This nation recently celebrated the Fourth of July. The holiday serves another purpose beyond a license to blow things up: this has been the day when Americans stop and remember the freedoms we have as a people.
One of those freedoms is spelled out in the Bill of Rights: the freedom of religion. Recently we’ve seen a number of contested cases in which the implications of the First Amendment have been debated. Lines are quickly drawn over issues of school prayer, nativity scenes in public spaces and Ten Commandments in halls of power.
The intent of this article is not to revisit those arguments; rather, to ask what happens to the church when that line becomes fuzzy; when the church is empowered by the state.
For the first three centuries of its existence, the Christian church was comprised of relatively powerless people. They did not have the blessing of the empire and were often seen as enemies of the state or as fodder for the games. The early persecution of the church by Roman rulers like Nero and Domitian has been well documented.
All that changed in 313 A.D. when Roman Emperor Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan making Christian worship legal. However, Constantine took it even further when he became a patron of the church. This was a major turning point in church history. Constantine established the concept of a Christian emperor in which the power of the state was wed to the body of the church.
This has been celebrated as a victory for the fledgling Christian faith. And indeed those faithful followers of Christ must have felt great relief to see the end of persecution and the beginning of legitimacy. However, there are some who look back on Constantine’s edict and see seeds of abusive power being planted in the church.
Has it been a good thing or a bad thing for the church to hold the power of the state, or for the state to have the full blessing of the church? No doubt there are good arguments for both sides.
The Crusades, the Inquisition and the slaughter of the American native people are all events which were instigated or blessed by the church in conjunction with the state. Yet there have also been occasions when the lessons of compassion and charitable actions by the state have been driven by the church or by Christian conscience.
A number of years ago contemporary biblical scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote a book entitled “The Land.” Using the metaphor of being “landed” or “landless,” he traced the history of the people of God in Hebrew scripture. He pointed to a surprising consistency during the time when the people of God were powerless (such as the wanderings in the wilderness with Moses and the later exile of the Israelite captives into Babylon). When the people were powerless the faith generally grew and flourished. However, those times when the religious community was infused with power of the state were the times when the faith faltered. Not only did the faith falter, but the nation/church tended to become oppressive and addicted to the power of the sword over the power centered in worship, prayer and charitable acts.
Brueggemann then found similar tendencies in modern history at those times when the lines between church and state were unclear. He pointed to a paradoxical truth: the church is most faithful when it comes from a place of weakness rather than a position of power; the church is most faithful to the historic gospel when it is not dependent on the power of the nation. Stated another way, the church’s power is displayed in its weakness.
This shouldn’t be surprising since it parallels the nature of the Christian God. When God gave the ultimate revelation of God’s own self, it came not in the miraculous or the powerful, but in the place of absolute weakness: on Golgotha when Jesus the Christ was nailed to a cross. The Roman centurion overseeing the crucifixion spoke in that moment the words which would become the confession of the church: “Truly this was the Son of God.”
God’s greatest revelation came in an moment of apparent defeat.
The power of the church has never been the power of the sword or the power of a religious government. It has been the strength of outsiders as the prophets spoke the word against abusive systems and structures; it has been the power of the gospel announcing amazing grace to those outcasts and oppressed who have been crushed by the machinations of this world.
The freedom of religion is a rare right which should be cherished and practiced; we are blessed living in this nation. Exercising that right, the church needs to be in conversation with all the powers that be, whether that power resides in governments, militaries or businesses. Yet the line dividing church and state is a dangerous one for the church to confuse or to cross. We must remember our origins and the nature of the God we confess: the one who died in weakness is the very revelation of our God.
