Tag Archives: religious persecution

Rethinking Church #13: Privilege Always Comes with a Price

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For the first 275 years of its existence the church endured persecution, spontaneous at the local level, official at the imperial level. Its offense? Non-conformity “to the pattern of this world” (Rom 12:2). Christians would not participate in the pagan ceremonies and sacrifices that accompanied almost every aspect of social life in the Roman Empire. Nor would they pledge loyalty to Rome by offering sacrifices to the “divine” Caesar. Many Christian writers in the Second and Third Centuries wrote works addressed to the emperor arguing that Christianity is neither politically subversive nor morally corrupting.

Only with the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious freedom within the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, did official persecutions end. The emperor Constantine I (d. 337) favored Christianity and even participated in the Council of Nicaea (325). Theodosius I (d. 395) took the final step toward establishing Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire by outlawing many heresies and ending pagan sacrifices. The tables had turned. Christian emperors supported the church and persecuted pagans with equal or even greater energy than the pagan ones had persecuted Christians.

Not surprisingly, Christians rejoiced and thanked God for their new freedom and privileges, and Constantine was hailed as a saint and a thirteenth apostle. Can we blame them? Who wants to live as a social outcast, have your property confiscated, be thrown in jail, or suffer torture and death for being a Christian? What was the persecuted church to do when offered freedom to worship as it pleases and organize its internal affairs as it thinks best? When given official status, financial support, and social visibility, should the church have turned them down? Seeing crowds of people enter the churches for worship and instruction, should the church have turned them away? Most of us would have done the same had we been in their shoes.

But privilege always comes with a price. For when the empire becomes Christian, the church becomes imperial. And an imperial church must support the empire. Perhaps most of my readers are clear that this exchange turned out to be a Faustian bargain. I agree. But I want to argue that getting out of that deal with the devil is not as easy as renouncing established churches and ratifying the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” As I pointed out in the previous essay, every state reserves to itself the power of life and death over all individuals and associations within its jurisdiction. If it leaves the church alone, if it recognizes its freedom to worship as it pleases, to organize as it sees fit, to choose its own leaders; and if it grants such privileges as tax exempt status, it does so only because—and only as long as—it judges that the church does not work against the interests of the state and in fact contributes to the common good as the state understands it.

It may happen that a state views its interests in ways that largely harmonize with the church’s mission of witness. It may be that this state sees the work of the church as advantageous to the common good. If so, it is not always wrong for the church to use these freedoms and privileges to advance its mission. However in every society, no matter how friendly to the church, there will always be areas where the state’s aims cut across the church’s mission. There are no exceptions to this rule, for “no one can serve two masters” (Matt 6:24). And in some cases, formerly “friendly” states’ views of their interests—of what is good and evil and of what serves the common good—can change so dramatically as to come into fundamental conflict with the church. Hence the church always faces—no exceptions—the temptation to seek or hold on to freedoms and privileges granted by the state by subordinating, compromising, or giving up its mission to witness to the lordship of Jesus Christ.

At every point in its relationship to the world—from bare toleration, to approval, to establishment—the church should ask what price it has to pay for these freedoms and privileges. How deeply in debt we have already become may not come clear until the mortgage comes due. And come due it will. Perhaps it already has.

Rethinking Church #12: The Devil’s Primal Instinct

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As the church becomes visible in the world, occupying space and time, turning people toward Christ in devotion and loyalty, and transforming the way they live and relate to others, the world fights back on all fronts. In the New Testament, the “world” is understood in two ways. It can mean God’s creation, which he loves and wishes to save (John 3:16). Or, it can refer to the twisted order that exists in the human mind wherein something other than God holds the place of honor. This perverted order manifests itself in such individual vices as lust, greed, and pride and in all levels and combinations of the social order:

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:15-17).

I will leave to one side the individual and focus on the social dimension. We are born into a network of social relationships of ever increasing abstraction—the biological family, local communities, and finally the state. We enter other communities voluntarily—businesses, friendships, schools, gangs, clubs, unions, and professional organizations. Each of these societies has a preexisting identity and tradition. In volunteer societies, identity and tradition are expressed in rules and ceremonies, and in the state they are expressed in laws and symbols. Every association demands that its members conform to the group in ways that preserve group identity and facilitate achieving its purpose. Individuals that refuse to conform are disciplined or excluded.

According to the New Testament, we should not be surprised but expect that the entire social network into which we are born—that is, “the world”—is wrongly ordered. Everything is out of place. As I said above, the world and everything in it is God’s creation. But if we love it as a whole or in part more than we love God, we become “the world” in that second sense.

We cannot evade sin and our responsibility by forming corporations and associations. Human associations do not escape but mirror and magnify the vices and virtues of the human heart. Sadly but quite clearly, most people do not love the Father more than they love world. Consequently, the human institutions and associations they form are always ordered to worldly goods—pleasure, wealth, honor, and security—as their highest value. So much so that John can say “the whole world is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).

The state more than any other human institution mirrors and magnifies human vices and virtues. Like other human institutions composed of lovers of the world and dedicated to worldly ends, states cannot love the Father more than they love themselves. But more than that, since states by their very nature reserve to themselves the ultimate power of life and death over their individual members, inevitably they come to think of themselves as gods. Perhaps some states are better, more just, or more benevolent than others when measured by the gospel’s morality. I don’t deny this. But whether promulgated as the will of the Pharaoh of Egypt, the King of Babylon, the Emperor of Rome, or the will of people speaking in their representatives in Western democracies, the “law” is always a human law, never the will of God. And it’s always accompanied by the threat of death. The confession “Jesus is Lord” is heresy in every municipality, county, state, and country in this age or any other.

When the church becomes visible in the world, the world expects it to submit to its order. Everyone else does. But the church replies to every family, friendship, business, friendship, school, gang, club, union, professional organization, and state, “Jesus is Lord.”

 “But I can give you pleasure, wealth, honor, and power ‘if you will bow down and worship me’” (Matt 4:9), a confused world answers.

“Jesus is Lord,” The church repeats.

 “Then I will confiscate your property, put you in prison, torture your body, and kill you!” the world shouts, trembling with anger.

Then, remembering Jesus’s words, “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. (Luke 12:4-5), the church asserts without hesitation, “Jesus is Lord.”

The devil’s primal instinct leads to a second defeat. But he has one last trick up his sleeve—for he is an expert liar.

Next Time: The devil offers to embrace Christianity. He pledges to protect and defend the church, to give it favored status and a prominent place in the imperial court. “I will open my games, assemblies, courts, with prayer to your God. I will suppress your enemies and build magnificent basilicas for your worship. Only, pray for me and urge the people to obey me in all things related to the temporal order.”