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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
November 20, 2005
Church & State
The idea that Church and State should never mix has always been popular among those who think churches should not exist. To a faithful Christian mind, or Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Sikh -- I think I've now covered 95 percent of the self-declarations on the Census forms -- the issue can't be as simple as that. The elector votes with his whole mind and whole heart. Even if we wanted to, it is not within our gift, to pump blood with only one ventricle. Humans weren't designed that way.Moreover, the State does not exist in a moral and spiritual vacuum, no matter what impression our present Liberal government leaves. Government and electorate are alike bound, even when they deny it, to standards deeper and older than themselves. The minister who claims that a piece of legislation has, in effect, nothing to do with morality or belief, but is simply expressing the popular will, is striking a pose. In approximately ten cases out of ten, a closer examination will reveal that he isn't expressing the popular will, either. Though he may well be expressing the will of a certain interested constituency, who think they will benefit from the legislation and whose votes he is hoping to corner. For even in our present rather sunken condition of public life, the vast majority of people are prepared to distinguish right from wrong under earnest cross-examination. And so powerful is the hold of nature, and nature's law upon them, that they will more or less agree on the moral inadvisability of murder, extortion, theft, perversion, fraud, perjury and so forth. This hardly means they are free of temptation to crime themselves, in their private lives. Nor am I denying the existence of a growing vanguard, who in the absence of real social pressure are prepared to argue that fair is foul and foul is fair. Verily, in our popular culture, they hover through the fog and filthy air. But more often than not -- over issues such as "euthanasia", or "same-sex marriage", or abortion on demand -- the people know better, and show better in polls (when they are not asked trick questions). They may, however, be relieved to have the moral burden of a difficult decision taken from their shoulders, and then not wish to have it returned. They may easily believe media reporting and government propaganda designed to assure them that the latest, apparently immoral legislation, is in fact quite "inevitable"; or that it is somehow rationally defensible, by some abstruse principle of "human rights", or other aery notion that not even the propagandist can explain except in glib deceitful slogans. Truly vicious politicians may exploit this phenomenon, and create a fait accompli, as was done this last spring in our Canadian Parliament to ram home "same-sex marriage", a little after ramming home a bill to criminalize opposition to homosexuality. Which is not to say the politicians in question were not justified in their own minds. The devil himself thinks he has an argument, and Hitler said he was in the right. I am only saying that their minds are twisted. The significance of the Church, in the old Church-State equation, was that it acted as a moral check on political excesses. The political power of "church" -- and I am using this word now in the broadest sense, to refer to all organized religion -- was the power to sound a moral alarm. No elected politician in his right mind would set his face against such authority, until very recently. Only an armed tyrant could afford to think of risking such a thing. I take it for granted that a separation of powers between Church and State is a good thing. The theory was, the State has a monopoly on physical force. The Church has the key to a balancing moral force. It was the wisdom of our ancestors, prefigured in Christ's own instruction to "give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's", to keep these two extraordinary powers apart. For the State which is free to define, for its own convenience, the right which it is empowered to vindicate, is the purest tyranny. And this, whether or not anyone happens to elect it. It should also go without saying, that the State may, of its own nature rooted in the will to power, seize the moral monopoly, too, if it can. Which is in fact what happens, invariably, when the power of the State grows to what it has become today; becomes the Welfare State with its bureaucratic tentacles reaching into every aspect of our daily lives. That is why the people generally, and religious hierarchies in particular, have a solemn responsibility to prevent the State from making its claims -- from arrogating the claims of the Church, as well. Courage is sometimes required of us -- to set our faces against the facelessness of a State that believes itself entitled to play God. Perhaps I will return to this big topic. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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