flying.farther

This is a paper that I have constructed with the aim to begin the process of synthesizing my theology – a theology that is inherently political. Clearly some, or a great deal, of the content in the paper has show up on this blog already, but do not let that deter you from reading this. This paper is to show the connections I am starting to make between theologies that I am putting together. Let me know what you think.

Switching Narratives: From Constantinianism to the Theopolitical of Cavanaugh, the Theoeconomic of McCarraher and the Political Theology of Metz
By David Horstkoetter

The historical question, “Does the state corrupt the church, and if so, how ought the church respond?” is particularly relevant to constructing a political theology. This paper seeks to put forth a genetic political theology with specific reference to Christianity, state power and market forces. This paper has three parts: The first section establishes the popular Constantinian story – of Constantine’s imperial intervention yoking the church with violence – as a foil to a more precise history.1 While Constantinianism is broadly defensible when understood as a history and heuristic story about state interference, it lacks necessary details for a history to ground one’s political theology. Such ambiguity creates a framework that only partially describes and challenges the Christian and secular situations. The second section puts forth a more recent history linking the modern nation-state and the economic market as colonizers that provide the necessary details and energy to directly engage the current colonizing order. Simply put, a critical history of the current order and its colonialist nature correctly reveals that the world pressures the church and in response to the intrusion, Christianity radicalizes itself. The detailed story of the state and market allows Christianity to understand, reject and combat colonizing effects within itself and the world at large. The third section begins to resist the state and market by recognizing that Johann Metz’s critique of bourgeois Christianity is realized and fulfilled when Christians are reoriented by the Christian story. The Metzian concept of dangerous memory reveals the logic of the state and market in contrast to the Christian story, and emerges as we are oriented in the direction of eschatological hope. Lastly, this paper ends with a point of departure for imagining a constructive political theology of Metzian origins that challenges the church and current order, using historical and theological lenses.

Approaching the Past and its Story
The controversial issue of imperial power and early Christian formation is at the forefront of theological, political and popular writings. Stanley Hauerwas underscores his Christian response to violence with the idea of a pacifist, communal church which rejects the yoking of church and state beginning with the Constantinian shift (Constantianism).2 Mark Lewis Taylor in Religion, Politics, and the Christian Right and Cornel West in Democracy Matters also write with the idea of Constantinian Christians in mind.3 Lastly, The Da Vinci Code caught the public’s attention to the notion of the imperial corruption of the church, although the work itself was not scholarly, and largely inaccurate. Common and deeper questions develop through each of the aforementioned sources: How much influence did secular power have in the formation of Christianity? And more specifically, did the imperial power of Constantine corrupt Christianity? While Hauerwas, Taylor, West and even Dan Brown answer “Yes” to both questions in one degree or another, there is more to be said regarding the history of imperial intervention. For example, on the specific question of Constantine’s influence and motivation at Nicaea, the historical accounts lack reliable detail. This inconclusive judgment results from the fact that: little documentation of Nicaea exists; the purpose of councils is to reform on an ongoing basis; relying on a single word to establish imperial involvement is tenuous at best; and history provides a hagiographic Constantine.

No writings survive from the Council of Nicaea where the Constantinian story begins. The Nicaean creed exists today only because it was recorded on paper in a later revisionary council.4 Robert Grant confesses that “within twenty-five years a leading participant in the council wrote a book about it and had to rely on his memory for an account of what went on.”5 For such an important council, that for some seems to have determined the fate of Christianity with a sort of finality, it is disturbing to have so little historical data from sources written years later. This general lack of data about the past does not support anyone to shape the events to their liking, it can merely yield ambiguity.

Elevating Nicaea I to a position of finality incorrectly eclipses the environment of continuous creed-making, changing the council’s function and importance, particularly in relation to Chalcedon I.6 The problems concerning Christology were never entirely resolved at Nicaea. To say the contrary, or to view Nicaea as an isolated, but definitive and comprehensive event is to misunderstand the council in relation not only to the Arian conflict, but also to the other ecumenical councils and creeds. Constantinople I, Ephesus I and others attempted to balance, reform and improve upon the Christological understanding of Nicaea that was explicitly reactionary – a creed that largely defined itself in opposition to Arianism.7 Christological creed-making, which addressed old questions while including new questions, was a centuries-long process.

