Shlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
This appeared in the CNEWA Magazine.
http://www.cnewa.org/cw29-2-pp30.htm

Poosh BaShlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Yuhannon

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Antidisestablishmentarianism

by Msgr. Archimandrite Robert L. Stern

"What's the longest word in the English language?" was a challenge in my grade school. "Antidisestablishmentarianism" was supposed to be the correct answer. The word refers to opposition to disestablishing, in particular, the official Church of England. This is almost the exact opposite of the popular American idea of separation of church and state.

Many British colonists in North America were religious dissidents who had fled religious oppression in their homeland. When political structures for the United States were being developed, it was agreed that there should not be any official government-established religion.

This was a radically new idea that went against the tide of history.

For example, the ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman empires all saw state, religion and culture as indivisibly linked.

Many early Christians were killed not for being followers of Jesus, but for denying public veneration of the divine Roman emperor. Their religious convictions made them appear as traitors to the state.

When Christianity became the imperial state religion in the 4th century, the tables were turned, but the same linkage of religion and state prevailed. In the Byzantine East, until the 15th century, the emperor was head of the Church and "Coequal of the Apostles."

It was the emperor who convoked and presided at the early ecumenical councils � and set much of their agenda as well.

After the fall of Rome in the 5th century, again the linkage prevailed, but this time the religious authority, the pope, took on the power of the state.

Popes continued as temporal rulers until the 19th century, when they lost their lands to a new, unified Italian state.

Union of church and state characterized many Catholic countries right up until the Second Vatican Council.

Sometimes religion was displaced by another, pseudo-religious ideology, but one still linked to the state � for example, rationalism/secularism in France, Nazi socialism in Germany and Marxist communism in Eastern Europe.

Notwithstanding the American inspired idea of separation of church and state, in much of the world today, in effect, an "antidisestablishmentarian" view prevails.

Wherever Muslims are the majority, Islam is the prime constituent of society. Islam does not know a separation of religion from government. Islamic states, whether secular, moderate or extremist, all still have an "established religion."

Israel was founded as a Jewish state. It still struggles to define its identity and the role and rights of its non-Jewish citizens.

Paradoxically, the United States, so concerned with separation of church and state at home, supports both the Jewish and some Muslim states in the Middle East, while wrestling with its relations with the other Muslim ones.

Moses was a ruler; so was Muhammad. Jesus denied that his kingdom was of this world, but it has been taking his followers a long time to really get the message.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

"When Christianity became the imperial state religion in the 4th century, the tables were turned, but the same linkage of religion and state prevailed. In the Byzantine East, until the 15th century, the emperor was head of the Church and 'Coequal of the Apostles.'

"It was the emperor who convoked and presided at the early ecumenical councils � and set much of their agenda as well."

This is far too simplistic a synopsis and, in fact, quite wrong. The emperor was NEVER considered "head" of the Church, though he was viewed -- by the Eastern Fathers and others -- as a protector and defender of the Church. Chrysostom calls the state a "co-worker" (synergos) and "assistant" (boethos) to the Church in teaching men how to live rightly, i.e. virtuously. Symphonia or interdependence is not the same thing as so-called caesaropapism (which was NEVER the norm in the East).

There are, it is true, so-called establishmentarian impulses in the dominant Orthodox/patristic theology of politics and government, but they are far more nuanced than Archimandrite Stern's argument suggests.

Unlike both the dominant political theology defended by Roman Catholicism -- which made the Church a state, even a super-state -- and Protestantism -� which posited a strict and sometimes radical separation between Church and state, arguably laying the foundation for the Enlightenment model of relegating religion to the so-called private sphere �- the Greek Fathers appeal to the Church as a standard, an archetype, by which all secular governments are to be judged. The state should aspire to govern like the Church, though mankind's fallen condition means that this will likely never be fully realized. Cf. Ivan Karamazov's "essay" discussed in one of the early chapters of Dostoevsky's great novel: the state is intended to become like the Church, not vice-versa (the ultramontanism of Pope Gregory VII).

This appeal to ecclesiology, as it were, does not so much limit the aims of secular government as it does define, enlarge, perfect, and even sanctify those goals. Although the Greek patristic tradition, consistent with the Gelasian theory of the two powers, recognized that certain differences between the Church and the state existed and that some responsibilities could not be shared (e.g., the formulation of doctrine, the waging of war), it nonetheless placed considerably less emphasis on dividing up temporal and spiritual functions. Believing that many of the goals proper to the two �powers� (e.g., making men moral, providing for the common good) not only complement one another but may even -- and ideally should -- coincide, the Greek Fathers instead seem to suggest that there can be no authentic separation between the things of God and the things of Caesar. Everything belongs to God and, if He so chooses, He may enlist Caesar�s assistance in carrying out His plans. To hold otherwise would contravene the inherently cosmological scope of Christianity and its affirmation that �the whole man and all his life belong wholly to the kingdom of Christ� (Schmemann).

Just thinking out loud.

In Christ,
Theophilos

Dear Theophilos,

Well put!

It is interesting that the Emperor was the first to appropriate the title "Vicar of Christ" - a title later taken by the Pope of Rome.

The Emperor had a crucial role to play in the Church, but this didn't prevent the people from opposing him vigorously whenever they believed he acted not in the best interests of the Church or the formulation of its traditional faith.

Alex

Especially when the emperor was an iconoclast...