Between the Lines XIV: Church, state and spiritual sense
The original idea behind the United States of America is religious and inspiring. Its Declaration of Independence, issued in 1776, says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Does the America of today embody those ideals? Sometimes. But when politicians seem to use religious words and ideas simply to increase their popularity, and religious leaders seem to use the power of the state to increase their earthly power, a nation can lose its inspired character and become an intolerant bully.
It wouldn’t be at all surprising today to hear something like this from an American political candidate who wants to rally public support: “We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity. Our movement is Christian." But consider this: Those words were spoken by Adolph Hitler in 1928, when he had not yet consolidated his power. At first, many Christian leaders flocked to his side. But when his National Socialist Movement finally came to power, Hitler tried to destroy the place of the church in society. As reported by The New York Times from the records of the Nuremburg Trials, "the Nazis simply lied and made deals with the churches while planning a 'slow and cautious policy of gradual encroachment' to eliminate Christianity." Eventually, “Nazi street mobs, often in the company of the Gestapo, routinely stormed offices in Protestant and Catholic churches where clergymen were seen as lax in their support of the regime.” When dissident Protestant churches issued a manifesto protesting Nazi tactics, 700 pastors were arrested.
It’s not ridiculous to think that politicians who espouse Christianity today may one day become its enemy if their power is threatened. We can’t leave it to institutions to police themselves. To protect the legitimate position of both church and state in society, we ourselves need to step up. You and I have a direct connection to God, not through institutions or human beings but through spiritual sense. Spiritual sense is “a conscious, constant capacity to understand God.”1
The understanding of God doesn’t come from institutions or doctrines or magnetic personalities, and it certainly doesn’t come from governments. It comes directly from God to you and me, and what we do with that understanding makes all the difference in the world.
I try to use spiritual sense in my writing. For example, in 2020 I traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria and interviewed two teenagers who had recently arrived in the city, one from Afghanistan and one from Pakistan. They were refugees who had traveled, mostly by foot and guided by traffickers, to escape the terrible situations in which they were living. One boy’s family was under threat from jealous relatives who had already killed the boy’s father. The other boy had been enrolled in a religious school where, he believed, the students were being groomed to become suicide bombers. I published a story about the boys on the website of my client, UNICEF.
These boys wanted a normal, peaceful, productive life. UNICEF and the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee were helping them, and young people like them, to continue their lives within the law, despite constant battles with legal systems, politicians’ agendas and persistent traffickers, the latter of which were working aggressively to regain control of the boys. But I also saw their troubles as a microcosm of something bigger, the war between spiritual sense on one side and greed, envy and hate on the other, and I wanted to see if I could write this story from the standpoint of that spiritual sense – that is, from the perspective of each player in this story as governed by God and with the capacity to respond to God’s guidance, as I believe is the case. I made no mention of God in what I said or wrote – that wouldn’t have been appropriate – but the presence of God at every step of the boys’ journey was the idea behind how I wrote the story. You can judge for yourself here how well I did.
We all have our own avenues to prove the power of spiritual sense, and none of them is subject to human institutions, even though we may work through institutions at some points.
Russian President Ilya Chestnov in Holy War is intent on convincing people of his religious bona fides by performing fake miracles. Politicians today who use Christianity to justify their actions have their own fake miracles, such as claiming to have won an election that they lost. Chestnov’s quiet foes, activist Tamar Tsmindashvili and journalist David Darke, understand in one way or another that spiritual sense, which David calls his angels, is the only thing that will uncover the hypocrisy of leaders and protect the people.
A seemingly Christianized state and a secularized church are both powerless to stop the spread of real spiritual insight. We can help keep spiritual sense alive through our work and prove that life, liberty and happiness are still possible for everyone.
1Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 209.
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