The language of Homoousion employed at Nicaea I often is used as a microcosm for the whole discussion of imperial power in the church and the point where one interprets the meaning of imperial intervention.8 Not only is it a problem to focus on one council, particularly one only known through second-hand histories, it is much more problematic to base one’s idea of imperial intervention on the introduction of one word into the creed. Histories do say that the emperor suggested the Homoousion, but how much did he really intervene? There was at least a wall of liturgical separation within the council. The emperor did not have the right to vote, but only to confirm and pronounce the vote as an edict, and he was also barred from the Eucharist and membership in the church because he was not baptized.9 Was the imperial suggestion one of exasperation, part of a grand conspiracy, or something in between? The written sources do not offer an answer. It has only been determined that Constantine desired to unify his empire and use Christianity to that end, however, that still tells too little about how the word was suggested.

Emphasis on the introduction of the term Homoousion is unclear, but that is mostly taken into account by historians who attempt to maintain the ambiguity of the history. It is entirely possible that Ossius of Cordoba (although Ossius might not have been at Nicaea) or another Christian adviser prompted the emperor to suggest the word, as happened earlier in the Donatist controversy.10 Perhaps Constantine himself was the puppet. In fact, some suggest that it is improbable that Homoousion originated from Constantine at all.11 Little is known about the atmosphere at Nicaea when Homoousion was born, other than that the Arians objected. It seems tenuous at best to rely heavily on one council to define an outlook, much less on the basis of the introduction of this single word.

Constantine himself is an ambiguous figure in history, for the literature presents a sanitized emperor.12 The texts that “chronicled” Constantine’s greatness were explicitly meant to influence how we understand Constantine as “the Great” and do little to account for the moral quality of his diverse actions. The fact that later sources called the emperor Constantine solely Christian bleached the emperor’s identity and the led people to accept the “Christian” history, or in this case hagiography, as truth. For example, most assume that Constantine was the first Christian emperor, rather than an emperor who had a vision of Apollo and seemed to have continued pagan practices with his version of Christianity.13 The emperor, in an alternative view, was “not the ruler of one people, class or religion: he is the just ruler and saviour (sic) of all. The emperor is to be like God in all respects, a heavenly being, … most like God, [in] his philanthropia [love of humankind]. His mind intent upon heaven, he strives to be the image of God…the imitation of God’s fatherhood.”14 In this interpretation, the emperor becomes a manifestation of God: the image of the Logos, an avatar, an incarnation, or theophany/Christophany.15 As the emperor was the avatar, the “authority of the emperor stems not from the people or the army but from God” and the word of the emperor “may be taken for a canon.”16 The avatar development, combining theopolitical identity with the previous Roman identity of emperors, largely manifested itself through cultic worship of a human who would die and become divine. The office of emperor becomes problematic for Christians theologically and politically. As the emperor assumes demigod status, Christians and historians of the past and today debatably call this status of apostleship or “sanctification of the temporal order,” instead of an imperial grab for equal status with Christ.17

Constantine is known as a consensus builder; living in both pagan and Christian camps, he attempted to balance between both sides through co-existence, although tolerance seemed to be his last resort.18 John McGuckin asserts that this move toward apostleship was Constantine’s attempt to assert himself as both Christ and the Unconquered Sun (Apollo), which he seemed to have dialectically maintained through his life and even at the moment of his death.19 Indeed Constantine raised up a statue that could be interpreted favorably by pagans and Christians alike.20 He gave the church money and property, but did not relinquish his title Pontifex Maximus or cease the financial contributions to pagan cults.21 Likewise, the council itself was a “joint result of an episcopal and imperial decision.”22 One can confidently say that, in Constantine’s attempt to unify his empire, he became a friend to all sides and a proper politician.

