Here, and here Josh Marshall's pen pals grope for the word to describe what it all means. We Christians call it "providence."
Now we're in dangerous territory here. God knows how many people told me that they were just so sure that God's hand was in George W. Bush's rise to the prezdicy. I don't want to be a mirror image of those people. I don't eagerly await a left wing Christian theocracy. I do eagerly await a return to the rule of law and the consignment of military force to its rightful place as a last resort. I eagerly await garden variety corruption, not torture, war crimes, the politicization of science and criminal justice and the demonizing of the loyal opposition.
My final paper in my Celtic Christianity is on The Life of Columbanus, the sacred biography (don't call it hagiography!) of the Irish monastic whose aceticism surpassed anything today's extreme athletes do to their bodies and whose uncompromising personality seemed to alienate as many people as he dazzled with his sanctity. Much of the Life narrates his complicated relationship with the Frankish king Theuderich and his Jezebel-like grandmther Brunhilda, whose husband initially set up Columbanus in a monastery. Theuderich, like Herod, "liked to listen to" Columbanus, but because the latter wouldn't bless the king's sons by his concubines, he aroused the wrath of the court, and was exiled.
Now was Columbanus motivated by moral indignation at the king's refusal to marry? Or was he motivated by political reasons? If the king were to take a legitimate queen, Brunhilda would be cut out as the power behind the throne. Was the "sharp, two-edged sword" of the Word in Columbanus' hands nothing more than a shiv for the Queen Grandmother?
Or, one might wonder why the author spends so much time on this episode in Columbanus's life? Did it "really happen," or, since many of these saints' lives are shoehorned into the biblical narrative, does the "script" demand an Elijah-like confrontation with Ahab and Jezebel or a John the Baptist versus Herod and Salome scene?
Or is it that the saint's onetime closeness to Theuderich and Brunhilda was something of an embarassment in the years after their overthrow and execution, like Billy Graham having the ear of Richard Nixon, and Jonas is trying to rehabiliate his subject's reputation by stressing that the two parties eventually came to blows?
The point is... well, two points: providence, just like prophecy, can be self-serving. Not anticipating any substantial rehabilitation of President Bush's image, I wonder how right wing theocrats will distance themselves from the man they were so sure was anointed by God to do great things?
The other point is how closely Christians ought to act in concert with any regime. This is a big issue in China right now, and it divides the house church Christians from those in the state sanctioned church. It's been a big issue for missionaries down through the ages. Not shmoozing in the court often meant denial of entry. But once you got your foot in the door and the government fell, you were liable to get the door slammed in your face, or a foot and other body parts cut off.
It's a complicated question, and from the Church's side, the relationship between Church and State can't be reduced to a posture of white, middle class quietism posing as radical discipleship.
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