The Globalization of the Christian Nation

“The fate of our time is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and above all a disenchantment of the world.” Max Weber

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? Psalm 2:1

Introduction

Globalization and the modern concept of the Christian Nation are bound by secularization. The confusion of the nation concept exemplified by the evangelical movement in the United States of America highlights a global diffusion of state sovereignty through privilege and power. In light of the global shift of Christianity’s center of gravity from the Global North toward the Global South, this shift transferred the European Westphalian Christian nation-state into a global manifestation into the post-colonial era. Globalization - among many other descriptions - is an unmaking of the traditional Westphalia Christian nation-state. The Treaty of Westphalia, Enlightenment or modern philosophy combined with the acceleration of global evangelical Christianity contributed to both the confusion of the concept of the Christian Nation and the diffusion of the divine concept of sovereignty. State sovereignty bracketed out the previous Christian divine sanction, bolstering, theoretically, the secular modern state or nation-state. So while the Western international system has misplaced belief in God through secularization or intentionally fleeing from specific communities of religious practice, The Weberian thesis of the transfer of “clerical goods into worldly possession” confronts the Christian Nation concept of evangelicalism and uncovers a secular direction all its own. What follows unpacks a multi-layered disciplinary exploration.

The Westphalia watershed marginalized the religious from the evolving secular state, but it also began a diffusion of sovereign social movements within and outside of the nation-state. The state receiving the attention in studies on sovereignty provided political science an empirical research program in constructing its theories. The marginalization of religion emerges as a focus of International Relations studies and political science by burying the language of the state in a monolithic civilizational culture. The Westphalia secular conceptual trajectory promoted a limitation in understanding social-religious movements and their religious dimension. Recently, the main schools of International Relations theory in the United States began to explore this. The English School has provided broader conceptual research for over half a century. A common term that has provoked this “post-secular turn” is “religious resurgence,” which relies upon particular secularist epistemological assumptions and the realities of a post 9/11 world. It is used to refer to activities, movements, and processes that challenge authoritative secularist settlements of the relationship between metaphysics, politics, state power, and identified non-state actors. It could be viewed as an attempt to refashion the secular. Rather it is proposed that the secular is nihilistic, a product of modernism, ontologically dependant upon the religious or theological and uncovered as a postmodern difference while captivating the evangelical imagination for the past generation through its attacks on secular humanism as a form of identifying the enemy. Secular devotion toward a global order is not just analogously religious: it is religious. A critique of the secular myth comes from various philosophers and social theorists. John Milbank in Theology and Social Theory (1990 ed. 2006) claims philosophical social theoretical frameworks that interact from a philosophical epistemological and polemical direction provide a distinct challenge for society and politics from his theological critique. Rather than exclusively arguing fully against a secular myth as does Milbank, a broader interdisciplinary gathering aide the analysis and elicits the assumptions and motives that may exist. Modern behavioral sciences done by Christians demonstrate a methodological facet in arguing for a realignment with the missio Dei. For missiological directives must acknowledge the counterproductive results of evangelical globalization as the following evidence suggests. Therefore, Evangelicalism may be the victim of nihilism all its own through fiat pronouncements in the name of sovereignty in the saeculum.

A Christian Nation in the Missio Dei?

David Bosch’s (1991) suggestion that, in the light of Missio Dei, the renewal of the church’s mission stands paramount. How does the Christian Nation concept align with the missio Dei? The concept of mission is God’s mission as proclaimed throughout the centuries. The Latin Missio Dei for short refers to John 20:21 where Jesus says, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” Jesus was sent by the Father and the Father and the Son to send the Holy Spirit into the world as the Triune God sends the church into the world. Jesus is also saying that his mission is the model for our own mission as a church. Simply translating the Latin phrase into the English “the mission of God” will not suffice, since we face a series of difficult questions, including which god? What is mission? Who is a part of it? What is its purpose? And why does it exist? Predictably, there have been many different answers to these questions, despite the fact that there is something approaching a global adoption of the term, one which includes many evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and some Pentecostals. David Bosch states, (1991: 390-1) “Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission…. There is the church because there is a mission, not vice versa…. To participate in mission is to participate in the movement of God’s love toward people since God is a fountain of sending love.” Worked out toward nations of people who are cultic, religious and “secular” but not within an organized religious construct.