In sum, history can only speak to the facts; however, facts in this case are relatively few and imagination is high. As a complex and ambiguous history, the correct answer to the original questions about the negative influence of imperial power from a historical perspective is partially yes and partially no. That is to say, the story begins to collapse whenever there is a push for details, for they are lacking in reliability – similar to Constantine’s conversion, whenever that actually was.23 The conclusive answer is as simple as it is broad: each person and text was attempting to persuade or to manipulate. Christians were attempting to use imperial power, as imperial power was attempting to use Christians, while second-hand texts attempt to denounce or elevate party lines and individuals within the bias of the text. What we can begin to judge is whether or not the church lost identity as it began to grow or adapt to the newfound power. Ultimately, no matter what the secular power attempts, be it Theodosius I theoretically co-opting the church or the persecution of Diocletian, it is the church that allows or rejects any intrusion. The church is responsible for its own secularization; more is gained by focusing on the church’s act to permit the emperor, who retained the title Pontifex Maximus, to sit in the council and speak, than by basing a great deal on the Edict of Milan and Homoousion.24

This reorientation of Constantinian history, focusing on the church’s own move to allow secular influence, acknowledges a decisive change when Constantine rose to power, but it is not enough for a political theology. Constantinian history makes sense from afar and can indeed be supported; however, upon closer inspection it is quite literally lacking reliable, detailed sources. Not only is the distance troublesome merely in establishing what happened, but also correctly establishing commonality between the past and the present is difficult at best. This exposes one of the greatest difficulties for Constantianism as a history for political theology; in the lack of detail, with the distance of time and cultural difference between the far past and the present, finding commonality becomes increasingly simplistic and, because the past may not even speak on some current issues, the Constantinian story can become unhelpful as a heuristic device.25

The Colonizing State and Market
Christian communities and their actions are radicalized and speak more urgently to the situations in the present crises when rooted in a modern story, specifically the church’s current relationship to the state and market. Instead of attempting to span the cultural shift from ancient to modern, made in the time between Constantine and the present as Constantinianism attempts, the story of the state and market is immediately practical. This focus on recent history provides a more precise approach than the category of Constantinianism, and it still maintains that Christians and the church at large are called to serious, committed levels of engagement. Lastly, critiques of state and market can achieve and surpass conclusions by those who advocate a communal church, similar to Hauerwas’ resident aliens or Gustavo Gutiérrez’s base ecclesial communities; alongside the heuristic critique of the state and market can lie a kingdom theology and ethic with the body of Christ as an alternative social body.26 The story of the co-opting state and the commodifying market covers the concerns of Constantinianism, but working with kingdom theology, it also radicalizes the body of Christ. Simply put, focusing on a narrative more detailed and immediate to the current situation between the church, state and market reveals the plurality of present problems.

In Torture and Eucharist and Theopolitical Imagination, William Cavanaugh puts forward an unconventional reading of the modern nation-state. He posits that the nation-state’s narrative put forth to its citizens – that the nation-state is necessary for securing peace from warring religions – is false.27 The state’s narrative is fairly straightforward: There were “Wars of Religion” between Catholics and Protestants in the early modern period, and from within this chaos the nation-state emerged to provide safety for the population and continues to do so today. The state asserts its myth as true, necessary for the state’s existence and the world’s survival; however, in reality the state uses this myth to justify its inherently aggressive existence through overwhelming power and violent coercion – its raison d’état.28

Contrary to the narrative of the nation-state, Catholics and Protestants were allying against other Catholics and Protestants during the Early Modern age.29 In fact, many of the conflicts called the “Wars of Religion” were actually the modern nation-states’ violent birthing.30 Hence, the term “Wars of Religion” is a misnomer. For example, the make-up of Early Modern France was certainly not monolithic; rather, it existed in a constant tension. At one point, the ultra-Catholic Guise, the Catholic Valois and the Huguenots of Navarre vied for domestic power. In the end, the monarchs of the île de France, the Catholic Valois, united with the Huguenots of Navarre against the Guise so as to maintain a nation-state instead of a papal state. Foreign relations were also highly complex and violent. The Catholic Holy Roman Empire and its other Catholic and Protestant alliances sought to drive France, both Catholic and Protestant as one, into the Atlantic. To ensure the survival of the French state, it was France’s goal to exacerbate the similar complex tensions within the Holy Roman Empire, a public enemy to France which was larger and more complex in nature.31

