To confess Jesus Christ as Lord in the ancient world was not a private act of devotion, nor a sentimental piety reserved for the afterlife. It was a political declaration with revolutionary implications.
The Roman Empire hailed Caesar as dominus et salvator—“lord and savior”—whose reign guaranteed peace and prosperity. To ascribe those titles to a crucified Galilean Jew instead was an act of defiance that destabilized the ideological foundation of the empire.
To say “Jesus is Lord” was to say “Caesar is not.” It was to declare that Rome was not ultimate, that the emperor was not divine, and that salvation would never flow from imperial conquest.
For early Christians, baptism was not merely an individual spiritual rite. It was an initiation into resistance. To be baptized was to renounce allegiance to empire and pledge loyalty to a counter-community.
In the waters of baptism, one was washed free from Rome’s claims and reborn into an egalitarian fellowship where “there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female” (Galatians 3:28). The church—ecclesia—was not an extension of the state; it was an insurgent body politic, an alternative polis embodying God’s vision of human flourishing.
To imagine heaven was not to dream of Valhalla, where warriors secured honor for Caesar’s glory, but to envision a realm beyond imperial reach—a place where Caesar does not rule.
The earliest apologists understood this clearly.
Justin Martyr described Christians as those who obeyed earthly rulers only to the extent that such obedience did not conflict with their loyalty to God. Tertullian, writing from North Africa, was even more daring: Caesar was not to be called “Lord,” for that title belonged to Christ alone.
In the second and third centuries, Christians were accused of atheism not because they lacked belief, but because they refused to participate in civic rituals that sacralized Rome’s violence. Their refusal to burn incense to Caesar was not petty defiance—it was a rejection of the empire’s entire ideological apparatus.
This resistance gained sharp expression in Carthage, a vital North African city under Roman occupation. Carthage was more than a colonial outpost; it was a breadbasket for the empire, supplying Rome with grain and wealth extracted through exploitative taxation and forced labor. The Roman economy was built on the backs of African provinces, enriching the imperial center while impoverishing the colonized periphery.
In this setting, Christian faith in Carthage carried an inherently political charge. To proclaim Christ as Lord was to resist not only Rome’s religious propaganda, but also its economic exploitation.
Tertullian and later, Cyprian of Carthage developed a distinctly African theology that confronted the empire’s violence with an alternative vision of justice, dignity, and solidarity. Carthaginian Christians refused to legitimize Caesar’s economic order, which starved the poor to feed the imperial machine.
Their martyrdom was not a death-wish; it was a refusal to concede that Caesar’s power was ultimate.
Contemporary Distortions
This history throws contemporary distortions of Christianity into sharp relief. When right-wing commentators like Charlie Kirk drape Christianity in the garb of American capitalism, they betray the very essence of the faith.
Kirk’s brand of Christianity defended unfettered markets, glorified inequality, and baptized violence, particularly through his defense of unrestricted gun ownership and his denigration of marginalized communities.
Capitalism in its American form is no less exploitative than Rome’s imperial economy. Like Caesar’s grain monopolies, American capitalism consolidates wealth in the hands of a few while extracting labor and resources from the many.
It sanctifies greed, normalizes economic disparity, and sacrifices the vulnerable at the altar of profit. To claim that such a system reflects the will of God is not Christianity; it is idolatry.
The gospel does not sanctify empire; it exposes it. The cross is not a symbol of imperial victory but of imperial violence unmasked and overcome by divine solidarity with the oppressed. The resurrection is not a metaphor for private hope but a declaration that the powers of death—whether Rome’s legions or modern capitalism’s machinery—do not have the final word.
To follow Christ is to resist every form of empire, ancient and modern, that dehumanizes, exploits and excludes.
Recovering this radical edge of Christianity requires honesty about how far the faith has strayed from its origins. Too often, churches in America have traded their prophetic voice for proximity to power. They have baptized Caesar in the name of Christ, serving empire rather than resisting it.
When Christianity is reduced to a culture war weapon—mobilized against queer people, wielded against Black communities, or baptized in the blood of school shootings—it becomes unrecognizable to the martyrs of Carthage, who resisted empire at the cost of their lives.
What is at stake is not merely theological precision but historical memory.
To be Christian has always meant to live under occupation and yet to imagine another world. It is to embody an alternative community where swords are beaten into plowshares, where the hungry are filled with good things, and where the oppressed are lifted up.
To forget this is to forget the gospel itself. To remember it is to resist empire in all its guises—Roman or American—and to bear witness to the liberating kingdom of God.
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Rev. Keion Jackson is a minister, an Episcopalian and an Independent Liturgical Theologian.
