Between state and God

The object of every anti-disestablishmentarian is to ensure that the state and the church remain enjoined and act as one. On the one side we have the all-seeing power of God, which gives credence to the other side where we have the all knowing power of the monarchy whose monopoly over the threat of violence and over the national Treasury enables the patronage of the church and the clergy.

This would mean in a church made up of just one religion, or one denomination of one religion, there would be no room for a secular state, which encouraged the religious freedoms associated with a plural society. This would also mean that either the monarch would serve as the head of the church, or would hold office under the authority of the spiritual head of the church.

Naturally the egomania of monarchy has made it such that the former dispensation — of the monarch being the head of the state church — was preferable to the latter dispensation of the monarch being the sovereign through whom the chief priest worked to implement “God’s plan”.

“Paralleling the concept of sovereignty in strengthening the power of the monarch was the idea of divine right of kings, at once a denial of ecclesiastical control, and a declaration of power in the secular realm. The argument was that monarchy was a divinely ordained institution, that kings were accountable to God only; that they ruled by the laws of heredity and that resistance to them was sinful.

Dante had claimed that the emperor ruled by divine right, Marsiglio that the ruler’s power came from God, Wyclif that the king reflected the Godhood of Christ while the priest represented only his manhood, Belloy and Barclay, members of the Politiques, that Divine Providence bestowed the crown on a particular individual and that this action of God could not be disobeyed by anyone, including the Pope.”

Curits, Michael. Chapter 10, Sovereignty and Divine Right, The Great Political Theories; Harper PMC 2008, Page 302

Over time we have seen the church and the state in conflict and this conflict has had various outcomes. In some countries, these outcomes have been the secularisation of the state, while in others specific interpretations of the faith have become state religion.

In all of these cases of secularisation, what we have seen is that the church has become a civil society organisation, and that the administrative control and funding of the church is left, largely, to the public. While this may contrast with state religions, which are naturally funded in part by the taxpayers, the influence of the church in society has not changed at all.

Indeed, state religions, while being ostensibly freely accessible to the people, are less likely to receive large donations from members of the public simply because the need is not present. As such, the public attending congregation in a non-state church would be more likely to follow the flock of a specific congregation, because while all God is one, you as an individual make contributions to specific houses of God. By contrast, in a state religion, all branches of the state church are created equal, and while there may be specific branches which have national rather than local functions, the fact is that attendance at any one branch achieves the same objects.

Well, this is assuming that there are no shamans in the reckoning, because shamans have both the power to deliver the word, as all priests do, and also the power to manipulate reality in respect of the aspirations and needs of specific congregants. And thus assuming that the shamans were bound to one branch of the state or to one church in society, then assuredly they would have a specific following.

India doesn’t have a state religion, as it would be impossible to impose a foreign religion — Indo-Aryan Sanskruti Hinduism — which the majority do practice, over a domestic religion — Tamizh Civaism — which the majority do not practice. More than this the Church in India, and by church I mean all of the institutions of God and faith, has always held more power than the state and the monarchy.

And while it is true that most of the temples are state funded in some way, the fact is that all of them are funded by the public through direct donations as well. The practice in Hinduism is that priests should be paid for the work that they do. It’s called dakshina in Sanskrit. And while temples will pay their priests a wage, they will also receive and pay dakshina.

Now the wages paid to members of the clergy are generally very low, compared to the salaries of other professionals. And this disparity creates the conditions wherein the church becomes more like a business for the priests than for the ecclesiastical activities of self denial and the eschewing of materialism, because of the reality of the cost of living, as experienced by the members of the clergy.

Rumours abound of religious organisations owning large profit-making corporations and properties, where these investments are intended to fund the church or the temple in perpetuity irrespective of the donations or dakshina received from the congregation. Further to this, the advent of superstar priests demanding and being paid superstar wages has all but turned religion into a business.

The precepts of ascetic virtue suggest that this is not correct, and that this situation of either the state controlling the church or of the church becoming commercialised, is something that can only be remedied by ensuring that the clergy themselves are true to their own principles.

In South Africa our superstar priests must be paid superstar wages, provided that they are prepared to accept four things:

A fixed scale of remuneration based on the qualifications of the individual, their employed job function and the size of the congregation in terms of the legitimate membership of the religious institution.
A performance agreement which stipulates the use of the whole of their time, within the context of prescribing the number of people who will hear the word, who will be saved and who will be converted into the faith on a daily basis.
That all revenues due and payable for religious services are paid to the institution directly without deduction, and that the cleric should be only paid by the institution, both a basic salary and a fixed percentage of the institution’s revenue or turnover each month.
And that the clerics will not interfere in the administration and management of the institution, leaving that to the democratic processes of the congregation.

Failure to achieve these agreements will mean that we cannot actually hold the people who have been entrusted with the salvation of the people to account for the public resources under their control and within the ambit of their influence.

But most of all we must decide as a society whether we want to recreate the paradigm of state and church, interwoven as one, because all religions say the same thing and all religions are in fact more conservative than all states, and certainly there is no scripture which condones, accepts or encourages corruption and the related normalcy of politics. So in choosing to stand so close to God, our politicians would be best advised to consider whether they want the respect of their fellow citizens, for their proven leadership abilities, or whether they want the adulation on bended knee reserved for the clergy who deliver salvation by ephemeral means.

In Zimbabwe, we have seen over the last 30 years the rewriting of hymns through the substitution of the word Mugabe for the word Christ, against the background of a Marxist rejection of religion; and this hasn’t worked very well for the Zimbabweans. The state religion of Tabbliqi Islam, has produced intolerance of and civil discord with the Sunni Muslims, while Zionism is no more than coded Judaic racism dressed up as Jewish nationalism. Similarly, the existence of right-wing Indian Hinduism and genocidal Sinhalese Buddhism do little to inspire love for people outside of their congregations.

The evils committed by men bearing both scriptures and muskets are legendary all over the colonised world and these things are not the products of the word of God. Indeed none of the religions here prescribe intolerance in any form.

So if you are going to proscribe the termination of pregnancy, please ensure that every pregnant woman receives from the state everything she needs for a successful and healthy pregnancy, birth, post natal term and for the care of her child.
And if you are going to proscribe same sex marriages, then amend the provisions of civil unions, so that the necessary financial, social, human and corporeal rights required, in respect of maintaining a home and a household, are available to people in civil unions.

But if you are not going to do these things, then all you are doing is violating the human rights of the individuals concerned, and driving these practices underground and into the crevices and recesses of society. So much for helping people to step into the light it seems.

Issued by www.thiruvalluvar.org, in the interests of creating common ground between religions, faith, the clergy and the people both within and without the congregation.