Politics Subverts Religion

 I hate the photo accompanying An unholy alliance. I do not like seeing Orthodox clergy with Putin. Unfortunately, the Moscow Patriarchate supports Putin wholeheartedly. This has caused problems enough in the Orthodox Church.

But An unholy alliance delves into more than my church.

Yet enclosed within Locke’s case for toleration is an argument for what the religious sphere does not encompass: property, commerce, and political life. It was a dual recipe both for privatised religion and a market freed of ethical considerations, and it laid the philosophical foundation for the expanding capitalist order.

Situated as we are on the cusp of a post-liberal world order, it is apparent that these premises about the nature of religion and its relation to the public sphere are increasingly at odds with observed reality. If religious belonging is no longer articulated in the familiar liberal idiom of belief, this fact signals the collapse of something far more significant than personal integrity.

Hungary offers a prime example of how the new political order rejects many liberal conceptions about the nature and purpose of religion. Since being re-elected to power as Hungary’s prime minister in 2010, Orbán has repeatedly invoked Christianity in public statements and political gestures. Among the more meaningful have been his attempts to cast himself as a 21st-century King Saint Stephen. According to Hungarian nationalists, St Stephen was the legendary founder of the Hungarian nation. He unified the tribes of the Carpathian Basin in the early 11th century by forcefully converting them to Christianity (a fact celebrated by conservatives in the United States). As opposed to flimsy attempts to reach the masses through persuasion, St Stephen embraced the use of state violence to create the moral order he desired. His appeal to contemporary conservatives stems precisely from this willingness to reshape the social and political order through coercion.

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Commentators have expressed considerable outrage at Orbán’s hypocrisy, and there is an entire cottage industry devoted to arguing that Trump is not a good Christian. The problem is not that their supporters can’t see the facts. Rather, it is that they are judging from different criteria. And indeed, the apparent contradictions vanish if we abandon prevailing notions of what religion is supposed to be. Contrary to the liberal model that holds matters of religious affiliation – chiefly styled in Protestant fashion as ‘belief’ – inconsequential to one’s civic status, Orbán’s Hungary advances a competing concept of Christian belonging. Religion in this sense is not a contested assortment of ideas and practices related both to the transcendent and earthly realms, but identity in a far more simplistic way: it is who you are, far more than what you think or how you act.

It is worth underscoring just how distinct this deployment of Christian religious belonging is, based not on faith, submission to clerics, ritual practice nor church attendance, but on simple being. As László Kiss-Rigó, the bishop of Szeged and close ally of Orbán, stated in an interview in The Guardian in 2019: ‘In Europe, even an atheist is a Christian.’

And that last quote makes no sense to me; it is oxymoronic. I wonder what education, what intelligence, what knowledge is now required for Catholic bishops. My oldest sister responded to her visit to an Orthodox Vespers service with the comment that she was not into formal religion. Maybe she understands this idea of simply being Christian. For me, Christianity requires accepting the formalities of the Nicene Creed and living a life imitating Christ. One may imitate Christ without being a Christian, but one cannot just be a Christian. How many confused atheists there must be in Europe!

Illiberal forms of religiosity have a special role to play within national conservative movements, of course, supposedly providing the common basis for virtuous life. But the turn away from faith evident within emerging constructions of Christian community also gestures at a more fundamental rejection of choice that undergirds the new nationalism (in favour, so Hazony claims, of ‘collective freedom’). The implications of these shifts are far more troubling, and expansive, than the problems posed by either hypocrisy or religious instrumentalism. Instead of bemoaning seeming contradictions or lamenting the instrumental use of religion for nefarious political ends, it is far more crucial to see the contours of a new, illiberal religiosity coming into being.

As I understand Christianity, Christians are to respect the moral equality of individuals, and to be careful in how we judge others. Consider these points from Judge Not:

Here is the difference between good and bad judging, between godly accountability and ungodly judgmentalism.  When Paul reproved the sinner in Corinth and judged him, he did it for the sake of the sinner, to lead him to repentance and pardon and joy.  Paul did not suggest that he was better than the sinner.  Indeed, Paul was not in the equation at all, because it was not about comparing the sinner to anyone.  But when the Pharisee judged the publican, the comparative equation was everything.  The purpose of the judging was not the repentance and reclamation of the publican, but the self-exaltation of the Pharisee.  And we know where such self-exultation leads.  “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,” the Lord said.  So, “judge not.”

Restrictions apply as to how Christians are to make their judgments:

The sense in which we are to judge is clear:  everyone knows what is right and what is wrong, and when a brother or sister does very badly, he or she was must reproved.  On this both the Old and New Testament agree.  “You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall surely reprove your neighbour, lest you incur sin because of him” (Leviticus 19:17).  “If your brother sins, go and reprove him in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother” (Matthew 18:15).  Being a disciple of Jesus involves getting rid of our sinful habits, not our moral compass....

 

 An unholy alliance details how "Christian" nationalists reprove those they oppress:

...What differentiates the new nationalism is the ability of the community, however defined, to harness the coercive and unprecedently invasive powers of the state. State power is neither remote nor largely irrelevant to the functioning of the community, but interventionist, constructivist and deeply necessary. One of the abiding paradoxes of nationalism is that it requires the state to create a communal order that is supposedly innate....

I emphasize the second sentence - it is not the private rebuke of the sinner, but the focusing of the police power upon the dissenter that removes this from Christian behavior.

I would think this paragraph would raise the eyebrows of all good Christians as being more Mammon than Christ:

In contrast, the new nationalists propose to resolve the old feud between equality and freedom by doing away with them both. Orbán’s Hungary is infamous not only for its use of the law to curtail the media, judiciary and political opposition, but the cultivation of an oligarchic class whose fortunes are tied to their proximity to power. Pro-natalist state subsidies aimed at increasing traditional family size – increasingly eyed by US conservatives who have broken from neoliberal principles – exist alongside regressive taxation and an extreme corruption. So too, appeals to Jewish unity and privilege within Israel mask the marked and growing economic inequality that exists even within the state’s Jewish population.

Politics concerns itself with worldly power; religion opposes the corruptions innate to worldly power. What calls itself is Christian nationalism is only another worldly power corrupting the spiritual.

For a different perspective, Baptism à la Carte: Or Why the Orthodox Need to Discuss Human Identity Seriously:

The baptism earlier this summer then directs our attention to the diachronic but still open question, Who, am I? We humans are definitely sinners, but we are also created in the image of God and, despite our deviations and failures, are constantly searching for our fullness. To move beyond sterile polarizations, we need as Churches to find the courage to finally discuss seriously, on both the level of synodal and theological deliberations, the status of being human. This frank discussion should occur not in opposition and negation of the various current social and scientific developments (after all, this is the world we live in and not some bygone, glorious byzantine or Russian past). Instead, the discussion should unfold in a way that, without giving up the rich and often normative tradition (regarding imago dei and personhood), can address in a theologically meaningful and pastorally sensitive way the challenges posed by modernity, including, among others, homosexuality. Let me conclude by referring to the words of Elpidophoros, which express this compassionate and embracing spirit of Christian faith: “Every person, no matter who they are, or what they have done—for better or for worse—is worthy of God’s love. And if they are worthy of God’s love, then they are worthy of our love, too.”

I do not see much in the way of love in authoritarianism, or the religious leaders who give it credence.

sch 10/15/22