Why does Peter Leithart find this encouraging, uplifting, or persuasive? Why does the inadequacy of secularism somehow prove the sufficiency of God-drenched conceptions of the world?
The task is not simply to expose the inadequacy of a world without God or to show the collaborative spirit of religious engagement in the common good. It surely must more specifically be to demonstrate the unique power and thrilling wisdom of the logic of God in Christ and to reconceive tired issues in the light of the shape of Christ’s coming. The authority and the credibility of the public theology rest not so much on the theologian’s insight, intelligence, or subtle grasp of complex issues (wondrous as each may be) as on the ability – respectfully, lucidly, and accessibly – to show how Christ redefines human nature, transforms death, and overturns the givens of life; to show what only God can do and only God has done; and more intriguingly, to highlight the way that questions in public life today reflect and recall issues faced by the church in shaping and embodying Christian doctrine.
Who said secularism was going to figure it all out? Who says that Christendom ever did? In fact, if Peter Heather is correct about the appeal of the Roman Empire to Christian Emperors — Constantine, Justinian, and Charlemagne — then the European world even in its most Christian phase was responsible for a lot of senseless war:
. . . a restored empire that captured the essence of the Roman original had become completely impossible by the year 1000. Not only had Islam broken apart ancient Mediterranean unity, and the balance of power in Western Europe shifted decisively north of the Alps, but, still more fundamentally, patterns of development were now much too equal across the broader European landscape. Thanks to this equalization of development, you might say, the scene was set for the thousand subsequent years of fruitless warfare which followed as Europe’s dynasts intermittently struggled to achieve a level of overarching dominance that was in fact impossible. In that sense, it took the nightmare of two world wars in the twentieth century before the European Dream was finally called into existence to try to put a stop to the process of endless armed competition between powers that were always too equal for there to be an outright winner. (The Restoration of Rome, 294-295)
And let’s be clear, these were dynasts with Christian motivations (at least in part — Hegel’s w-w had not come along yet). So why does Leithart think that putting God into the questions surrounding public life will do any good? This time, he thinks, the politicians, inspired by his guy Constantine, will get it right?
And if anyone ever wants to argue for Christendom as an example of politics accomplished Christianly, or that the Christian society secured human flourishing, s/he should merely consider the fundamental dynamic of medieval monarchy — gain control and keep it by taxation, warfare (and don’t forget leaving behind an undisputed heir). According to Heather:
In the small-state world of early medieval Europe, expansionary warfare replaced large-scale taxation as the source of renewable wealth that was necessary to maintaining a powerful central authority in anything but the very shortest of terms. . . . All of which prompts one final question: if expansion was so crucial to the longer-term exercise of central authority, filling the massive gap in royal finance created by the end of taxation, why did later Carolingian monarch allow it to end? . . . A more profitable route into the problem is to consider expansionary warfare in terms of cost-benefit equations which governed it. Expansionary warfare would bring in profits, but also involved costs, not just in financial terms (food, weaponry, etc.), but also in personal terms since some of those participating would certainly die. If you think about it in this way, then the ideal profile of an area ripe for expansion is easy enough to construct: it needs to be economically developed enough to offer a satisfying level of reward both in terms of moveable booty and potential land-grabbing, but militarily not so well organized that too many of your expeditionary army, on average, are going to die winning access to the prize. . . . On every corner of the frontier, the cost-benefit equation was starting to deliver a negative answer, either because the enemy was too formidable (Spain), or because the likely benefits were not that great (the Balkans), or some combination of the two (southern Italy and the Southern Elbe region). (288-90)
When you think about empire and government in those terms, the modern secular nation-state surely does seem to have its advantages. That’s not because it doesn’t go to war or because it’s run by a bunch of virtucrats. Instead, say what you will about capitalism and its appeal to baser human motivations, it does generate the kind of internal wealth that many times prevents nation-states from having to conquer another people who will pay the government’s bills. Not to mention that constitutionalism and enumerated powers are a much better way of gaining consent than intimidation by force (cheaper too).
Old Life 
But maybe John Milbank and James K Smith think DG Hart is a practical gnostic for not endorsing the old- new politics of Philip Blond—
How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor by James K.A. Smith, Eerdmans
“This disembodied, buffered, individualist view of the self seeps into our social imaginary – into the very way we imagine the world, well before we ever think reflectively about it. We absorb it with our mother’s milk, so to speak to the extent that it’s very difficult for us to imagine the world otherwise.”
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Leithart—We could refuse to eat and drink in the Father’s presence. Then the promises of a future feast, the promise of glorified creation, the promise of deliverance are not memorialized before the Father. And the kingdom does not come….. We memorialize Jesus by eating bread and drinking wine. Unless we do that when we gather for worship, we’re doing something less than Jesus wants, and we are doing less for this world than God intends.
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2014/06/what-happens-in-holy-communion
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A Churchman a 1K Man Can Love
http://online.wsj.com/articles/cyprus-bishop-tries-to-regain-lost-clout-1402097616
By MATINA STEVIS
June 6, 2014 7:33 p.m. ET
NICOSIA, Cyprus—”They robbed us. It was outright robbery,” Archbishop Chrysostomos II snapped from behind the heavy wooden desk in his vast office one recent morning.
