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Easter Against the Empire: Faith in a Time of War

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Mar 25, 2026

Guest

John Dominic Crossan

John Dominic Crossan, professor emeritus and historical Jesus scholar, offers a sharp, accessible take on Jesus, empire, and collective faith. He contrasts agrarian kingdom imagery with urban Paul, reframes resurrection as communal vindication, unmasks literalist traps, and sketches nonviolent, distributive resistance to imperial power. Short, provocative, and deeply political reflections for Eastertime.

01:17:17

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INSIGHT

Palm Sunday As A Parabolic Contrast To Empire

Palm Sunday is a staged parable contrasting Pilate's military procession and Jesus' lowly donkey entry to expose imperial power.
Crossan and Marcus Borg emphasize timing and absurdity (a nursing female donkey) as deliberate provocation.

insights

INSIGHT

Temple Action Targets Worship That Hides Injustice

Jesus' temple action functions as prophetic symbolic shutdown, condemning worship that shelters injustice.
Crossan links Jesus' 'den of thieves' to Jeremiah 7: using worship as refuge from social injustice invites temple's destruction.

insights

INSIGHT

Render To Caesar Denies Caesar's Claim To Divinity

'Render unto Caesar' separates imperial authority from God's rule and exposes equating Caesar with God as treasonous.
Crossan explains the coin's inscription equates Caesar with divinity; Jesus' answer defuses the trap by denying that equation.

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Jesus' conversion: covenant and participatory God

01:33 • 4min

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Kingdom language: Jesus and Paul compared

05:31 • 2min

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Justice: distributive over retributive

07:06 • 2min

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Traction: Jesus' peasants and Paul's urban audiences

09:30 • 2min

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Expectation of imminence: Jesus vs. Paul

11:28 • 1min

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Preventing hierarchy in urban assemblies

12:48 • 2min

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Training to think beyond examples

15:00 • 2min

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Aesopic fallacy and critical reading

16:38 • 3min

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Recovering Scripture's authority without literalism

19:33 • 3min

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Lent and Easter: fasting and feasting debate

22:13 • 2min

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Mark's journey: Caesarea Philippi to Jerusalem

24:01 • 2min

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Palm Sunday as parable: donkey vs. parade

26:20 • 3min

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Temple action as prophetic shutdown

29:06 • 3min

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Render unto Caesar: separating God from empire

31:54 • 3min

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Betrayal logistics: why Judas may be unnecessary

34:28 • 3min

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Eucharist as mandate for distribution

Participatory execution and resurrection

42:13 • 8min

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Anselm, judges, and alternative models of God

49:59 • 4min

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Easter demands the Good Friday context

54:05 • 4min

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Wounds preserved in resurrection imagery

58:30 • 3min

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Reading parables as lived metaphors

01:01:29 • 2min

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Genesis 1 as lens: distributive God

01:03:32 • 2min

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Resisting empire: three layers of action

01:06:01 • 3min

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Palm Sunday today: war and religious resistance

• Mentioned in 2 episodes

The Last Week

What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem

John Dominic Crossan

Marcus Borg

In 'The Last Week', John Dominic Crossan and Marcus J. Borg provide a day-by-day account of Jesus's final week in Jerusalem, using the Gospel of Mark as their guide. They portray Jesus as a moral hero who challenges unjust power and advocates for the poor, offering a radical interpretation of his life and mission. The book explores themes of non-violent resistance and economic justice, presenting a Jesus who is both historically grounded and relevant to contemporary social issues.

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• Mentioned in 28 episodes

Parable of the Sower

Octavia Butler

Published in 1993, 'Parable of the Sower' is a dark and vivid portrayal of a future where global climate change and economic crises have led to social chaos. The story is told through the diary entries of Lauren Olamina, a 15-year-old Black girl living in a gated community near Los Angeles. Lauren suffers from hyperempathy, a condition that makes her feel the pain and pleasure of others. As her community is destroyed by external threats, Lauren embarks on a perilous journey north, developing a new faith called Earthseed along the way. Earthseed's central doctrine is that 'God is Change' and cannot be resisted, but can be influenced. The novel explores themes of survival, faith, family, hope, and community in a world torn apart by environmental devastation, economic collapse, and violence.