Alongside a traditional redemptive or reconciliation storyline of the universal church, a means of “participation”, a historical narrative drama is uncovered. This establishes interdisciplinary points of contact with International Relations theories. Prompted by narrative theology as one of many methods of interpretation over conclusive universalizing. The intent here is to highlight this narrative hermeneutic alongside the traditional systematization of theology. The Bible portrays dramatic accounts of God’s activity enacted not at a mythical sacrificial or metaphysical philosophical level, but with people, a society redeemed for a purpose by a historical cross and resurrection of Christ in space and time by the incarnate second person of the Trinity. Hans Frei (1974) published the seminal study toward this developing hermeneutic, where a crucial part of this story, of course, is told by the writers of the New Testament prospectively or prophetically—the New Testament is a work of eschatological hope. Historically speaking, the victory of Israel’s God over the pagan world through the faithfulness of Jesus and of those in him was the conversion of the Roman Empire under Constantine and Theodosius. Exclusive narrative theologians will typically object to use of the spacetime actuality of the Christ event that matters, but rather allow the storytime actuality of the Christ event and empire as Christendom. In order to avoid this gnostic docetism, Kevin Vanhoozer (2005:40) provides further groundwork from an evangelical premise in highlighting this textual narrative. “God can and has entered into a relationship with the world… and comes and goes as he pleases.” He is both the victim and the hero, thus, the conflict between YHWH and the gods of the nations takes center stage. Here the conflict between the people of YHWH and the nations, culminating in the acknowledgment of the rightness of Israel’s God throughout the pagan world unfolds the Old Testament motif of the Divine warrior. Therefore, the Missio Dei begins first with the struggle of Israel’s God—that is, of the one good creator God—to establish his sovereignty (divine right) over the nations beginning with Israel. It is grounded in the intention to bless the nations, and it includes the “salvation” of people from the nations and their false religions. This narrative begins with the builders of Babel and their judgment on the large-scale self-aggrandizement of humanity, YHWH then calls Abraham to be the covenant father of a new nation creation. His seed through Israel or the Hebrew nation is established by way of intense conflict with the gods of their masters, Egypt. Out of the Exodus, a rivalry between YHWH and the Canaanite and other regional deities escalates throughout the period of the kingdoms and reaches its climax in the Babylonian invasion and the exile as YHWH’s judgment on an idolatrous – religious people who broke His covenant. The prophet Isaiah expresses the hope that Israel will be restored, but more importantly, this act of salvation will be a demonstration to the nations that “there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Saviour”. “To me, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance” (Is. 45:22-23). In the New Testament, Paul’s argument in Philippians 2:6-11 is a theology that builds upon this continuing narrative, i.e. through the faithfulness and obedience of Jesus, the conversion of the pagan world will come about: “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”. The final book of the canon, the unveiling Book of Revelation, when the “kingdom of the world” becomes the “kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.” (Rev. 11:15).

A historical narrative that determines the Missio Dei from the texts of scripture is not totally open-ended. It is also contingent, it needs constraint or a contextualized reading from space/time perspective.  In other words, how then does scripture speak to us today? J. Todd Billings (2010) addresses the misunderstanding that easily arises when the ancient text does not address the church of today, but only addresses the ancient community. “… When Christians analyze the text, its history, and background, we should not assume that the historical gap between our contemporary horizon and the ancient one is a great canyon to be bridged by clever analogies or parallels." In a very real sense, this gap is bridged by the Spirit—the same Spirit who unites together God’s people in their respective culture and time. Thus, are books of the Bible “addressed to” ancient Israel or the early church? Through Scripture, the Spirit addresses all of God’s people, not just the original hearers, according to Billings. Here an unfolding between the judgment of God against Babel which was Babylon to the overthrow of “Babylon” normaly signifying Rome in the New Testament “Apocalypse” or may I propose something much more in our face today, Islam. This further interprets the background or overarching story of creation and the renewal of creation, yet in the foreground is the drawn-out conflict between a nation creation by YHWH (true Israel) and their required resistance to the gods of the nations.

Peter Leithart a strong advocate of state and church unity claims, (2009) European Christian society, took the form of the Missio Dei, a politically underpinned assertion of the lordship or “kingdom” established at the end of the biblical narrative, with a coherent, rational and universalized Christian worldview, that would eventually be exported to the rest of the world, held accountable internally (as ancient Israel had been) by movements of dissent and renewal. The Roman Empire left its mark on several continents, including Africa but after the Roman Empire fell, it's emerging Christendom church/state remained both the official and a stabilizer of society. Only after European pre and post-Westphalian states began to emerge was discontent and protest able to really rise within this Christendom. (Bosch 1991: 48) As these events of the Reformation were concurrent with the discovery of the so-called New World, many of them left the Old World for new horizons where the separation of powers became a founding principle. (Walls 1996: 69) As nation-states emerged in Europe, most of them maintained the alliance between church and state, although some of these now involved Protestants like Anglicans, who actually represented the English state in the British Empire as the State Church, but all were given a seat at the pluralistic table of its American colony in the form of the Episcopal Church among other free churches either derived or in protest toward the European Westphalian state. However, in the American colony, patriotism and the problematic “God and Country” concept emerged in a pre-Westphalia sense. This represents the creation of a narrative demanding increased scrutiny in the age of globalization. So how should one avoid reading back too much into history and thus creating a vulnerable meta-narrative. Perhaps, viewing its modern genealogy may help.

