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Each day this Lent we’re looking at major “turning points” in Christian history – moments or seasons in which the story of God’s people took an important and often unexpected turn.
It’s a very old dream.
Wouldn’t it be great to live in some version of God’s kingdom on earth, where people who profess love for God run everything – including the government, schools, and major industries?
It’s been tried before. What resulted, however, was anything but the paradise everyone anticipated. And it took an exceedingly long time for the dream to die.
We’re talking about Christendom, or the so-called “medieval synthesis.” For something like a thousand years (approximately 500 to 1500) the best minds in Europe wrestled with two questions: Should church and state be separate or unified? And who should be the leader – the spiritual pope or the secular king?
Historian Mark Noll points out that Christianity is always emerging from one state of existence into the next one.
One of the most remarkable “emergences” was the transition of Jesus-followers from helpless targets of Roman persecution to the very leaders of Rome’s crumbling empire. As the glory days of ancient Rome faded from view, the Church found itself in the strange position of being the last effective institution still standing – the one remaining source of cultural hope and stability.
What should Christians do with this unexpected gift? Consensus gradually emerged that God must surely be calling for a new Roman Empire – but this time a Holy Roman Empire.
That vision seemed to become a reality on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, when Pope Leo II, in a magnificent ceremony, placed a crown on the head of Charles, king of the Franks. This grandson of the warrior-king Charles Martel immediately became more than just a garden variety royal. He was now Charlemagne (“Charles the Great”), a man who signed his official dispatches with the phrase, “Charles, by the will of God, Roman Emperor.”
Charlemagne – tall, strong, and fearless, yet sometimes cruel – could barely read. But he knew that education had become a make-or-break issue in the daunting wilderness of Europe.
He decreed an empire-wide engagement with scholarship and the arts that came to be known as the Carolingian Renaissance – an explosion of learning that helped launch numerous new centers of Christian study. It was an exciting time.
But a key question was left hanging in the air. Who was more important: the pope or the emperor?
Specifically, how in the world did the pope ever achieve the authority to place a crown on Charlemagne’s head?
It’s a long story. And different branches of Christianity tell the story differently.
Catholics, for instance, trace the primacy of the bishop of Rome all the way back to Peter, who, according to tradition, held that position some 30 years after the time of Christ. Jesus had declared in Matthew 16:18, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church…” Even though the word “pope” (from the Latin papa) wasn’t used exclusively of the bishop of Rome until the 11th century, Catholics have long seen the pope as nothing less than the vicar (or representative) of Christ on earth.
Orthodox Christians honor the pope, too – but only as one among several equal patriarchs.
Protestants (all 30,000-plus different denominations) tend to see the pope somewhere along a spectrum from wise, God-appointed leader to “just another guy” to the Antichrist. Speaking on behalf of this group, I’ll just say that Protestants aren’t always particularly bright, but we sure make the religious scene more interesting.
The very idea of Christendom, which necessitates a human spiritual leader exerting authority over matters of both Church and state, could never have taken flight apart from an extraordinarily strong pope.
The right man for the moment turned out to be Pope Gregory I (540-604), appropriately known as Gregory the Great.
A humble priest with unimpeachable character, he rose to the highest spiritual office over his own objections. Gregory negotiated with barbarians, centralized various practices of worship and study, and above all emphasized the pastoral dimension of Christian leadership.
He launched a revolution in sacred music, as evidenced by the fact we still call his innovations Gregorian chant.
How did he see himself? He was servus servorum Dei (“a servant of the servants of God”). If you survey 20 centuries of spiritual leadership, it doesn’t get much better than that.
The “glory days” of Christendom, if we can use such a term, began about A.D. 600. For many centuries, simply to live in Europe meant (by default) you were a “Christian” – even if you didn’t attend church, pursue Christian ethics, or give Jesus a second thought. Politics, education, art, and economics all happened under the umbrella of a system that assumed it was possible to combine the sacred and the secular.
Unfortunately, knowing God no longer required conversion. Salvation became a two-step process: (1) Be born. (2) Be baptized.
After one’s baptism, the church served as the indispensable agent of God’s grace, having sole authority to provide the life-sustaining sacraments of confirmation, holy communion, confession, marriage, holy orders, and anointing of the sick.
It can safely be said that losing access to such gifts of grace was considered the ultimate medieval disaster. Spiritual vitality, sadly, came to be seen as a realistic option for the few, not the many. Few popes, meanwhile, were considered models of wisdom and purity.
What would happen if people began to doubt Christendom’s core principle – the absolute centrality of the Church in every aspect of life? The whole system would crumble like a house of cards.
Slowly but surely, that actually happened. It’s a story we will share in the days to come.
The synthesis of Church and state that began with Constantine and was accelerated by Charlemagne is now long gone. Should we mourn its loss?
Today there are strident voices insisting that a new version of Christendom simply has to be launched. If only we elect the right leaders who embrace the right theology and enact the right policies, something like God’s kingdom on earth will become a reality. Others insist that America has always been a “Christian nation.” All we need to do is reclaim our spiritual roots.
But such thinking overlooks what Jesus himself had to say about the subject:
He is the king of a kingdom that is not of this world (John 18:36).
Throughout history, Christianity has always been at its best not when it tries to control a particular society, but when it exists as an alternative communityor culture within that society.
That doesn’t mean we can’t still dream.
We can dream that Christianity will emerge into yet another new state of existence – one in which people imitate the ways of Jesus with greater zeal than imitating secular power.