In 1900, twice as many Christians lived in Europe as in the rest of the world. Now, thanks to Western missions, Christianity’s numerical centre of gravity has shifted South. One estimate says that about 838 million Christians live in the global North (or “the West”), while over 1.1 billion Christians live in Africa and Asia. This divide will increase exponentially. For Hinduism’s victims — the lower castes — are seeking the Savior. But . . . will the new Church be controlled by the North’s defeated ecclesiologies?
For now, the “North” continues to be the theological and financial center of global Christianity. That means: the non-Western Church is afflicted by “the West’s” defeated ideas of the Church.
One terrible view of the Church developed in the “Eastern” Orthodox Church when a Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople took the official title, “King and Priest.” Christian Emperors that followed him viewed themselves as representing “Melchizedek” (Genesis 14:18). They centralized political and the ecclesiastical powers in their own hands.
One head of the Western wing of the Roman Church, Gelasius I (492-496), the Pope in Rome, questioned that dangerous view. In a famous letter to the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I, the Pope argued that the political and ecclesiastical powers are united only in Christ. Because of human weakness, Christ Himself “has separated two offices . . . so that neither shall become proud.” Emperors need priests to receive forgiveness and eternal life. Likewise, priests need divinely appointed rulers to manage temporal affairs.
In spite of such theological differences, these two largest wings of the “Western” Church — Eastern (Greek) Orthodox and Western (Latin) Roman Church — remained formally united for another five hundred years. They split only in 1054; both becoming weak and vulnerable, like Israel and Judah after Solomon.
The Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, partly because Rome chose not to defend its twin in the East. That led to some Orthodox Patriarchs declaring Moscow as the “Third Rome” — the new headquarters of Orthodox Christianity.
Napoleon (1769-1821) completed the destruction of the Western “Holy Roman Empire.” That process had begun over two centuries earlier with the Reformation attacking the abusive power by the Roman Catholic Church.
The Protestant Reformation (1517-1648) nurtured the third Western view of the church . . . emphasizing the “priesthood and kingship of all believers.” Martin Luther focused on the “Royal Priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9). That required the Church to educate every child. For God’s will cannot be done on earth unless everyone learns what God’s will is.
French and Scottish Calvinists took the “kingship of all believers” as seriously as their priesthood. This made their churches a nursery of Liberty, that the Scottish Enlightenment called “Democracy.” George Buchanan had called it “Popular Sovereignty” for it required inner “self-government.” It was the sovereignty of citizens whose hearts were ruled by God’s Spirit and Word. In Luther’s hands, “priesthood of all believers” educated Europe. The Reformed view of the Kingship of Christ in every believer’s heart, liberated Europe from its traditional tyranny. It institutionalized “Limited Government” in sovereign nations, set free from tyrannical “Christian” empires.
The Kingship of all believers required God’s children to manage their community’s welfare through their own elected elders and deacons. This meant that not the State but the King’s body, the Church, was God’s liberating agency for welfare and for the education of future generations.
To repeat, this view made the Church the nursery of democracy. People managing their affairs through the leaders they elect to govern local churches, villages, cities, and nations was understood as Liberty. It made people responsible for their own welfare. Only at the end of the 19th century did rulers (the State) take over from the Church the “ministries” of Welfare and Education. That marginalized the Church and prepared the cultural soil for European Fascism, Communism and Secular totalitarianism.
The Protestant movement developed the idea of the State Church — Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican — by fusing Scriptures with European history and pre-Christian history. Individual liberty of conscience began to be institutionalized after the 1640s. Prior to that, the Protestant State-Church also abused some of the power that came from its association with the State. Partly in a reaction to such abuses “independent” or non-state churches were born. Some of them were not too sure if the State’s power also came from God, so that His will may be done on earth.
The Separation of Church and State developed most fully in North America. It was a pragmatic necessity. The USA’s original 13 colonies had different state-churches. The sad memories of Europe made the colonies hesitant to form a Union without ensuring that the Federal government will not promote a particular denomination. In their view, religious liberty required a separation of State and Church. However, no one imagined that separating Church and state meant the separation of God and Government. “In God we trust” remains the USA’s creed, printed on every dollar bill.
For reasons I have discussed elsewhere, gradually, America’s theology embraced anti-intellectualism. By the end of the 19th century, the Protestant Church surrendered its own universities to secular states and retreated into Bible seminaries. It handed over the study and teaching of its own history as well as the Bible’s political and economic thought to the world. The American Church lost the Bible’s teaching about the Church itself: Why did God create the Church?
Consequently, during the 20th century, American missionaries have gone around the world spreading a secularized misunderstanding of God and Government, Church and State, Law, Education, Economic Development and Social Welfare. A significant part of America’s defeated Church has surrendered to the Devil even the domains of marriage, family, and children.
Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican ideas of State-Church is losing. The idea of Non-State, local community-centered Church is gaining ground in Latin America, Africa and Asia . . . and that is good. The problem is that this American idea of the Church no longer knows that God created the Church and baptized it with His own Spirit in order to bless the nations . . . to bring healing to the ends of the earth.
I began discussing these ideas in my book Truth and Transformation (2009). An Indo-African edition has just been published as Truth Transforms: A Manifesto For Ailing Nations. Two years ago, I gave four lectures on the theme “Victorious Church And The Healing of the Nations”.[1]
The proposed book, The Victorious Church and the Healing of the Nations, is intended to bring together a group of scholars and practitioners to stimulate fresh reflection and action by the global church.
In order to bless the nations, the Western Church has to be healed of its theological paralysis . . . and the non-Western Church has to find the courage to study the Bible disentangling itself from the lenses colored by the West’s defeated Church.
[1] See https://www.youtube.com/live/sB6ZbMAmQgw?si=ZHDKTGq1SRo-gs3K