Secularism’s Captives: The Evangelical Right

The Westphalia nation-state system moved onto a totalizing global stage immediately through what Walter Russel Mead (2007) terms the Dutch and British maritime mercantile economic system going beyond the American colony. Evangelical directions through migration in the colonial periods of the last 300 years navigated this system around the globe. The early stages of this were mainly migratory through the trade and economic structures developing rapidly into the age of the Industrial Revolution. In the later stages, a formal religious dimension took shape through the state church and free-church movements eventually expressed as missionary societies, yet with an economic progressive trajectory. In these later stages of the colonial era, a nation-state’s presence existed as a trans-territorial presence of a state in another region, and more specifically among people and a society that was indigenous to that region forcing diversity upon the nation-state in culture and perhaps religion. After the abolition of the Slave trade in the early 1800s, the modern Protestant Missionary movement was also in its infant stages, yet it developed rapidly through the century and specifically following the explorations of David Livingston and the subsequent “Scramble for Africa” of the colonial period. Thus, as missionaries came to Africa from both sides, Europeans were mainly colonial. Americans were much the same, but they tended to come from congregational and evangelical denominations rather than state churches, unlike Europeans who often came with official endorsement. However, there were obvious exceptions to this pattern, on both sides. The rise of nationalism led to conflict on unprecedented scales among the tribes of Europe as it was imposed upon the tribes of Africa. Therefore, nationalism did not serve Africa very well. What it really did, as colonial empires collapsed in the wake of the world wars, was to allow African tyrants to take over from colonial despots. The arbitrary borders protected local autocrats after independence was won from colonial oppressors. In post-war jargon, First World came to mean the developed countries in the West, fighting a Cold War with the Second World or East Bloc. Both were in the Northern hemisphere or North. The so-called Third World contains the developing countries, most of which are in the Global South. Ironically, the Global South contains two-thirds of the world's population, so it should really be called the two-thirds world and it is the part of the world where Christianity is rapidly growing.

According to Michael J. Greig (2002:228) today’s globalization expands as both remote and local communications become instantaneous, the relevance of distance and physical geography as forces that shape culture have rapidly declined. The means of globalization today is unique over the former colonial presence where the migration mainly brought a new conquering people to a new territory, the indigenous peoples were either eliminated or marginalized. The state and its societal reach are considered in sociology. But in the US, International Relations research primarily overlooks specific societal influence or focuses on economics. This economic focus provides various forms of research that sociology has incorporated. Here globalization further elevated sociologies methods and objects of study to the global arena. Jan Scholte (1997:428) gives three concepts of globalization encompassing a larger scope. “(1) Globalization is an increase in cross-border relations. (2) Globalization is the removal of barriers to large-scale movements of trade, travel, communications, and finance. (3) Globalization and social relations are viewed as decreasingly tied to a territorial framework. Instead, a global phenomenon extends across widely scattered locations simultaneously, diminishing the significance of territorial distance and borders.” Nation-states are geographical, juridical, and cultural units, and theses terms provide utility in describing a country or a state through its most common use. On the global stage, states are mainly viewed as power relations embodied in various domestic political institutions and can interact constructively through institutions, regimes, collective security, or behave in an aggressive manner through intimidation, oppression and war. In recent decades two analytically distinct concepts of (1) nation-state or political-state and (2) non-state actors are now common in International Relations theory. This is where Max Weber’s sociological conception of the state may not be helpful. For Weber, the state is a set of cadre and institutions that exercise authority, a “legitimate monopoly of coercion,” over a given territory. As Weber’s construct of nation-state still transcends territoriality conjoining economic and political (in Weberian terms, "markets and states") realms become externally related, separate and even oppositional, spheres, each with its own independent logic. Conceptually analysed, William I. Robinson (2001:160) posits that nation-states interact externally with markets. The International Political Economy (IPE) is such a vehicle and demonstrates an interface with social dimensions. Therefore, the social realm is what connects the “state” through its societal/nation-state connectivity. Robinson further argues; “In relation, much has been written about ‘global governance,’ an approach that assumes the duality of a nation-state system with its own logic alongside a global economy. Nation-states are to cooperate in coordinating expanding international activity and in confronting the problems of the new age.” Such is another way of looking at society as a layer of multi national-state interconnectedness. The globalization of today may be different, but not new as stated.

The founding of the United States of America and the era of the late 18th century was decidedly “anti-Westphalian” in its federalist form, a definitive move away from a state church hierarchy. The 150 years of colonial America did not foresee this outcome as many of the original colonies had theocratic church/state ruling intents. After the founding of the republic, the evangelical populace imagined its own version of the Christian Nation. Daniel Philpot (2001) traces the Westphalia nation-state system to the Protestant Reformation and ideas generated in what was an overtly religious movement influencing such spheres as law, politics, the military, economics, and society. The Westphalia system in Europe solved to secularize the state from the state church; elevating the political position either inherently tied to Roman Catholicism or the emerging Protestant states. European forms of Protestantism close link with the state produced a smoother cohesion as Roman Catholic state still was bound toward the Roman Catholic universal reach and eventual Vatican based hierarchy. The secular state’s establishment coincided with the emergence of laws and norms further isolating religious thought within other evolving ecclesiastical structures. The Reformation’s influence into the New World proceeded due to emigration from Europe mainly to the new world and other colonial outposts.

