Matter, brought to you by Braille. I'm Li Chengrako, and this week we'll be looking at key issues in the field of humanities. Today we're speaking with Steve Vernal Davidson. He teaches critical interpretations of the Bible as part of the evaluation of the legacies of colonialism in the modern world.
His book is writing and reading the Bible in post-colonial perspective. Steve, thanks so much for sitting down with us today. Thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to discussing this.
I spent a lot of time in Catholic school having studied the Bible, and I'm always interested in the different interpretations of the text, so I'm excited to talk about this. But before we get into the Bible and colonialism, can you just clarify some terms for us? What's the difference between imperialism and colonialism? Sometimes people use those interchangeably, but you distinguish them here.
I think the historical record, they are under separate events. On one hand, colonialism involves some form of settlement. And for the most part, some sense of permanent settlement. So a power nation, country or someone from the outside might just come and take over, or settle in a particular place, and set up in many ways its own culture, involves its language, its religion, all these sorts of things.
So that tends to be seen as a sort of colonialism, broadly written. On the other hand, imperialism tends not to have the same kind of physical settlement. It tends to be more in terms of influence, influence from a distance where other countries are brought into the orbit of a controlling power. And the control is done from the outside through various means.
In some instances, you may just have local representatives who are native to that country, or you might send your own who will also take care of business. So in a sense, one of the things that points I make is that the difference between these two are only matters of difference from the perspective of the outside power. The people on the inside, the ones who are either imperialized or colonialized, the difference is really subtle for them. And in fact, the big reality is the imposition of this power from this external power.
Yeah, and that makes sense with Rome at the time of Jesus as well, right? They were more of an imperial power than a colonial power in the way that, like you said, they impose certain things on Rome, they impose taxes, they also set up infrastructure, but didn't exactly impose the culture, per se. Would that be correct? Yeah, that would be certainly true because if we think basically of Jerusalem as the city or as the broader environs of Judea at the time, certainly the political structure is Roman, but they left in place a lot of the indigenous Jewish cultures, practices, religions, et cetera, et cetera.
Yes, Latin was a language within which sort of a business and politics were conducted, but the local people continued to use their own native languages, only a particular elite who had to interface with the with the Romans who were fluent in those issues of Roman culture and dominance. So that's one very good example. And I think for the most part within the biblical world, what we're seeing is in many sense forms of imperialism rather than colonialism. So, yeah, that's interesting then.
So with that of the backdrop, how does the Bible justify colonialism, specifically, particularly among Europeans at the end of the 16th century when, you know, we really start to see colonialism start to explode around the world. So one of the things I tend to look at in response to this question is the way within which Europeans understand their external overseas explorations and conquest as from a very idealistic perspective that what we're doing is improving the world and making it a better, making it a better place. So there's this sense you will see from the French that they are trying to civilize the world's team it and bring it into some kind of a control. The British also had this, this notions, this Spanish, and Portuguese, you know, most of them had different varieties of it.
And in some sense, they take this idea on or at least this, if it's not in response to the Bible, the Bible does provide a kind of a justification of going into the world and this sort of evangelizing mission of bringing people into the kingdom of God, folding them into this one universal church, or this one universal religion, under this one controlling God. And in some ways, you know, converting them into this idea of a better way of life, et cetera. So there are many ways within which the sort of the pictures that we see leading up towards the end of the Christian Bible kind of resembles what we see Europeans doing starting in the 16th century. And there are ways within which if not a direct causation, what you have is a kind of a moral flavor that helps Europeans not feel as if they're doing something quite terrible.
No, it may not be that all Europeans were interested in doing this wonderfully good work because from many of them, this was an economic venture. So the Bible does make some people sleep a little easier at night, I think, because if you read it that way, then you could hide the other aspects of the colonial project that you're engaged in and constantly foreground. This is about improving things for these unfortunate people in the rest of the world. So did these colonial powers like Spain, for example, do they basically see themselves as like the apostles going out into the world?
And like you said, evangelizing people? Most definitely if we take the sort of a first colonialist apostle of Spain, Christopher Columbus, Christopher Columbus's work was more of a religious project than it was either a scientific or political project. I mean, you read Columbus's journals and you read what motivates him. He isn't interested so much in finding a trade route because he wants to improve trade.
With the with the East or to make sea travel much more efficient. Columbus wants a route to China so that he could exploit the riches of the East in order to help Christians recapture Jerusalem from the from from from Islam. That's that and therefore ushering in the kingdom of God. So so in one sense, I mean, Columbus makes it into a very religiously focused evangelical project.
Subsequent generations, it's evangelical, but it's kind of an economic and other kinds of evangelism. That's that's tied up with it. So it's a definitely as understanding themselves as a puzzles of either a sort of a superior religion or superior culture and civilization or economic policy, ways within which we would see in the document, the historical document, how the Europeans are sort of positioning themselves at this time. Yeah, so let's get back to the document of the Bible itself and sort of the different interpretations of it.
I'm very curious. Normally, the reading of the Bible or Jesus's life is that there was tension or at least a perceived tension between Jesus and the Roman Empire that somehow Jesus wanted political power. And I was think a good example of Jesus pushing back on that perception is the gospel where he states render and to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. So it still feels like Jesus has some anti imperialist or anti colonial sentiment.
How do you think gospel readings like this justify colonialism or I don't know, perhaps the depiction of Jesus or various interpretations of Jesus performing that role? I think this is one of those statements that everybody loves because it means that whatever position when you hold, you can find it affirming your position. And in one sense, there is Jesus in some place. If you read it, splitting the difference that there's a realm that Rome controls.
And of course, there's a realm that God controls. But I tend to read it as, well, these two things are in a face off that Jesus lays out the groundwork before us. And what you have is an earthly empire that in many ways is antagonistic to the heavenly empire and those. And as someone who lives in an age, you have to in some ways figure out how you're going to determine your allegiance to one or the other.
