Part I in a Series of Posts Based on an ETS paper of 11/2006:
Christendom is widely abandoned and ridiculed. Despite helping create the modern university, parliamentary forms of government, international law, world class arts and science, the vices of Christendom are more widely know than her virtues. Yet Christendom is a good model for Christian flourishing, the religious right in America (however flawed) is essentially a positive development, and attacks on it are flawed. Secularism in Western Europe and the United States has proven unable to sustain itself. It is not fecund in any way.
In a pluralistic society, the Christian family, culture of life, and evangelism will bring a gradual growth in influence for traditional Christians which will naturally lead to a rise in Christendom, a Christian culture. While Christendom will never be identical to any state in this age, any state can associate with it.
Of course, Christian notions of liberty, hard won over time, demand Christian toleration for those who disagree. Christendom is triumphant at the end of the world, but never triumphalist now. Our call is to love our enemies and respect those who abuse us.
Christendom is nothing but a long term acknowledgment that though Christians will always be engaged with some intellectual and cultural opponent, people of faith must flourish in human communities in this world until Christ returns.
Secularism has nearly run its course and Christians must not lose their nerve and capitulate to it. Those states in the United States most secular are shrinking and those most religious are growing. John Kerry, like John Kennedy, would have been elected President if the states he carried had maintained their populations at 1963 levels. Western Europe is rapidly moving toward an Islamic majority and only an alternative religious perspective demonstrates an ability to compete with it . . . as Benedict XVI is so ably arguing.
I. Cornel West and the Constantinian Attack
Until Christ returns to rule as Emperor in the New Jerusalem, High King above all Kings, Christians must make sense of their relationship to earthly kingdoms. In a republic such as the United States a citizen is part of the sovereign. Each American faces the temptations of such power. Some princes flee their power, but history teaches the danger of this to the prince and to the kingdom. Some princes try to use their power for good with mixed results. Some princes use their power for their own pleasure or for wickedness, and these rulers corrupt themselves and their people.
In his influential and fascinating book Democracy Matters Professor Cornel West attacks the “religious right” as abusing their sovereign power. His term for this abuse is the striking word “Constantinian.”
Professor West reminds his reader of much that is valuable. He reminds that the Christian relationship to government will always be strained. The Kingdom will never come in this Age, therefore the Church will always relate to power in a “prophetic voice.” West goes further and warns against three great dangers that beset the American democracy. Failure to act against the dogmas of “free-market fundamentalism,” “aggressive militarism,” and “escalating authoritarianism” threatens the well-being of the American people and government. One of the chief vehicles of these evils is a “Constantinian Christianity.”
West and the religious left in America have a specific target in mind when they use the term “Constantinianism.” Of course, Constantinian is a compliment in the Orthodox tradition, but its use by the Orthodox is so different from that of West, so heavily nuanced, and of such long standing that it deserves a separate treatment.
Some other scholars in the “emerging” or “radical orthodoxy” camps, like J.K. Smith, have attacked modern liberals such as West, traditional liberalism, and the religious right with the term “Constantinianism.” However, it is difficult to discern a coherent view of the relationship between the City of God and earthly kingdoms in these works. Too often the presentation is of an inchoate Christian socialism or communitarianism too little worked out to be applauded or criticized. It is Cornel West and others in modern liberalism that have gone beyond mere ad hominem and used the term within a worked out view of Christianity and government.
In fact, “Constantinianism” is a side ways attack on the notions of Christendom and the Christian lady and gentleman. These ideas helped guide much public policy and rhetoric right through the period of the Second World War. However imperfectly implemented, the notion of Christendom is responsible for much that is good in the world. It acts as a check to the individualism that can lead to moral nihilism. It also allows for liberty and human happiness without succumbing to the ancient temptation to find Paradise without God or to seek the chimera of equality in God’s hierarchical universe.
Next: What about Constantine?