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SIGHT-SEEING: THE CHURCH AND POWER

Glowing cross

NILS VON KALM reflects on why the church should heed the warning about the link between corruption and power…

The most recent round of upheaval in Australian politics has been a reminder of the old adage by historian, Lord Acton, that, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

The closer we are to power, the stronger the temptation is to misuse it. I really don’t think humanity is strong enough to deal with power on its own without outside help and commitment to a worldview that is bigger than ourselves. The evidence for this has been there for all to see in Canberra this last week.

Glowing cross

“The shameful way of the cross would be the way the world would be saved,” says Nils von Kalm, noting that it wouldn’t be through power or military might but by “a love so revolutionary that it looks weak in the eyes of the powerful”. PICTURE: Diana Vargas/Unsplash

 

“[T]rue Christian faith is always on the margins. That’s where Jesus always is. History is littered with the wreckage of when the church aligns itself to power.”

When I visited the West Bank and Israel in May, we went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial. As I walked around the memorial, seeing the stories of Jewish people and the horror they experienced, it struck me that the Holocaust was a well thought-out, systematic, planned genocide. If you’ve ever considered the very nature of evil, this was it.

Human nature is such that our values tend to change depending on our life circumstances if we don’t have support from others. For decades, Israel has been treating Palestinians as less than human. The oppressed has become the oppressor. Palestinians would quite possibly be the same if the roles were reversed.

That’s why true Christian faith is always on the margins. That’s where Jesus always is. History is littered with the wreckage of when the church aligns itself to power. It started when the church became the official state religion of Rome in the 4th century, we saw it in the alignment of the German Christians to Hitler, and we are seeing it in the complete loss of moral compass that most of the white evangelical church in the US has experienced in getting access to Donald Trump.

Australian preacher John Smith said many years ago that true Christianity marches on its knees. It marches with the oppressed, in the valley where the poor are assigned their place by the powerful. There, in the dirt, away from the glitz and glamour and the bright lights, sits the Creator of the universe, in solidarity with the forgotten ones.

Earlier this year, the Centre for Public Christianity released their important film, For the Love of God. The sub-title explained the premise of the film: how the church is better and worse than you ever imagined. Something I didn’t mention in my review of this film was that the better and worse of church history follows a pattern. The church is at its most Christlike when it is either persecuted or on the margins of society, and it is at its most sinful when it is closely aligned with power.

For the first 300 years of the church, up until the time of Constantine, the Sermon on the Mount was the guiding framework of the Christian movement. Stuart Murray highlights the following characteristics of the church during this period:
• Churches were small;
• everyone took part in contributing to gatherings;
• there were no professional clergy;
• meals were central;
• groups were known for their good works;
• they lived a radical lifestyle;
• baptism was a sign of conscientious objection; and,
• they were marginal in society and persecuted.

The fascinating outcome of this is that, according to social historian Rodney Stark, the growth of the Christian movement during this period was exponential to the point that by the time Constantine became Roman Emperor, pretty much half the population of the Empire was Christian.

After this period, when Christianity became aligned with power and became the state religion, here is what happened:
• Obligatory church attendance;
• Obligatory tithes;
• Large buildings replaced small;
• Clergy became professionalised and hierarchical;
• Monologue preaching developed;
• Laity became passive; and, 
• Infant baptism replaced believer’s baptism.

The access that the church gained to power meant that the Bible had to be read differently. To accommodate its alignment to power, there had to be a diminishing of New Testament social teaching such as the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. You couldn’t really take seriously the command to love your enemies now that the expansion of the empire was apparently God-ordained. The church instead now supported the social order, citizenship became more important than discipleship, and the definition of ‘orthodoxy’ as the common belief became determined by socially powerful clerics who were supported by the state.

The outcome of all this was something that is all too familiar in the current Western church. Jesus became marginalised and the church moved to the centre where power lay. Isn’t this what we see today? Listen to Christians who talk about their support for Donald Trump. They hardly ever mention Jesus. When they use the Bible at all, they will quote from the Old Testament. It’s the same with those who peddle prosperity teaching, another doctrine which is linked with power. Isn’t it ironic when we have Christians who won’t talk about Jesus?

“When we stand with the powerful, we will be distracted from the way of Jesus. When we stand however with the powerless in the valley, we will find Jesus, away from the halls of power, in the dust and dirt where the poor and marginalised live.”

Ann Morisey states that when the church is close to power, it becomes like a punch-drunk fighter who is back on the ropes. She says: “The hangover that the church is still recovering from, results from having imbibed the potent liquor served by the powerful of the nation. A millennium of carousing with kings, queens and ministers of state takes its toll…The church, like the chronic alcoholic, has to go through a process of detox, clearing out from the system the toxins that would otherwise bring death. Power has been the poison that has prevented the institutional church from understanding the Gospel.”

These are powerful and confronting words. But so were the words of Jesus, and we would do very well to heed them.

True, Christian faith is never interested in winning the culture wars; it is never interested in creating a “Christian” society in the mould that some political parties are wont to do. True, Christian faith always walks with Jesus into the places where the marginalised are herded, where the powerless are kept in their place by the powerful, where the troublemakers are kept out of sight, and where the oppressed are forced into prison-like conditions.

And there, where they have always been given the message that they are not wanted, Jesus tells them they are blessed. They are blessed when they mourn, for God will comfort them; they are blessed when they are persecuted for the cause of justice, because it is them that will inherit the kingdom of God and not the ones who have a sense of entitlement to it.

This is why the Christmas story was such good news right from the start. When Mary gave her Magnificat, in the context of Roman occupation and oppression, she rejoiced that God lifts up the humble and brings down the powerful from their thrones. She foresaw what the birth of her son would do. Her son, who would live his life in the margins, and die a criminal’s death. The shameful way of the cross would be the way the world would be saved. It wouldn’t be through power or military might, but by the quiet Spirit of God, by a love so revolutionary that it looks weak in the eyes of the powerful.

Our view of life is determined by where we stand. When we stand with the powerful, we will be distracted from the way of Jesus. When we stand however with the powerless in the valley, we will find Jesus, away from the halls of power, in the dust and dirt where the poor and marginalised live. It was the case 2,000 years ago, and it is the case today. Power corrupts, and the church needs to heed the warning.

 

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