Now, by paying the tax to support the Roman Empire, does it maintain it? Does it keep it? Does it support it? I think in one sense, we could read this as an anti-imperial gesture by saying, look, look how dependent this empire is upon the income of poor and oppressed people.
Could it really be that powerful? If it's power rests with us economically. And you contrast that with the heavenly empire, which makes no demand, which is self-sustaining and keeps itself going. So in painting the picture, you could hear these anti-imperialistic tones from Jesus.
If you certainly wish to go in that direction. I mean, there will be those who would say, yes, Jesus just affirms the legitimacy of the empire and Jesus affirms that allegiance is due to it. But I read it as what Jesus is doing is exposing the weak foundations upon which the empire stands and the brittleness of what the empire is doing. Allegiance means to it because what you have is an empire that cannot sustain itself and under its own weight and its own construction, it will fall and it will collapse.
Now, so there's a sense in which I think when you read sort of through the most of the Bible, the Jesus figure becomes one of the more striking figures that is standing against empire and the imperial constructions. So there's a way within which what I'm arguing kind of looks in another direction because Jesus gives us this wonderful picture of during the lifetime is his lifetime. Where what you do is kind of a expose and critique the imperial constructions of Rome. But as you move further through the New Testament, what you are also seeing are ways within which the Jesus movement is aligning itself closer and closer to the structures and the ideals of the Roman Empire to the point where it does feel as if they either get subsumed into the Roman Empire or subsumed into the logic of the Roman Empire.
So yeah, I position Jesus as this strong sort of an anti-imperial person and then something seems to go a little awry afterwards. Well, and I think that what you just said sort of speaks to the fact that and you mentioned this before you started your question that essentially it seems that there's something in the Bible for everyone and you can sort of cherry pick the things that you want in there to justify your own worldview. Certainly. And we see this in several instances.
I think the fundamental question one has to raised is a theological question. That is to say, what's the nature of God? What's the nature of God's relationships with human beings who are God's referred people and also to do the deep dive within the biblical text in terms of how it has been developed as to how the writers, the workers, the people who are telling us the stories about God align with these pictures and depictions of God. And sometimes we don't always line up very smoothly because yes, the tensions that you spoke about that that we see in almost any historical moment, we will find the tensions around the number of people.
And we always have to ask who gets to tell the story in the end and who story we hear. So when we receive Gospels, we always have to be checking and asking how did this gospel writer resolve that tension that we see within the issues of the Jesus movement and the Roman Empire. And that's one of the ways within which we kind of do the critical, the critical work and the critical reading so that we are in some ways don't oversimplify things and say, well, it's either this or it's that or it's completely this or it's completely that. Because one of the things that colonialism does is to create such a stratified and layered kind of a society that it complexifies things.
So you don't always find it neatly, neatly laid out as as well as you would like it to be laid out. I want to come back to, you know, the historical influence of the Bible, you obviously mentioned before how it influenced Christopher Columbus. You point out that historical evidence does show that the Bible can support anti colonial movements Gandhi credits Jesus as an influence, for example, what do you think happens though, when we read the Bible. Is an anti imperial text and was it mean if the Bible does indeed justify colonialism.
Yeah, so I have I have in mind how the Latin America Latin American started reading the Bible sensitive to these tensions between characters in the Bible and the imperial constructions with on the which on which they lived. And in Latin America, they read and they saw how these imperial powers were were oppressive and they started to think through and I'm talking, you know, mid 20th century readings, and they started thinking through of how external financial organizations become oppressive for them. How external nations and the militaries become become become oppressive and and the Bible became a way for them to articulate some of those those feelings and experiences and to draw in some sense strength for a struggle against against the powers that they were they were faced. They were faced with that that I think is an important bit of stuff for us to see there are other, there are other ways if you start to think of the ways in which enslaved Africans in the United States understood themselves as fighting against the power of the of the slave holding system.
And for many, many of the the results of enslaved people in the United States were led by Bible wielding individuals who read the Bible over and over again and just could not come to terms with what they were seeing. Or what they were being taught what they were they were being told. So, so, so the notion of the Bible as a justification for for colonialism is not very, very far fetched because that's precisely the kinds of things that we were seeing in say the conquest of the Americas, whether that conquest was being okay was being done by the Spanish or much later other British and European settlers who came to came to North America, there was there was there was always that there is a sense in which we also have to keep asking ourselves. What do the imperial constructions look like in our current day and the ways within which the Bible continues to justify the kinds of structured oppressions that many people have become quite comfortable with.
And, and I think that to the extent that we want to leave the question that I'm raising here as simply a historical question, we will fail to see the ways within which biblical justifications for a kind of comfort with with oppression remains, remains with us, or the ways within which we don't point out sufficiently the excesses of Roman state power, right, the ways within which the power of the Roman state to determine who lives, who dies, and to make that those determinations not necessarily just simply arbitrary ways to the extent that we we miss those things when we read into the biblical text is the extent to which we will miss the way within which state power gets used in abusive and oppressive ways within within our lifetime and say state power I mean within the internal mechanisms of a state within which we live, but also within ways that state power gets externalized and applied to other people in different parts of the world. So there are these very subtle movements that we also have to pay attention to in reading the Bible because we can simply cause us to ignore what is happening before us and to be alive, very smooth, and easy pictures from the Bible as being unproblematic therefore our current world is also unproblematic. That's Steve Vernal Davidson, his book is writing and reading the Bible in Post-colonial perspective. Steve, thank you so much for talking about this.
I really enjoyed it, which we had more time. So I hope to have you back on the podcast soon. Thank you very much, this has been a very good experience for you. You are listening to the Humanities Matter podcast.
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