I lament and pray for all persecuted Christians....
I think it foolish for a denomination to get "in bed" with secular government.... typically, the secular state knows how to use and abuse politics better than denominations do and it usually works to the disadvantage of Christians. My own denomination left Germany and purposely chose the USA because church and state were not "in bed" here. Because of "foolish" on the part of Christians or not, I still decry and lament when the Gospel is hindered and the Body of Christ is persecuted. Sadly, WE (the church) tend to be too individualistic, too "near-sighted," too neglectful of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
I used to be a Libertarian Ayn Rand atheist... For me in those years, the only supreme being on earth was the human being... I did not have time for people who had sold out their minds to have faith in a non-demonstrable god of some kind or another... And you had better, in my thinking, not try to control me with your religious nonsense... So I totally get you on the desirability for a total separation of Church and State...
In Revelation 20:2-3 we find the Prophesy that the Serpent shall be bound for a thousand years, and then loosed for a little season... We are in that little season now... But when was Satan bound for a thousand years? There is only one nation that had him bound for a thousand years... It had a Religious Government and a secular one... A Patriarch and an Emperor... They worked hand in hand... It was established in Constantinople in 330, and finally fell in 1453... It's emblem is the double headed eagle...
So to your point, we really do not have a choice... The Liberty Bell cracked in Philadelphia... In the context of the disintegration of the Western Latin Church launched by Luther's inspiration, with many years of religious wars and persecutions in all manner of directions, and in a new nation conceived in Liberty, no longer under the rule of distant kings and having many competing colonies, religious freedom was needed, for the Colonies themselves were of differing sects and conflict arose easily, and getting along in peace in a violence-prone social context was needed, and we were given the Founding Fathers, Washington, Adams and Jefferson and the rest... Nature itself imposed her own union on the colonists...
And now we are under the rule of "individual rights" and the outworking thereof, and we are seeing in the streets the violence prone organization of forces set to destroy that foundation and persecute the people of faith under national world rule - For we are the New Rome, this USA, and beyond us there is no escape politically... The forces of Good and evil are arrayed against each other pretty clearly now... The natural divisions of the western church that united under the banner of the Constitution of limited government have been exploited in their divisions and individual rights are being assaulted by group-think mass hysteria, and the times are as interesting as is torture unto death...
Individual Rights, you see, as the foundation of the US, is breaking down, and is now disintegrating into the identity politics of "group rights" of various denominations... Individual Rights is itself a secular notion, as is identity politics, and itself devolves into family and corporate competing groups and the powers of talent arising therein... You see, the Christianity of the West is itself this great competition of competing beliefs, which have been exploited by their division at the hands of oppressive rule...
Which is why Russia clings to the authoritarian rule of her quasi-Emperor (now-President Putin) who keeps to the Apostolic Faith of the Russian Orthodox Church as it has been emerging from 80 years of horrific persecutions under the Communist Atheists - Who does not permit divisive religious sects much entry into the Russian lands... Russia is not a religious theocracy, as Islam tries to be, nor is it a secular Government of individual rights, but is held more along the lines of the old Byzantine Empire, and with television and the internet, Putin maintains his popularity by having a lot of fact time with the Russian people discussing world and domestic matters... He is perceived by his peers as one of the very wise leaders of the world...
The reign of the Roman Empire in Constantinople was for a little over a thousand years under one Orthodox Faith...
One of the questions I marvel at is this: "How well will that Orthodox Faith be received in a country of individual rights such as we have in the US?" For it was born under the persecutions of an autocratic government in Jerusalem fleeing to Egypt, and established itself in the political power of the Roman Empire under Constantinople for a thousand years, was picked up and transferred in power to Russia, and fell to the Communists, and is now emerging in the US in freedom...
We will find out...
But there will be a remnant that will not bend their knee...
Arsenios