This political solidification was not achieved merely because of nationalized forces like the Holy Roman Empire, England, France and Rome, but it was the national state that coerced its subjects, soon to be titled citizens, into the state’s centralizing of power through an individualizing social contract, like Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan or John Locke’s Second Treatise. Eliminating the validity of social communities by monopolizing citizens’ relationships, the nation-state achieved prominence and power via the eradication of alternative social space in the name of peace, through violence, if necessary.32 Thus, the nation-state and its oppressive raison d’état emerged as a power unto itself. Coercive military force became a necessity because the state claimed it to be, but more over, because the state first used force to birth itself and in turn created its own enemies. Simply stated, the “Wars of Religion” in Europe during the Early Modern age were less about differing Christian traditions, and more about nation-states beginning to vie for power in both the domestic and international spheres.

Similar in many aspects to William Cavanaugh’s theopolitical argument, Eugene McCarraher writes a convincingly theoeconomic thesis:

The corporation parodies the ecclesia, and the trinkets of the market ape the delights of the heavenly city. The enchantments of capitalism pervert our longing for a sacramental way of being in the world. A fat, greasy, hoarding slob in ancient Babylonian lore, Mammon appears, in capitalist modernity, in a counterfeit angelic rainment.33

Simply stated, McCarraher argues that the secular market is not a demystification of humanity, but is in fact equally dependent on enchantment as the “sacred” and that capitalism constitutes a “new form of enchantment” through “the repression or displacement of sacrament.”34 As the state attempts to demand first allegiance from its citizens by claiming control and marginalizing its competitors, so too does the market attempt to assert control over people by poorly mimicking and inverting the Christian emphasis on meeting the needs of humanity by giving through the likes of capitalism and materialism that calls humanity to buy a perceived need.

McCarraher and Cavanaugh are not alone in their conclusion that the state and market are colonizers, to use the language of a liberationist theologian.35 There are Muslim scholars reaching the same conclusions from their own marginalized perspectives. Khaled Abou El-Fadl’s writing on the chaos within Muslim communities, particularly in the Arab world, seems to parallel Cavanaugh’s theopolitical interpretation of the nation-state.36 El-Fadl asserts that the state’s jealousy obliterates alternative social space, having “formally dismantled the traditional institutions of civil society, …Muslims witnessed the emergence of highly centralized and despotic, and often corrupt, governments that nationalized the institutions of religious learning and brought the awqaf under state control,” for the state always seeks to assert power over its citizens and justify its raison d’état.37 El-Fadl also attributes the appearance of the state and its deconstruction of “traditional institutions of religious authority” to the rise of groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The claim of the state for the necessity of the state and the need for violence to ensure the state’s survival became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Farid Esack seems to agree with McCarraher’s theoeconomic readings. Citing David Loy and Harvey Cox, Esack similarly asserts that: “Underpinned by its theology – economics – it has numerous temples in the form of shopping malls to which people are drawn by deeply unfilled inner needs, for which the temple, church or mosque are now perceived as inadequate.”38 Esack continues to describe the force of the market as one that “seeks to convert all other cultures in its image, utilizing them for consolidating the system.”39 This is, in a word, colonization.40

Theologically and sociologically these Muslim scholars are reaching similar argumentative conclusions as some Christian theologians and historians, and this illuminates at least two important points. First, some Christians and Muslims have a similar understanding of nation-state and market power, which might result in a condemnation of the powers as they currently exist. This leads to the second point: While Muslims struggle against the encroachment of Western Imperialism, are Christians working prophetically against the chaos causing state and market that attempt to influence us, or have we been co-opted by the religion of the state and the market?