“They” are the euro-zone leaders and the International Monetary Fund, who demanded Cyprus shrink its banking sector in return for a €10 billion ($13.8 billion) bailout last year.
The government’s decision to take the money cost the traditionally powerful Church of Cyprus tens of millions of euros, and served as another sign of how marginalized the church had become after the 2008 election of Dimitris Christofias, a Communist, as president.
The two leaders hardly ever met but sniped at each other from afar. The war of words escalated during the financial crisis, when the archbishop said Mr. Christofias had “destroyed the country,” and he responded with a charge of populism.
Now, with a new center-right government in office, the 73-year-old archbishop seems to be trying to recover some of that lost clout—and money.
He regularly meets with new President Nicos Anastasiades, is talking more to the media and has taken it upon himself to invite potential investors to the island.
The archbishop has even changed his stance on the island’s financial crisis. Last year, he said Cyprus should leave the euro. Now, he says, “The isolation from Europe would have been disastrous.”
Church leaders have traditionally wielded strong influence in Cyprus—unusual in largely secular Europe. Archbishop Makarios III led the country to independence from British colonial rule and became its first president in 1960.
A 1974 coup attempt against him, which was aimed at attaching Cyprus to Greece, led to a Turkish invasion that has left the island partitioned ever since.
But if Makarios was a statesman, Chrysostomos, who was ordained in 2006, is seen more as a businessman.
“He is regarded as the most commercially minded cleric in Cyprus,” says James Ker-Lindsay, a professor at the London School of Economics specializing in Cyprus and the region. A popular joke goes that the archbishop’s title should be “Chief Executive Officer, Church of Cyprus Inc.”
With the Cypriot economy forecast to shrink 4.8% this year, following a 6% contraction in 2013, the archbishop faces a similar challenge to some CEOs: how to preserve value in a shrinking market.
There is no public record of the church’s assets and its chief financial officer declined to provide one or comment for this article. The archbishop himself has valued total church assets at about €4 billion, equal to a quarter of the country’s annual economic output.
The Cyprus Holy Archbishopric owns big chunks of publicly traded companies: Vassiliko Cement Works Ltd, the country’s only heavy industry; Hellenic Bank, where U.S. hedge fund Third Point LLC is also a major shareholder; and beer and soft-drinks firm KEO.
It also is the biggest landowner in the country. But its real-estate holdings have been hit by a collapse in property values, which fell 15% in 2013, according to a survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
However, its investments in banks have suffered most.
To get the 2013 bailout, Cyprus had to close its second-largest bank, Laiki, and restructure the largest, Bank of Cyprus, forcibly converting large deposits into shares.
“With what right did they touch depositors’ money? Investors lost their capital, too!” the archbishop, who vigorously opposed the deal, said in an interview in his bright office, located in Nicosia’s old town. An elderly woman served Turkish coffee—called “Cypriot” here—in tiny blue-and-gold enamel cups featuring the Byzantine double-headed eagle.
“I reacted to this with all the strength in my soul,” he says in Katharevousa—a lofty mixture of ancient and modern Greek mostly spoken by clergy in Greece and Cyprus.
The church suffered at least €80 million in paper losses when its stake in the Bank of Cyprus was repriced because of the restructuring and lost 98% of its value.
If the archbishop had had his way, Cyprus—which joined the European Union in 2004 and the euro in 2008—would never have gone to Brussels for financial assistance in the first place. His preference was for stronger ties to a fellow Orthodox country: Russia.
In 2011, when Cyprus first faced default, Archbishop Chrysostomos called on his “brother,” as he calls Kirill, the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, to help then-President Christofias secure a €2.5 billion loan from the Kremlin.
Two years later, a similar intervention helped Cyprus win better repayment terms. “We intervened to extend the loan,” he says, rearranging the wide sleeves of his cassock to reveal a golden wristwatch.
Along with the euro-zone bailout, the archbishop has had a change of heart on another major issue: He said he now backs a new round of talks to reunify the island, which would bring the 265,000 Turkish Cypriots and 839,000 Greek Cypriots under one federal state.
Before a 2004 referendum on a United Nations plan to reunite the island, bishops here warned the flock that if they voted in favor, they’d be barred from heaven. Only 24% of Greek Cypriots voted in favor and the plan was dropped.
“If the Turkish Cypriots really want to make a proper federation and to live happily on the land of our fathers, we have all the good will to work toward that. If they do too, we can get to the end,” he says of the current efforts.
People familiar with the church’s property say much of it is in the Turkish-occupied part of the island. A reunification plan that saw some of that land returned would significantly boost the church’s portfolio.
The archbishop recently issued an extraordinary joint declaration with the Turkish Cypriot mufti, the religious leader in the predominantly Muslim north, calling for peace and unity on the island. Yet he says he’ll withdraw support for any plan that doesn’t send Turkish settlers in Northern Cyprus back to Turkey. The mufti is a settler.
Archbishop Chrysostomos handling of this and other tough political issues “shows why we still use the term ‘Byzantine’ when talking about the highest forms of political scheming,” Mr. Ker-Lindsay says. He warned against taking the archbishop’s support for reunification for granted.
Write to Matina Stevis at matina.stevis@wsj.com
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Today’s younger generation will be way too occupied looking at their IPhones, Laptops, and video game screens to bother with fighting. We’ll have world peace via distraction.
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