Uncivil worship and witness: Following the lamb into the new creation, by Michael J Gorman

Author: Michael J Gorman. Review by James Gordon

I am in a curious position regarding this book, most of which I found helpful and illuminating. Its title denounces me as having read Revelation irresponsibly – it was through reading it in 1971 that I found myself steered towards Quakers. I was amazed to find that the images described had been largely fulfilled: a world in breakdown was already plain to see, and has become more so with every year.

So the charge of irresponsible reading was challenging, but I can go with all of Michael J Gorman’s three strategic approaches: poetic, political, and pastoral/prophetic. These are not exclusive but compatible.

I cannot accept it is ‘irresponsible’, however, to consider the work’s extraordinary relevance to the way Christianity has developed. Gorman writes of Revelation as some sort of ‘literature’ artfully contrived, a sort of Christian cobbling together of previous statements in the prophets. He writes that ‘John weaves hundreds of scriptural allusions into a new coherent vision.’ If the book is a humanly-constructed drama/narrative, its author is lying, because he makes it clear from the outset that it was communicated to him from spirit. Christ asserts authorship at many points.

I took particular issue with Gorman’s acceptance of the ‘Lord’s Day’ as merely referring to the first day of the week, when it more usually refers to the ‘Day of the Lord’. It was not till Constantine’s edict in 313CE that Sunday became the normal day of worship.

The Book of Revelation most clearly represents the seer as having been transported into a vision of the end times, which was how early Quakers understood it. It was the one book of the Bible that John Calvin never commented on – but it was the only book on which George Fox did.

Having said all that, there is much in Gorman’s work to learn from, and to commend, especially the way in which Rome’s emperor worship is more subtly represented today in what the author calls ‘uncivil worship’ – masquerading as Christian when it is nothing of the sort. He particularly castigates the US reverence for national institutions and symbols, and attributing to them the same supposedly-religious value as a truly Christian one.

Finally one must question Gorman’s identification of Revelation as ‘worship literature, as a liturgical text’. Even as a ‘pastoral’ one. Friends will probably part company here, as many of us do not accept such a view of worship. But above all, I cannot agree with his dismissal of the idea that the book refers to our time. Just look at the news reports of the very plagues and woes that Revelation predicts. This is very much our present, beginning to be enacted before our eyes. For Friends to ignore these, and the character of Revelation as a truly prophetic book, would be truly irresponsible.

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