You can easily recognize the tenets of political theology by examining the rhetoric found in White Christian nationalism. However, it is also embedded in spaces we feel are obviously secular. I argue that these roots can be found in that passage from the book of Revelation in which humanity’s restoration is preceded by a final conflict and an eternal separation. Divine justice—and therefore, ultimate justice—is accomplished for all eternity by creating the correspondingly ultimate polarity, the division between Heaven and Hell. What does this kind of final division among human beings seem to promise in our current polarized atmosphere? Why do we in the public squares of American discourse suffer such ongoing political, cultural, and theological influence from this Revelation-driven eschatology, even as theologians rigorously debate the apparently rarified nature of the apocalypse and the existence of Hell?

William J. Bernstein, author of The Delusions Of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups, argues that American polarization cannot be understood “without a working knowledge of the . . . dispensationalist narrative.”² I have come to understand that groups on the left and the right, with radically different worldviews on social challenges and profoundly different solutions for those challenges, are, paradoxically, both comforted and fueled by the idea of a final “sorting” of the kind painted vividly in Revelation 21. Wherever we fall on the harrowing American political spectrum—but especially at either end of it on the right and left—the eschatological divine promise that in the end the good will be rewarded and evil will be punished for all time seems to provide strength and confirmation that God (or “the good”) is on our side. Then, the terrible question remains: Who is good and who is evil?

We can track these promises all the way back to the patristics. Nearly all of the patristic writers affirm an eventual eternal separation between the righteous and the wicked in their commentaries, placing belief in an ultimate, consummate justice that is applied to those beyond the grace of God, with the notable exception of Origen of Alexandria. Origen tantalizingly alludes to a “mystery of future resurrection” in his Homilies on Joshua, declaring that Revelation 21 will set the stage not only for the abolishment of evil but for the destruction of death itself.³ In Origen’s commentary, a division of peoples takes place, but instead of permanent separation between judgment and salvation, people are divided between those standing in front and those standing behind who will ultimately unite with Christ.⁴ Origen’s teaching of apokatastasis, or the restoration of all things, pointed toward universal salvation. With this “minority report,” Origen (who was later anathematized) sets the stage for an enduring debate within Christendom, not only about the end times and who can be saved, but about how our worldviews impact our social interactions.

The phrase apokatastasis pantōn, meaning “restoration of everything,” is used in Acts 3:21, where the Apostle Peter heals a man who was born lame. This teaching, that perhaps everyone will gain salvation eventually, has been quietly present in various denominations of Christianity.⁵ There is indeed a movement within the widespread Christian communities of our day—including conservative evangelicalism—to emphasize the ultimate sovereignty of the loving God that will make itself known on this world, even on the stubborn and ignorant people that inhabit it. Harkening back to Origen, these committed believers maintain that in the end no one will be able to resist the love of God. Good will triumph over evil. All that is wrong will be made right. And somehow, in some way, and at some time, everyone will be saved.

Belief in the Lord’s justice has a long and rich tradition in the Christian tradition, especially in African American spirituals and hymns sung by the enslaved and abolitionists through the most brutal and inhumane moments of American chattel slavery. In their pain and suffering, the enslaved called on Providence to deliver them.⁶ This infused abolitionist sentiments as well, notably the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which draws on imagery from Revelation 19:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.

In his commentary on Revelation, Craig Koester writes that during the nineteenth century

African Americans gave Revelation a significant place in worship. The forms of Christianity practiced by slaves retained a West African sense of the immediacy of the spirit world, so when the author of Revelation reported seeing visions ‘in the Spirit,’ it was a recognized form of religious experience. Slave songs included images of gold crowns, the tree of life, and New Jerusalem, and voiced hope for a future characterized by freedom and dignity.⁷

During the Jim Crow era, Koester goes on, “worshipers continued to see a hopeful element in Revelation’s vision of cosmic change, because it meant that present conditions of injustice would not continue forever.” The sentiment is a cry as old as time: God will give me justice! This powerful belief seems to respond to and rectify the complaint in Habakkuk.⁸

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. often invoked Moses. In the final speech before his assassination on April 3, 1968, known as his “Mountaintop” speech, King called out, “I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land,” ending with the refrain, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” The oppressed, the marginalized, and all the people who suffer from injustice who heard his words then, and since, have subscribed to the apocalyptic rhetoric that there will be a great moral “sorting,” and injustice and evil will no longer be allowed to thrive. God will put things right at last.

