As an Orthodox Christian, I share all these views and note this: No Orthodox Church could exist in the Americas *except for* our liberal democracy that pointedly rejects the idea of "Christendom."
We would have been slaughtered, and those doing the slaughtering would have been taught they had done God's holy will.
As was true in Europe prior to the American Experiment. As is true today in Ukraine, where the Patriarch of Russia himself has blessed the murder of Ukrainian Orthodox Christians in the name of "Russkiy Mir."
What Rubio and his ilk want, and what all decent humans should oppose with every fibre of our being, is a rejection of tolerance and a return to domination by force of all who think or believe differently.
I agree with Peter Wilson. I don’t know how much you have kept abreast of the conversation around Tom Holland the last few years, but he has so utterly reframed the argument you’re currently making that it seems crazy for you not to at least nod dismissively in his direction.
In a nutshell, as Peter says, you’re still talking about Christianity and liberal democracy as two separate things, the way people did ten years ago, when Holland has argued fairly persuasively that liberal democracy is a product of Christianity. Even more, it’s a kind of appendage of Christianity. In some cases, it’s actually an aspect of Christendom that has been imposed by force on non-Christian peoples, whether they wanted it or not. (e.g., Muslims, who have no Christian tradition of the saeculum and religio, can feel their religion is under attack when they are forced by Western Christians to separate the secular and the religious.
What’s more (and I’m still parroting Holland here) Christianity, by is nature, undermines the very power structures that seek to use it as the source of their power. There’s just always going to be a very uneasy relationship between a faith of “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first” and “the weak shall inherit the Earth” and power structures attempting to make that faith the basis and justification of their power.
Thus we see Christian soldiers conquering under Christian banners only to see, over time, Christianity itself undermining and altering the very hegemony they seek to impose. Your article seems to be taking those soldiers at face value, and in a short view you’re correct, but we see at the same time that the magic of Christianity, in the long view, is its refusal to be used in that way.
This is a really thoughtful piece. I think the irony is that the United States nor the Founding Fathers fits this concept of Christendom; open-borders George Washington and critic of Paul the Apostle (!!!) Thomas Jefferson created a Christendom in North America! Also, a country founded in part on religious liberty, often by dissident Protestants and notable non-Church going deists, is a bulkhead of Christendom strain credulity. However, contra Old CP, Orthodox Christianity is probably closest to this concept of Christendom and Constantine (see how in Orthodox country after country there is a close tie-in between the national church and government), something lesser but similar with Catholicism, but ironically a largely big divide between Church and State in most Protestantism. And to your point Nate, isn't Mormonism, at least in Utah, Christendom? The LDS is super-powerful in the state? Bringham Young was the Territorial Governor forever? Feel free to challenge me OLD CP and Nate on my points above. I agree that the Christendom project, especially spearheaded by the United States, is ahistorical and almost ridiculous. I just think there is more spectrum to this debate and more applicability to Orthodox and LDS, at least historically....
I think that there is something to what Holland says, and I nod toward that in my post when I talk about the relationship between Christianity and liberalism. I actually think that Larry Siedentop makes an even stronger and more detailed case in his book Inventing the Individual (Harvard UP 2014). However, I would make two other points. First, there is a difference between saying that liberalism is historically and intellectually indebted to Christianity, and saying that one supports an ideal of Christendom. For example, I think that if you are thinking about Christianity in "civilizational" terms that Russia is part of Christendom, even though it lacks a strong liberal tradition and Putin's invocation of Christianity is decidedly non-liberal. Second, the fact that there is a genetic relationship between liberalism and Christianity is sometimes used to justify the claim that ONLY "Christian" countries can be liberal. This, I think, is false. There are East Asian liberal democracies like Japan that are not particularly Christian, for example, and I think that one can be a liberal without being a Christian. Hence, I don't think that either liberalism or Christianity require a "Christian civilization" and that many (most?) versions of Christian civilization historically haven't been particularly liberal or, I would argue, particularly Christian.
I'm drawing a lot from the Puritan tradition these days. They viewed the old world, the old Christendom, as fatally corrupted. It was the corruption and hypocrisy of the old world that they were fleeing from. To be able to build a True Christianity. The Kingdom of God was to be built here on earth - many of them believed the center of that project to be here, in America, what they were building with their labors and for their progeny, it was too be the Skeleton of the Kingdom of God.
I have abandoned entirely the notion that a truly moral people can ignorantly dispense with the question of the morality of the actions of their superiors. The Kingdom of God will be built from the ground up - it will not be built through deception and manipulation, and other such wearisome and vain nonsense of the present world. We are as of yet not ready, we are at of yet far from God's Kingdom, so we must acknowledge our ignorance though.
They have such contempt for consent. That is the kind of person who builds a wicked society - one who has contempt for the consent of others, and just wants them used for his person. Such a person builds wastelands. Their kind unfortunately is replete throughout our current world. And why wouldn't they be? This is not the Kingdom of God. Nonetheless, we have to continue building towards it. These people will become less and less common over time - as people are raised up, and slowly begin to realize the folly of such means of existence. The military power of course shall be the last to abandon this mode of organization - at Jesus said, " all who draw the sword will die by the sword." Such institutions will probably be unfortunately necessary until we have other the Kingdom to Jesus. But we should always build towards God's Kingdom nonetheless.
The Kingdom of God can only be built in a free, secular republic. The old means of mass domination of society and institutions were pure ignorance, and did not at any point even come close to building a truly Christian society. The Postliberals treat that mode of existence as if it were the Kingdom of God already, and that it just be radishes returned to. This is the height of ignorance. The Kingdom of God is in the future, not the past.
As an Orthodox Christian, I share all these views and note this: No Orthodox Church could exist in the Americas *except for* our liberal democracy that pointedly rejects the idea of "Christendom."