In describing America’s founding as an anti-Westphalia order identifies the Christian Nation problematic. A variety of politically active evangelical organizations called the US Christian Right exemplify this. James Davidson Hunter (1987:4) states that American Evangelicals – “a diverse and decidedly heterogeneous group” - brought Ronald Reagan to power in 1980 and then were embraced by George W. Bush in 2000” - even 2020 Donald Trump is behind us. Jon Butler (2000) uncovers that American Evangelicals have been ubiquitous since the era of the Puritans and pilgrim fathers. Forming the American colonies in a democratic sectarian fashion yet with some colonies more pronounced as theocratic. This launched activist American evangelicalism as a quasi-force eventually providing ideological impetus in the liberation from British rule. Arguably, this was aided out of the previous decades of the revival known as The Great Awakening. Legal precedent mitigated state/church theocratic aspirations as a number of the colonies established government-supported churches. So great was the threat of the revivalists out of the Great Awakening that in 1742, Connecticut passed a law against itinerants from outside of the colony. The revival transcended geographically and established church denominational boundaries and produced new churches that were separate from the established government-supported churches. F. J. Lechner (1990:84) highlights the revival’s very concern with personal piety set the community of true believers further apart from the state. These changes thus moved the colonies inexorably towards “disestablishment” or the separation of Church and State which technically exists today, and of course, fiercely debated by reductionist factions. Consequently, a mystical - ethereal Christian Nation concept emerged fueling successive evangelical generations or embraced by default for the average, even non-religious citizen and tied to another concept known as American exceptionalism. This was expressed as patriotic populist activism through broad-based domestic non-state structures by voluntary and social advocacy societies, and  providing Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835) plenty of data. Until the last half-century, this evangelical influence manifested itself as a progressive or liberal political expression and was domestically focused and not aligned with conservative politics. Today, American Protestants' principled grassroots activism continues to be fueled by revivalist conviction and impulse based on the Christian Nation concept. Here patriotism abides and is expressed in multiple ways for the majority of Americans domestically, yet on the international stage, this patriotism is viewed with suspicion nor understood.

On the global stage, US evangelical Christianity elicits confusion for the casual observer of foreign policy as the Christian Right’s conservative political divergence is quite distinct. It is expressed as being anti-global governance and its pro-unilateralism. Contemporary streams of American Protestantism divided into the conservative and liberal holding differing global perspectives. The most important differences between various Christian groups demonstrate degrees in which each promotes optimism about the possibilities for a stable, peaceful, and enlightened international order. The most basic schools in International Relations studies in the USA - realist and liberal - provide some assistance but since they do not directly deal with religion, rather the state, the religious dimension is lost in their positivist empirical pursuit. Thus these schools research program provides little help, which is ironic. Nevertheless, a casual observer could deduce that religious conservatives are generally International Relations realists and religious liberals, generally International Relations liberalist. Evangelical liberals have stood for social justice and the peace movement and represent the older mainline churches having jettisoned doctrinal differences and the debates they produced for the sake of unity and collective action in a society known as social justice. Conservative evangelicals make up these churches as well, but an exodus has transpired. Walter Russell Mead (2006) argues this smaller movement of evangelical liberals exists where the method of cultural influence involves the state with political approaches that differ from the more conservative segment of evangelicals represented by the Christian Right who have another approach to the state. But these differentiations contain further ambiguity which is difficult to analyze due to generational evolution. The dividing line between the conservative and evangelical ambiguity is more a matter of attitude and sociological manifestation such as class, education and regional differences than belief systems and a big difference between the generational hegemony of the World War II generation and to some extent the Baby Boomers. This generational phenomenon is juxtaposed with the arrival of Generation X and the emerging Millennium Generation. (Pew Forum 2007) Therefore, the Christian Right and evangelical Christians are not one in the same - "Survey research shows that 70 percent of evangelicals don't identify with the Religious (Christian) Right." Such a survey uncovers a certain disconnect, certainly from the evangelical liberal wing, but, moreover, demonstrating complexity and diversity of thought and general ambivalence toward political expression. Nevertheless, the Christian Right is certainly not made up of the evangelical left and liberal Protestant groups, therefore, the Christian Right’s impetus is clearly made up of conservative evangelicalism.

The Christian Right’s political expression out of evangelicalism seeks political and legislative power, and over the last 30 years challenged domestic social issues such as abortion, gay rights, and secularization of schools. Duane Oldfield (2004:768) states while journalists, politicians, and academics continue to analyze and debate the Christian right's policy and effectiveness in these areas, less attention has been paid to the religious right's influence on American foreign policy. One point of difference that is significant involves evangelical’s international reach through missionaries where social justice and human rights may intersect; this was most notable among previous generations of missionaries pre World War II. The successive era of evangelical conviction to bring only the message of Christ’s gospel in a spiritual sense to the world without getting involved in social issues grew out of domestic liberal and fundamentalist dichotomies of the 1920s. This era has now passed as the Christian Right’s mandate differs from this dualism. The Christian Right’s emergence is one of 'political proportions,' and research shows Evangelicals are the most likely of all major American Christian groups to believe that religion is a public matter that should speak to social and political issues of all kinds. C. Smith's (2000:18) research points toward the Christian Right rejection of global governance, its secularized institutions such as integration, human rights from a UN impetus, international law, multiculturalism, and multilateralism. State sovereignty is preeminent for the Christian Right while its own role in influencing the state is open for debate. I argue this is primarily from its reliance on constructing positions through patriotism entrenched on the problematic Christian Nation concept in a pre-Westphalia sense. This represents the creation of a narrative demanding increased scrutiny in the age of globalization due to its international repercussions.

