IN his book The Tyranny of Liberalism, James Kalb explains with his typical lucidity why separation of church and state are so important:

[T]he authority of the church is not primarily that of a ruler, let alone a tyrant, but that of a custodian of something passed down. The church must have internal discipline to function, but its primary purpose is to present, not to enforce. Like other intellectual authorities, it should have substantial independence but no direct political power. The good, the beautiful, and true need to be institutionally separate from political power to be seen as superior to it. A believer would no more give the state authority in religious matters than a physicist, sculptor, or moral philosopher would give it authority in science, aesthetics, or morals. Conversely, rule by priests has many of the same disadvantages as rule by philosophers or law professors. Few people want it.

Government is organized force. There are many goods it cannot promote effectively, and its legitimate respect for the highest goods does not require it to enforce them directly or to define them beyond what practicality demands. The single most important function of the church is to relativize the state by placing it in a larger setting. It can do that only if church and state have substantial mutual independence. [The Tyranny of Liberalism, pages 250-251]

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Bruce writes:

Eastern Orthodox Christians would disagree that the Church and State should be separated. 

The Orthodox ideal is Church and State in harmony ruling to create a devout Christian society – a life filled by prayer, ritual, liturgy, religious art, poetic theology and examples of high sanctity from ascetic Holy Fathers, elders and Saints. A life focused on improving the chances and quality of salvation, developing humans towards participation in God (the process termed deification or theosis).

This was achieved most fully in the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) which many have regarded as the mostly devoutly Christian society ever achieved as well as the most enduring and resilient). Other examples are parts of ‘Celtic’ Christian (i.e. Orthodox) Dark Ages Britain and Holy Russia (before Peter the Great). 

The Eastern Orthodox ideal is that the Monarch should be divinely sanctioned and inspired (there were no rules of succession for a Byzantine monarch – it was not hereditary – yet the city state of Constantinople lasted around a thousand years). 

The Monarch should rule in harmony with the Patriarch and Church who – while appointed by the Monarch – yet have spiritual authority over the Monarch. (The Pope is seen as the senior Patriarch, but not as supreme.) 

The situation of an Orthodox monarchy is explicitly unworldly, relies on divine sustenance, on miracle indeed; and is only imaginable in a devoutly Christian society. It seems impossible, yet it has happened and more than once.
 
None of this is translatable to modern democracy, which is one reason why modern democracy is so essentially hostile to the Christian society. 

Laura writes:

While 21st century radical democracy, with its insistence on the extreme separation of church and state, is indeed hostile to Christian society, democracy essentially fulfills Christianity rather than opposes it. There are obvious disadvantages to church leaders being appointed by monarchs, with the church then inevitably, over the course of time, becoming a tool of the state. When church is strong and infuses its sensibility throughout society, democracy provides for the flowering of faith. Democracy represents the evolution of Christian principles and the recognition of a God that does not force, but beckons.

Obviously there are many serious problems with modern democracy. But those problems stem not from democracy itself, but from the secularization of Christianity. A healthy Christian society, for instance, would not endorse the universal franchise. Democracy was not born with the idea of the universal franchise.

This is an argument I cannot fully develop here. But one reason I chose Kalb’s quote is I was annoyed to find a Catholic blogger yearning for a day when we will be ruled by a Catholic king and all the complexities of modern life will be resolved in a theocratic utopia. This longing is misplaced. Theocracy destroys a society’s love of God.

Dan writes:

I think the problem lays in the misidentification of democratism of the post-Enlightenment West with the ancient organic democracy of our Germanic and Hellenic ancestors. French political thinker Guillaume Faye observes:

Democratism is now a world dogma, but it’s a sham democracy, for it neglects the people’s interests. Western democracies are actual oligarchies that conceal their betrayal of the Hellenic-Germanic tradition of democracy. [Why We Fight, Arktos Media Ltd., 2011, page 111]

He further observes about democratism that it refuses to allow genuine classical democracy, and “accuses true democrats of being ‘populist’, which has been given a pejorative connotation.” Thus, what passes as democracy in North America and Europe is really nothing more than rule by oligarchs and plutocrats with the trappings of democracy in the form of “free” elections (of course, the elites make sure to control which candidates we have access to).

Faye then calls for us to resurrect the principles of organic democracy, which he explains are:

[F]ounded on the following, ostensibly contradictory, but in fact complementary notions: ethnic homogeneity, the primacy of the popular will, aristocratic and meritocratic selection, and historical destiny. [Why We Fight, page 114]

I think these are all principles that traditionalists can rally behind, instead of slipping into some nostalgia for a medieval utopia that exists more in fantasy then in historical reality (though I am certainly sympathetic toward traditional monarchies).

Laura writes:

Interesting. Faye’s “organic democracy” sounds like Toqueville’s ideal of a democracy that exists amid strong countervailing forces.

Stewart G. writes:

“Theocracy destroys a society’s love of God”

I would greatly appreciate any substantiation of this claim. It is not clear to me that monarchy was bad for Christianity: it is in the age of the democrat that we find post-Christian nations whilst the age of kings was famous for its devout Christian nations. It seems from the rest of what was said on this page that you think democracy is good for Christianity, but not as we have it. What needs to change in our ’21st century radical democracy’ to allow it to support Christianity?

Laura writes:

I didn’t mean that monarchy was bad for Christianity. Obviously it wasn’t bad for Christianity during periods of history but Christian society is destined over time to move toward some form of democracy because of its theological understanding of man and the role of Christ in the life of the individual.

But radical democracy and the sort of politicization of the church that we see in Islam are both incompatible with Christianity.

In the West today, Christianity is much healthier and more vocal in the United States, where there was no prolonged tradition of formally established religion, than in Europe. The Catholic Church grew so rapidly in America during the 19th and early 20th century that it was once believed a majority of Americans would become Catholic. And today, church attendance here significantly exceeds that in traditionally Catholic France. That is one example of how over time formally established religion can weaken faith.

All government is religious in nature. Government deals with questions of ultimate meaning. But the issue is whether religious authorities have formal political authority or exert their influence indirectly and informally. The ideal alternative to the secular theocracy we have today in liberalism is – in light of our own American tradition – what we once had: informally established Christianity, which served as a publicly recognized source of guidance. 

Again Kalb:

[T]he initial public religion in a more traditionalist America would likely be the one America had before the judicial coup of the sixties: an informally established, minimally doctrinal and basically Protestant Christianity. Such a restored informal establishment, however minimal, would move American public life closer to what most people and traditions (including those which reject the American public religion as such) believe proper than does our current increadingly perfectionistic establishment of advanced liberalism. Such an arrangement would not satisfy everyone, but the same is true of every conceivable arrangement. Anything more specific (such as Catholicism) would lack the necessary public support; anything more abstract (such as “Judaeo-Christianity) would be an artificial construction not taken seriously. … Catholics and Jews did not like it when psalms from the King James Bible were read in public schools, but that practice was far more friendly to Catholicism and Judaism than what succeeded it. The nature of the religious establishment might well change as the views of the American people evolve. Such changes have to do with the public sense of what is real. They cannot be forced; their direction and pace cannot be chosen in advance. (p. 272)

However, it would require much more than this for our society to moderate democratic extremism. Limiting the franchise, ideally to married, working men, would help.

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