We would have been slaughtered, and those doing the slaughtering would have been taught they had done God's holy will.
As was true in Europe prior to the American Experiment. As is true today in Ukraine, where the Patriarch of Russia himself has blessed the murder of Ukrainian Orthodox Christians in the name of "Russkiy Mir."
What Rubio and his ilk want, and what all decent humans should oppose with every fibre of our being, is a rejection of tolerance and a return to domination by force of all who think or believe differently.
I agree with Peter Wilson. I don’t know how much you have kept abreast of the conversation around Tom Holland the last few years, but he has so utterly reframed the argument you’re currently making that it seems crazy for you not to at least nod dismissively in his direction.
In a nutshell, as Peter says, you’re still talking about Christianity and liberal democracy as two separate things, the way people did ten years ago, when Holland has argued fairly persuasively that liberal democracy is a product of Christianity. Even more, it’s a kind of appendage of Christianity. In some cases, it’s actually an aspect of Christendom that has been imposed by force on non-Christian peoples, whether they wanted it or not. (e.g., Muslims, who have no Christian tradition of the saeculum and religio, can feel their religion is under attack when they are forced by Western Christians to separate the secular and the religious.
What’s more (and I’m still parroting Holland here) Christianity, by is nature, undermines the very power structures that seek to use it as the source of their power. There’s just always going to be a very uneasy relationship between a faith of “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first” and “the weak shall inherit the Earth” and power structures attempting to make that faith the basis and justification of their power.
Thus we see Christian soldiers conquering under Christian banners only to see, over time, Christianity itself undermining and altering the very hegemony they seek to impose. Your article seems to be taking those soldiers at face value, and in a short view you’re correct, but we see at the same time that the magic of Christianity, in the long view, is its refusal to be used in that way.
See my comment elsewhere in this thread.
This is a really thoughtful piece. I think the irony is that the United States nor the Founding Fathers fits this concept of Christendom; open-borders George Washington and critic of Paul the Apostle (!!!) Thomas Jefferson created a Christendom in North America! Also, a country founded in part on religious liberty, often by dissident Protestants and notable non-Church going deists, is a bulkhead of Christendom strain credulity. However, contra Old CP, Orthodox Christianity is probably closest to this concept of Christendom and Constantine (see how in Orthodox country after country there is a close tie-in between the national church and government), something lesser but similar with Catholicism, but ironically a largely big divide between Church and State in most Protestantism. And to your point Nate, isn't Mormonism, at least in Utah, Christendom? The LDS is super-powerful in the state? Bringham Young was the Territorial Governor forever? Feel free to challenge me OLD CP and Nate on my points above. I agree that the Christendom project, especially spearheaded by the United States, is ahistorical and almost ridiculous. I just think there is more spectrum to this debate and more applicability to Orthodox and LDS, at least historically....
On point #1: to what extent is liberal democracy rooted in Christianity? I would be interested in your take on Tom Holland's argument in Dominion.
I think that there is something to what Holland says, and I nod toward that in my post when I talk about the relationship between Christianity and liberalism. I actually think that Larry Siedentop makes an even stronger and more detailed case in his book Inventing the Individual (Harvard UP 2014). However, I would make two other points. First, there is a difference between saying that liberalism is historically and intellectually indebted to Christianity, and saying that one supports an ideal of Christendom. For example, I think that if you are thinking about Christianity in "civilizational" terms that Russia is part of Christendom, even though it lacks a strong liberal tradition and Putin's invocation of Christianity is decidedly non-liberal. Second, the fact that there is a genetic relationship between liberalism and Christianity is sometimes used to justify the claim that ONLY "Christian" countries can be liberal. This, I think, is false. There are East Asian liberal democracies like Japan that are not particularly Christian, for example, and I think that one can be a liberal without being a Christian. Hence, I don't think that either liberalism or Christianity require a "Christian civilization" and that many (most?) versions of Christian civilization historically haven't been particularly liberal or, I would argue, particularly Christian.
Seidentop's book is on my list!
I'm drawing a lot from the Puritan tradition these days. They viewed the old world, the old Christendom, as fatally corrupted. It was the corruption and hypocrisy of the old world that they were fleeing from. To be able to build a True Christianity. The Kingdom of God was to be built here on earth - many of them believed the center of that project to be here, in America, what they were building with their labors and for their progeny, it was too be the Skeleton of the Kingdom of God.
I have abandoned entirely the notion that a truly moral people can ignorantly dispense with the question of the morality of the actions of their superiors. The Kingdom of God will be built from the ground up - it will not be built through deception and manipulation, and other such wearisome and vain nonsense of the present world. We are as of yet not ready, we are at of yet far from God's Kingdom, so we must acknowledge our ignorance though.
They have such contempt for consent. That is the kind of person who builds a wicked society - one who has contempt for the consent of others, and just wants them used for his person. Such a person builds wastelands. Their kind unfortunately is replete throughout our current world. And why wouldn't they be? This is not the Kingdom of God. Nonetheless, we have to continue building towards it. These people will become less and less common over time - as people are raised up, and slowly begin to realize the folly of such means of existence. The military power of course shall be the last to abandon this mode of organization - at Jesus said, " all who draw the sword will die by the sword." Such institutions will probably be unfortunately necessary until we have other the Kingdom to Jesus. But we should always build towards God's Kingdom nonetheless.
The Kingdom of God can only be built in a free, secular republic. The old means of mass domination of society and institutions were pure ignorance, and did not at any point even come close to building a truly Christian society. The Postliberals treat that mode of existence as if it were the Kingdom of God already, and that it just be radishes returned to. This is the height of ignorance. The Kingdom of God is in the future, not the past.