Christians are called to stand in condemnation of those who bring chaos and violence. In this case, this refers to the state and the market and all that is included in their systems of repression by their powers and structures. Humanity, Muslim or Christian, cannot flourish if relationships are continually broken because bombs from planes obliterate terrorized people and fearful governments poison alternative social space. As the state and the market privatize through colonization, the state and market forces rip apart social bodies much like the physical bodies of European victims that were drawn and quartered centuries ago. Just the stories of the state and market function heuristically to direct the church against present evils, the radical and prophetic Christian spirit must be encouraged to aid humanity.

Imagining the Beginning of a Political Theology
Political theology, Johann Baptist Metz asserts, must begin with engaging history because historical consciousness regularly reforms our current identity and thus allows for the continual, interrupting praxis of solidarity.41 And so Metz puts forth a political theology that engages history and a changing narrative and praxis. Understanding one’s social location within the Christian narrative and the body of Christ, and contrary to the colonizing state and market, is essential for developing a political theology.42 In addition to involving itself in history, Metz’s theology incorporates a strong eschatology that encourages hope and a forward-looking orientation within the memory of suffering in the past and present. Christian historical consciousness is a reforming experience, pushing the church to change the surrounding world, not merely itself.

Metz argues that “ the formation of [Christian] identity always begins with the awakening of memory.”43 Hauerwas’ emphasis on narrative achieves the same end – the first Christ event and the promise of a brilliant future form a changed community, a fundamentally Christian community.44 In other words, the materialized past and a Christian eschatological hope changes who the community presently is through a remembrance of Christ, a vision of the telos and the power to change. The body of Christ is made responsive to past suffering through anamnesis, for it is the nature of Christianity to imitate the suffering Christ, as the church is a community for the oppressed (orphaned and widowed) and a challenge to the oppressor.45 The Christian vision interrupts one’s conception of the present, by giving an alternate vision of history; Christians are re-contextualized within a different story, an informative and liberating story that resists the colonization of the state and market. Christian praxis is then attuned to suffering shaped by the Christian story and consistently interrupts the apathetic world through solidarity with the helpless and suffering of the present.46 This biblical story then informs the church’s identity and gives a new identity to practitioners of a social, Christian praxis.

As the church is more directly positioned to stand against the colonizing influence of the privatizing story of the state and market, Christians who take their faith seriously are dared to convert from a bourgeois Christianity to the Christian story made of memory and community. When Christians actively understand that the church in America is colonized, the church can begin to actively work against privatizing forces and with those suffering.47 Previously the church was not working with the colonizers, but now the church purposely seeks solidarity with the poor and oppressed through both the newly visible, liberative action-speak and the already existing subversive communal-being of the ecclesia.

Individually “the Christian has the responsibility to develop his [or her] faith’s relationship to the world as a relationship of hope, and to explicate his theology as eschatology.”48 Still, the single Christian is not alone in either his or her relationship with the world or the future Christian hope; instead the body of Christ that develops a Christian’s identity is grounded in a “horizon of eschatology,” and more specifically in an eschatological foundation that is primarily creative and zealous.49 This eschatology envisions the church as capable of revealing the Christian hope to the world; the revelatory eschatology is inherently political as it shapes the church according to the mission of Christ, rooting the church in declaring the present, eschatological hope of the basileia to this world.50

Therefore it is the body of Christ that stands in the basileia, its mission, and continually interrupts the world’s attempts at self-redemption or self-production through love, sacrifice and solidarity.51 The church acts as the in-breaking of the basileia to the present by visibly solidifying the intensifying nature of the Christological sacrifice on the cross.52 The church points from the suffering and resurrected past to the future and hope for the world. Simply put, the church interrupts the world by proclaiming the hope of the future in a revolutionary, subversive and imaginative way.