Brian K. Blount suggests that Revelation is best understood when viewed through cultural lenses. He writes, “The shocking visions that constitute the bulk of John’s work, while undeniably awe-inspiring, provoke more questions than answers.”⁹ According to Blount, the apocalyptic book gained affinity with enslaved African American people in part because of its narrative of liberation and its prophetic posture toward oppression. The cultural conditions present in ancient Rome resonated with Black people as they read the text.

The shouting out of brutalized slaves in worship, analogous in many ways to the crying out of these slaughtered souls in Revelation, in and of itself was a register not of futility but of defiance. . . . Even the “how long Lord,” which might otherwise be interpreted as the passive cry of the utterly helpless, becomes a testimony to the belief that “we know it won’t be long, true Lord and Master, before you engage our world, and with our help make it right.”¹⁰

During my interview with Koester, he noted how King similarly pointed to the imminence of God’s justice as he rallied supporters in his speech “Our God Is Marching On,” after the long march from Selma to Montgomery:

I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody’s asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men?” . . . I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again. How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.¹¹

One would be hard pressed in contemporary America to find many folks who would question the righteousness of King’s cause—in public, at least—but a multitude of others find comfort in the Revelation-fueled thought of Providence waging holy war on their behalf.

As a boy, I was taught through my spiritual heritage that the Day of Judgment would come soon. My father, born in 1955, was raised in Camden County, North Carolina, a rural town mired in the injustice of Jim Crow, where Black people sat in the back of the bus, schools were segregated, and access to recreational venues like a movie theater or roller-skating rink was restricted by race. He attended church each Sunday along with his seven siblings and my paternal grandparents.

My dad was among the first Black students to integrate the Camden County Public Schools, and, from stories he told, he had a difficult time, suffering daily torments and indignities, from being teased and picked on to being hit or spit on by white classmates. The Ku Klux Klan tried to burn a cross on my grandfather Luther Bogues’s land, to which the World War II veteran responded, according to family stories, by angrily running outside with a shotgun as they drove away.

Knowing this context, it becomes easier for me to understand why my father and two of his brothers were attracted to the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses as they came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s. All three of them were unnerved by the strife of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the political assassinations that punctuated the era. Faced with the inhumane conditions of their hometown, the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses offered an enticing message that justice, which had eluded them for so much of their lives, might be found through biblical scripture and in the eschatological belief that soon God would right the wrongs of a fallen world. A marked sign was that in Kingdom Halls, congregants had integrated already, and there were modestly cordial relations across racial lines.

Matthew Schmalz has studied the theology and organizational practices of Jehovah’s Witnesses for more than three decades. When I interviewed him, on April 7, 2023, he said that Armageddon

reflects a sincere desire to have a world that is just. A world that is not only just but peaceful. . . . Secondly [with Armageddon] there is this undercurrent of violence being directed not by individuals, but by God toward anti-god organizations, organizations which oppress, which exclude, which marginalize. In one sense there is this optimism that this system of things can be changed and changed in a just order by God. In another sense there is this kind of resentment.

When I was around seven or eight years of age, the Watchtower magazine conducted a weekly series at our Kingdom Hall looking at the events in biblical prophecy that precluded the anticipated Armageddon. It was stressed that remaining faithful, living according to Bible principles, and being obedient to commands from the Bible and the organization’s governing body were the only way one could have a scriptural hope of surviving Armageddon, which was expected imminently in our lifetimes. The Jehovah’s Witness religion teaches that Jesus Christ returned to power in Heaven in the year 1914, around the start of World War I, and that Satan and his demons were cast down to Earth, marking the beginning of the Last Days foretold by the Bible.¹²

I remember sitting on the sofa one day, contemplating whether or not I would survive the impending apocalyptic battle or be destroyed by God for some misbehavior. I asked my father once, “What will we do when Armageddon starts?” He replied to me, “Son, we’ll be praying.” The fear left me so jumpy that I would startle at the sound of a soda bottle being opened. When I confessed to my parents what had been bothering me, they surmised, incorrectly, that my anxiety was a result of watching too many superhero cartoons and action movies and decided the best course of action was to remove my video game collection and action figures and curtail my television viewing and its “worldly” influences.

