In the post yesterday about Patriarch Alexiy, I wrote the paragraph below. It struck me that this could lead to some additional comments that might be helpful as we, in the USA, think through what Church and State mean.
However, being Cuban, and having served as a missionary in South America, I had the opportunity to meet at least one bishop (Anglican) who had grown up on the Communist island and then been allowed to leave to be a missionary in Uruguay. And, no, he had not “given in” to the Communists and he had a lively faith with a desire for the gospel (and the Church) to grow. What I did find out was that he did not hook the faith with a particular system of government, like tends to happen here in the USA. Mind you, he was clearly not a Communist, but his outlook on politics and social issues was much more “European” and to the “left” than is common in this country among conservative Christians. But, he clearly was morally and theologically conservative.
And, so I gleaned from him a small glimmering of how to separate the Church from the State. No, I do not mean the travesty that separation of Church and State has become in the USA. Rather, I mean I learned the ability to separate a current political system from the eternal Kingdom of God. I am not claiming that I know the correct relationship between Church and State. That is an argument that has raged since the fourth century A.D., and became very heated at the time of the Reformation and the Anabaptists. But, I am beginning to see some of the questions that I need to ask.
Both Bolivia and Peru, where I served, had some principles in their political system that are quite different than the USA. For instance, they do not take your private ownership of land as inviolable. What do I mean? Well, in many parts of South America, if you buy a piece of land, but do not put a wall around it, care for it, and/or occupy it (depending on the country), then someone may be able to come onto “your” land, claim squatter’s right, and have ownership transferred to them. Our reaction would, of course, be to claim that this was “morally” wrong. That is our land; it may not be taken from us. But, in those cultures, it is not your land, ultimately. It is the community’s land. The “immorality” is for you to keep a piece of land undeveloped when there are people in need.
In the Netherlands, if a building is empty, not in use for twelve months and the owner has no pressing need to use it (such as a rental contract starting in the next month), then it can be legally squatted. The only illegal aspect would be forcing an entry, if that was necessary. When a building is squatted it is normal to send the owner a letter and to invite the police to inspect the squat. The police check whether the place is indeed lived in by the squatter — in legal terms this means there must be a bed, a chair, a table and a working lock in the door which the squatter can open and close. — Wikipedia
I used those countries because they provide a mixture of backgrounds. Bolivia and Peru have a Roman Catholic background. The Netherlands have a Reformed background. And, yet, both have reached the same conclusion. The ownership of land is not solely dependent upon a simple juridical declaration, but is also dependent on some actual use of the land. Frankly, in practice few people “squat” a piece of land way out in the countryside. They mostly look for something in the city. However, the people who colonized the West went out there, squatted a piece of land, and if they managed to keep it, they could register it at the land office. So, we also have a history of “squatting” in our culture.
So, is there a Christian position on land ownership? Or is land ownership one of those cultural issues that can have varying answers without in any way violating Christian principle? I have deliberately picked out what I think is one of the easy issues in order to get you thinking about Church and State. Have you ever asked yourself whether what you take as a “right” is simply an attitude or is it something for which you would be willing to fight? Because, sometimes, the Church must choose to fight regardless of the odds.
In order for the Church to be able to relate properly to the State, it constantly has to ask itself what things are eternal, what things are cultural, and what things are temporary. Obviously, I am not talking simply about land ownership. And, one caveat, do not discount culture. Culture is an important part of what it is to be human, and I believe that it is something through which God works. What the Church does in one culture can and should vary from what the Church does in another culture. One of the hardest lessons for missionaries to learn is that what is cultural is not equal to what is non-essential. I will go even farther and say that what is cultural can often also be very important to God, but that is the subject of another post someday.
The problem in the US is that we have become convinced that our system is Christian. Thus we assume that any really Christian people will have our system. We fail to realise that our economic system is not a moral absolute: rather it is simply the way things are here. Nor is there any human system that can match the generosity and charity of the Christian absolute. Where the US system succeeds in one area, it fails in another (and maybe state-run socialism succeeds in that area, but fails in the first). Parish-level communism may be the closest answer, (a la Acts) but we know from our own history that we’ll fail there, as well.
What is, in a given culture, is neither anti- not pro- but rather the tools we have to work with.
Our US history of Squatting was welcomed by the Native population: but we cam in and claimed moral ownership of the land. Our system routed theirs, largely by force. We continually recreate the one thing listed as “only legal aspect” listed in your example from the Netherlands.
I’ve been reading a lot of Wendell Berry.
Check out, ” What Are People For” as a primer.
It is possible to be a communal land use person and a conservative believer.
Our economy, as we are seeing vividly now, is extremely destructive.
Huw and Rob, I agree with you both. We have indeed become convinced that our system is Christian in every detail. Thus, for some believers, any attempt to adjust the system is tantamount to religious heresy. I saw this in Alabama where the Christian coalition associated group campaigned against state constitutional reform on the grounds that non-Christians were involved in the attempt to change it. In fact, the Alabama coalition was eventually expelled from the national Christian coalition.
And, when I was in Bolivia, I met some Christians from the Aymara tribe who lived in a basically communal land use tribal society. It was their heritage from hundreds of years back and they saw no reason to change it when they became Christian.