In contrast to the church’s mission, the church in America is crippled in its Americanness as it accepts the narratives of the state and the market.53 The bourgeois religion that Christianity in America has become (more formed by the state and the market) is dependent on privatization.54 The Constitution, as the American social contract, is an Enlightenment document that privatizes citizens; this country’s foundational anthropological lens is individualistic. The state converses with, or coerces, the individual into discussion between the individual and the state as its primary relationship. American Christians must realize the influences of the constitution and understand that the church is fundamentally a social institution contrary to the state and market – the body of Christ.55 In response, the American Christians must understand the necessity of a social Christianity and reject privatization before they can accept a full Christology and ecclesiology; in order to envision the Messianic nature of Christianity, Christians must first understand who they are.56 Their call is only accessible when Christians get past the American dream, humanist hopes of anthropocentrism and other enticements by the state and market.57

American culture has become increasingly “hominized,” as Metz similarly asserts about his own German culture years ago.58 While it seems society may be shifting back towards a more cosmological view due to scientific discoveries, these breakthroughs have had little effect on some aspects of secularization, namely ideological, secularized hopes that humanity will overcome, thrive and conquer future frontiers. Secularized and nationalistic hope provided by Ronald Reagan (one example among many) became the controlling ideology which Metz warns against.59 This ideology of nationalistic hope has taken hold of American Christians by replacing eschatological hope and, instead of liberating, it traps the globe in Americana’s oppressive custody.60 Thus, American Christians no longer remember the atrocities of Auschwitz that Metz so actively addressed because of the blinding nature of the promise of American hope.

I am not calling for the burning of the constitution, total anarchy or a theocracy; but rather for the awakening of a new conscience in American Christians to understand that the current relationship with the government is unhealthy for the body of Christ. The government’s social contract defines the church, instead of the church finding definition amongst Christ and themselves as the body of Christ. Christians must first realize that the anthropocentrism given to Americans by the government is not a Christian anthropology. Insisting on being the body of Christ, a cohesive social body that inherently has a politic, reclaims the Christian memory of suffering and solidarity. No longer would the memory of events such as Auschwitz be supplanted in the church by a secularized American hope to the detriment of the church.

For a tangible example, it is no wonder that the Church has largely ignored Darfur, for American Christians have instead continued to place their hope in the bright, anthropocentric destiny (with masculine emphasis) preached by Reagan and in a country that has largely ignored places like Darfur in favor of national interests like Middle Eastern oil. We have lost the “messianic praxis” of “discipleship, conversion, love, and suffering,” because we have accepted the secularized sacrament of a nationalistic hope.61 Consequently, the church has held to theologies that remain unchanged and unresponsive in the face of suffering: genocidal civil wars, starvation and drought. With unchanged theologies and failing to recall Christian suffering, American Christians do not act as prophets in the world. The secularization of Christianity through a form of enchanted, secular hominization has caused us to lose not only the idea of suffering with and for others but also ourselves.

Conclusion
Constantinianism is vague, and does not speak sharply enough against the nation-state’s attempt to function as savior and the market as an alternative enchantment, which in turn colonizes and oppresses. Simply, Constantinian history lacks nuance and fails to address the plurality of issues that have risen today in the unique way that the state and market have colonized the world and the church. That Constantinian history currently focuses on yoking violence with the church is vaguely helpful but lacks depth. To situate the church in contrast to Constantine as our primary focus lacks the richness necessary to challenge our current situation beyond one issue. Cavanaugh and McCarraher offer a much more relevant and nuanced history for developing a political theology today. Not only is the recognition of the state and the market more relevant in addressing a plurality of issues, it also directly ties into a Metzian political theology without altering or hindering a theology grounded in the basileia.

_______
1. Constantinianism in this paper is in reference to a Stanley Hauerwas/Cornel West understanding, which will be discussed at greater length later, and is well summarized in Cornel West’s Democracy Matters: “Constantine himself seems to have converted to Christianity partly out of political strategy and imperial exigency, and then proceeded to use the cloak of Christianity for his own purposes of maintaining power. As the Christian church became increasingly corrupted by state power, religious rhetoric was often used to justify imperial aims and conceal the prophetic heritage of Christianity.” (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 148.

2. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in a Christian Colony (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992) and The Hauerwas Reader edited by John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).

3. Mark Taylor, Religion, Politics, and the Christian Right (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 158, 160-161.

4. Robert Grant, “Religion and Politics at the Council of Nicaea” The Journal of Religion, 55 (Jan., 1975), 1.

5. Ibid., 1.

6. Roger Haight, Jesus Symbol of God (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2005), 273, 285, 297-298. John McGuckin The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 90.

