Sarx

T’S THAT Time of year again: July the 17th, or, possibly, the 4th. July 14th, too. Hither and thither you’ll find sundry pious types (mostly RCs and EOs) lamenting the fall of the Russian and French Monarchy – usually with true reports of the atrocities that followed the fall of those kings.

The death of anyone – even the worst tyrant – is death. It ends their opportunities for repentance. It divides their soul from their body. It destroys the hypostasis created by God. It is sad. This same death especially of the worst tyrant – may relieve the world and the lives of many people of a great evil. Human actions are not simple, they are complex. I doubt anything we do is entirely good or entirely evil. The death of kings in the midst of revolution is no less complex than any other human event. Likewise the reign of kings.To read these writers, you’d imagine that “king” was the way God wanted us to go – despite his clear and evident intention in both the OT and the NT that he be our only king. Perhaps a few of the writers, especially the Uberfum followers of Father Seraphim Rose, you might get the idea that the fallen king – or monarchy in general – was God’s plan for the world and his church and this horrid evil of democracy was proof of our rejection of God. These people are confusing the Kingdom of God with the Society for Creative Anachronism.

There are pious and holy and even saintly kings and leaders of all sides. Charity is done by all sides and evil too. Certainly revolutions are bloody and certainly churches were destroyed, clergy killed, Christians imprisoned. This is exactly what God promised us would happen for following him. In many cases the deaths happened for reasons other than theological. Many parties were killed for being oppressors of the poor, the weak, ethnic and religious minorities. The churches in Russia and France before their revolutions were heavily allied with and even identified with the monarchies and their near-slavery levels of classism, their anti-semitiesm, their xenophobia The policies of the monarchs were supported by the Church which functioned as an arm of the state.

As an arm of the state, I wonder if the institutions only got what they rightly deserved for participating in the oppression of the people, in allying themselves with the rich instead of the poor, in supporting the status quo to support their own worldly power. There was a perichoretic union between the Church and the State instead of between the Church and the Trinity. The Church had stopped functioning as the Kingdom of God and had declared the earthly kingdom to be that heavenly kingdom. When the sate fell the institution of church paid the just and due price for supporting the old regime.

In France and Russia, the Church also paid the price for supporting the New Regime – swinging to the left as far as they had swung to the right but still in the name of retaining their political power. The churches tried to adapt to the new situation, making changes in their polity and liturgy that were in line with the new political order. This, of course, failed. Again, people were killed. Atrocities were committed.

The issue here is not simply the change in secular government: certainly Christian history is filled with kings, emperors, queens, princes, dukes and other such titled persons who had no friends of the Church. Likewise history is filled with pious revolutionaries who think they are doing the will of “nature and nature’s God” in liberation. The problem comes in the Coronation ceremony when the Church drops the crown on the King’s head. The problem comes at the Inauguration ceremony when the preacher invokes God’s blessing and presence on the oath-taking of a new President. When the Church stands up with the political authority she becomes part of that order. When that order is criticised, the Church is subjected to the critique. When that order is rejected, the Church is also rejected. When that order is overthrown, it is the Church that is overthrown as well.

The institutional Church gets what she deserves for playing worldly politics on the world’s terms. She is playing the harlot, running after earthly lovers rather than attending to her heavenly bridegroom. Sadly, innocent people get pulled into that bloodbath as well. It is convenient to blame the secular authorities for our persecution and to complain loudly for our “rights”. In this day and age it is easy to critique the errors of dictators past and present. But dictators, oppression, death and destruction are nothing new. Jesus died in such a situation. What is new here is the Church’s collusion with one or the other side. It was such collusion of Religion with the State that caused Jesus’ death, and likewise, it is such collusion over the last 1700 years that has caused the death of millions of innocent people around the world: the crusades in Europe and the Middle East no less than the progroms in Czarist Russia; the murder of Christians in Asia no less than the murder of Muslims and Jews in Spain, the Middle East and elsewhere, indigenous peoples in America and Australia. Since Constantine sucker-punched the Christians in New Rome, it has been so. I fear God will ask for payment for that spilled blood from the Church and not from the secular rulers.

The Leaders of Revolution, especially in Russia and France but also China, England and other places, often (always?) cause death to religious leaders and followers for political reasons. Even in places where theology is claimed to be the case there is more often political power struggle behind the scenes. Likewise the so-called wars of religion – the Crusades, the Protestant-Catholic wars of Europe from the Reformation right up to the most recent bombings in Ireland – are political power grabs under a painfully thin if not transparent veneer of theological justification. Equally so today in the so-called “Culture wars”: these, too, are merely political grabs by the left and right dressed in religious drag to lure the voters out of the Church’s catholicity into sectarianism.

Certainly the issue of politics, of political choices or participation, are best left to the working out of salvation with fear and trembling of each follower of God in the way of Jesus. But the choice of the Church can only be for the Kingdom of God which can never be confused with any earthly kingdom or led by any earthly king. While a Royalist and a Republican may worship the same God it is the Church’s place to serve communion to both of them, hear the confession of both, condemn the excesses of both, commend the goodness of both, and – at Christ’s altar and in the world – work for the reconciliation of both to each other and to God.

For the political purist of any side, this will make the Church a betrayer of all sides. Churches will be destroyed, clergy killed, Christians imprisoned. This is exactly what God promised us would happen for following him.

That’s the way it is supposed to be, here in the world, but not of it.