Reading about recent promises of a ‘golden age of America,’ I was reminded that in 1978 the television series Dr Who had segment called The Pirate Planet, written by Douglas Adams, whose later claim to fame was The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.  The basic plot of The Pirate Planet was that when times became difficult, its leader, the Captain, would announce a ‘Golden Age of Prosperity.’  Without divulging too much of the plot, the Doctor and his companion, Romana, discovered, with some horror, that the golden age of prosperity resulted from plundering (and destroying) planets for their mineral wealth.  I suspect that Douglas Adams might have been somewhat prescient in anticipating the realisation some decades later of just how much prosperity in the western world resulted from exploitation of not only the mineral wealth, but also the people of other places and cultures.  

However, this is not quite as modern a phenomenon as we might like to believe.  Indeed, as John Lennon wrote, ‘There's nothing you can do that can't be done,’ or, ‘Nothing you can know that isn't known.’  

Promises of a golden age may appear innocent to some (and false to many others!), but study of the New Testament ought to make them unsettling.  The Roman emperors Augustus and Nero and their supporters proclaimed ‘golden ages.’  Much like the modern promises of a golden age, Romans were promised abundance, peace, and security for those who fell in line with the prerogatives of the regime.  In the first century, court poets, coins, statues, gifts of grain, and military actions proclaimed that the son of god, which is how the Roman emperor Augustus and, later, Nero were regarded, had initiated a golden age of abundance and peace.  Those willing to submit to the emperor’s ‘god-ordained’ rule and its consequent golden age were to be provided with incomparable peace and plenty for people, especially Roman citizens and wealthy free and freed men.  It promised nonhuman flourishing as well, such as fields shining gold with grain, trees and vines heavy with fruit, wild beasts tamed and contained. All of this on account of the religious devotion and tactical successes that only the emperor, as son of god and head of the body politic, could deliver.  

To be sure, Italy and its Mediterranean neighbours did enjoy a certain form of peace after the Roman Republic transitioned into an empire under Augustus. And Rome, as the empire’s capital city, experienced unparalleled abundance, peace, and religious revitalisation, particularly while Augustus ruled. For free, wealthy, male citizens, the imperial world did indeed glitter brightly.  But scratch the surface and the underlying reality reveals that the luxuries enjoyed by the few required the exploitation, domination, and impoverishment of many members of creation, human and nonhuman alike.  The gold glimmering on the surface of Roman rhetoric masked a rotten core of slavery, eviction, extraction, and murder.  

Subsequently, the emperor Nero’s own golden age of abundance relied not only on his inheritances from imperial predecessors but also on nefarious acquisitions.  After ordering Seneca to take his own life, Nero confiscated his former adviser’s vast agricultural lands in Egypt.  The emperor also took control of six estates in the province of North Africa, in and around modern Tunisia, when he had their owners murdered.  Their combined holdings amounted to half of the province.  With all this prime land, Nero successfully expanded his access to the ancient world’s most important commodity: grain.  The Pirate Planet may well have been inspired by such exploitation, although of course, history has tended to repeat itself numerous times in this regard. 

But the Roman empire in the first century enjoyed its (selective) golden age against the backdrop of a rapidly growing religious movement that clearly understood the cost of prosperity for a few at the expense of many.  The letter of the Apostle Paul written to the church in Rome can be seen to be rather subversive in this regard. 

While the Apostle Paul is often read as a theologian concerned with salvation and grace, his letter to the Romans is also a bold political statement. In a world where Caesar was proclaimed as the son of god, Paul’s declaration that Jesus is Lord carried radical implications.  To confess allegiance to Christ was not merely a private spiritual act - it was a public, political commitment that rejected the emperor’s claim to divine authority.  The church in Rome, composed of a mix of Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, enslaved and free, embodied a new kind of community, one grounded in mutual care, humility, and the renunciation of domination.

Paul’s exhortations, particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth chapter of his letter to the Romans, called the community to a way of life that stood in contrast to imperial values: to bless those who persecute, to repay no one evil for evil, to associate with the lowly, and to overcome evil with good.  Rather than depend on violence or coercive power, Paul encouraged a community founded on service, generosity, and hope - one that bore witness to a different kind of kingdom, where peace was not imposed from above but cultivated from below.  Indeed this whole section begins with, ‘Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’  

This counter-imperial vision resonates with the teachings of Jesus, who spoke of the ‘Kingdom of God’ as leaven in the dough, or a hidden treasure, or a mustard seed - humble beginnings that grow into something transformative.  In this way, the early Christian community became a prophetic voice, challenging the myth of empire by embodying an alternative story of human and cosmic flourishing.  I am inclined to suspect, rather sadly, that if this was not in the Bible, it would be dismissed as ‘woke’ nowadays.

The parallels to our own time are difficult to ignore. Today’s promises of a golden age - whether from populist leaders, Silicon Valley technocrats, or multinational corporations - often conceal extractive logics not unlike those of the Roman empire or the Pirate Planet.  We see it in the vast inequalities of the global economy, where the comfort of the few depends on the relentless labour and sacrifice of the many.  We see it in environmental degradation, where the earth itself is treated as a resource to be plundered for short-term gain.  We see it in the rhetoric of prosperity that glosses over injustice, silences dissent, and defines peace as the absence of protest rather than the presence of equity.

And yet, as in the first century, alternative visions continue to emerge.  From faith communities to grassroots movements, from indigenous traditions to ecological networks, there are those who refuse to accept ‘golden ages’ built on the suffering of others. They call us to remember that true prosperity is not measured by GDP or military strength, but by the flourishing of all creation - human and nonhuman alike.

In the end, the allure of a so-called golden age often conceals a far darker truth: that someone, somewhere, must pay the cost.  Whether in Nero’s Rome or Douglas Adams’ Pirate Planet, the prosperity of the few too often comes at the expense of the many.  But the early Christian witness offers a striking counter-narrative - one that champions humility over hubris, sharing over hoarding, and truth over spectacle.  In our own age, marked by both abundance and inequality, the call to discern what lies beneath the gold is as urgent as ever.