7. McGuckin, 78-90. Haight, 274.

8. Homoousion is defined as: “the Son of God was consubstantial (of the same substance) as the Father.” McGuckin, 171.

9. Johannes Straub, “Constantine as ###### ######### Tradition and Innovation in the Representation of the First Christian Emperor’s Majesty” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 21 (1967), 48-49.

10. Ibid., 47-48. McGuckin, 88-89.

11. Victor C. De Clercq, Ossius of Cordova (Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1954), 218-281. Francis Dvornik, “Emperors, Popes, and General Councils” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 6 (1951), 10. McGuckin, 74, 172-173. Ossius is also referenced by historians as Hosius. Some think it improbable that Ossius suggested the word, nevertheless, Hansen states it is improbable that the word originated from Constantine. RPC Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 201-202.

12. “The bulk of the written material is by Christians about Christianity, thus strongly illuminating one side of Constantine’s character and life but leaving another in deep shadow. Modern scholars usually submit to this balance of light, rightly if they are studying the reign as an important episode in the history of the Church, wrongly if they are studying it on its own terms and for its own sake.” Ramsay MacMullen, Constantine (New York: Croom Helm, 1987), 243-244.

13. Emperor as Pontifex Maximus in Colm Luibhéid, The Council of Nicaea (Ireland: Galway University Press, 1982), 12-16.

14. Ibid., 22.

15. Johannes Roldanus, The Church in the Age of Constantine: The Theological Challenges (New York: Routledge, 2006), 60-61. Williams, 6-8. Massey H. Shepard, Jr., “Liturgical Expressions of the Constantinian Triumph” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 21 (1967), 78.

16. Williams, 22-23.

17. Shepard, 74-75.

18. Grant, 2.

19. From discussions with John McGuckin and also in McGuckin, 74-75.

20. Straub, 44.

21. Ibid., 46-47.

22. Francis Dvornik, “Emperors, Popes, and General Councils” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 6 (1951), 9.

23. T. G. Elliott, “Constantine’s Conversion: Do We Really Need It?” Phoenix, 41 (1987), 420.

24. Hauerwas, Resident Aliens, 17.

25. This critical analysis of history is not to say that the past is irrelevant. In this very specific case, when establishing a political theology and noting the relationship between church and state, it is possible and more helpful to start with more recent events that also have, in this case, direct ties to the diverse, current situation. It is best to look later where synchronization or subjugation are in full swing – where modern questions pose queries that the past can answer, and the examples are tangible and plentiful, rather than mysterious and unknowable. A history of the modern world locates the current church within its immediate context and therefore can comfortably address modern assumptions and evils.

26. Throughout this paper, kingdom theology will be referred to as such to maintain clarity and faithfulness in each quotation. However, in response to the feminist rejection of the term “kingdom” as sexist, and their replacement “kindom,” I will substitute basileia when I am arguing my own position, because “kindom” seems to lack necessary transcendent qualities. Hauerwas’ ecclesial vision of resident aliens is found in the book of the same name as cited earlier, and Gutiérrez’s vision of base-level ecclesial communities in A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2006), xli.

27. William Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 4.

28. I use raison d’état throughout this paper to create a link to the Early Modern French absolutist monarchy, specifically with L’Instruction du Chrétien and the author Cardinal Richelieu in mind, who is credited with being the first to employ raison d’état.

29. William Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination (New York, T&T Clark, 2002), 22.

30. Ibid., 28, 29.

31. Ibid., 30. Later, under Louis XIV, France decisively changed tactics towards a more aggressive international stance, both economically through mercantilism and militarily through the constant, seasonal offensives upon the Holy Roman Empire.

32. Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, 3-6.

33. Eugene McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon: Notes Toward a Theological History of Capitalism” in Modern Theology, July 2005, pg. 433. There is actually more than coincidental similarity between Cavanaugh and McCarraher. As he makes clear on page 450, McCarraher builds on the historical, ecclesial and sacramental argument of Cavanaugh.

