Beyond the secular state: Christ is not a private matter
Beyond the secular state: Christ is not a private matter

Summary/Abstract: There is no such thing as a morally, religiously, or ideologically neutral state. All states through law and public policy establish a particular morality and a particular view of the proper place of religion and ideology. In particular, the contemporary secular state as a more-than-minimal state is one in which a particular secular ideology is established rather than a religion, to the detriment of an all-traditional religious belief. In Europe and in the West generally, the secular state is explicitly advanced as the replacement for the Christendom St. Constantine established, constituting in its place a new secular dominion. This paper argues, given that (1) there is no neutral state and (2) the contemporary secular state by definition has an animus against Christianity, there can be no general agreement regarding the proposed new secular moral and political vision. The contemporary United States government and the European Union are at best modi vivendi, where a modus vivendi is understood as “a merely tolerable, self-interested, and non-principled concession of each citizen to the exigencies of contemporary historical reality, providing the only workable alternative to endless and destructive civil strife”1. Traditional Christians should instead support a “soft” re-establishment of Christianity through a plurality of approaches realized within a federal framework, such as this establishment existed in the United States in the first half of the 20th century allowing for local difference (e.g., laicism in France with the exception of Alsace-Lorraine, along with an established church in England). This paper contends that this state of affairs, a form of the Christendom established by St. Constantine, should be more acceptable to fundamentalist Protestants, Orthodox Jews, and traditionalist Mohammedans than the current laicism of the secular state. The only stakeholders are those who will have a strong establishment of a laicism, such as France has. Moreover, Christians should recognize that they owe to all the reminder that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Christ is not a private matter. Christians must live their Christianity as a public matter.

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