L'Etat, C'est Dieu

     A tip of the hat to Father David Standen, who has sent me several poems on the Stations of the Cross by a Fr. Donaghy, S. J., who taught at Holy Cross in the 1940's.  Father Standen does not have the complete set, so if anyone out there has ever heard of these and knows where to find the rest, we both would be quite grateful.  They are superb poems.

     It occurs to me, as I think about this first poem, that true theocracies are really quite rare in human history: I mean rule by priests, with the civil order entirely subservient to the demands of the faith.  People on the left in our country will throw that word "theocracy" around, but all they mean by it is "any attempt to overturn various court decisions, and a few legislative decisions, allowing untrammeled sexual license."  By their definition, America has been a theocracy throughout its history, until the dawning of the Age of Aquarius; and anybody who thinks, let's say, that the court was wrong to interpret dirty pictures as "speech," and that the court compounded the wrong by curbing exactly those forms of speech that the First Amendment was written to protect most zealously (political and religious speech), is automatically the equivalent of a mullah or a muezzin calling the people to break out their prayer rugs or else.  Idaho, Iran -- what's the difference?

     It's easy to dismiss that sort of absurdity, but it does obscure a truth that is easy to overlook.  The danger, in human history, is not so much that a religion will take over the state, as that the state will become the object of cultic veneration.  The man who ceases to believe in God, as Chesterton famously said, will not believe in nothing; he will believe in anything.  And the biggest anything out there right now -- and this is not a new thing in the world -- is the State.  Our form of the idol is the State Omnicompetent, the State All-Wise, the State that doles out bread and circuses, that will instruct our children better than we can imagine, that can make us eat what we should and not smoke what we shouldn't, the State that will claim our money as its own to save us from destroying our planet, the State that will bring Peace on Earth and Good Will toward Men.

     Jesus had no intention of wresting the state to the control of high priests; he'd had quite enough of that sort.  "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," he said, acknowledging a certain autonomy for the State, "and render unto God what is God's," he added, and let statists take heed.  The Gospels and Acts are full of time-serving, principle-compromising, weathervane-watching priests playing the politician, and politicians bowing to the great god the State; and they all come off pretty badly.  Prime among them is this man who asked "What is truth?" and yet despite that cynicism, or rather as a result of it, found it easy to bow before the deities Augustus et Roma:

     1. He Is Condemned

Pilate must heed the public pulse and poll,
As every politician quickly learns;
The multitude that smiles, as quickly spurns,
And so he shrugs his shoulders and his soul;
His fingers flutter in the brazen bowl;
The guilt is off his hands and head; he turns
To take the spotless towel; in him burns
A doubt -- but Caesar's favour is his goal.

"Sub Pontio Pilato"--down the years
Before a man may truly live, reborn
Of water and the Holy Ghost, he hears
Caught in the Creed, those words of pitying scorn
For him whose heart was meagre, not malign,
Who used ironic water for a sign.

Comments

[Bill R]

"Our form of the idol is the State Omnicompetent, the State All-Wise,..."

When I hear people speak vaguely of a belief in a "higher power," my first reaction is--"You mean the state?" Idolatry is alive and well today, and the First Commandment is still in first place for a reason.

[Bill R]

A truly ecumenical Christian book (recommended by Neuhaus, Weigel, Colson, et al.) is a modern classic: "Idols for Destruction," by Herbert Schlossberg, which has a long and eloquent section on the state and political ideology as modern idols. One odd result of reading this book is that you'll never again look upon the Old Testament as old: it is terribly relevant, and therefore modern, in its recognition of idolatry as an ever present temptation.

[Kyle]

Wow! That was an awesome sonnet! If anyone finds the source, please post it, so I can buy a copy too.

[Ethan Cordray]

The very idea of the omnicompetent state is most laughable to those of us who actually work for said state. "Omni" is not the prefix that I would attach. "In" would be a little more appropriate.

[Tom Austin]

Yes, the rest of those poems, please!.

P.S. Ethan is exactly right; I've worked in various parts of the government for almost two decades and the idea of a government conspiracy is more laughable every year.

[Judy Warner]

I don't know much about ancient cultures, but in modern times it seems that Muslim states come closer to theocracy than anything I've ever heard of. Afghanistan under the Taliban seemed like a perfect theocracy. Saudi Arabia and Iran are pretty theocratic but are too connected with the modern world for the people to remain submissive forever. At least the citizens of a theocracy are in no danger of worshiping the state!

[Ethan Cordray]

Tom, I think one of the funniest examples is people who hold on to anti-Bush 9/11 conspiracies even in the face of the Iraq war. The surest way to protect the towers would have been to hire Haliburton to blow them up.