The primary Westphalia secular direction was initiated by legal scholars such as Hugo Grotius and religious rationalism. On one hand, the pursuit of an absolute legal standard of natural law did not pose problematic, as it was reconciled within the sovereignty rights of the state that Westphalia instituted. And it was the issue of state sovereignty that separated it from the religious hierarchy in rule, eventually condoning the rise of legal positivism, thus making the state the absolute standard. On the other hand, Westphalia provided a commencement for the modern state system to marginalize religion into the private sphere. Edward Luttwak (1994) underscores this refusal intellectually acquired, to inquire and wonder into the spiritual. Such thinking certainly follows the empirical foundations of the Enlightenment, since religion seemed “unverifiable”, and such a pronouncement emanated from the attitude against religion by early thinkers and the social contract theorists of that era emanating from Hobbes, Locke, and Rosseau. Despite the prevailing intellectual view, religion continued to play a large role in the lives of individuals and society. Philpot (2002) acknowledges that “deeply embedded in the international system itself is a secularized authority structure whose origins lie in the calamitous strife over the relationship between spiritual and temporal authority.” Hugo Grotius ended up on the wrong side of the major Dutch theological dispute, the Synod of Dordt, and applied himself to more “temporal” solutions like the Thirty Year War. Hedley Bull (1990) notes that the solution arrived at in the Westphalian treaty focused more on the religious conflict in Germany (and by implication, to the wider problem of religious conflict in Europe) was not the one which Grotius preferred. Grotius sought the end of the schism or religious schisms within the Christian world; the peace of Westphalia perpetuated these schisms. Grotius would certainly be considered a theological liberal today as he also knew in his day, but from the vantage point of conflict resolution and its universal application, he contributed a unique foresight. Could this represent a link to Grotius's influence on American evangelicals today? Not at all, for outside the Just War tradition and the similarities of divine legal thought, conservative American evangelicals have little common ground with Grotius, besides a general fiat of spirituality. Moreover, The Christian Right’s patriotic uncritical unilateralism does not follow after Grotius’ thought. His form of religious rationalism represents a foundational moral imperative in resolving conflict. And this seems to be subordinated and less of a priority due to a unilateral Just War positioning of the Christian Right. Hugo Grotius’ work is further instructive through the research of Knud Haakonssen (1985) by his contribution through legal treatises which did not exclusively come from written codes of law but to a larger extent from natural reason, out of the natural law tradition of medieval theologians and the Protestant Reformers, yet not as theological dogma. During the pre-Westphalia era, legal minds and theological generalists like Grotius helped international law evolve as a practical mediating structure for resolving the Thirty Years War and for the international expansion of Europe. His project developed three categories: First, the divine, which he calls either the "primary law of nature" or the "divine volitional law; thus, no longer God but today the state has assumed the role of absolute. Second, "primary law of nations" (which he also calls the "secondary law of nature" which consists of the universally agreed-upon principles shared by all nations of the world. So a pragmatic aspect of law arises providing a mediating structure as a deterrent to state aggression, as Grotius recognized that disagreements among nations were rampant and was enough of a realist to develop legal mediating structures. His rationalism promoted the hope that principles of justice in dealing with conflict in which others would at least recognize international common norms. Further specific norms also developed by Grotius as the third area of study, "secondary law of nations" or "human volitional law," which consists of the rules that nations are bound to by compact or treaty observations. Out of this process, (William Long 2004) notes that customary international law expanded and established numerous precedents that provide international law a secular life of its own, a reality that has drawn much suspicion from the Christian Right.

Carl Schmitt in Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, (1922) his seminal essay presents sovereignty in its historical context. According to Schmitt, The precise historical achievement of the state was the unity of auctoritas (traditionally claimed by the emperor) and the potestas that had been the preserve of the Papacy throughout the Middle Ages. This unity advanced the state in perfecting its own sovereignty, which, in raw political terms, meant that the state achieved a monopoly of the power to decide on the exceptional situation, and so to name the public enemy. The friend-enemy distinction is a concept Schmitt developed out of late medieval thinker Jean Bodin’s analysis on the “exception.” Or, put another way, the precise quality of sovereignty lies in its competence to determine when the normal functions of positive law are inadequate to the circumstances at hand. It is the sovereign who both creates and solves the exceptional situation through the imposition of its fiat. The essential characteristic of the modern state is that it should form the watershed of the friend-enemy distinction, and so maintain an external-internal divide. After the chaos of the Thirty Years’ War, the triumph of the state consisted of its ability to neutralize and overcome civil war. In terms of the basis of conflict, it substituted raison d’état for the interminable struggles of religious righteousness. Schmitt links “exception” to sovereignty in his first sentence. Not just this text, but political theology as a form of inquiry begins where law ends. If today we are generally inclined to believe that we live in a world of law that is, or should be, without exception, is it the case that we live in a world without sovereignty? Much of the contemporary political theory of globalization claim exactly that: sovereignty, on this view, is an anachronistic concept that has become dysfunctional at best, and misleading at worst, in our Globalization of human rights and global markets. Therefore, much of the evangelical diffusion into the Christian Right and its political activism could be understood in terms of living within “the exception” i.e. the loss of Christendom and taking sovereignty into their own hands through a fiat to address the perceived “exception” of secular humanism.

