The Orthodox Churches on Church-State Relations and Religious Liberty

Abstract

Apart from the pre-Constantinian era of church history, the areas conquered by Islam, and the modern situation under the rule of militant atheism, the Orthodox churches show a very strong preference for church-state unity and have even been somewhat over-accused of submission to the state, especially by those who try to apply Latin problematics in dealing with this question. Within the Roman Empire, the Latin churches were involved in the very same church-state relations as the Greek churches, until the barbarian invasions gave occasion to the papacy to re volt against the Roman Empire by accepting the status of a vas sal feudal kingdom of the Frankish Empire. The actual result of this arrangement was the enslavement of the church to pow erful secular interests, since the election of pope and king of the Papal States became one identical event, and since the election of bishops was generally put into the hands of the kings of Eu rope. In order to liberate the papacy and the churches of the West from secular interests, strict clericalism and papo-caesaris tic theories were evolved, which, however, proved in the long run much more successful on paper and in the imagination of pious Catholics and some Protestants than in practice. There are still alive many members of the last generation to witness the cen turies-old veto power exercised over papal elections by the Em perors of the Holy Roman Empire and Austria. Aside from the so-called radical reformers, the Reformation churches also showed strong tendencies to unite church and state. In America, pluralism and secular humanism made it necessary to follow the lead of the free churches in developing church and state separation in order to guarantee religious lib erty and to make possible civic cooperation for the common good. Besides this American concern for religious liberty, there is the missionary concern for the freedom of prosyletizing activi ties within those countries and societies which treat such enter prises as a form of foreign aggression. Then there is the weaker