Christians might do well to do some sociology. After all the Bible is full of it. One basic concept is “establishments”. They are people with privileges and patterns of control who maintain their positions in a range of ways. So, for example, we are used to the Queen being surrounded by soldiers, dressed posh so that we like them, but soldiers have partly kept the monarchy in place since William the Conqueror, except when Oliver Cromwell took over, and he was military too. But establishments are held in place by many factors. They can be impressive though buildings like the Palace of Versailles, or dress, or music, or statues or capital cities or fame. Indeed, the Tower of Babel and Ziggurats were probably the first establishments – the central group of people who will make a name for themselves. They normally, backed by military compulsion, establish themselves through law, property ownership, slavery and control of labour. The Norman conquest did the Doomsday Book to establish Norman property rights and people were serfs to part control their labour. Most societies through most of history have been establishments; in China the literati have been basic to its civilisation. So all of us should try to understand them.

Establishments are so normal that they shape culture, the way we see things, through most of history. In ancient Greece the slaves were eclipsed by Plato and Aristotle in the formation of ideas, and since then scholars, poets, playwrights, jesters, philosophers and religions have gathered round the political establishment, mainly the monarch. The Pharoahs, the Roman Emperors, the Doges in Venice, the Spanish, Indian, Chinese and British Courts carried the culture of the day. Shakespeare traded in establishment cultures – Caesar, Hamlet, the Merchant of Venice, the English Kings, Macbeth, Lear and the black Othello. So cultural formation, what is often called civilisation, is establishment culture, what the big people think. And the big people have time to think, because they have other people working for them, paying taxes and being servants. In the18th century the aristocracy had libraries in their stately homes and employed tame philosophers to think for them. We call it the Enlightenment. Most people in the arts rely on establishment patrons to fund their painting and they have often produced boring large sycophantic works which we move quickly past in the Louvre, Vienna, the National Gallery or stately homes. In all of this vast establishment culture lurks the question, “Does the Establishment possess the truth?” Normally, the Establishment answers quickly, “Of course, we do.”

And then there is establishment and religion. You have already thought of “the established church”. But that is not a big enough place to start. Often the gods have been the establishment. The Pharoahs, Dagon, the Caesars were gods, state gods. Athena in the Parthenon was the Athenian state. If the god, the centre of all existence, was the state, then it ruled, it was to be obeyed unquestioningly. We easily forget that in 1945 the Emperor of Japan had this status still, even when Japan had been defeated. So religion has been owned by the establishment throughout most or all human history, fused with the state and it has told us how to do religion with many bizarre outcomes. We have had gods of war, gods who keep the masses in fear. Many religious buildings, temples, are there to impress, to keep this great show on the road. Obviously, we have scarcely touched this great subject, but we must press on.

For establishments are self-important. They involve some people seeing themselves as special and looking down on others. The others may be slaves, serfs, workers, servants, the masses, ordinary people, hoi polloi (the many), the proletariat and so on who will supply the work and goods to keep the established elite in the comfort to which they are accustomed. Taxation is a part of this – taxation which then pays a servant class. The control of wages is similar. We now realise that the whole business of slavery and empire was part of an extension of this pattern around the globe. The Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, British, Belgian, French, Italian, Russian and German Empires involved constructing a vast pattern of domination around every continent to serve the elites of Europe and enrich them.

So this concept is quite close to the centre of human history, except it is not quite. It occurs in the Bible, but it is, so to speak, knocked off its pedestal and now we must consider how. Pharoah is establishment and the Children of Israel are slaves. But Pharoah is defeated and the Children of Israel are freed to live before God. They receive the Ten Commandments and are called to live by the law. Moses is the servant of God, and is sanctioned when he fails. The military is not important. The religious system is limited to a portable ark of the covenant and life is defined for all people as living in lawful equality. The distribution of land is roughly equal and slavery is forbidden except at the edges. Of course, this is a primitive society, but what we tend not to notice is that the nation-state of Israel is anti-establishment. God chooses the normally humble ruler, not the establishment. It is a minor nation. It wrongly chooses the route of wanting a king like the other nations and God’s prophets emerge as a continual critical commentary on the rulers and political establishment. When Solomon establishes religion in the Temple and accumulates chariots and horses and Rehoboam moves to slavery, Israel breaks up, and the later prophets are a continual commentary against establishment and its falsehoods.

Come the Gospels and Jesus thoroughly deconstructs the whole system of establishment. He will bring down the mighty from their thrones. The ruler is the servant. His yoke is easy. He ignores the self-important. The first will be last and the last will be first. God’s pay is equal. He is the friend of the outcast. Yet he is the ruler, the King of the Jews, the Son of Man, the Messiah, the actual ruler who will not even be defeated by the cross, that tool of Roman intimidation.  He is the ruler who has nowhere to lay his head, and the one who rejects control even when his betrayer is sitting with him. But this is not merely a reaction against establishment, but the business of all of us living the whole of life openly and truly before God and Jesus parables us into what that is like. The Good Samaritan is healthcare for all. We do not trust the sword. We forgive and mend relationships. We love our neighbours and learn that meek living is good news. The disciples, the learners are ordinary people, and, Jesys insists, the rulers must be slaves. Of course we are still trying to see what this great calling to humankind means, but it certainly means the overturning and withering away of establishments.

And the Church is compromised. Catholic and Protestant churches have long done deals with the established state. The churches trim their messages to supporting the State. God will give us the victory in War. The Archbishop crowns the sovereign. In return the church is established. In the Elizabethan era you could be fined sixpence for not going to church. Many churchpeople think, live, pray and vote in terms of the establishment. In the Trump era some American Christians tried to achieve a special US version of a subchristian establishment. But perhaps now things must be different. We cannot short cut on God’s way. The planet is being destroyed by the Western establishment, especially the capitalist one. We ordinary Christians have the task of unthinking all our habitual orientations towards the establishments we live in. For establishments just carry on. But the teaching of Christ, whom we follow as students, does not carry on. There may be two dozen establishments from which we must escape and new relationships which must be forged, if God is to be with us. Of course, God is with us, if we are humble and open, but we must seek to find, and destruction is stalking the planet. Substantially, it is destruction caused by establishments, and the meek, the non-establishment people, will inherit the earth. It is a vast unviolent revolution, bigger than all of us, to be done by following Jesus. Responding to what the Creator may be asking of us to conserve this exquisite earth requires establishments to reform or crumble. These levels of thinking involve exiting the status quo and Jesus insists on saying, “But I say unto you…”