Former President Donald Trump picked Waco, Texas, as the site of the first public rally of his third presidential campaign on March 25, 2023. The town itself is steeped with apocalyptic history, as it was the location of the Branch Davidian compound raided by federal authorities in 1993. The Branch Davidians, a Christian apocalyptic sect who preached the end times were imminent, were led by a charismatic militia leader, David Koresh, who convinced his followers he was the second coming of the Messiah.¹⁵

“I am your warrior, I am your justice,” Trump bellowed to the crowd. The Texas Tribune reported Trump saying, “For those who have been wronged and betrayed . . . I am your retribution.”¹⁶ Trump’s address to the estimated 15,000 in the crowd was steeped in grievance but also in apocalyptic rhetoric and symbolism: “2024 is the final battle, it’s going to be the big one,” he declared.¹⁷ “Either we surrender to the demonic forces abolishing and demolishing, and happily doing so, our country, or we defeat them in a landslide on November 5, 2024,” he added. “Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state.”¹⁸

It is clear that Trump casts himself as a messianic figure to his adherents, pledging to wage war, on their behalf, on those he says are ruining the country, and promising a restorative, redemptive path to those who would join his cause to “Make America Great Again.” He vows to throw out the “thugs” and “criminals” and has said he would identify gang members and undocumented immigrants and deport them from the country. The “final battle” envisioned by Trump allows him to enact a real-life narrative of Revelation 21, where the New Jerusalem descends to Earth from Heaven.

Trump’s jeremiad-like vision appeals to White Christian nationalists who see America as being restored to the Eden-like days of its past. In this purely and symptomatically American eschaton, a final separation is the goal. Trump’s Apocalypse would exile from the American New Jerusalem all who oppose him politically. In many ways, this language is also inspired by traditional New England Puritan rhetoric in which America is portrayed as a “City upon a Hill” and “City of God,” as Phillip Gorski and Samuel Perry explain in their book The Flag and the Cross. Gorski and Perry suggest that White Christian nationalist beliefs

reflect a desire to restore and privilege the myths, values, identity, and authority of a particular ethnocultural tribe. These beliefs add up to a political vision that privileges that tribe. And they seek to put other tribes in their “proper” place.¹⁹

In his 2020 book, Embodied Idolatry: A Critique of Christian Nationalism, Kyle Edward Haden says Christian nationalism, especially the American strain, has eroded the Gospel message that looks for redemption in all humankind. Haden makes the argument that nationalism constitutes a form of idolatry, a worship that places something man-made above or at an equal footing with God. Haden says that because nationalism is “sold under the guise of patriotism, it is not only hard to dislodge, it is hard even to recognize as idolatrous.” Haden argues that the narratives get embedded through “a variety of narratives of American exceptionalism and White Christian supremacy ingested from childhood. It is experienced as a form of expansiveness of being, offering implicit, and sometimes explicit, promises of gaining greater desirability.”²⁰

Apocalyptic rhetoric is not only confined to the spaces of the religious and political right, although it’s not exactly a mirror image on the political left. Climate change activists have adopted many of these tropes as the threats of global sea level rise and the warming planet take hold. As a child, I watched a television show called Captain Planet and the Planeteers in which a group of global teenagers are united under the sanction of Gaia, the Spirit of the Earth, to battle with a cadre of henchmen who pollute the planet with reckless greed and abandon. The teenagers, assembled under the moniker the “Planeteers,” wield rings that unleash wind, water, earth, and fire, along with the spiritual element of heart, to combat the wicked polluters. The Planeteers combine their powers to form “Captain Planet,” a messianic figure who delivers justice to the enemies they cannot conquer on their own. The eschatological beliefs of the Planeteers are showcased in the lyrics of the television show’s theme song:

Captain Planet, he’s our hero.
Gonna take pollution down to zero,
He’s our powers magnified,
And he’s fighting on the planet’s side
Captain Planet, he’s our hero,
Gonna take pollution down to zero,
Gonna help him put asunder
Bad guys who like to loot and plunder

Within the lyrics of what is essentially the opening hymn in this beloved children’s environmental fairy tale based on all too real scientific projections is yet another reenactment of Revelation 21. In the ecological and climate Apocalypse, pollution must be annihilated, ushering in a “New Heaven” and a “New Earth.” Take note that Captain Planet’s followers are to help him put “asunder”—which implies a separation—all those who perpetrate the looting and plundering of the earth. In the closing lyrics, an invitation is delivered to be a participant in this political theology: “We’re the planeteers, you can be one too! ’cause saving our planet is the thing we’ve got to do,” the theme’s chorus exhorted. “The power is yours!” Included with the toy figures from the show sold to children was a plastic ring styled like the one carried by the Planeteers.

