“Inter-Imperial Christianity”: A World Christian Corollary to “Inter-Christianity”

My August 2017 post entitled “Inter-Christianity” lists five ‘inter-’ traits of Christianity that “demonstrate the wideness of God’s grace as well as combat against the self-promoting, co-opting tendencies of all groups and settings”: international, interconfessional, interdisciplinary, intergenerational, interdependent. This new post adds another “inter-” trait, namely “inter-imperial.” To anchor this new post in its intended Christian (not partisan political) framework, I invite you to read that brief earlier post now (Inter-Christianity) before proceeding below.

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Last week’s White House release of its November 2025 “National Security Strategy of the United States of America” prompts this new post, which is contextually set within the US. The post’s subtitle (“A World Christian Corollary to…”) is a play on a key component of the NSS statement, namely “The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.”

If you have not yet read the NSS statement for yourself, I encourage you to do so now at https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf 

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Not surprisingly, the NSS document is strikingly self-promoting and braggadocious, both about the current presidential administration and about the USA’s place in the world and in history:

• “No Administration in history has achieved so dramatic a turnaround in so short a time.”

• “To ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country….”

• “The goal of this strategy is to tie together all of these world-leading assets, and others, to strengthen American power and preeminence and make our country even greater than it ever has been.”

Material wealth, prestige, military security, and power are laid out as the USA’s supreme values, particularly in international relations. Issues such as justice, compassion, and environmental responsibility are negated by self-serving substitutes:

 

• Not justice but “fairness”--a narcissistic category meaning “competitive advantage”

• Not compassion but self-promoting “goodwill” and “generosity”: “our nation’s historic goodwill,” “The United States is by every measure the most generous nation in history.“

• Not environmental responsibility but “U.S. access to critical resources, including minerals and rare earth elements” 

The NSS document’s tone and emphases harken back to the biblical descriptions of ancient Assyria and Babylon, including those regional empires’ rulers’ self-aggrandizing postures, e.g., Sennacherib (Isaiah 36-37), Belshazzar (Daniel 5).

A key component of the NSS statement is to economically and militarily control the Western Hemisphere, i.e., for the US to explicitly assert itself as a regional empire. This strategy is (mis-)labeled as “Western Hemisphere: The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine”:

“After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.“

In actual history, the 1823 Monroe Doctrine was to prevent European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere–not simply “American [US] preeminence [and] access to key geographies throughout the region.” The 1904 Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (expressed when US international interests were expanding after the 1898 Spanish-American War) interjected a more activist posture of intervening in Latin America as the US deemed necessary. However, the new NSS aim toward “potent restoration of American [US] power and priorities” is not a “Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” per se. Instead, the NSS follows the same spirit as that of many previous rulers of Assyria, Babylon, Rome, the Ottoman Empire, the Mongol Empire, Spain, Portugal, Britain, Holland, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, and other regional empires throughout history that have come and gone.

The US intervening out of self-interest in other parts of The Americas is of course not new. This latest NSS simply makes more explicit, and brazen, US intentions–absent any sense of justice, compassion, or environmental responsibility. Put more concretely in today’s terms, the Trump Administration advocates a small cadre of strongmen–led by DJT, of course, but including Putin, Xi, Modi, and strategically crucial Saudi and Israeli leaders–who negotiate regional control of the world’s resources for each other’s increased wealth, power, and prestige.

For the inherently international, interconfessional, interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and interdependent worldwide Christian Church, living and serving within regional empires is also nothing new. The difficult struggle has been to “combat against the self-promoting, co-opting tendencies of all groups and settings” (“Inter-Christianity”). Those self-promoting, co-opting groups and settings have included regional empires, e.g., Rome, Parthia (Persia), China, several modern European nations, Japan, the USSR, the USA. Living and serving as the “inter-imperial” worldwide Church is needed to resist being co-opted by self-serving empires.

Thankfully there have been exemplary examples of Christian individuals and groups that have lived out their “inter-imperial” Christian unity and collaboration, e.g., Russian Bishop Nicolai who remained in Japan during the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War. Sadly, imperial co-opting of Christian groups has often succeeded, e.g., the Western Church’s brandings of Eastern Church traditions as heretical, contemporary Russian Orthodoxy and most US Evangelicals supporting their respective nations’ self-aggrandizement.

Inter-imperial Christianity’s current role in and for Africa needs special mention. Demographically, theologically, socially, and in many other aspects, Africa–particularly sub-Saharan Africa–is becoming the world’s most substantial and influential Christian region. For its part, the NSS (as do other regional empires’ economic strategies, particularly China’s) approaches Africa within an “investment and growth paradigm capable of harnessing [exploiting] Africa’s abundant natural resources and latent economic potential.” The NSS self-justifies that paradigm by expressing constructive-sounding objectives to “partner with select countries to ameliorate conflict, foster mutually beneficial trade relationships, and transition from a foreign aid paradigm….” However, those allegedly corrective objectives lead into the NSS's self-serving goals for Africa of “opening … markets to U.S. goods and services” and “compet[ing] for critical minerals and other resources.” In light of this fresh wave of imperial exploitation of Africa and its resources, worldwide Christian networks and partnerships must stand for justice, compassion, and environmental responsibility.

Regarding Africa and all other regions of the world, Inter-imperial Christian unity and collaboration take many forms, be they in scholarship, ministry and mission, or exercises in compassion. Christians in business, economic, political, educational, and other “non-religious” sectors play particularly important roles in fostering inter-imperial Christian influence. Important for such living and service is the foundational conviction that unity in Jesus Christ is deeper than the strong, compelling demand for imperial devotion.

As has always been the case throughout history, regional empires come and go: “The nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales” (Isaiah 40:15). Followers of Jesus Christ also have the prophetic words of Revelation 11:

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying,

“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
    who is and who was,
for you have taken your great power
    and begun to reign.
The nations raged,
    but your wrath came,
    and the time for the dead to be judged,
and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints,
    and those who fear your name,
    both small and great,
and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”

May God guide and strengthen worldwide Christian efforts to faithfully embody “Inter-Imperial Christianity.”

Please add your comments below as you will (but only after reading the linked material as well). Kyrie eleison.