34. McCarraher, 443, 450.

35. Although Anabaptist-like theology has been accused of sectarianism, liberation theology provides a potential voice for communitarianism to speak beyond its own ecclesial community when the church understands itself as colonized, or that the world continually attempts to colonize the church. On the sectarian charge, see James M. Gustafson “The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections on Theology, the Church and the University.” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society 40 (1985): 83-94.

36. Khaled Abou El-Fadl, “The Ugly Modern and the Modern Ugly: Reclaiming the Beautiful in Islam,” Progressive Muslims (Oxford: Oneworld Publicatins, 2005), 46.

37. El-Fadl, 47.

38. Farid Esack, “In Search of Progressive Islam beyond 9/11,” Progressive Muslims (Oxford: Oneworld Publicatins, 2005), 89-90.

39. Esack, 90.

40. Interestingly, El-Fadl and Esack seem to function as liberationists within the Muslim world. However, El-Fadl and Esack criticize liberal Muslims for working within the systems that obliterate religious social space by colonizing their communities. A liberationist Muslim does not seem to be in agreement with liberationists I know that take a great deal from Reinhold Niebuhr’s conception of power. Instead, these liberationist Muslims seem to parallel the Yoderian proposal of kingdom as alternative space.

41. Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, translated by J. Matthew Ashley (New York: Herder and Herder, 2007), 150-155.

42. Ibid., 150-155.

43. Metz, Faith in History and Society, 75, 172.

44. Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, Indiana: 2001). See both chapters, “A Story Formed Community” and “Jesus: The Story of the Kingdom.” “The social ethical task of the church, therefore, is to be the kind of community that tells and tells rightly the story of Jesus,” 52.

45. Metz, Faith in History and Society, 62-63, 79-80.

46. Metz, Faith in History and Society, 67-68, 208.

47. Interestingly, in the narrative shift from the emphasis on Constantine, it is possible to retain a solid, communal ecclesiology. Instead of stunting the community, the story of the state and the market radicalizes the existing community against present structures of privatization and calls the church to speak loudly and visibly (for the black community around me continually calls me to do so). In other words, the kingdom theology and ethics – a communal church as the body of Christ, existing as an alternative to worldly structure – that John Howard Yoder and Hauerwas advocate are not actually lost during the narrative shift. Rather, the critique that Hauerwas has a non-liberative theology by Cornel West and Gary Dorrien can begin to be solved because there now exists room for a liberative theology rooted in the ecclesia. Although this solution is probably not enacted in the way they wish a liberative church to be since the ecclesia rejects working within the humanist system, I do imagine West and Dorrien will appreciate an ecclesiology that moves toward the margins, instead of to seemingly fortified garrisons awash within the state. See Gary Dorrien’s Soul in Society: The Making and Renewal of Social Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 351-361 and West’s Democracy Matters (cited earlier).

48. Johannes B. Metz, Theology for the World, translated by William Glen-Doepel (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 90.

49. Metz, Theology for the World, 90, 94.

50. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 330, 337, 338.

51. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 338. Metz, Faith in History and Society, 156-158.

52. Metz, Faith in History and Society, 87-88.

53. American will be used in the paper as a substitute for citizens of the United States of America; however, it could also extend to a broader understanding of the Western world to include Eurocentrism.

54. I use the term American Christians throughout this paper to denote the syncretism, for that is how they see themselves. I am aware that for some using the term American Christians may implicitly support the validity of the state as it distinguishes between Christians, but that is not my intent. Rather, the term as it distinguishes Christians shows the divisive nature of the state and that is the only purpose for its use.

55. Metz, Theology of the World, 133.

56. Johann Baptist Metz, The Emergent Church: The Future of Christianity in a Postbourgeois World, translated by Peter Mann (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 12.

57. Metz, Theology of the World, 146.

58. Metz, Theology of the World, 57.

59. Metz, Theology of the World, 68.

60. Johann-Baptist Metz and Jürgen Moltmann, Faith and the Future: Essays on Theology, Solidarity, and Modernity (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1995), 55.

61. Metz, The Emergent Church, 27.