The Church and Power

I am reading a book by Liz Charlotte Grant called Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis after Losing Faith in the Bible.

“Braiding together encounters with the natural world, Jewish midrash, and art criticism, Grant offers a fresh vision for reading the Christian Scripture.”

She wants to know how she can love the Bible again – which I believe is a question many Christians would ask if they had the courage. The Bible has become such a known quantity to so many of us, pressed into a theological framework that requires that we wring every text, every parable, every poem, every song, every apocalyptic vision into a - usually simplistic - answer to the question “How do I get to Heaven when I die?”.

Some of us have become bored with it. Others feel unseen and unheard. Many have been abused. We have gotten tired of reading it in the same old way and long for the new life it promises but which our leaders are not showing us.

But that’s not what this post is about. In the chapter on Hagar she writes some things about the church and power that I thought were relevant for today, as the white American evangelical church has been on a journey to sit in the seat of power in the US for a number of decades now, invited by the Republican Party and spurred to action by the fury of the culture wars.

As you may know, the first centuries of Christian church history were ones of marginalization and persecution. They were also centuries of great growth. But in the early 4th century CE “the church and state had moved in together. The Roman emperor Constantine (306-337 CE) had converted to the faith, which meant, for the first time, Christians were no longer being slaughtered for sport. And the church gained a state budget. IN Constantine’s empire, claiming Christianity no longer required an appetite for controversy, unlike in the previous two centuries, when martyrdom at the hands of the state had become a popular and revered cause of death. Now, to be Christian was to have power. Hypothetically, someone could wield the name of Christ for political gain. Someone like, say, the emperor could poison his son, hang a rival, and still receive the Eucharist each Sunday if only he screwed up his face to penitent frown.

Whenever the church has gained power and wealth throughout history, corruption and exploitation follow. The age of Constantine resembles our own with uncomfortable clarity. Then and now, church leaders sidle up to candidates with whom they share nothing in common except the hunger for power.”

“The United States is a country where politics and religion intertwine dysfunctionally. Pastors reach beyond the pulpit and into the White House – not for the sake of the vulnerable, but for their own dominance, for the sake of authority. Likewise, politicians claim religious allegiance for a competitive edge. The rich fill our closets with clothing constructed by impoverished hands. And marginal populations starve as food pantries lose funding while billionaires blast rockets into the stars for four-minute joy rides. In other words, every human society, including our own,…had the potential to use God as a tool to uplift strength and denigrate weakness. We prefer comfort to the poverty and homeless wanderings of Jesus and his prophets.”

[This post is written on the day Pope Francis died. Obviously, he was a man who held much power, as has the Roman Catholic Church for millennia. And yet - he tried in many ways to demonstrate the humility and servanthood to which Jesus calls us. Hopefully the Church will learn from him and continue on the same path. To be honest, I'm not super optimistic about that.]