Religious Global-Narratives

Evangelical Globalization in International Relations theory may be further unveiled through a reading of the English school of International Relations three research concepts: the international system, the international society, and the world society. The (1) international system (Hobbes/ Machiavelli/ realism) is about power politics amongst states and puts the structure and process of international anarchy at the centre of IR theory. This position is broadly parallel to mainstream realism and neorealism and is thus well developed and clearly understood. A definition that states form a system to the extent that they interact with each other regularly, and to the degree that their interaction affects the behavior of each state. It is based on an ontology of states and is generally approached with a positivist epistemology, materialist and rationalist methodologies and structural theories. (2) International society (Grotius/ rationalism) is about the institutionalization of shared interest and identity amongst states and puts the creation and maintenance of shared norms, rules, and institutions at the centre of IR theory. International society has been the main focus of English school thinking, and the concept is quite well developed and relatively clear. In parallel with the international system, it is also based on an ontology of states but is generally approached with a constructivist epistemology and historical methods. (3) World society (Kant/ revolutionism) takes individuals, non-state organizations and ultimately the global population as a whole as the focus of global societal identities and arrangements, and puts the transcendence of the states-system at the center of IR theory. Revolutionism is mostly about forms of universalist cosmopolitanism. It could include communism, but these days it is usually taken to mean liberalism. This position has some parallels to transnationalism but carries a much more foundational link to normative political theory. It clearly does not rest on an ontology of states, but given the transnational element, neither does it rest entirely on one of the individuals. The critical theory defines its approach, but it is more about historically operating alternative images of the international system as a whole than it is about capturing the non-state aspects of the system. These general definitions are further developed by Barry Buzan (1992, 1993, 2004) in reading the English School as a research program for societal ideas and religion through a historical sociological approach. Beginning with the (1) international system, aligning most closely to the neo-realist paradigm of the Americans, the following is realized: The international system existed because the projection of European power brought previously isolated peoples and political communities into regular contact with each other. For a system to exist requires the existence of units, among which significant interaction takes place and that are arranged or structured according to some ordering principle. Here (Buzan 1993: 331) ‘the behavior of each (actor) is a necessary factor in the calculations of the others.’ In the international system, the units are states (or independent political communities). The interactions among them include war, diplomacy, trade, migration and the movement of ideas.” The key phrase here is “the movement of ideas” which certainly includes religion.

In distinguishing the English school from the more scientific American school, it is presented that the “consequences of anarchy vary according to the level and type of interaction in the system.” (ibid) Such an analysis provides globalization its maneuverable position around the contours of state power or lack thereof. However, this does not equate the English school with American neo-realists such as Kenneth Waltz who take a different view that state inequality is a more prominent factor today than in the era of the super-powers. This improves the political role of a country over economics, as Waltz rejects the globalizers’ view that “the world is increasingly ruled by markets,” (Waltz 1999:700) or by ideas and the contributing religious movement as surmised since the neo-realists have no use for societal influences on the international system. But within Buzan’s work, some helpful directions are bridged between the two realist schools of thought. Here, the English school draws upon sociological concepts that help in providing empirical data.

