Church And State

We tend in USA to affirm the separation of Church and State yet argue as to the dividing lines.  It is really an argument of Church vs State, and who has supremacy, or at least supremacy in what areas.  The Catholic Church has a history of testing the limits of church vs state in many places and times over the last two millennia.  For about half that time the status quo of today would be unacceptable to the Church.  It is acceptable, on the surface today, only because the Church can say nothing about it.  So far there has been no enduring model of Church and State polity.  That arrangement is up for grabs at any time.

In the debate of Church vs. State the Church claimed ultimate arbiter status.  Via the experience with kings, the church's claim to divine right was arrogated by states unto themselves, and now we have the unstable truce wherein the state sees itself with in essence divine right, and the church teaching the state is an inferior entity to both church and family.  Lesson: don't make any claim for yourself that you do not want your enemies to make for themselves.

Reading Will Durant on the Reformation, one might get the sense that real argument was over real estate, or in essence, rents.  The church had grown so rich in property and income that Kings and Nobles coveted the Church's holdings.  Both Henry VIII and the Lutherans saw themselves as Catholics (and still do) just not beholden to a Roman pretense of primus inter pares.  This gets tricky, since Popes, Henry VIII and Luther, while fighting each other, also executed protestants.

While these "catholics" abused each other, they made alliances and combinations among themselves, with Protestants and occasionally Moslem leaders to either hold or expand their territory.

The Church clearly lost its moral voice as it became a great landowner, and now as it is reduced to museums and libraries on a Roman hilltop, it enjoys a moral authority that comes with poverty, something the Dalai Lama enjoys now that he is homeless.

Out of all of these various combinations the Church is still looking for a proper balance and role in the world.  Satan tempted Jesus with all temporal power, and since Satan could not fool Jesus, it  demonstrates Satan was offering something he could deliver.  In spite of this, the Church keeps seeking a place in the world. The recent announcement that the church likes the idea of a super-bank (and consequentially a one world government) is an example of how the game is played: the inevitable is the ideal.  If we are to have a one world government, the Church wants a place at the table.  The idea is although the Church may meet with Satan in the desert, it will not give in to temptation.  The Church is entertaining change, since the current polity is not working out so well for the Church.  Well, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Of all the combinations and cultures and pressures of organizing society in the Reformation it seems that the best combination came about in the Kingdom of Scotland, at least inasmuch as their kings can own no property, and the freedom of conscience and other beneficial aspects came together written in a survey of economics by Adam Smith, a moral philosopher.  It is those ideas that animated the theories of opportunists at various spots on the globe, in particular the American colonies and the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong.

So much of what America was is well preserved in the political-economy of hong Kong: no standing army, less than half the people pay taxes of any sort and almost no one pays the top rate of 16%, money is issued by private companies, toleration of race and creed is legendary and easy since opportunity is unlimited. Charities provide the social safety net, and are sufficiently subscribed.

What happened?  Because Hong Kong is a free market, it is exceptionally difficult to amass exceptional wealth.  Hong Kong does have five times the billionaires per capita than the USA, but no where near the poverty since anyone who wants work can get it, especially there are no restrictions on starting your own business.  There is the problem, the USA government prefers big business by crushing small business.

Note the earlier comment that private companies issue the currency. One especially harmful advantage government affords big business gets in USA is banking.  Money is controlled in a way that generates too big to fail, limiting opportunity, expanding the division between rich and poor and makes war exceptionally easy.

A highlight of Hong Kong is the religious tolerance.  There is no power, government or church, to enforce any preferences.  And since all religion is voluntary (as opposed to the Reformation where real estate defined religious belief) there is no religious conflict in Hong Kong.

What is playing out in USA sure looks like a replay of the reformation, and we are in the phase just before the "religious wars" break out.  The religion of the Tea Party is war, and the religion of the Occupy Wall Street is welfare.  They both claim to represent the real America.  Occupy Wall Street will claim they are defending USA's original fairness, neglecting to recall the accommodation of slavery at our founding, and with our prisons presently redolent of Soul, how little progress our black brothers have made in the Welfare state. The Tea Party claims our military protects our freedoms and extends our mission, ignoring that the founding fathers expressly abjured standing military because soldiers in uniform militate against freedom. Military and freedom are enemies. A pox on both of their houses.  Between these analogously Lutheran and Protestant views stands the Federal Government playing the role of Roman Church, professing both welfare and warfare, both faith and works.

The Reformation was essentially about economic reform, and that is were we are.  It is astonishing to read the Reformation history, as laid out by Durant, and observe how closely the patterns can be laid upon our modern saga.

Within all of the wars and executions and so on, there were pockets of freedom and tolerance and peace and prosperity.  Wish that historians spent more time studying and writing on those pockets of peace and prosperity rather than the bloody failures.

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