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.
Highlights from the conversation
- The pivot: empire hard to empire soft. Leopold’s opening question on why Las Casas is the hinge. Rome was harsh in its provinces. The Norman Conquest was harsh. And here is the moment somebody wakes up and says we cannot keep converting people with fire and the sword. Las Casas’s own book was titled The Only Way — the way of Christ in mission, as against the Spanish methods. Joerg’s warning: the Northern European liberals of the nineteenth century pick up this softer discourse, which is why next week’s Schleiermacher session matters. This is not a Catholic-Protestant story. It’s the birth of the empire we’re actually living in.
- Charity, advocacy, solidarity. Xavier’s question on how to tell soft empire from the way of Christ when they look alike. Joerg’s rule of thumb. Charity has something patronizing in it — here, let me help you, let me give you a handout, because I’m the one in control. Advocacy — the liberal move — functions the same way: I speak for those who have no voice. Better than silence, and still top-down. Solidarity asks a different question entirely: how are those of us closer to the center of the empire actually related to those pushed under its wheels? That’s the way forward, and it’s where the class is heading in two weeks.
- Flip the measuring stick. Caleb’s question, and the Christological core of the hour. Well-meaning people tell their kids others are people like us — which is real progress from they’re three-fifths human. The problem is you’re still the paradigm. You determine what human means and are then generous enough to include others in it. Joerg’s flip: what if others define us? Not others are like me, but what if I were like them? Which is exactly the Chalcedonian question about Christ’s humanity — Jesus is homoousios hemin, of the same substance as us, and the whole thing depends on who gets to define humanity. A. J. Levine on Jesus the Jew helps, and Joerg pushes further: Jesus was a specific kind of Jew who challenged Judaism too, because he was looking from below. The last shall be first. What you have done to the least of these.
- What gets lost when suffering and agency get split. Adam’s question. Las Casas finds the suffering Christ in the Natives — genuinely striking, and Gutiérrez rightly celebrates it. He calls them the Christs of the Indies. But then he locates the acting Christ in the Spaniards. Which is the charity problem again: some people act, others receive. Joerg on what good news to the poor actually means — not that we bring them a hot meal, but that you will no longer be poor, which is about agency as much as money. And the solution isn’t a middle road where everybody gets a little agency and a little suffering. Agency emerges in the struggle. Like Good Friday and Easter, which we keep splitting apart: victory through defeat, agency built through suffering.
- Converting from one God to another. Pete’s question, and the hardest thing in the session. We usually picture conversion as unbelief to belief. Joerg’s experience: church is the hardest place to talk about God, because most people think God is the one thing they already know — you can do a history study, you can do mission work, but the God thing you cannot touch. And if you can’t question your images of God, it may be that you’re worshiping an idol. Las Casas wakes up not through argument but through practice, through blood and sweat and death. George Bernard Shaw: God created humanity in his image, and we have returned the favor. Which means the image at stake isn’t just my self-image but my image of how the world works. Convert the churches first. That’s what Jesus was doing — not pointing fingers at outsiders, but working on his own people.
- The privilege/power distinction, and what Wink missed. Sarah asked about Walter Wink and the powers. Joerg thinks highly of him, and names what he’s pushing past. Wink analyzes dominant power well. The harder question is how do we fit into it — those of us who aren’t the violent perpetrators, who mean well, who think that by criticizing the conquest we’re home free. Joerg’s move: privilege and power get confused. He has plenty of privilege and says so. But privilege doesn’t translate into power, which is why speaking truth to power isn’t sufficient, and why you have to organize. George Tinker’s Missionary Conquest (1993) tells four centuries of stories where missionaries contributed to genocide of Native populations without benefiting themselves — agents of the empire who weren’t driving it or profiting from it. Once you see that discrepancy, you can fight back.
- Land back needs labor back. Isaac’s question on reparations. Las Casas said the Spanish needed restitution of what was wrongfully taken or they’d lose their souls, which Joerg takes straight: reparations are necessary, saying sorry doesn’t cut it (see last week on the weight of sin). But then the thing nobody’s talking about. Everybody’s talking about land. What else was Las Casas taking? Labor. Forty acres and a mule — what’s the mule for? Land can go in a trust; labor is what you do every day, and it’s where agency lives. The conclusions of Theology in the Capitalocene work this out for reparations for enslavement in the US, in terms of both land and labor. (There’s an excerpt in Jacobin, and a version at YES! Magazine — Google his name plus reparations.)
- On the flag-wrapped warrior Christ: just say no. Celeste’s question about cowboy Jesus. Joerg reached, of all places, for Nancy Reagan. There’s nothing else to say. This is the hardest thing for his Methodist students, because the instinct is to be welcoming and hospitable and all-inclusive. So he reads them the actual invitation to the United Methodist open table: Christ our Lord invites all who love him, who earnestly repent of their sin, and want to live in peace with one another. If you do not repent, and you do not want to live in peace with one another, you are not invited. The words idolatry and heresy are on the table.
About our guest
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.com
Previous Episodes w/ Joerg
- Anselm’s God Can’t Just Forgive: Joerg Rieger on Why That’s Good News, Not Cruelty
- Who Owns the Creed? Joerg Rieger on the Conservative Gimmick and the Surplus They Missed
- Empire Goes All the Way Down: Joerg Rieger on What “Christian Nationalism” Misses
- Why Religion Matters Now
- Theology in the Capitalocene
- Divine Justice & our Ultimate Concern
- the End of Religion & Business as Usual
- Joerg Rieger: Jesus vs Caesar
- Different Gods, Different Religions?
- Wild Goose Theology Happy Hour with Joerg Rieger and Emilie Townes
- The Economy, Election, Ayn Rand-Ryan-Romney, Occupy, & More
- Occupy the Church! Rita Nakashima Brock, Joerg Rieger, & Christophe Ringer
- Economics, Theology, and Discipleship
JOIN OUR OPEN ONLINE CLASS: The Empire Christ Couldn’t Keep
Ever notice how Christian nationalism gets talked about like it’s some bizarre new glitch in the faith? It isn’t — it’s a 2,000-year-old arrangement wearing new 
clothes, and once you see how the pattern works, you can also spot the Christ who keeps slipping free of it. Join theologian Joerg Rieger and Tripp Fuller for The Christ Empire Couldn’t Keep, a free six-week online class tracing the holy alliances, imperial creeds, and stubborn resistance that have shaped Christianity from Paul to the present. You’ll get six lectures from Joerg, six live Q&As, weekly readings from his book Christ and Empire, and a community of fellow troublemakers thinking it through together. It’s free to join, every session is recorded, and it kicks off Thursday, August 27. Grab your spot at HomebrewedClasses.com.
Theology Beer Camp 2026 — The God-Podcalypse — hits Kansas City October 8–10, exactly one month before the election. Thirty scholars (Ilia Delio, Cornel West, Diana Butler Bass, Gary Dorrien, and a stack more), thirty God-pods, four post-apocalyptic stages, and the community everyone keeps telling us is the real reason they come back. Come find your people at Theology Beer Camp
This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000others on our Substack – Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com
Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download