A Series of Posts Based on a Paper Given at the ETS 11/2006.
Cornel West with other modern Christian liberals has a problem.
He does not want to argue for passive non-involvement in politics, since he feels that great social change is needed. Most Americans are Christians and motivated by their Christianity, and as a prophet for change he obviously does not want to disenfranchise Christians. He quickly concedes that the American experience is deeply religious. Christians have always been an overwhelming majority of Americans and Christian ideas permeate American arts, thought, and philosophy. Most American leaders have professed some form of Christianity. 
How to negotiate this?
He argues that good Christianity is “prophetic” and bad Christianity is “Constantinian.” Good Christians speak truth to power and bad Christians are co-opted by it.
How useful is this definition? It turns out not very. Constantinian Christians “supported slavery” and prophetic Christians were against it. How does this not just amount to “those who agree with West are good and those who disagree are bad?”
How does West discern a theological difference between Northern and Southern Evangelicals? As a recent book by an Oxford historian points out, Lincoln (though his own religious status is debatable) used Evangelical rhetoric and votes to gain power. In fact, Lincoln seems a perfect image of the “Constantine figure” in American history. Like Constantine he faced a nation in peril full of divisions and like Constantine he saw Christianity as the way to bind the wounds of the nation . . . even if not Evangelical himself. This is his overt appeal in the Second Inaugural as he engages in some of the most subtle and beautiful public discourse in history to relate the American nation to the on going plan of God. He did this in context of a terrible War.
It was not after all merely prophetic messages that freed the slaves, but the might of the Union army with its thousands of dead armed by the free market factories that West seems to dread.
Lincoln acted, used force, bent rules when he had to do so . . . and acted more like Constantine than Cornel West!
Constantinian Christians: “argue today for state-sponsored religious schools . . . throw their tacit or more overt support behind anti-abortion zealots or homophobic crusaders who preach hatred (a few have even killed in the name of their belief), they are being Constantinian Christians.” Such Christians do this because they have “lost . . . fervor for the suspicion of worldly authorities and for doing justice to the most vulnerable among us. . .”
First, it is simply false that conservative Christians are uncritical of government. It is basic principle of conservatism that perfection can never be achieved in government. Missing from West’s analysis are such thinkers as Burke and conservative activists like Disraeli, Acton, Wilberforce, or Lord Shaftesbury.
Second, Christians argue against legal abortion, because they believe state power is being used to murder the defenseless. This may be wrong, but a visit to any “mainstream” seat of power will indicate that nobody fervently advocates the pro-life position because the titans of government (Republican or Democrat), media, or academia will applaud. One begins to suspect that charge of Constantinianism is simply an attempt to silence traditional Christians.
Third, West is arguing that “preaching” that homosexuality is a sin is “Constantinian.” However, preaching is not a state act. Knowledge that the state should not approve homosexual activity and recognize it as equal in value as normal marriage is not a desire to kill or persecute homosexual persons. Many persons cannot get married, and many loves are not recognized by the state, but this is not because of hatred on the part of the citizens.
Finally, it has become common for those who agree with West to argue that the Church has become “obsessed” with sexual issues (like homosexuality and abortion) and are missing other areas. Christians would happily have left abortion laws as they were, but the left demanded the right to abortion as a Constitutional right. Christians were not thinking about gay marriage until activists began to redefine marriage for the first time the history of the West.
If Christians do not act strongly, against the full weight of non-Christian culture, then their tax money would go to support practices such as abortion they view as intolerable vice. When West argues for gay marriage, feminism, and abortion, he argues with the approval of his Ivy league colleagues. It requires no courage at all to risk the wrath of people one despises to win the approval of those one admires. This, on the face of it, is the “prophetic” voice of non-Constantinian Christianity.
c. Constantinianism as “Imperialistic”
A major assumption of West is that America is an Empire. Of course, this is an abuse of the word “empire.” West rightly argues that one should be suspicious of power and the temptations and corruption of wealth. However, he has failed to account of wealth and power as signs of God’s blessing.
The Old and New Testament contain a realistic this-worldly tension between wealth and poverty. Scripture recognizes that God’s rules work, that those who live righteously will, on the whole, prosper in a just society. Spiritual blessings are the greatest and most natural end of holiness, but the Bible makes it plain that temporal blessings frequently follow as well. In fact, so pervasive was this theme that Christ had to frequently emphasize the temptations and corruption that can follow from God’s blessing. When Israel followed God, He blessed them, but those blessings sometimes acted as a snare to them.
West assumes that the fact that poverty exists shows that a society is unjust, but one need not be Scrooge to take issue with that assumption. West has confused his social analysis with the gospel. The poor should not be oppressed, but should poverty be allowed? What if some of the poor choose to be poor through their behavior? Should they be stripped of this right? West takes complex questions and gives simple answers. The poor are always poor because somebody (free markets?) is oppressing them.
Christians should show solidarity to the poor as with any human being. One can differentiate between reasons for poverty and best solutions to the problems of the poor. For example, one would not want to select means, like socialism, that help one poor person while creating social structures that keep more people in poverty.
Second, empires are not necessarily bad. The federal world-wide empire postulated by Dante in the Comedy and De Monarchia is defended by the master poet on the grounds that it would be most likely to be just, end wars, and allow for the flourishing of the arts and sciences. Such an empire could allow for consent of the governed, democratic in-put in governance, and limited central authority. In other words, merely describing a state as an “empire” does not condemn it without further argument. What are the alternatives to the Empire? Are they more just or would they lead to the chaos that was so destructive in Western Europe when the Roman Empire fell?
Next: The Fetish of Equality and Democracy!