There are two possible views in understanding these to use the classical distinction from sociology between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft conceptions of society. The gemeinschaft understanding sees society as something organic and traditional, involving bonds of common sentiment, experience, and identity. It is an essentially historical conception: societies grow rather than being made. The gesellschaft understanding sees society as being contractual and constructed rather than sentimental and traditional. It is more consciously organizational: societies can be made by acts of will. (Buzan,1993:333) Just as societies can be made by acts of the will or fiat, International Relations theory, namely by neo-realists, also can be constructed in the same way. Although the English school certainly would provide the gemeinschaft direction in explaining globalization movements today, it is the neo-realist conception of boundaries of international systems that would confine research on the state originating systems into “like units.” The Gesellschaft would fit the neo-realist or liberal construction, but the gemeinschaft is the underlying concept that provides movement for ideas and religious aspects. For an example of this process, Buzan contributes the following: The first view of how an international society comes into being is rather forcefully advocated by English School founding theorist Martin Wight: "We must assume that a states-system (i.e., an international society) will not come into being without a degree of cultural unity among its members." This view results from historical analysis and fits closely with the gemeinschaft conception of society. Wight develops two examples to support his case, classical Greece and early-modern Europe. In both cases, international societies developed in subsystems whose units shared significant elements of culture, especially religion and language. The ancient Greeks shared a language and religion that differentiated them from the so-called barbarian. Most Western and Southern (though fewer Eastern) Europeans shared the cultural residue of the Roman Empire, most notably in the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire. … At a very minimum it suggests that the preexistence of a common culture among the units of a system is a great advantage in stimulating the formation of an international society earlier than would otherwise occur…. (ibid) As historical sociology, this provides a crucial component in doing theory, but whether it should actually be considered theory is debatable according to the American positivists. Buzan (2004) builds upon previous work in concluding that in the light of the structural Americans, the English School does not really hold up as a theory in stating, “Many Americans, however, often demand that a theory strictly explains and that it contains or is able to generate testable hypotheses of a causal nature.” (Buzan 2004:24) Recent scholars of the English school have tended to concede that the work of Martin Wight should not be considered theory in the strict sense of the word. But how this really matters in the broad scheme is irrelevant, for the American positivist constructivist school has embarked on this direction in studying globalization. Alexander Wendt (1994), one such theorist, has developed the theoretical framework to pursue this: “it is collective meanings that constitute the structures which organize our actions. Actors acquire identities – relatively stable, role-specific understandings and expectations about self – by participating in such collective meanings.” (Wendt 1992:397) International systems are thus incorporating new directions, one that the English School has given much attention to this same conclusion questioning “real theory” is also found in relation to (2) international society. “Despite its long gestation, international society remains better developed as a historical than a theoretical concept.” (Buzan:1993:329) As research is oriented more toward historical events in the English school, American structural liberalism is a contemporary pursuit and focuses more on the International Political Economy (IPE). At the core of this understanding are international institutions that are strengthened due to globalization’s acceleration. “…the twentieth century’s obsession with nationalism as the link between the inter-human and the interstate domains has to be broadened out to incorporate the wider forms of inter-human society - interstate agenda, whether in human rights, democracy or economic interdependence/ globalisation". (Buzan 2004:197)

Following this are questions of what is actually meant by (3) world society, and how it relates to globalization. World society bears heavily on the most important debates within the English school, so much so that even the relatively well-developed concept of (2) international society cannot be properly understood without taking world society into close account. For all of its shortcomings, the English school approach to world society does show exactly why the concept is important, and also shows where (if not yet how) it fits into a theoretically pluralist approach to IR theory. (Buzan 2004:62) State-centric assumptions are not primary, and the trans-nationalism of the modern European state system is kept in view by the founding scholars as the concept of world society has developed. Here, the unique twist of the English school within a “revolutionism” construct shows how ideas generate across global society. World society has evolved according to Hedley Bull’s work into what is known today as a group of states allowing for domestic influences made up of highly organized intra and non-governmental organizations (IGOs & NGOs), transnational in their scope and local in their activities. His (Bull) world political system includes firms, states, and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), a bundling together which blurs any distinction between international and world system, and feels close to what Americans once labeled a world politics paradigm, and now goes more under globalization. (Buzan 2004:38)

In holding the English school to the strict American positive scientific confines, the matter of religion and ideas continues to have a force all its own. In today’s world of diverse actors, the English school has certainly provided a description of the new non-state actors contributing to international politics in the form of IGOs and NGOs. This is where the prescriptive possibilities are sought from the descriptions of the organized actors of world society, the aforementioned NGOs, and particularly those of a faith-based orientation. Religious NGOs and institutions are creating transnational advocacy linkages and coalitions with new social movements on a variety of global issues that can be interpreted as a part of a growing cosmopolitan ethos that might underlay a global civil society. (Thomas 2005:115) Something the American International Relations theorists have addressed structural liberalism, which focuses on institutions and regime theory, yet with the developing school of constructivism, the validity of such influences is no longer questioned as they once were. However, it has not kept inquisitive international relations scholars across the globe struggling with the confines of their own empirical demands. Constructivism developed in American institutions under structural or neo-realist and liberalist theorists and further adapted by the broader view European based researchers accepted a direction beyond the terms of what is empirically justified. Scott Thomas (1998, 2005) , a constructivist, addresses arguments concerning the exclusion of religion in International Relations studies because of the modernist positivist project by looking at the globalization phenomena of various sub and trans-state actors, such as religious non-governmental organizations or NGOs. His contribution to tracing the modernist project in International Relations involves the strictly private religious affair promoted within the principle of state sovereignty for the purpose of promoting loyalty among its people. This relegated religion to a separate set of beliefs to keep ecclesiastical authorities out of matters of the state. Furthermore, in criticizing the positivistic modern approach of the American school and some constructivists in missing the significance of “religion for social action” in International Relations studies, Thomas draws upon social theory. This puts the individual story within the broad community where identity is formed. In constructing this larger narrative of collective states, individuals and communities, a hermeneutic function emerges. This is significant in light of the fact that traditional scholars of International Relations theory are often frustrated by the fact that interpretation or hermeneutic directions do not produce the kind of general conclusions or law-like propositions that emerge from explanatory theory in the social sciences. There is an absence of predictive capacity in hermeneutic theory.

