Reclaiming God from Empire: Nonviolence in an Age of Religious Nationalism

I didn’t set out to study nonviolence. Like many, I stumbled upon it in fragments, quotes that refused to leave me, the persistent sense that some ancient wisdom was trying to cut through the noise of our modern world.

Over time, through teaching, crisis counseling, community organizing, and meditation, I’ve come to a radical realization: Nonviolence is not merely a political tactic or a personal ethic. It is a global resistance movement against the fusion of religion and empire. It is how we reclaim God from the powers that abuse the sacred to justify violence.

We live in an age of rising religious nationalism. From Hindu majoritarianism in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India, to Christian nationalism in the United States, to theocratic impulses behind Israeli settler expansionism, to Islamist authoritarianism across parts of the Middle East, violent ideologies drape themselves in sacred flags. Across continents, politics does not just use religion, it deifies power itself.

These movements, despite differences in theology, share a dangerous logic: God belongs to the nation-state. Dissent is heresy. Violence in defense of faith is holy. From Trump rallies invoking Jesus as a warrior against “wokeness,” to mobs in Sri Lanka attacking Muslim businesses under Buddhist banners, the message is the same: We are the faithful, and they are the enemy.

This is not faith. It is idolatry.

Nonviolence is not weakness, it is moral imagination.

The through line is the same everywhere: Political machines manipulate our spiritual longing—our desire for meaning, belonging, and moral clarity—into instruments of fear. Fear of invasion, moral decay, the other. Religion fused with nationalism offers an intoxicating narrative: You are chosen, your suffering righteous, your violence divinely sanctioned.

The consequences are stark: genocide in Myanmar, insurgencies in Nigeria, mass protests in Iran led by women chanting “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi”—Woman, Life, Freedom.

Yet, wherever God is weaponized, people of conscience rise to reclaim the sacred.

The prophets of scripture were never courtiers to kings. Jeremiah, Amos, Isaiah, Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, Guru Nanak—they stood outside the gates, shouting warnings. They taught that God is never found in empires but in the poor, the exiled, the occupied.

Jesus did not die because he preached love; he died because he preached a love that refused Caesar. His nonviolence was not meekness; it was resistance. To “love your enemies” was to forgive Roman soldiers, tax collectors, collaborators, a revolutionary courage that unsettled empires.

Mahatma Gandhi understood this deeply. His weapon was truth; his discipline, nonviolence. His target: the British Empire, which fused God, king, and commerce into one colonial theology. Gandhi’s Ahimsa was a spiritual rebuke to every religion that justified oppression in God’s name. He was not just a nationalist, he was an exorcist.

The world has changed. Weapons are faster. Propaganda is louder. Failures now risk climate catastrophe, nuclear war, genocide. Yet the core dynamic remains: Empire seeks to baptize its violence. In President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Orthodox priests bless missiles. In Gaza and southern Israel, both Hamas and Israeli extremists quote scripture to justify massacres. In the US, Bible verses are wielded to demonize LGBTQ+ communities and suppress reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the poor remain poor, the Earth burns, and God’s name is dragged through bloodied streets.

Resistance requires more than interfaith talk or symbolic gestures. We need a global, spiritually rooted movement connecting every site of conscience. Pastors, imams, rabbis, monks, Indigenous elders, atheists, spiritual seekers, anyone refusing the false choice between extremism and moral apathy.

Such movements exist, though rarely in headlines:

• In Iraq, Muslim and Christian activists march together for water rights and anti-corruption.
• In Nigeria, interfaith committees interrupt cycles of revenge violence.
• In the US, Jewish and Christian leaders occupy Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, practicing faith in action.
• In India, Dalit Buddhists and Sikhs resist Hindutva ideology with solidarity, not hatred.
• In Brazil, Afro-Brazilian religious practitioners confront evangelical persecution through ritual, music, and protest.

These are the prophets of our time, not famous, not always safe, but always faithful.

Nonviolence may seem fragile in a world of drones, deepfakes, authoritarian surveillance, beheadings, bombings. Hunger strikes against indifferent governments can feel meaningless. Yet, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the “Frontier Gandhi,” organized 100,000 Pashtun men into a nonviolent army, declaring, “It is cowardice to kill. It requires courage to be nonviolent.”

I recall historical images of Black Panthers feeding children, monks lying before tanks in Myanmar, Standing Rock, grandmothers chaining themselves to border fences, Iranian women burning hijabs in defiance. Nonviolence is not weakness, it is moral imagination. It refuses empire the power to define our dignity.

It is difficult. I fail daily. My thoughts are not always peaceful; my rhetoric sometimes sharp. I am still unlearning the myth that power requires domination. Yet we must try. The alternative is annihilation.

As a counselor and teacher, I witness the spiritual devastation of religious violence, not only physical, but emotional: shame, fear, exclusion. A woman fleeing an evangelical cult. A gay teen rejected by his mosque. A veteran praying for forgiveness nightly after deploying drone strikes.

Reclaiming God is urgent. Pastoral. Political. Global. The world doesn’t need more interfaith conferences. It needs a defiant, loving, spiritually alive army saying, “No” to every lie told in God’s name and “Yes” to every human being whose dignity is at risk.

Yes to Palestinians and Israelis. Yes to Muslims and Hindus. Yes to atheists and fundamentalists. Yes to victims—and, if they seek it, to the redeemed.

The God I follow does not wave flags. Does not draw borders. Is found in the faces of those who show up unarmed. If faith is real, it must be revolutionary. If God is just, God must be liberated from every flag, every bomb, every distorted sermon.

This is the work. And it requires all of us.

Nonviolence or nonexistence. Gandhi and King made their choice. What will ours be?