St. Silouan the Athonite once chided a hermit who proclaimed atheists would “burn in everlasting fire.” St. Silouan prayed for the souls of all the living and the dead, including those in Hell. As recounted by his pupil Archimandrite Sophrony, St. Silouan responded by asking the following question: “Tell me, supposing you went to paradise, and there looked down and saw somebody burning in hell-fire, would you feel happy?” The hermit resolved that it would be the fault of the damned and could not be helped. St. Silouan replied, “Love could not bear that,” adding, “We must pray for all.” Sophrony writes that St. Silouan placed high priority on love for enemies, calling it the “criterion of true faith, of true communion with God, and a sign of the real action of grace.”²¹

The St. Silouan story reminds me of an interview I did a few years ago with Ed Stetzer, now dean of the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, who gave me the following abbreviated exegesis of Micah 6:8: God is more just than we can comprehend, and also more merciful. We are told that the Lord requires both justice and mercy from us, but finding the balance between the two poles is a woeful charge. And there is an additional, underemphasized requirement in the verse: the call to act with humility. As we imperfectly strive to balance justice with mercy, we must also strive to temper our own certitude with humility, avoiding the urge, as the feminist critical theorist Donna Haraway described it, to employ “the god trick of seeing everything from nowhere.”²²

In many ways, I find the eschatological remedy of apokatastasis appealing on the surface, yet unsatisfying when applied to a maximal utility of unconditional pardon. In my opinion the generous extension of mercy for even the most evil acts must include the critical component that I learned through the Twelve-step program of making amends. To echo the cry of activists throughout the civil rights movements: No Justice, No Peace! But still, to be sure, the teaching of apokatastasis provides an appealing framework within which—maybe, despite evidence to the contrary—in light of God’s vast mercy, we could and should find the redemptive qualities in everyone. There is a joyful rest I find in Revelation when I ponder Koester’s analysis that the vision of redemption includes a countless multitude of every tribe and nation that no one can number. That gives you a sense of God’s mercy, he says. There is satisfaction, too, in the thought that the Almighty is not blind to injustice, indifferent to pain, or neutral to the cause of those who suffer.

There’s an aphorism that the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know. If anything, my studies at Harvard Divinity School have yielded more questions than answers, and some of my beliefs have been problematized and complicated. I admit that I’m partial to the approach, favored by Eastern Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware and Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Barron, that we should, at a bare minimum, hope for the salvation of all. What would be the purpose of the Christian faith and the good news if we didn’t hope for everyone to be saved?

Such a hope certainly motivated my beloved grandmother to spend her twilight years preaching door-to-door; and it motivates me to sit at Twelve Steps meetings each week, sharing what experience, strength, and hope I have that, maybe with faith in God and the hard work of repair, another suffering alcoholic can be saved from destruction. What do we lose when we don’t strive for at least that approach in our interactions with people? Isn’t this the only way we might fulfill the great commandment Jesus gave when he implored us to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves? Surely our body politic has suffered as a result of our certainty about who is good and who is evil.

Still, a more complex question might be: What would it mean to employ a political theology of apokatastasis and abandon the hegemonic political theology of Armageddon? Would it mean more truth and reconciliation, as opposed to the nihilist rhetoric, cancel culture, and fiery jeremiads we are accustomed to? Would it mean more inclusive language, and resisting the urge to believe in the worst of intentions among those we view as our adversaries, reserving self-critique for our own actions instead? I certainly believe so.

It’s been reported that the great evangelist Billy Graham once dismissed Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision for a desegregated country, as outlined in his “I Have A Dream Speech,” saying, “Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.”²³ Graham’s mistake in this case may have been both a lack of ambition and a failure of pragmatic vision about what could be accomplished if the arrival of the “New Jerusalem” was not relied upon.

There is much in the work of justice that we have the capability to do ourselves. It will never be a perfect expedition this side of Heaven, but that doesn’t absolve us from trying. It takes me back to the Serenity Prayer used in Twelve Steps settings, where we pray to change the things we can. Instead of anticipating the end of the world and letting Armageddon do the work of meting out divine justice, could we instead see all as worthy of redemption, and build the beloved, expansive, multicultural, multicolor community King envisioned?

Bereft of a final separation, integrating ourselves to dwell in harmony implicates us in a much lengthier process of working to see the divine image in everyone. I know that some of this reconciliation will certainly require the work of Providence. My ownership of the concept of humility reinforces the belief I espoused above, that in some higher realm, with powers at play that are greater than me, the troubles of the world are worked out and the people I might not see the best in are yet part of the divine plan. At the same time, my own spiritual journey has taught me that some of the challenges we face will require us to do the hard work ourselves, much as those who were lost to the hell of addiction find recovery through the Twelve Steps.

Austin Bogues graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 2023 with a master of religion and public life degree. He was a 2021 fellow with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism.