I've been asked to talk about the relationship between the orthodox christian church and in the broadest sense earthly powers in other words governments rulers political systems that's a tropical question because there is at least one geopolitically important country Russia where orthodox Christianity is the historically dominant faith and where the church enjoys a close if informal relationship with the nation's earthly governors indeed it might now be said that upholding and promoting religious orthodoxy is part of Russia's foreign policy just as it was in the 19th century so it's pertinent to ask whether there is anything about orthodox Christianity as such which lends itself to close relationships with earthly powers. Perhaps the first thing to say is that no political system no regime no ideology forms part of the core beliefs of orthodox Christianity. Of course orthodox Christianity does have plenty of core beliefs about the creation of the world about Jesus Christ about the Holy Trinity about the destiny of the human race in a world where god has become incarnate .Those beliefs are laid out in the Nicene creed and they were elaborated in the seven councils of the church held between 325 and 787

Now in relation to those stated beliefs it's important to stress that they express profound truths only as far as human language will allow there is a level at which all great truths about god are inexpressible and words and concepts will only take us so far but it is believed that words can at least guide us in the right direction and steer us away from certain wrong ways of thinking and these spiritually important words do not have anything directly to say about politics they don't tell us which political systems or leaders we should admire or what political program we should follow and it's noticeable that among orthodox Christians you will find an extraordinary range of political views from the far left to the far right or sometimes a bizarre mixture of the two

orthodox Christianity does not offer itself as the perfect practical solution to man's earthly dilemmas what it does encourage is a certain presumption of obedience to earthly authorities and indeed that presumption can sometimes have surprising consequences during the Russo-japanese war of 1905 a Russian bishop who had built up a sizeable flock in japan told his followers that they as loyal subjects must pray for the success of their own emperor and his forces he as a Russian will be praying for the tsar

orthodoxy takes seriously the radical distinction between earthly and spiritual power that was made by Jesus Christ when he was challenged to say whether it was right to pay taxes to the emperor

you may remember the story he took a coin bearing an image of Caesar and quoting here from Matthew's gospel he said to them whose is this image in superscription and they said to him Caesars and he said to them render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto god the things that are god's

at the same time as they contemplate their own history orthodox Christians must acknowledge that doctrines and definitions which they consider important were formulated in a particular historical and political context the east roman or byzantine empire was a world in which the emperor as defender and champion of the faith was expected to work closely with the patriarch with the other bishops and ultimately with ordinary believers to maintain a christian polity all played their part in upholding that christian realm it was the emperor who convened those great councils of the church even if it was the bishops who made the theological determinations the roles of the emperor and the patriarch were complementary not identical the emperor was in a sense spiritual he received the Eucharist the consecrated holy gifts of bread and wine in a style befitting a priest and not a layperson

so in that sense the emperor's role was to some degree a religious one but he generally delegated doctrinal and liturgical matters to the church unless he had some overwhelming reason to believe that the church's leaders had lapsed into heresy

the relationship between the emperor and the church in the east roman world had a name symphonia and in 2009 the newly installed leader of the Russian orthodox church said the ideal of sinfonia was perhaps impossible to apply literally in the modern world but it could nonetheless serve as a kind of model or inspiration for today's relationship between his church and Russia's earthly masters having said all that orthodox Christianity can also flourish in conditions which are very far from symphonia it's an undeniable historic fact that orthodox Christianity has in practice shown great flexibility some would say too much flexibility

in adapting to earthly regimes of every kind including Islamic and even atheist forms of governance

under the ottoman empire the church was circumscribed and hemmed in but in some ways also shored up by earthly power in worldly terms it could be said that the ottoman sultan contracted out the governance of his orthodox subjects to the church

even under soviet communism a regime which was availably atheist and practiced terrible persecution of religious believers the church managed to some degree to preserve its outward existence by entering some deep compromises with the Marxist state

part of the church anyway there were some bishops some congregations some believers which responded to the bolsheviks by going underground

the terms of the relationship between the official Russian church and the soviet state were defined by a famous agreement between the bishops and the communist authorities around 1927 which said we recognize the soviet union as our earthly motherland and her joys and successes are also our joys and successes that statement of loyalty to the communist state was not enough to ward off terrible waves of prosecution in the 1930s but it did provide the basis for a period of cooperation between the church and the state from 1943 onwards as Stalin rallied the moral power of the church to pursue the war effort it can certainly be said that the church has proved capable of great ingenuity in adapting to worldly regimes whose ideology is utterly alien to its own

but what about those regimes which profess to be pulling in the same direction as the church regimes like the byzantine empire or the Russian monarchy which saw itself as a successor both to the emperors of Byzantium and even to the kings of ancient Israel would it be accurate to say that openly or otherwise orthodox Christians will always yearn for the restoration of the form of government which explicitly supports and upholds their own religion and their own worldview well certainly there are some orthodox Christians who express that yearning they lament the downfall and the execution of Russia's star Nicholas in 1918 who from their point of view was the world's last christian emperor and they yearn for the time when an openly christian monarchy will be restored what they have in mind is that it's something much more robust than the loosely christian constitutional monarchy which exists in England for the really die-hard monarchist nothing will do except the restoration of a christian sovereign who is not constrained by the electorate and is therefore free to act by his or her own divinely guided lights

that view certainly exists but i think it's fair to say it's a minority view let me tell you here an anecdote while visiting the united states i once overheard a bantering conversation between a very traditional priest of the Russian diaspora an American nun whose brother happened to hold a senior position in the administration so the priest said look i know your brother's a democrat but surely you must be a monarchist like we are to which the nun very properly replied i i much prefer to concentrate on the kingdom of god and i think we can say that the nun's answer was very well grounded theologically

in the eyes of outsiders the close relationships which orthodox bishops have formed with earthly powers friendly or otherwise can seem like an irresponsible or even cynical form of quietism a politically deferential church can of course be very useful to a powerful and ambitious sovereign and a mighty sovereign or simply a strong executive power of any kind can return that favor by granting privileges and monopolies to the church at least to the modern liberal mind this sounds like a compact to suppress human freedom and flourishing but there is another way of looking at the relationship between church and state as it has been understood and developed in the christian east the two forms of power can coexist not in lockstep or in cynical collusion but rather in creative tension as the history of the east roman empire tells us emperors and patriarchs did not always get along sometimes posterity judges at the emperor was right sometimes posterity judges of the patriarch was right sometimes the christian world came to the conclusion that both the emperor and the patriarch had been led astray and both had to be guided back on track by one courageous individual so the locus of accurate and honest thinking about the mysteries of god does not rest in any particular institution rather it emerges from creative tension among the saints revered by the Russian orthodox church is saint Philip an archbishop who challenged Ivan the terrible over the mass murders that his brutal private army was committing in a famous scene metropolitan Philip confronted the tsar and accused him of violating the lenten past not by eating the flesh of animals but by shedding the blood of human beings the bishop was banished imprisoned and ultimately executed for this courageous stance and the church is in no doubt about who is in the right although although there are some fanatical power worshipers in Russia who still profess to be great admirers of ivan the terrible even in the 20th century there are some impressive examples of orthodox believers speaking prophetically and acting out their beliefs in defiance of earthly power the church recognizes as a saint a young man of Russian German origin called Alexander schmorel who was executed by the Nazis in Munich in 1943 at the age of 25 for taking part in the conspiracy against Hitler called the white rose movement another saint and martyr of the mid-20th century is mother Maria skopsova an unconventional Russian-born nun who ran a kind of refuge for the down and out in German occupied paris she saw hospitality and unconditional altruism as the heart of the christian gospel and she made some perceptive observations about her compatriots who were lost in excessive piety or imperial nostalgia she and her son and two companions were arrested by the Nazis and mother maria died in a gas chamber in on holy Saturday in 1945 in short orthodox Christianity does have examples and resources in its ancient history and its modern history which can inspire a stance or principal defiance of earthly power when that's morally required contrary to certain stereotypes orthodoxy is not always overzealous or even cynical in its determination to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's but i think it would be fair to say that these resources are underused rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto god what is god's is not always an easy or clever answer to an ancient problem but it's rather an invitation to reflect and wrestle we cannot always expect the dividing line between those two obligations to be neat and easy to identify especially when Caesar is asking us not only to pay taxes but actually to do things which are plainly ungodly