A State is not a Business

The idea that “a State should be run like a business” should pain the soul of a Southerner like a sharp thorn in a soft foot. A people and their government have their origin in the will and act of a Holy God. Thus, both have Him as their goal and as the model of their conduct. To reduce the functioning of a State government, which is an inseparable part of the mysterious spiritual-physical body of the ethnos, to the operative principles of a mundane business, then, is grotesque and repulsive.

The bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church spelled out some of the foundational truths of nations and governments in a document they wrote as the 21^st dawned titled The Basis of the Social Concept.

About nations, they provide the following:

“In addition to their sharing one religion, the unity of the people of God was secured by their ethnic and linguistic community and their rootedness in a particular land, their fatherland (II.1).

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The universal nature of the Church, however, does not mean that Christians should have no right to national identity and national self-expressions. On the contrary, the Church unites in herself the universal with the national. Thus, the Orthodox Church, though universal, consists of many Autocephalous National Churches.

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The cultural distinctions of particular nations are expressed in the liturgical and other church art, especially in the peculiarities of Christian order of life. All this creates national Christian cultures.

Among saints venerated by the Orthodox Church, many became famous for the love of their earthly homeland and faithfulness to it. Russian hagiographic sources praise the holy Prince Michael of Tver who gave his life for his fatherland, comparing his feat to the martyrdom of the holy protomartyr Dimitrius of Thessaloniki: The good lover of his fatherland said about his native city of Thessaloniki, ‘O Lord, if you ruin this city, I will perish together with it, but if you save it, I will also be saved’.

In all times the Church has called upon her children to love their homeland on earth and not to spare their lives to protect it if it was threatened. The Russian Church on many occasions gave her blessing to the people for them to take part in liberation wars. Thus, in 1380, the venerable Sergius the abbot and miracle-maker of Radonezh blessed the Russian troops headed by the holy Prince Dimitry Donskoy before their battle with the Tartar-Mongol invaders. In 1612, St. Hermogen, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, gave blessing upon the irregulars in their struggle with the Polish invaders. In 1813, during the war with the French aggressors, St. Philaret of Moscow said to his flock: If you avoid dying for the honour and freedom of the Fatherland, you will die a criminal or a slave; die for the faith and the Fatherland and you will be granted life and a crown in heaven.

The holy righteous John of Kronstadt wrote this about love of one’s earthly homeland: Love the earthly homeland… it has raised, distinguished, honoured and equipped you with everything; but have special love for the heavenly homeland… that homeland is incomparably more precious that this one, because it is holy, righteous and incorruptible. The priceless blood of the Son of God has earned that homeland for you. But in order to be members of that homeland, you should respect and love its laws, just as you are obliged to respect and really respect the laws of the earthly homeland.” (II.2).

In another section, they expound the nature of the state/government (bolding not added):

“God blesses the state as an essential element of life in the world distorted by sin, in which both the individual and society need to be protected from the dangerous manifestations of sin. At the same time, the need for the state aroused not because God willed it for the primitive Adam, but because of the fall and because the actions to restrict the dominion of sin over the world conformed to His will. Holy Scriptures calls upon powers that be to use the power of state for restricting evil and supporting good, in which it sees the moral meaning of the existence of state (Rom. 13:3-4) (III.2).

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The Orthodox tradition has developed an explicit ideal of church-state relations… Attempts to work out this form were undertaken in Byzantium, where the principles of church-state relations were expressed in the canons and the laws of the empire and were reflected in patristic writings. In their totality these principles were described as symphony between church and state. It is essentially co-operation, mutual support and mutual responsibility without one’s side intruding into the exclusive domain of the other. The bishop obeys the government as a subject, not his episcopal power comes from a government official. Similarly, a government official obeys his bishop as a member of the Church, who seeks salvation in it, not because his power comes from the power of the bishop. The state in such symphonic relationships with the Church seeks her spiritual support, prayer for itself and blessing upon its work to achieve the goal of its citizens’ welfare, while the Church enjoys support from the state in creating conditions favourable for preaching and for the spiritual care of her children who are at the same time citizens of the state.

