Analysis | Written by Dr. Lewis Brogdon | January 7, 2026
Published originally by Baptist News Global
For the past few months, I’ve immersed myself in prophetic writings, Second Temple apocalypticism and related texts. And I know what you may be thinking: He’s fascinated by the end of the world. Not really.
What has captivated me is the backdrop of these writings — people of faith dealing with the world as it is, not as it could or should be. Texts like the book of Revelation are not about predicting future dates; they are borne out of the brutal reality experienced by people of faith living under oppressive political and social conditions.
Apocalyptic literature emerges in contexts where the powers of this world crush the vulnerable, distort justice and claim allegiance by force and fear. For the communities who produced Daniel, Revelation and similar writings, empire was not an abstraction; it was a daily reality of violence, coercion and compelled worship. These texts introduce us to cosmic dimensions of struggle, realities beyond what meets the eye and forces that shape human history in ways that often go unnoticed by the powerful and are paid for with the blood of the powerless.
Yet there is a further truth here — one Scripture forces us to confront but we often evade: How easy it is for human beings, even the religious, to bow the knee to idolatrous and corrupt power. This article is about why Christians bow to power, why we must name it, and why we must resist with humility — knowing we are not as immune as we imagine.
Apocalyptic reality: Empire and allegiance
In the book of Daniel, three young men risk everything by refusing the king’s command to bow before a golden statue. God delivers them, and we celebrate their faithfulness. But we rarely pause to consider the multitude that bowed — the people who chose survival over allegiance, conformity over conviction. The story invites us to see not just the heroes but also the crowd that capitulated.
In Revelation, John’s vision is drenched in imperial language and imagery because the Roman Empire was the dominant power that shaped every aspect of life. In chapters 13 and beyond, we see not only resistance but a vast multitude worshipping the beast — a stark depiction of how political power, economic pressure and cultural norms seduce allegiance away from God toward the world’s gods.
These texts remind us evil is not merely individual moral failure; it is also embedded in systems that offer security in exchange for loyalty.
Jesus himself knew this reality. On the night of his betrayal, Peter promised unwavering loyalty, yet three times he denied knowing Jesus. The rest of the disciples deserted him and fled. In the face of fear, disappointment and danger, those closest to Jesus did not stand firm. Why do we so often miss these parts of the story? I think it’s because these narratives hold up a mirror — one that reflects not only the inspiring few, but the many who compromise when the stakes are high.
Compromise in a compromised world
Today, we are living in a time that invites comparison with these ancient patterns — not because history is repeating in some deterministic way, but because the dynamic of power and allegiance remains the same.
Consider the profound moral questions raised by recent political realities:
- Military force without legislative sanction. In the past year, the United States has engaged in military operations in Venezuela, Nigeria and Iran without explicit authorization from Congress. The Constitution vests the power to declare war in the legislative branch; bypassing that authority raises urgent ethical questions about the use of lethal force and democratic accountability.
- The dismantling of federal institutions. Federal agencies charged with humanitarian work and public service — including USAID — have been drastically reduced, leaving dedicated public servants unemployed and critical programs undercut. Abrupt decisions often were made without adequate care for the human cost.
- Domestic deployments of the National Guard. The use of military or quasi-military forces to police American cities without clear statutory authority challenges norms against militarization of civilian life and raises concerns about civil liberties.
- Conditional funding as coercion. Threats to withdraw federal funding from universities and organizations that uphold diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have pressured institutions to abandon commitments to marginalized communities under the threat of financial loss.
None of these developments occur in a vacuum. They are part of a broader moral landscape in which power is exercised without accountability, where human life is subordinated to strategic interests, where bureaucracy can feel callous, and where coercive incentives reshape institutional behavior.
We are living in one of those historical moments that try people’s souls and test their faith. And what is striking — what should unsettle us — is how many Christians are responding. Not with prophetic critique. Not with moral clarity. But with silence, rationalization, indifference or even applause.
Many have bowed the knee — looking the other way, offering theological cover or redefining justice and righteousness to fit the contours of political convenience. Many bowed and, in some cases, are still bowing.
This bowing is not abstract. It has a location. It has job descriptions and boardrooms and pulpits attached to it:
- CEOs and corporate decision makers
- University and college executives
- Search committees and governing boards
- Mid-level governmental officials and bureaucratic enforcers
- Pastors, ministry leaders and denominational voices.
And it is not only those in positions of authority. It is the people within these systems — employees, faculty, congregants, staff — who feel the pressure to comply to keep their jobs, protect their families or simply avoid conflict.
Survival can feel like wisdom. Pragmatism can sound like virtue. Bowing the knee can seem reasonable — even responsible. But if we cannot acknowledge the forces that make bowing the knee feel that way, we never will learn how to stand.
Holding truth and mercy together
There is a danger here for those of us who care about justice, righteousness and public faithfulness. It is the danger of believing that because we can see the compromise of others, we must be immune to it ourselves. When we name the ways Christians have bowed the knee to corrupt power, we are not standing over them in triumph. As Paul writes in Galatians, “Restore such a one in a spirit of meekness, remembering that you too may be tempted.”
