Empire Hard, Empire Soft: Joerg Rieger on Las Casas and the Conquest That Learned to Be Nice

This is the fourth live Q&A for The Christ Empire Couldn't Keep, and this week we're in the Americas with Bartolomé de las Casas — Joerg's pick over Martin Luther for the Reformation-era chapter, and the hinge of the whole course. Here's why. Las Casas owned an encomienda. He had Native people working for him. He was, in Joerg's words, a slave driver. Then he woke up, gave the land away, freed the people, and spent the rest of his life arguing against the conquest. Gustavo Gutiérrez read him as a precursor to liberation theology, and when Joerg got into the sources, he thought: not so fast. Because what Las Casas actually represents is the pivot from empire hard to empire soft — from fire and sword to kindness and charity, which is nicer, preferable, and still empire. The whole session is about learning to tell soft empire from the way of Christ when they look almost identical. We got the charity/advocacy/solidarity distinction, the flip on anthropology (not others are like us but what if I were like them), why converting from one God to another is harder than converting from no God at all, why land back needs labor back alongside it, and Joerg's answer to the flag-wrapped warrior Christ, which is two words long.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Dr. Joerg Rieger is the Distinguished Professor of Theology and the Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies at Vanderbilt University and founding director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice. For three decades, he has worked to bring together theology and the struggles for justice and liberation that mark our age. His work addresses relations of theology and public life, reflecting on the misuse of power in religion, politics, and economics. His interest is in movements that bring about change and in the positive contributions of religion and theology. His constructive work in theology draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary traditions, with a concern for manifestations of the divine in the pressures of everyday life. Several of his 24 authored and edited books address the topics of this course, including No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future; Unified We Are a Force: How Faith and Labor Can Overcome America’s Inequalities (with Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger); and Faith, Class, and Labor: Intersectional Approaches in a Global Context (with Jin Young Choi). www.joergrieger.co