[Little Gidding]

Excellent post and wonderful poem. Nice point, too, about those who stop believing in God, but, although you and many others attribute it to Chesterton, apparently no one has actually been able to find exactly this quote in his writings, although he did write things like it. But, as a sort of consolation prize, I offer you a source for a very similar thought, but from François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), Génie du christianisme, ou Beautés de la religion chrétienne (Paris: Migneret, 1803), pp. 169-170. Note particularly the last few lines:

Il ne s' agit pas d' examiner rigoureusement ces
croyances. Loin de rien ordonner à leur sujet,
la religion servoit au contraire à en prévenir
l' abus, et à en corriger les excès ; il s' agit
seulement de savoir si leur but est moral, si elles
tendent mieux que les loix elles-mêmes à conduire
la foule à la vertu. Et quel est l' homme sensé qui
puisse en douter ? à force de déclamer
contre la superstition, on finira par ouvrir
la voie à tous les crimes. Ce qu' il y aura
d' étonnant pour les sophistes, c' est qu' au milieu
des maux qu' ils auront causés, ils n' auront pas
même la satisfaction de voir le peuple plus
incrédule. S' il cesse de soumettre son esprit à la
religion, il se fera des opinions monstrueuses. Il
sera saisi d' une terreur d' autant plus étrange,
qu' il n' en connoîtra pas l' objet ; il tremblera dans
un cimetière, où il aura gravé que la mort est un
sommeil éternel , et en affectant de mépriser
la puissance divine, il ira interroger la
bohémienne, et chercher, en tremblant, ses destinées
dans les bigarrures d' une carte.

Il faut du merveilleux, un avenir, des espérances à
l' homme, parce qu' il se sent fait pour vivre au-delà
de notre univers. Les conjurations , la
nécromancie , ne sont chez le peuple, que
l' instinct de la religion, et une des preuves les
plus frappantes de la nécessité d' un culte. On est
bien près de tout croire, quand on ne croit rien ;
on a des devins, quand on n' a plus de prophètes,
des sortiléges quand on renonce aux cérémonies
religieuses, et l' on ouvre les antres des sorciers,
quand on ferme les temples du seigneur.

[Ethan Cordray]

Gidding, I don't suppose you could bang up a quick translation of the most salient part, for us barbarian monoglots?

[Little Gidding]

I hear my dear wife calling me to rake leaves out of the daffodils just now, but if no one else has done it by later today, I'll give it a shot.

[Little Gidding]

I'm sure you'll be glad to know that the daffodils survived my ministrations. Here's a clunky translation of the last sentence:

"One is close to believing anything, when one believes nothing; one has soothsayers, when one has no more prophets, divinations when one renounces religious ceremonies, and one opens the caves of the wizards, when one closes the temples of the Lord."

[Hunter Baker]

I'd only pick one nit. The first statement seems off to me. Religious and political power unified in one person or structure has actually been extremely common in human history.

[Joe Long]

Muslim states "theocratic"? I know the dictionary might agree, but...I guess "diabolicratic" isn't a word.

"Meager, not malign." A perfectly turned phrase, I think.

[Nick]

Ah! Southern Appeal gives us a cast off commenter?

[Tony Esolen]

Mr. Baker,

Indeed yes -- but it's been common as in the case of the worship of Augustus et Roma, or the worship of the city-god Shamash in Babylon, or the tutelary city deities Pallas and Dionysus in Athens. The distinction I wish to make is that the state as god is the great rival to the worship of God. Neither Rome nor Babylon nor Athens was a theocracy, but all involved a great measure of idolatry of the state.

[Judy Warner]

Even having an official state church seems to hurt the worship of God. Look at England, where more people attend mosque each week than attend the Church of England, versus the United States.

[Labrialumn]

As N.T. Wright points out, the first Christian creed "Iaesou ho Kyrios" is not only a true and essential theological statement, it is also a treasonous statement against Rome. The Caesar cult was wide-spread and growing in the eastern part of the empire at that time, and its key phrase was "Kaisaros ho Kyrios"

At least one of the two major parties is pushing the State religion of Kaisaros ho kyrios.

[Scott Pennington]

Let us not forget the context of "render unto Caesar . . .". Christ was faced with a conundrum. Advocate tax rebellion and face punishment from Rome or advocate idolatry (the coins bearing Caesar's image) and face the wrath of believing Jews. He outfoxed them by reframing the issue. I don't think it's exactly an endorsement of separation of church and state (although it has been used to support that idea by many).

[Ryan Jankowski]

We have recently added Schlossberg's chapter 5 of 'Idols for Destruction' to our audio collection and is available free for anyone that might be interested.

http://reformedaudio.org/schlossberg.html

God bless!
Ryan