I've been learning a few words over the last few months. These words are useful shorthand for complex concepts that I've been carrying around like a loose bag of tools for a while. One such word is “Constantinianism,” which can loosely be defined as the attempt to marry Christianity to politics, nationalism and earthly patriotism. This has been the defining characteristic of the leaders of the American Religious Right, who long ago ceased to confine themselves to matters of strictly Biblical morality, and who have for a long time tried to define Christian duty mainly in terms of being a patriotic, flag-waving American defending the American way of life.
Constantinianism is named after the Roman emperor Constantine who ostensibly became a Christian when he was 40 years old, and who decreed that Christianity was to be the official state religion of the Roman empire. As a result of his decree and profession of Christianity, conditions improved greatly for Roman believers, who had heretofore been violently persecuted. But Constantine went farther than simply becoming tolerant of the Faith. He began to see himself as a guardian of the Faith, responsible for using his earthly political power to maintain orthodoxy. Thus he led a military assault against the the North African Donatist Christians, who were accused of heresy by bishops and clergy loyal to Constantine. In fact, the “heresy” of the Donatists consisted of nothing more than refusing to accept the authority of bishops who had renounced the Christian faith and turned their brethren over to Roman authorities during earlier persecutions, and had then asked for reinstatement to clerical office under Constantine. (It appears, then, that eritheia, power games and abusive churches are not a new phenomenon.) (Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I#Religious_policy)
Under Constantine the religious authority of the Christian Church was married to the political and military power of the state. Thus the “state church” was born, and was empowered to stamp out any churches not officially sanctioned by the state, using military force if necessary. Members of the state church were taught that one of the highest Christian duties was for each member to zealously and unquestioningly support the state in which their church resided, to the extent of full military service if called for. And the state church legitimized the wars and conquests fought by its sponsor state by teaching the concept of a “just war.” After the Reformation, when there were several European states each having its own state church, each state church functioned along the same Constantinian lines, each teaching its members their supposed obligations to the states which sponsored them, and teaching the same “just war” concept. This frequently led to contradictions that were ridiculous enough to be quite funny if they had not been so tragic: the armies of two European nations at war with each other, each praying to God in the Name of Jesus Christ for the annihilation of the other army. One example of this is World War 1, with the British Bishop of London advising in 1915 that Britain should be mobilized for a “Holy War,” and the Germans inscribing “Gott mit uns” (God with us) on the buckles of soldiers' belts and praying “Gott strafe England!” (God punish England!)
Is all war unjust, then? I cannot answer that question. I, for one, am glad that the American Civil War was fought and won by the North. As a result of it, I am a free man instead of being a victim of inhuman exploitation. But there have been many supposedly-just wars fought by the supposedly “Christian” nations of the First World. History, and the Day of Judgment, will show that the vast majority of these wars were not just at all, but mere land or resource grabs or colonial conquests designed to enrich the elites of the warring nations. As the years have passed, I have come to see Constantinianism as a worldly corrupting influence in the Church, whose members are supposed to be living as strangers and exiles on the earth. My rejection of the American Religious Right is a rejection of Constantinianism.
I am not alone in this rejection. Over the last several months, I have met several other bloggers who think along the same lines. One of them is Sarah, author of the Accidental Blog (http://accidentalweblog.blogspot.com). A recent post of hers, “Responsibility To Protect,” asks how Christians ought to relate to the state if our relation is not supposed to be Constantinian. She makes a very good point that Christians may be making a mistake by just walking away from involvement in the polity of the state, since polity is part of everyday life and not a separate sphere. The main thrust of her question is this: should Christians attempt to use earthly power at all in order to promote a godly outcome in their own state or in other states?
Her question is a good one; it forced me to think – a lot! People who ask such questions perform a valuable service for their neighbors. In fact, I think a good goal for a thinking person is to try each week to ask a question that gives someone else a headache from having to think a lot to answer it :). I have to admit, though, that while I have some opinions on the subject, I don't have an answer to her question.
But there is one aspect of her question about which I think I can speak with assurance. She was thinking specifically of Christians using the power of their state to help the citizens of “failed states,” that is, states whose governments are crumbling and unwilling or unable to provide justice, basic security and essential services for their citizens. The example she cited of a failed state is that of Zimbabwe, whose citizens are suffering from hunger, violence, disease and monetary hyperinflation. I think she was thinking that Christian citizens of a rich, privileged nation such as the United States should have some power to intervene for good in the affairs of a backward nation like Zimbabwe.
I'd like to offer a rather different perspective. First, I think that there are many uncomfortable and heretofore un-noticed similarities between many failed states as they are now and the United States as it now is. I think that these similarities will lead to conditions in the United States deteriorating rapidly very soon, and that it's entirely possible that parts of our country may end up suffering just as badly as Zimbabwe.
It's hard to get at the truth regarding Mugabe's role in Zimbabwe, since news about that country is brought to America largely by major media corporations owned by Western economic elites who have their own agenda. But it is also true that there are many African (and other) nations which are ruled by self-seeking leaders who sell out their citizens and the natural resources of their lands to the West for the sake of massive personal gain. This has also been true of the leaders of the United States ever since Ronald Reagan. The selfishness and looting of our nation's wealth by politicians accelerated through the reigns of Reagan and Bush I, and really took off during the presidency of Bill Clinton. Under President George Bush, the term “looting” has become totally inadequate to describe the raiding of this country by the rich. We may have to come up with a new term, something like “hyper-looting.”
A country whose leaders raid its resources for their own personal gain has no resources left to provide for the common good. Such a country is characterized by increasing disorder and failure of infrastructure – including roads, sewers, bridges, water treatment plants, law-enforcement and public protection agencies, financial systems, and even whole cities. Increasingly, we don't have to look overseas to find evidence of such failure. We need only look at the American South in the aftermath of the hurricanes which have passed through since 2005 to see destroyed infrastructure that will probably never be rebuilt. Or we can look at Detroit and the urban ruins that are reverting to prairie wilderness there. We can look at the strong probability that the U.S auto industry will be bankrupt before New Year's Day, the massive job losses, the partially-finished new housing tracts that will never be finished and that are being stripped for salvage, and any number of other signs of state failure right here in the U.S.A.
The U.S. is hardly alone as a candidate for the designation of “failed state.” Jeff Vail at http://jeffvail.net and John Robb, author of the Global Guerrillas blog (http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/), have argued that the early 21st Century will be a time in which the nation-state loses its legitimacy due to resource constraints and system failures, and that local “resilient communities” will become a much more important part of everyday life.
In short, many of the nations of the West, or the Global North, or the First World, however you want to describe them – nations which have for so long considered themselves to be the privileged, the rich, the advanced – are on the verge of becoming failed states in their own right. This is especially true of the United States. (How many of you have read Reinventing Collapse?) So here's my question to make thinking heads hurt, if anyone out there is reading this and wants a headache for the next few weeks: how should Christians live and act in a land that is falling apart?
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