"Wherever they went, they created a wasteland, and called it peace." Placing these now much-quoted words in the mouth of a defeated British chieftain, the Roman historian Tacitus dismissed the fundamental ideology with which his country justified over two hundred years of violence and domination inflicted on the ancient Mediterranean world. The Roman Empire, it was argued, suppressed the dozens of little wars being waged in that world and the regimes that were waging them, established order, and provided the economic infrastructure necessary for the thriving trade that sustained peace throughout its dominion. What was left unmentioned in this ideology was the cost in blood and destruction, not only as immediate effects of the wars of conquest, but in maintaining Roman supremacy in the face of resistance from peoples to whom the "peaceful Roman order" looked oddly more like an efficient system of colonial exploitation that ended finally by reducing subject lands towasteland.

A couple of centuries after Tacitus, St. Augustine, proud as he was of his Roman citizenship and inherited Roman culture, would pick up the historian's theme, developing a whole theology of history in which human systems of political and economic control, "The City of Man," a generalized image of the Roman Empire, were placed in constant opposition to the Kingdom proclaimed by the Gospel, "The City of God." Whereas the City of Man was established and maintained in violence and dedicated only to its own continuance, survival, and enrichment of those who wielded its power, The City of God was founded in justice, sustained in peace, and lovingly dedicated to the end that all its citizens would have life, and have it abundantly, living harmoniously in the community of creation in the presence of the Creator. Though the City of Man promised to deliver all the richness of the City of God, it in fact was merely a sham, presenting in reality only a precise parody, and exact inversion, of the True City.

The Empire of which the humanist Tacitus wrote and the late classical civilization in which theologian Augustine thought are long gone, but the models these two men created for thinking about the ordering of civil life, political power, dominion or nurture, exploitation or empowerment, wasteland or true city remain compelling. Dominating power in our modern world as in their ancient one is grounded in violence and theft. Look at the face of any modern Empire: British, German, Soviet, Maoist, American, or Pan-National Economic and you see the face of Rome, the same claims and promises, which, measured by the standard of the City of God, the Reign of God's Shalom, are mere parody. The tradition, both humanist and theological, tells us that to serve the exclusive domination of any human empire is to give oneself over to a fraud and a delusion.

The earliest mass Christian martyrdoms were the result of precisely this truth, that to serve God means that there are strict limits to how far one can serve Caesar. The early martyrs refused to participate in the cult of the deified emperor, an observance that usually meant no more than burning a pinch of incense before a little sculpture of the Caesar. Harmless enough, except that it meant affirming publicly that the claims of the human empire were true and that there exists no other City whose reality measures the human dominion and finds it lacking. And that the martyrs would not do. And still today, the City of Man requires of all its subjects what amounts to public cultus: the worship that pledges unqualified allegiance and declaration, through words or symbolic actions, that we believe that the only order is its version of order, the only security its version of security, the only peace, the wasteland it offers up to us. And still to deny the imperial cult and to witness to the True City can be costly.

The Church's vocation today, as in the time of the early martyrs, is to be the sacrament of the City of God; that is, the visible sign and agent of the reality of the Reign of God's Shalom, unmasking the pretenses of the City of Man in all its manifestations and challenging its claim to the lives and souls of human beings. But too often today, as in history, the churches have settled instead on serving as the chaplains and priests of the City of Man, sanctioning and sacralizing its false imitations. I would have to say that far too often my own inherited tradition, rooted in the established Church of England, has been especially entangled in such misdefinitions of vocation. But I do see signs of repentance and amendment, instances of genuinely prophetic witness, a growing theological tradition of dissent, a developing peace and justice theology. And that is what draws me to projects like ECAPC -- the opportunity for Christians of all varieties to share those parts of what they have received that are most faithful to the Church's vocation and to the City whichits serves, and to learn and to be inspired and strengthened by the best in the thought and life of other traditions. To turn the world to peace, we must also turn the church to its true allegiance.

Dr. Mycoff teaches English and Humanities at Warren Wilson College, serves on the National Executive Council of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, and is a member of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship. Respond to David Mycoff at dmycoff@warren-wilson.edu.