#27511

• Mentioned in 2 episodes

How to read the Bible and still be a Christian

John Dominic Crossan

In *How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian*, John Dominic Crossan explores the conflicting visions of God in the Bible, from a loving God to a vengeful one. He provides guidance on how to navigate these contrasting views, encouraging Christians to engage deeply with the text and its historical context to strengthen their faith. Crossan challenges readers to participate in a dialogue that shapes their understanding of the Bible's central message.

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Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography

A Startling Account of What We Can Know about the Life of Jesus

John Dominic Crossan

In *Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography*, John Dominic Crossan presents a provocative and scholarly examination of Jesus' life, emphasizing his role as a social revolutionary who challenged the status quo of his time. Crossan uses historical criticism to evaluate the Gospels and situates Jesus within the political and cultural context of first-century Roman Palestine. He portrays Jesus as a peasant leader advocating for radical egalitarianism and social healing.

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• Mentioned in 4 episodes

The Historical Jesus

The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant

John Dominic Crossan

In 'The Historical Jesus', John Dominic Crossan challenges conventional wisdom by demonstrating that Jesus is one of the best-documented figures in ancient history. Crossan's methodology integrates social anthropology, Greco-Roman history, and literary analysis to provide a vivid portrayal of Jesus. The book divides into sections that set the historical and social context of first-century Judaea, analyze the written records of Jesus' life, and reconstruct his teachings and actions. Jesus is depicted as a savvy and courageous Jewish Mediterranean peasant with a vision of economic, political, and religious egalitarianism and a social program to achieve it. The book also explores Jesus' relationship with John the Baptist, his teachings on the Kingdom of God, and his opposition to conventional morality and power structures.

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God and Empire

John Dominic Crossan

In 'God and Empire', John Dominic Crossan contrasts the imperial ideology of Rome with the kingdom of God as preached by Jesus, highlighting themes of violence, justice, and peace. He examines how Jesus and Paul challenged Roman power with ideological rather than military might, and draws parallels between ancient Rome and the modern United States.

In this final Q&A for our Jesus of Galilee series, I sat down with Dom Crosson to connect the dots between the hills of Galilee and the high-stakes political drama of Passion Week. We dove deep into how Jesus invited us away from the "apocalyptic delusion" of waiting for God to intervene and toward a participatory eschatology where we actually collaborate with the Divine. From unmasking the "asotopic fallacy" of biblical literalism to reimagining the resurrection as a collective human exit from imperial normalcy rather than a solo miracle, Dom reminds us that the Kingdom isn’t a future escape but a present, distributive justice. We even got real about the "escalatory violence" of our own time, discussing what it looks like for faith communities to embody nonviolent resistance while war rages in Iran. It’s a heavy, holy, and deeply subversive conversation to carry with you into Easter. If you want to hear all four lectures behind these Q&As and send in your own questions for our final session, head over to ⁠crossanclass.com⁠ — you can join for whatever you can give, including zero.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Join 600+ Listeners, 30 theologians, & 30 God-Pods at Theology Beer Camp 2026 this October 8-10 in Kansas City!

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⁠

John Dominic Crossan, professor emeritus at DePaul University, is widely regarded as the foremost historical Jesus scholar of our time. He is the author of several bestselling books, including The Historical Jesus, How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian, God and Empire, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, The Greatest Prayer, The Last Week, and The Power of Parable. He lives in Minneola, Florida.

Previous Podcast Episodes with Dom & Tripp

⁠⁠Are We Waiting for God, or Is God Waiting for Us?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠A Tale of Two Gods: Why C.S. Lewis’s Famous Argument Falls Apart⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠From Iron Swords to Nuclear Bombs: Tracing 3,000 Years of Escalatory Violence⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Paul, Christ, & the Mystery of Execution & Resurrection⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Paul & Thecla⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ask JC Anything

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