Nicholas Thompson traces the history of the Church's responses and reactions to governments.

In 2018 the American Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivered an address defending his government’s policy of separating children from parents who had tried to enter the United States without documentation. Apparently nettled by public scrutiny, the Attorney General grasped for an ally in: “… the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13: [1], to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.” Questioning government policy, he seemed to suggest, was tantamount to questioning God.

Unsurprisingly, Christians who opposed the policy of separation criticised Sessions for shallow, even cynical proof-texting. Some of them tried to offer an alternative, more rounded, account of Christian obedience, for example by reminding Christians of their duty to welcome strangers like the migrants at the southern border.

However, my aim here isn’t to relitigate that controversy. Suffice it to say that I think that Sessions was wrong, and his critics were mostly right. But where I think his Christian critics over-egged the pudding was in suggesting that there’s a single and self-evident biblical alternative to Sessions’ view of the case. In fact, I don’t think there has ever been a completely stable consensus on what the Christian attitude towards the government should be.

Christian Attitudes towards the State

When governments have been favourable, Christians — or at least the Christians the government favoured — have viewed the authorities as akin to a David or Solomon: anointed by God, though often in need of the Church’s prophetic counsel and prodding.

US Evangelicals with enough insight to acknowledge Trump’s transactional view of Christianity, have sometimes justified their support for him by invoking Cyrus of Persia as an exemplar. Trump, in other words, may be a heathen bully, but he’s our heathen bully, appointed by God to free his people from bondage in Babylon (whatever these Evangelicals take “Babylon” to be).

On the other hand, when governments have been unfavourable, Christians have taken solace in the apocalyptic texts that promise God will one day put a definitive end to bad governments. In some cases, this has led Christians to withdraw from society and wait patiently for vindication. In other cases, they have borne the consequences of public protest. In yet other cases, Christians have tried to help the apocalyptic timetable along by winnowing and destroying the chaff of injustice themselves. Here they’ve turned for inspiration to the apocalyptic promise that the saints will reign with Christ. Or, if when they were less sure that the end was nigh, Christians could turn for inspiration to those Old Testament texts that sanction rebellion against rulers who betrayed God’s trust.

Thus, over two millennia, Christians close to the centres of power, as well as those far from them, have used these biblical prototypes like a hand of cards, which they’ve played more or less fortuitously against those in power.

In the case of Catholicism, the Church has added further precedents that it claimed to have found in the natural order of things — from natural law, in other words.

Catholic Church Critical of Liberal Democracy

You could argue that this repertoire of responses has helped the Church adapt to changing political circumstances. That may be true, but the repertoire’s variety also gives the Church a variety of ways in which to misread the circumstances and respond ineffectively.

I was born in 1965, a few months before the close of the Second Vatican Council, and for this reason it never occurred to me until I began to read modern Church history that the Catholic Church might have regarded a liberal democracy like New Zealand as anything other than adequate — praiseworthy even. In fact, the Church’s ability to recognise anything positive in liberal democracy is only a few years older than I am.

For at least the preceding century, the papacy treated talk of political freedoms, equality and human rights as a recipe for religious indifference and moral squalor.

During the 19th century, and well into the 20th, papal statements on government evinced a nostalgia for the medieval alliance of throne and altar. Because the ballot box and the free exchange of ideas did not need the Church’s ratification or guidance, the Church felt unable to recognise them as a legitimate basis for government.

In fairness to the Church, political liberalism’s record wasn’t untarnished. The French Revolution, launched in the name of freedom, equality and solidarity, quickly became an efficient killer of its own citizens.

Some liberal regimes, like the Mexican Republic refounded in 1917, treated the Church as a threat to human freedom, and brutally tried to exclude it from the public sphere.

Political liberalism’s bedfellow, capitalism, also produced grotesque economic inequalities, confirming the papacy’s view that liberal individualism corroded any sense of the common good.

Church Supportive of Authoritarian Regimes

Even so, the remorselessly critical eye that the Church cast on political liberalism (and, of course, on social democracy, socialism and communism) was far less acute or critical when it came to authoritarian regimes.

Provided that dictatorships like Spain or Portugal (prior to the 1970s) gave the Church a leading or protected role in society they could be assured of Catholic acquiescence and even support.

The same was true of quasi-fascist regimes in inter-war and wartime Hungary and Croatia.

Christianity Playing Ambiguous Role

The future of liberal democracy, which seemed so assured after the collapse of communism in the early 1990s, is now under question in a way that it probably has not been since the 1930s.

Here again, global Christianity is playing an ambiguous role. Would-be authoritarians, like Trump and Bolsonaro, would not have made it into power without the support of Evangelical Protestants — Pentecostals in particular.

In Russia, Putin seems largely to have secured the Russian Orthodox Church’s acquiescence for his brand of authoritarian nationalism.

By claiming to support the “family” while scapegoating LGBT people, illiberal governments in Poland and Hungary seem to have ensured that the Catholic Church will remain silent as the governments attack the independence of the judiciary and of the media.

None of this should be taken to suggest that liberal democracy represents a heavenly Jerusalem worthy of exemption from the Church’s critique.

If there’s one fairly stable element in Christianity’s fluctuating attitude towards government, it’s the conviction that no government of limited, fallible humans can bring the perfect society into being. That insight should apply to liberal democracy as much as any other form of government.

Church to Consider Common Good of All

Even so, it seems to me that the Catholic Church will always benefit from a sober assessment of its own patchy record in negotiating the relationship between Church and State. Its attempts to speak prophetically have not always been easy to distinguish from the voices of the reactionary, the demagogue and the bully.

I recognise that the Church doesn’t have an easy task in reading the signs of complicated times and formulating appropriate responses. But — perhaps because I am a baby of Vatican II — it seems to me that the Church addresses government most authentically when it places itself alongside other humans (not just those within the Catholic tribe) and embraces its mission: “to give witness to the truth, to rescue and not to sit in judgement, to serve and not to be served” (Gaudium et Spes, par 3).

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 262 August 2021: 6-7