The political separation
of “Church and State” in U.S. constitutional law, a doctrine that is of
jurisprudence (judicial decision) rather than theology and thus does not
straddle and therefore demarcate the political and religious domains as qualitatively
distinct from a neutral standpoint. Furthermore, the question of what makes the
religious domain distinct (and unique) from all others is the pole from which a
religious functionary’s (or religionist) leap into the political garden from
the Garden of Eden can be detected. The trouble worsens if the criteria from
one domain in imposed and overlaid in the overreaching into another
domain, as if the criteria that is determinative in one domain were valid in
another. In fact, the eclipsing itself of the other’s own criteria on their own
“turf” is unethical. The legitimate sovereignty of a domain’s own criteria in
that domain over criteria indigenous to other domains yet superimposed renders
any supervening overreaching as both erroneous—as in going off-sides in
football (soccer)—and unethical because the criteria indigenous to a given domain
should not be disrespected within their own domain. In other words,
encroaching is presumptuous. If these ideas strike the reader as novel, even
strange perhaps, then I am keeping within the confines of my mission in writing,
as I look to a new dawn in which the ideational tyranny of hitherto reigning yet
questionable assumptions ist zerstört because they have been discredited,
which is not to say that every extant assumption should be eviscerated
and expunged for lack of substance. Unfortunately, Russia’s Patriarch Kirill, the
head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, went out on a tree limb, far from his religious
tree’s trunk, by formulating and spreading “revisionist propaganda to justify
the war in Ukraine” while the invasion was underway.[1]
The history and legitimacy of a bygone Russian empire (not the U.S.S.R.) properly
belong to the political rather than to the religious domain. Being schooled in
theology does not give even a high religious functionary the knowledge on which
to presume to be an expert in political history and international
relations. The resentment in the E.U. and U.S. at the patriarch’s intrusion into
a domain that is not an extension of the religious domain was not merely from
opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but also from an intuitive sense
that the domains of religion/theology and politics/government are distinct and
thus require different knowledge-sets and have their own respective criteria
and distinctiveness.
In late June, 2026, agreement
in the E.U. on “the 21st package of European Union sanctions against
Russia” remained “mired in difficult, with multiple obstacles and the public
threat” of a veto by the E.U. state of Bulgaria in the European Council, where
the proposed law had to pass unanimously or else fail to be enacted.[2]
Bulgaria’s governor, Rumen Radev, “publicly announced his opposition to
sanctioning Patriarch Kirill” with “a travel ban and an asset freeze.”[3]
Both the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church “belong to
the Eastern Orthodox Church, share the same faith and dogma, and are bound by
cultural and historical ties.”[4]
Radev’s rational is political rather than theological, however, as would
be the proposed sanctions against the patriarch, who had overstepped from the theological
onto the political domain in justifying the Russian government’s war even
if he drew on theological doctrines in making the political statement on
the war. Had Kirill restrained himself to “coloring within the lines” of
theology proper, he would not have been vulnerable in the political domain.
Especially in Christianity,
where Christ’s preachment, give what is Caesar’s unto Caesar, is a
salient reminder that distinctively religious transcendence does not
bother with politics, Kirill’s political ideology can be likened in the Gospels
to the Jewish Zealots whose cause Jesus does not take up because that political
movement is antipodal to the religious
preachment to love thy enemy. It is fitting, therefore, that Pope
Leo had recently been implicitly invalidated even Catholic just-war “theory” by
stating that Jesus would not be in favor of fighting in any war. From
the perspective of the political domain, Jesus of the Gospels may appear, at a
distance, as a mystic whose teachings pertain to a kingdom not of this world. This
is not to say that a distinctly religious message cannot have political
implications, even dire ones, as per Jesus in the Gospel narratives, but to say
that something that is in one distinct domain has an effect in another domain
is not to say that the “something” is in the other domain. Kirill went into
the political domain in formulating and spreading pro-war propaganda and thus
lost hold of that which makes the religious domain unique and distinctive. In
other words, he went too far out on a branch and fell into another property without
bothering to acknowledge that he was then in another, qualitatively different
domain with its own criteria.
Crucially, the political
domain is based on this realm, whereas, as Pseudo-Dionysius wrote, the divine
transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility
(emotion). Whereas the political domain is compatible with humanism, religious
transcendence, having a transcendent reference point (e.g., God), is not based
in, and thus limited to our realm, which is in the principle of
possibility within the limits of human conception, perception, and sensibility.
The two domains—the political and the religious—are thus qualitatively
different. To remake the latter too much of this realm is to deny the radical
transcendence that renders the religious domain unique. In depicting the
Kingdom of God in overt political terms wherein social, economic, and political
inequalities are treated as the problem and the Kingdom as a particular political-economic
system, or structure, Liberation Theology risks denying the distinctly religious
transcendence that is in the kingdom preached by Jesus in the Gospels. No where
in those stories does Jesus design an equitable economic system, for his Father’s
kingdom is of the heart rather than political economy. Similarly, Jesus does
not justify the Roman, or any other empire, for his orientation is to reverting
hearts back to God. Kirill’s attempt to justify the Russian empire from a
Christian standpoint can thus be regarded not only as dogmatic in the sense
of being arbitrary, but also besides the point, lying in another domain of human
experience.
At a basic level, the
religious domain can be said to be unique, and thus distinct from other domains
qualitatively rather than just by degrees of difference, because of the
transcendent basis that is not based within our realm wherein we think,
perceive, and feel. The experience of religious transcendence is thus
unique. Kirill strayed from this by climbing so far out on a tree branch (limb)
that he fell into someone else’s yard and started telling the people there how their
game is properly to be played. Any player in the indigenous group there could
not be blamed for exclaiming to the prelate, Excuse me? You don’t know how
to play our game because it is taught only here, not where you come from. You
are off-sides.
