The Power of the Sword

 In his recent work, 'Letter to the American Church", Eric Metaxas points out that the Christian community in Germany almost entirely missed out the warning signs in the 1930's regarding how National Socialism would take and abuse the levels of power to bring a process of control to completion. Abusing these means to bring every aspect of the national order, including the spiritual dimensions of life, into the sphere of direct control beneath an ideology currouption, sealing the culture in a cult of death, thus nothing was outside the sphere of their influence.

Metaxas notes that this was achievable due to 1: The social fracturing of the county caused by the war, 2: The Fusion that existed in the country between the secular powers and the influence these brought upon the structure of the church and 3:  The impoverished spiritual state of the German church itself, which had given so much away to secular approaches to the message and place of the message of Christianity. It is no wonder then that the church generally proved to be a bent force when facing the far more strident and advancing creed of the new social strident messages of the day.

This work, however, makes an even more vital observation in respect to the sorrowful state of the church in our times.

In an earlier section, Metaxas also touches upon the radical changes that commenced in the American church in the 1950's, when the state, which according to the American constitution, is supposed to be something entire separate to the church in the nation, begun to introduce policy which impacted directly upon what a minister was allowed to say and teach from his pulpit on Sunday's if he wished to remain in post. Here we see how the supposedly 'healthy' nature of 'democratic' sate influence has continue to grow and control the role of Christianity in a fashion that is tightly controlled and restricted for the last 60 years amidst Western society.

The depths and spans of such control became fully evident in 2020, when these states closed the churches entirely in respect to there normal functions, and since that period, the direct influence of what is deemed state dogma continues to feed directly into the regular nature of church life, meaning that further restrictions can be introduced when deemed necessary by the state.

This process of the use of the sword of state to curtail and steer church authority is of course not new. In his excellent study of the nature of the church in relation to this issue, The Subversion of Christianity, Jucques Ellul shows how such processes have been at work amidst the Christian community in an obvious and corruptive manner since the 4th century onwards, meaning that the Spiritual nature of the message and significance of the faith has so often become subverted to other political and economic ends, where the power of the sword of the state has become the primary focus and the crucial truth of the Gospel has become buried in the process of placing secular power and position first.

The same is so often the case today, especially in respect to the war Christian belief systems so often interpret present concerns or events through the lens of a secular requirement to see that certain 'powers' are defined as 'good' (godly) in what they say or do,  even what this means ignoring the actual need and suffering of other Christians who are effectively ignored in the manner that certain events are defined and understood through such partial analysis.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy in all of this, as Ellul and Metaxas both state, is the manner in which the church continually looses sight of its true message and role as a result of effectively siding with powers and ideas that leave the culture bereft of a vital spirituality which Christ brings to save a truly change this fallen world.

It has, no doubt, always been the case, and the kingdom comes in spite of such troubles, but it would be something if Christians at least woke up to the realty of this estate.