St. Justinian in his Sixth Novella formulates the principle lying in the basis of church-state symphony: The greatest blessings granted to human beings by God’s ultimate grace are priesthood and kingdom, the former (priesthood, church authority) taking care of divine affairs, while the latter (kingdom, government) guiding and taking care of human affairs, and both, come from the same source, embellishing human life. Therefore, nothing lies so heavy on the hearts of kings as the honour of priests, who on their part serve them, praying continuously for them to God. And if the priesthood is well ordered in everything and is pleasing to God, then there will be full harmony between them in every thing that serves the good and benefit of the human race. Therefore, we exert the greatest possible effort to guard the true dogmas of God and the honour of the priesthood, hoping to receive through it great blessings from God and to hold fast to the ones which we have. Guided by this norm, Emperor Justinian in his Novellas recognised the canons as having the power of state laws.

The classical Byzantine formula of relationships between state and church power is contained in the Epanagoge (later 9th century): The temporal power and the priesthood relate to each other as body and soul; they are necessary for state order just as body and soul are necessary in a living man. It is in their linkage and harmony that the well-being of a state lies.” (III.4).

In modern “American” politics, however, we get none of this beneficial understanding of human nature, history, etc. We get society reduced to a set of business propositions. Mr. Ned White is a candidate for Louisiana’s State Senate, and his statements on government are typical of the contemporary mindset:

“In short, Louisiana must be run like a business and the best way to ensure this goal is for people who run businesses, make payrolls, spend long hours building opportunities for all of people to be engage and involved in changing our state government.

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I want Louisiana to run like a business for the customers of Louisiana (the taxpayers) and every tax dollar accounted for and every penny spent properly.

I’m a businessperson. I spend every day making business decisions to meet my overhead, build new business, create new opportunities, and give my customers what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. I want state government to work the same way.”

Folks, this is Yankee nominalism in full bloom here in our Southland – another Yankee conquest over true Southern culture, which is opposed to this kind of materialistic reductionism that makes men and women created in the image of God into nothing more than taxpayers and the Christian ethnos a money-making enterprise.

It is true that the South lived through an infidel era of her own from the late 18^th to the early 19^th century, but it was an aberration. From the established churches of the colonial and early post-independence years to more recent decades in which Southern State legislatures have passed laws to bring Bible instruction and public prayer back into public schools and to outlaw same-sex marriage and other perversions – Christianity has been a dominant force in Southern life for most of her existence.

This is reflected in her thoughts about government, too. Rev. Dabney in his formidable Defence of Virginia puts those thoughts into words:

“We trace civil government, then, not to any social contract, or other human expediency, but to the will and providence of God, and to original moral obligation. If asked, whence the obligation to obey the civil magistrate who, personally, is but our fellow, we answer, from God’s will, which is the source and measure of duty. Man’s will is wayward and depraved. Hence practical authority to enforce this rule of right upon him must be lodged in some hands; and since God does not rule statedly by miracle, it must be in human hands. Civil government is God’s ordinance, and its obligations are those of original moral right. The advantage and convenience resulting illustrate and confirm, but do not originate, the obligation. This is the theory of government plainly taught by St. Paul (Rom. xiii. 1 to 7) and St. Peter (1 Ep. ii. 13 to 18). For we are here told that the civil magistrate is God’s minister, to uphold right and repress wrong; that obedience to him in this is not only of moral, but religious obligation; and that he who resists this function disobeys God” (pgs. 251-2).

For Dixie, as for any other Christian land, government is not a business. It is an authority ordained by God, and must be approached and “run” as something sacred. Edmund Burke, despite some of his inclinations towards liberalism, is still capable of a moving and fairly accurate description of government and society that is very much in keeping with the Southern disposition (via Reflections on the Revolution in France):

“In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood, binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties, adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections, keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place.”

The atheistic, utilitarian business model of human relations is unsound and un-Southern. It should be decisively banished from Dixie and replaced with her original Christian view of them, casting out all the Ned White’s and putting in their places every Prince Michael, Prince Dimitry, and King Alfred that we possibly can.

-By Walt Garlington