In other words: Call out the compromise but do not forget your own capacity for it.
This requires a rare kind of humility — a humility that justice movements sometimes struggle to practice. There can be an unspoken arrogance among those who resist: If you were righteous like us, you would have stood. If you saw clearly like we do, you would have resisted. But Scripture and experience tell a different story. We were all bowing the knee to something once. Many of us still are — just on issues that benefit us, flatter us, or shelter us.
It is one thing to say, “You bowed the knee. You were wrong.” It is another to say, “I could bow too. I have bowed before. God have mercy on us all.”
This is not an attempt to soften the truth or excuse moral failure. It is an attempt to tell the truth fully: Evil is resisted not by people who think they are above compromise, but by people who know how vulnerable they are to it. The aim is not moral superiority but faithful clarity; not perfectionism but repentance; not public shaming but truthful restoration. Humility, then, is not a retreat from justice — it is what keeps justice from becoming its own form of empire.
And if this is true — if the line between faithfulness and failure runs through every human heart — then the work in front of us is not merely to denounce compromise out there, but to understand how that compromise takes root in here. Before we move further, we have to pause and ask the harder question: What makes ordinary, well-intentioned people bow? Not the villains of history, but the neighbors we worship beside, the leaders we admire, the friends we trust, even the selves we present to the world.
The issue is not only that people fail, but why they fail — and what forces shape that failure long before the public moment of collapse. To confront that truth, we have to look not just at Scripture, but at the human psyche, the pressures of systems and the social realities that form us. This is where the mirror turns toward us.
A mirror we resist
Why does this happen? One insight comes from social psychology. Philip Zimbardo, in The Lucifer Effect, argues that good people are capable of evil not simply because of flawed character but because of the situational and systemic forces that shape behavior. When individuals find themselves in environments that reward conformity, silence or obedience, the barrier between good and evil becomes permeable. Zimbardo emphasizes that evil is not only inhuman monsters — it is human beings who act in ways that harm, demean and destroy others when the situation pushes them that way.
This resonates deeply with the biblical witness. Jesus did not suggest that only some people are capable of betrayal; he revealed that even his closest followers could fail under pressure.
The early church grappled with this reality too. In the Donatist controversy of the fourth century, Christians argued over how to treat believers who had renounced their faith under persecution. Some demanded purity and exclusion. Others, like Augustine, argued the church is always a mixed body — one in which mercy and truth must coexist.
The church’s task, then, is not to pretend compromise is impossible, but to name how easy it is — for me, for you, for all of us — to bow the knee under pressure, fear or desire for peace and security.
What does discipleship look like now?
The biblical call to discipleship is not comfortable. “You cannot serve God and mammon,” says Jesus in Matthew 6:24. The call to love neighbor, to seek justice, to protect the vulnerable, to resist evil — these are not optional extras. They are the language of what it means to follow Jesus in a world shaped by competing allegiances.
Our age is not an age of simple villains and heroes. It is an age where good people can easily acquiesce to structures of power that harm others — and simultaneously believe they are faithful. This is the very danger apocalyptic texts warn against: Not merely the existence of evil, but the seductive normalcy of evil.
So let this article be an invitation — not to despair, but to sober self-examination. Let it remind us that discipleship is costly, that allegiance to Christ may put us at odds with systems that demand complicity, and that the church always has struggled to discern where faithfulness begins and compromise takes hold.
If we are to stand like the three in Daniel’s story, it will not be because we are naturally heroic, but because we have recognized how easily we could be the ones bowing. If we are to follow the Lamb in Revelation’s vision, it will be by seeing clearly the forces that would seduce our loyalty and by choosing, again and again, to resist.
Because in the end, discipleship is not measured by the number of people who say they follow, but by the number who refuse to bow, even when the crowd — including the crowd of self-identified believers — bends the knee.
Faithfulness today may look less like winning and more like refusing to bow; less like triumph and more like truth; less like certainty and more like repentance that becomes courage. If we hope to stand in a furnace moment, it will not be because we believed ourselves heroes, but because we learned to confess our own susceptibility to the crowd.
We also must leave room for those who have bowed to rise again. Shame has a way of cementing people to their worst moment, trapping them in silence, fear or denial. The gospel refuses to leave us there. Peter’s denial is recorded in Scripture not to humiliate him for eternity, but to reveal the one who met him in failure, restored him and called him again.
If Christians today have capitulated to power, the answer is not cancelation or exile; it is the invitation Jesus gave Peter on the shore: “Do you love me? Then follow me.” Restoration is not an escape from accountability; it is what makes accountability meaningful — and it offers a path for rebuilding a country in moral ruins.
Lewis Brogdon serves as interim pastor here at Crescent Hill Baptist Church. He is the newly appointed executive director of Just Faith Ministries.
