Magisterial Orthodox Social Teaching

Part 4: Freedom of religion & the limits of the Church's public moral witness

Our last discussion highlighted for us the necessity of epistemological humility in the Church's social teaching. This isn’t a matter of skepticism or a lack of faith in Christ and the Gospel. Rather it is an acknowledgment of the complexity of any moral analysis of social phenomena that emerge from the decisions of independent actors making decisions based on their own idiosyncratic goals and understanding of their situation and the actions and situations of others.

Or, to return to the image I before used, OST is very much like driving in rush hour traffic.

And like driving at rush hour, not just the safest but most charitable way to proceed, is to leave room for other people to maneuver as they pursue their own goals in a highly complex and dynamic field of social interactions.

In OST this leads to two conclusions: the importance of freedom of religion/conscience and the necessarily provisional nature of OST. In what follows, we’ll touch briefly on why the Church’s vocation is best served by keeping a distance from the State. Ideally, this should be a chaste distance based on mutual respect and appreciation for the role of both Church and State in human affairs. That this hasn’t always been the case, is a tragedy even if God has brought good out of these situations.

Especially in the West (though increasingly in traditionally Orthodox countries), the limited and provisional nature of OST is also important. Take for example the First Amendment of the US Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

For better or worse, and sometimes for both, epistemological humility is a feature, not a bug of both American political philosophy AND the American culture. To be sure, America has had its fair share of religious and secular ideologues who spoke with a certainty that lacked even a vestigial sense of humility.

But as Roger Finke and Rodney Stark have argued,¹ religious liberty is corrosive to religious and ideological traditions that forgo epistemological humility. The historical reliance on State support by established churches, for example, made them unable to thrive or in some cases even survive in the rough and tumble of the 18th-century American religious marketplace. In the American context, what persuades ultimately is not raw power but a personal, humble witness.

While this witness can—and has—taken many forms, epistemological humility, the willingness of Orthodox Christians to engage those around us as our equals, has the potential to change hearts and so society. This doesn’t mean that the Church surrenders her convictions or authority. Rather it just means that Orthodox Christians are aware of the limits of our tradition and our own, personal, understanding of complex policy and social issues.

More importantly, however, the provisional nature of OST reflects not simply epistemological humility but the eschatological character of the Church’s life and witness.

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Freedom of religion

Both the Basis and FLW affirm (in the latter’s formulation) that “the Church can be at peace quite happily with a political order that does not impose theological conformity upon people by coercive means.” In fact, 

…the dissolution of the ancient compact between church and state--or throne and altar--has been a great blessing for Christian culture. It has freed the Church from what was all too frequently a slavish and unholy submission to earthly power and a complicity in its evils.

They conclude by saying

It is… very much in the interest of the Church that the institutional association of Christianity with the interests of the state be as tenuous as possible, not because the Church seeks to withdraw from society at large, but because it is called to proclaim the Gospel to the world and to serve God in all things, uncompromised by alliance with worldly ambitions (#13).

The provisional character of Orthodox social teaching

Given the dynamic character of human life, Christians will inevitably find themselves responding to new challenges as society changes. This is why in addition to the Church keeping a chaste distance from the State, FLW emphasizes the open-ended character of OST.  While it offers us boundaries we cannot transgression and still remain faithful to Christ, Tradition as such “tells us nothing about how Christians should seek to order society and promote civic peace when they themselves wield power or require of people and government when exercising their prophetic vocation to proclaim and witness to God’s justice and mercy to the world” (#9).

More importantly, the Church as well as politically engaged Christians cannot forget that in the end, the Church will necessarily “remain in some sense always an alien presence within any human order.” Fidelity to our vocation to remind humanity “that God’s judgment falls upon all human political power” means that while Christians can and should “participate in the political life of the societies in which they live,” they “must do so in service to the justice and mercy of God’s kingdom”  (#9)

And this means that while sometimes we win, there are times when fidelity to Christ means we will loose.

1. Roger Fink and Rodney Stark (2005), The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (revised edition)