Martin Henry

There are many things which divide Christians, and there has been a lot of bloodshed in the name of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.

One of the most critical dividers, which is about to reassert itself with great force, is differences of views and attitudes over church and state relationships. Statists and non-statists are arrayed across all other divisions.

Essentially, the statists are very much in favour of a 'Christian' political order in which the state reflects and protects the values and interests of the church as a matter of law. This stance logically extends to the compulsion of belief and the punishment of 'heretics'. A situation which was very common in the past, in the 'Christian West'.

Church, state

Non-statists are very much in favour of the separation of church and state, usually not only as a matter of 'Gospel' as they understand it [the Good News by persuasion, not compulsion] but to practically avoid the corrupting influence of state over church and church over state, which history has recorded in blood.

The modern secular democracies of the 'Christian West' were largely founded upon, and rest upon, this principle. The majority of them, however, have had and still retain residual 'state churches' with varying degrees of linkages between 'secular' state and church.

These secular democracies are facing perilous times under a thin veneer of holding together internally. Social and economic disorder is brewing. Environmental crises are spreading. But most of all, righteous people are sighing and crying over a cancerous moral decay, from which many believe the other ills have sprung and which must be legislatively restored.

There is a growing re-ascendancy of the statists peddling moral order solutions to social, economic and political problems.

Among a long list of 'errors' rebuked by Pope Pius IX in his "Syllabus of Errors" encyclical of December 8, 1864 was the secular democratic view that "The Church has not the power of using force, nor has she any temporal power, direct or indirect."

To this the so-called 'Christian Right', which is largely Protestant, would be obliged to say "Amen" in its quest to control and direct state power to moral, Christian ends. Statists are more united in this grand goal than they are divided by doctrine.

Fritz Stern, a child refugee from Nazi Germany who became a professor of European History at Columbia University, in November 2004, made a startling comparison between the Nazi state and the German Church and what he thought he saw happening with the US State and the Christian Right today.

Instrument of providence

Stern told his audience that Hitler saw himself as "the instrument of providence" and fused his "racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity."

The New York Times picked up Stern's speech [January 6, 2005]. His views have been subsequently reproduced on numerous websites including atheistic and agnostic ones hostile to religion in general and to Christianity in particular. Most interestingly, The New York Times report of the speech came to me through Rachel's Democracy & Health News (formerly Rachel's Environment & Health News) a newsletter which "highlights the connections between issues that are often considered separately or not at all."

It is precisely these crisis issues which propel the re-ascendancy of statists across a broad united front as the 'Final Solution' to the mounting problems of spiritually bankrupt post-Christian societies.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist.