Separation of Church and State

 The one thing my Baptist upbringing still obtains from me is a belief in the separation of church and state. The government cannot impinge on my conscience by having an established church or by disestablishing any church - therein is my reading of American constitutional law.

It is open to criticism - see below.

An alternative exists. The following comes from Public Orthodoxy's The Russian-Ukrainian War is Now a Theological Crisis:

The main theological issue interwoven with the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict is the relation of church and nation, particularly the Byzantine concept of symphonia, or harmonious relations between church and state, embraced by Moscow Patriarch Kirill and Russian Orthodox Church. According to this concept, the state is responsible for civil governance, and the church deals with spiritual issues. But, unlike with the Western concept of separation of church and state, these realms cannot be separated. Because they interpenetrate, the church cannot completely absolve itself from politics and other civil issues, and the state cannot totally abandon matters spiritual. So, church and state exist in relations of mutual support and reinforcement. That does not imply religious uniformity in the nation. That does imply, however, the leading position of a national Orthodox Church in relation to other religious bodies.

This makes sense to me, I had similar thought about our own American ideas. I believe the Framers of the Constitution assumed that those filling public offices would be members of a church, most likely one of the Protestant denominations, which would give them a unity of morality in carrying out their political duties that would then have a responding republican ideology permeating their churches. 

If I am right about the Framers, then I am wrong about our political/religious unity today. Please, do not limit my meaning to Christianity. The same effect should be produced by any religious training - a sense of morality and ethics - while American politics should have produced democratic ideals. What we have is either a religion without morality - see the evangelicals who supported Donald J. Trump - or a politics uninformed by democratic ideals - see Donald J. Trump.

Meanwhile, over in Russia, there is a problem with symphonia:

Symphonia was the model practiced by Byzantine emperors. Until recently, though, it seemed destined to remain in the past forever. Thirty years ago, Stanley Harakas, a preeminent Orthodox ethicist, said that there are no presuppositions for the implementation of symphonia as a model of church-state relations today. The idea of symphonia, said Harakas, is no more than a fossil of antiquarian interest.

Harakas was wrong.

In one of his earlier speeches after being elected Patriarch of Moscow back in 2009, Kirill declared symphonia his ideal model for church-state relations. He stipulated this model could not be replicated in modern Russia. After all, the church-state separation is still enshrined in the Russian constitution. Even so, said Kirill, the spirit of symphonia should guide our thoughts and actions as we are building a model of church-state relations. This spirit opens a remarkable potential for development of these relations, whereby church and state will refrain from interference with each other and at the same time build a broad system of cooperation.

Now that these principles have led the Patriarch to take stances that had such disastrous consequences, a major rethinking of the idea of symphonia seems to be in order. Whether it is in fact reevaluated by Russian Orthodox leaders will depend on many factors. There are powerful forces in the Russian Orthodox Church who are perfectly happy to have cozy relations with national and regional leaders of various levels. But the sheer fiasco of losing such a big portion of the church calls for a course correction.

The essay has this criticism of Western church/state relations:

The concepts of church-state relations dominant in the West are less than ideal. While ensuring greater freedom of faith and worship, they tend to marginalize the church from public square. One can hardly give religious reasons for public arguments and be taken seriously on this basis alone. Religious traditions, including Christianity, are being pushed out of Western public life.

I beg to disagree. Too often, what have been offered as religious reasons camouflage purely temporal ends. I think the continued influence of Martin Luther King, Jr. belies the marginalized of those acting of faith, rather than hypocrisy.

sch 4/20