Separating
church from state control is one of a few perennial challenges for
mankind. Religious intolerance historically is a function of the will
to power and a matter of factual control of political power through
the intolerance of political opposition. That is the principal that
makes democracy impossible for Moslem countries wherein the religious
authority is regarded as universal. Sharia law is in effect catholic.
That institutional method is ancient and found in Mesopotamian mud.
Urth had
its gods enacting as oligarchs atop ziggurats the archetype
activities of life. Rulers were gods embodied as man down through the
ages as Pharaoh and Caesar. Christianity overthrew that premise with
Christ. Jesus was a servant rather than a ruler of humanity.
Constantine
the Roman Emperor, born in England of a British woman named Helena
saw a sign from God and was moved to convert to Christianity. He
founded the Eastern Roman Empire capitol at Byzantium and developed
the role of Emperor as head of the Christian Church although that
role was vague enough at first. There was after all a Pope at Rome
and differences between more Orthodox and Catholic sects as well as
four other traditional patriarchates with equal claim for spiritual
prominence besides that of Rome.
Charles,
Charlemagne and the Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire for a time
could also claim to be first as political rulers of the Christian
Church with the power to appoint Bishops and other church leaders.
The problems of the Roman Papacy in its relation politically to kings
of the various nations often was one of papal claims to rule
politically as well as spiritually with kings disputing that right.
The issue was often one of who had a right to rule the unified church
and state. Those practical power issues tended to eclipse the
democratic rights of the laity or common folk. The political rights
of the common people tended to develop meaningfully along with the
emancipation of Christian fellowship from oppressive state and
ecclesiastical authority, and the process evolved over hundreds of
years.
During
the Protestant reformation the reformers such as Martin Luther,
Zwingli, Hus and Calvin took umbrage to not only corrupt clerical
practices and wrong doctrine, they found a fundamental priesthood of
believers approach to a direct relationship with Christ better and
more true than a hierarchical trickle down of doctrine from a
priesthood to a laity. There were numerous unintended consequences of
the reformation though.
With the
reformation Kings such as Henry the Eight broke off from Rome and the
Roman pope and became their own pope leading their own church. Like
Caesar as a god to be worshiped the nationalist popes leading their
own churches became pseudo gods issuing ecclesiastical rules by
decree. Decretals of the British female pope Queen Elizabeth set the
rules for mandatory church attendance and forms of worship
permissible in her realm. The protestant reformation became a more
complex breakup of political and ecclesiastical empires into new
local and regional ones. The continuing reform is to liberate the
Christian Church and individual spiritual freedom from bondage to
state authority.
Europe
was best by aristocratic usurpation of Christian authority in Sweden
as well as England and Russia. Spiritual liberation from Erastian
criteria could also bring development antipathetic libertines without
belief in anything besides cultural hedonism. Such godless behavior
in society resulting in elastic rationalism brought the anti-Christs
Stalin and Hitler to power with Stalin declaring churches 'not
working anymore' as the religion of state atheism was compelled on
the populace. Effectively worship of Uncle Joe became
requisite for survival.
The
state church of the tsars was the Orthodox sect of the Universal
Christian Church. In the Ukraine the inter-tidal areas of political
and sectarian conflict as well as the troubles of racism, culturalism
and practical issues of food growing lands and security from invasion
made for continuing contention for control. The Ukraine had
Catholicism from Polish landlords, Orthodox from Russian and a
synthetic Uniate Church comprised of both. Because of the association
of religion under state authority, religious strife was implicit as
it was for Cromwell, Milton and anti-Papist reactionaries, regicides
of Charles the First and St. Bartholomew's Day massacres in Ireland
and France unto the Briitish-Irish troubles of the 20th
century.
Conservative
forces have tended to support the human characteristic of depleting
and degrading the resources of foes; religious or political, and
liberal forces have sought relief from such oppression. Of course
there is a cyclical element to that. Christianity of the Lord is
liberal yet with perennial moral values. Even so Conservative
Christians defending doctrines and Church power and murdered hundreds
of thousands of Christians much less godless atheist heretics.
Protestants decried the faults of Catholicism yet even Protestant
reformers supported the execution of fellow reformers with different
doctrines. Human original sin corrupts all social establishments
while the spirit of the Lord perpetually frees saved individuals from
that bondage. One hopes that the Ukraine receives a new fellowship in
the Spirit of the Lord.
It
is difficult to imagine President Vladimir Putin as the Russian Pope
leading the Orthodox Church as it is impossible to imagine President
Barrack Obama as Pope of American Christians. Americans have a
difficult time understanding European history or the practical
political course of the historical political and ecclesiastical
evolution of the worldly establishments. American neon-elites of the
Eastern establishments have developed a convenient godless scientific
elitism without comprehension of historical and cultural
circumstance. Declaring themselves as infallible as any Pope ever has
their authority runs toward spreading a gospel of godless rationalism
that Frederick Nietzsche would have been comfortable with. They fail
to understand the error of Stalinism and fail to appreciate the role
of original sin in perpetually re-establish itself through state and
operative corporate censorship, repression of free speech and
opposition to political dissent. The will to totalize political power
and negate democratic individual is an implicit characteristic of
concentrated wealth and/or power. In the Ukraine the west as sought
to exert its will to power so far as possible. Because of the
contemporary criterion of atheist influence and evolution of
reprobate and depraved social behavior it is unlikely that the Obama
administration will be able to perceive then opportunity to work with
President Putin to advance the cause of the separation of Church and
state in Russian and the Ukraine.
The
2012 Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney declared Russia as
America's number one existential foe. That's not too surprising since
President Putin had banned Mormonism from Russia. Each leader sought
to interfere in religious affairs; Romney as a Mormon priest
effectively anathematized Russia while President Putin as the
Eminence Gris Pope of Russia failed to see the value of establishing
an extra-terrestrial religion that worshiped an oligarchy in the
Kolob Star System in Russia. President Putin could renounce Russian
Federation State control of religion and declare Universal tolerance
for spiritual values throughout all of it's lands including anything
it receives from a remorseful land-grabbing west in the Ukraine that
could potentially decide to share.
