Christianity With Strands of Constantinople

 

From Professor Cornel West, 2004 Essay on contemporary Christianity and politics:

...This same religious schizophrenia has been a constant feature of American Christianity. The early American branch of the Christian movement-the Puritans-consisted of persecuted victims of the British empire in search of liberty and security. On the one hand, they laid the foundations for America’s noble antiimperialist struggle against the British empire. On the other hand, they enacted the imperialist subordination of (Native Americans/Indians). Their democratic sensibilities were intertwined with their authoritarian sentiments. The American democratic experiment would have been inconceivable without the fervor of Christians yet strains of Constantinianism were woven into the fabric of America’s Christian identity from the start. Constantinian strains of American Christianity have been on the wrong side of so many of our social troubles, such as the dogmatic justification of slavery and the parochial defense of women’s inequality. It has been the prophetic Christian tradition, by contrast, that has so often pushed for social justice.

When conservative Christians argue today for state-sponsored religious schools, when they throw their tacit or more overt support behind antiabortion zealots or homophobic crusaders who preach hatred (a few have even killed in the name of their belief), they are being Constantinian Christians. These Constantinian Christians fail to appreciate their violation of Christian love and justice because Constantinian Christianity in America places such a strong emphasis on personal conversion, individual piety, and philanthropic service and has lost its fervor for the suspicion of worldly authorities and for doing justice in the service of the most vulnerable among us, which are central to the faith. These energies are rendered marginal to their Christian identity.

Most American Constantinian Christians are unaware of their imperialistic identity because they do not see the parallel between the Roman empire that put Jesus to death and the American empire that they celebrate. As long as they can worship freely and pursue the American dream, they see the American government as a force for good and American imperialism as a desirable force for spreading that good. They proudly profess their allegiance to the flag and the cross not realizing that just as the cross was a bloody indictment of the Roman empire, it is a powerful critique of the American empire, and they fail to acknowledge that the cozy relation between their Christian leaders and imperial American rulers may mirror the intimate ties between the religious leaders and imperial Roman rulers who crucified their Savior.

I have no doubt that most of these American Constantinian Christians are sincere in their faith and pious in their actions. But they are relatively ignorant of the crucial role they play in sponsoring American imperial ends. Their understanding of American history is thin and their grasp of Christian history is spotty, which leaves them vulnerable to manipulation by Christian leaders and misinformation by imperial rulers. The Constantinian Christian support of the pervasive disinvestment in urban centers and cutbacks in public education and health care, as well as their emphatic defense of the hardline policies of the Israeli government, has much to do with the cozy alliance of Constantinian Christian leaders with the political elites beholden to corporate interests who provide shelter for cronyism. In short, they sell their precious souls for a mess of imperial pottage based on the false belief that they are simply being true to the flag and the cross. The very notion that the prophetic legacy of the grand victim of the Roman empire-Jesus Christ-requires critique of and resistance to American imperial power hardly occurs to them.