A Pope A Politician and a Fight for the Ages
It’s rare in the 21st century for the words of a religious leader to make headlines, and even less common for a national political leader to argue with them publicly, but that’s exactly what we’ve been seeing. The war of words, both subtle and explicit, between the President and Vice President of the United States and the Pope, leader of the Roman Catholic Church, has triggered an international conversation both on the issues, but also on the bigger question of who gets to talk about what.
Our government waged war on Iran without provocation and without an apparent or accessible goal articulated. It was in clear violation of the Just War Theory, a framework written by St. Augustine in the early 5th century and theoretically followed by the Christian world since.
One of the first acts of this war was to bomb a school killing more than 160 girls, a war crime by both modern and ancient, both legal and moral standards. From there the attacks got worse and the rhetoric threatened mass annihilation. In response, the pope chastised our theoretically Christian leaders and defended the Iranians with lines like, (these are all quotes from the pope over the last few weeks) “whoever is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, never stands on the side of those who yesterday wielded the sword and today drop bombs.” “…our God is Jesus…who rejects war...” “No cause can justify the spilling of innocent blood.” “Enough of idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power!” “The delusion of omnipotence…is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive.” “God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war…your hands are full of blood.”
In response JD Vance, himself a Roman Catholic, said the Pope should be careful when speaking on matters of theology, which has to be the most bizarre statement in this ongoing public quarrel. He said it with a staggering level of arrogance. And, folded into that arrogance was a hint or even just a whisper of a threat. He said exactly, “I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.” I think what he meant was he should be careful when speaking on matters of theology that aren’t in alignment with US policy. In other words, don’t get in our way. Know your place.
Lucky for the whole world, this pope does, in fact, know his place.
But sometimes in this country, we get confused about who belongs where and who should be saying what. Part of the liberation people experienced in the founding of this nation was the implied and later codified declaration of the separation of church and state. And while we often assume that choice was a response to centuries of church corruption, it was actually a way of protecting the new church from the stink of politics. As the Puritans were imagining their home in the new world, they wanted to ensure that purity wasn’t tainted by either the Roman Catholic Church they were trying to purify themselves of or the mess that government too often creates.
In the beginning, what was declared in our Constitution was an assurance that no church would ever be Established. This is in contrast to the Establishment of the Church of England which, even today, is enmeshed in governmental systems. While they couldn’t have imagined the pluralism we have, they did want to guarantee that no one in government ever had a say in how religion was to be run or what people were to believe. Remember that they were fleeing England where there was a doctrine of uniformity that legally required conformity of liturgy, government and theology by every citizen.
But separation of church and state is not the same as separation of religion and politics. Separation of church and state, meaning no religion will be established, thereby giving people freedom of belief, - no conformity required - is a legal reality. It means that none of our federal systems will benefit or harm any one group over another. No favorites. No uniformity required. That’s what the 1st Amendment protects. Religion and Politics are different.
Religion is how communities ask big questions together. How we face Mystery, together. How we live deeply, together. How we organize our questions and how we respond to the answers, together. I keep saying “together” because religion is a communal reality. Spirituality is individual. How any particular person asks big questions, faces and responds to mystery, or seeks deeper life is our own spirituality. How we do that with others is religious. We are religious together.
Politics is how we organize ourselves in groups, how we make collective decisions, distribute shared resources, and solve common problems. Each person brings to those public conversations our own individual value systems which are informed by many things including culture, history, and religion. No single person can separate their religious beliefs – the things they discover in community when facing the great mysteries of life – from their politics – how they think we should solve our problems, distribute our resources or make collective decisions.
If we are religious – and if you’re here most Sundays it’s fair to call you religious like it or not – we are going to bring the values we espouse here into the public conversation. Authenticity requires it of us. To be ourselves, we have to ask what it means to Live the Truth as we understand it.
And that Truth is what we discern here, together. That Truth includes supporting each person in their fullness, includes gratitude as a spiritual practice, includes rest as a form of resistance, includes joy as witness to liberation, includes a belief in the beauty of every being with all our varieties, includes a sense of our profound planetary interconnectedness, includes wild equality of being, includes the value of discovery through science, includes truth-telling itself, includes living with Love at the Center of Everything.
And we carry those beliefs into public spaces. We embody them. They are who we are in the world. We want our civic organizing systems to reflect those values. Which means there is no way for religion to be separated from politics. Our politics is incarnational. It is embodied. It is our values taking flesh. Living and breathing in the world.
We don’t really expect our selves or our neighbors not to bring those value systems into the public conversation. And when it comes to clergy we require them to speak out on major ethical issues. We need it as witness. We may not agree with them, but as long as they are respecting our right to disagree, we have collectively determined that we need these voices. People like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. William Barber, the Dali Lama, the Archbishop of Canterbury who’s been turning my head lately, Thich Nhat Hahn, Rev. Mariann Budde (Buddy) who spoke truth to power at the inauguration, even our own Rev. John Haynes Holmes. Each of these people has at some time been the critical voice countering cultural norms. They are calling us to be our best selves. They’re holding up the vision of the new world, the world possible, the world not yet.
As is the pope when drawing attention to abuses of power leading to violence. And, he knows he has a particular responsibility in this scenario because this government has declared Christianity as core to its value system and the Vice President is himself Catholic.
The power struggle between secular and religious leaders is as old as humans. Since we could form language, we’ve been jockeying for position and recognition. Some of these power struggles have been epic leading to massive disruptions like the Inquisition and the Crusades to name only two. The Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism, the Protestant Reformation are a few others.
I actually think we’re in a similar fight right now, and one that, like the others, might also lead to a restructuring of the platforms and frameworks for our living.
I know there are people in our country – even in our government – who are trying to bring about the apocalypse. I’m not talking about that, but I’m also not not talking about it. What I mean is that I think there’s a little bit of a feeling both in the country and around the globe, that something big is happening. Maybe it’s AI. Maybe it’s the increase of violence. Maybe it’s the mind-boggling wealth disparity. Maybe it’s the fall of the American Empire. Maybe it’s the climate crisis. Maybe it’s all of these seeming to happen simultaneously and, in important ways, relatedly.
Do you know the entire tech world has a scale they call P(Doom)? It refers to the likelihood that AI will cause a disastrous outcome for humanity like extinction. There are some tech leaders who have a P(Doom) of 95%.
Even without that alarming number, there’s just a feeling so many people – on every side of the political and religious spectrum – have that something is coming or shifting or something. Something is something. Which is why we can’t cede ground to hopelessness. It’s just too easy give up. To look around and say, “We’re doomed. It’s done. Why bother?”
It’s why we need our incarnational politics.
It’s why we need our embodied integrity.
It’s why we need our voices of reason.
It’s why we need our experience of interconnectedness.
It’s why we need our willingness to be curious about difference.
It’s why we need our holy impatience.
It’s why we need our commitment to collective liberation.
It’s why we need our truth-telling in civic discourse.
It’s why we need to be visible as witness to the world we know is possible.
It’s why we need to embody hope in every public square.
It’s why we need our insistence that Love be at the Center in every decision, in every choice, in every vote, and policy, and law.
It might not be common in the 21st century to hear religious voices in public discourse, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to surrender common ground. Not now when our voices are profoundly necessary. So, as we started with words from Pope Leo, let us end with them.
“You are the salt of the Earth. You are the Light of the world. You are the message of hope, and it is on you, on us, to give hope to everyone else… Be not afraid.”