Scott Thomas’s (2005:115) hermeneutic theory, at least in its narrative form, does help to locate those points of decision where different actions might have produced different results or a different ending, and so it can show up in areas where more information is useful, and where possible policy interventions may help to produce different outcomes. Secular reason or social theory does not provide the kind of objective or non-ideological space, a view from nowhere, from which to study the world or from which competing paradigms can be compared; nor does theology or any religious tradition, many social theorists would quickly add. The elusive nature of objectivity continues to stand as a stumbling block in theory construction. This is true for the English school approach, and the anti-positivist constructivists as well. The complexity of this issue’s objectivity diverts one from making cause and effect connections of ideas and religion to certain actions. Other constructivists such as Vendulka Kubálková (2003), suggest the development of an international political theology (IPT), as one would study the IPE. Her approach is helpful in distinguishing a number of important methodological approaches. First, she argues the validity of the certain types of studies pursued by modernist bound social scientists, including the majority of IR scholars, have reduced religion to religious organizations and have categorized them as elements of transnational civil society or even as cultural ‘civilizations.’ Vendulka Kubálková (2003:81) The faithful are presumed to act in accordance with rational choice theory; if they engage in violence, then it must be because they believe the ends justify the means. Instead of looking at actions immediately, she follows linguistic/rule-oriented constructivism, and views religions as systems of rules that make them rationale for the believers. This is because the reality of a believer is impossible to understand without interpreting the representations of that reality as it is communicated through language and not a new area in philosophical and behavioral studies. Such a cross-discipline merger is an important direction. Since most religions take texts as their core, she also argues against the state-centric focus in International Relations studies as missing the dimensions of social activity in impacting foreign relations. Thus, it is essential to approach religious texts and their commentary as interpretative constructions. Taking the matter of textual structural research further, rather than just relying upon observable facts and actions. Kubálková (2006:144) focuses on integrating the concept of “rationality” as theorized in International Relations studies. In other words, “speaking is doing.” Following the theory of Nicolas Onuf, she states: “Onuf recognizes abduction as a category of reasoning in addition to induction and deduction. Abduction is reasoning by reference to the resemblance of wholes; metaphors and articles of faith that make sense as wholes or not at all. IPT recognizes rationality, but it acknowledges different forms of rationality, none of which are universal to all humanity.” Kubalkova pursues rationality from the perspective of a believer and goes beyond the assumptions of trying to prove the God of religion behind a confession and simply observes the reality of collective belief within a people. The object of God is therefore found in societal constructs, as expressed in colloquial language and expression. Kubalkova argues that there is now a way of understanding religion when one employs a hermeneutic methodology, similar to Thomas.

C(L)ashing Universalization

Globalization has become a vehicle of the Christian prescription of universals as faith. The English language is the language of globalization (Graddol 2000) this is evident by the reality of new technological words that often originate in English and eventually, the same English word makes its way into the vocabulary in another language. Globalization as a comprehensive concept contains vulnerabilities by the transmission of cultural dimensions that lend toward a misrepresentation of the clear equivalent use of language. African missiologist, Lamin Sanneh (2008) posits that Christianity’s engagement with the languages and cultures of the world has God at the center of the universe of cultures, implying equality among cultures and the necessarily relative status of cultures vis-à-vis the truth of God. No culture is so advanced and so superior that it can claim exclusive access or advantage to the truth of God, and none so marginal and remote that it can be excluded. All have merit; none is indispensable. The ethical monotheism Christianity inherited from Judaism accords value to culture but rejects cultural idolatry. Therefore, culture and language are integral to the expansion of the Christian faith, but also a vehicle that could not be defined with the neutrality of just any language. As stated, the NT was exclusively written in Greek which acted as the globalization language of its day, a language most suitable to develop the theological arguments in explaining the revelation of YHWH in the Torah or Old Testament was written in Hebrew, but also translated into Greek before the time of the NT. Greek, known for its classical form also operated in its Hellenizing form of Koine or common Greek which was quite versatile. The evidence of its spectrum of ability in usage among the disciples/apostles is evident through its 27 books. Paul, the majority writer has a high-level usage of Greek due to his elaborate education and as an OT scholar and Pharisee. Peter, John, James were small business owners from the fishing communities of Galilee who wrote in a simpler yet sufficient Greek with lesser vocabulary than of Paul. Nevertheless, Greek provided sufficient source language for conveying what is believed to be an oral testimony to the written process of the actual texts. Lamin Sanneh’s application of the influence of culture for historical analysis is sufficient and helpful, yet the question remains concerning the conveying nature of language and how it actually communicates and translates. Sanneh affirms language and its sufficiency for communication across cultures and language differences. Christian faith, initially Jewish, quickly became cross-cultural and pluralistic, however I would surmise such cross-cultural outreach goes even further back— certainly before Noah and linked to the Hebrew Calendar. So on the Day of Pentecost, each listener heard rustic Galilean apostles speak “in his own native tongue” (Acts 2:6). Each, having come from some far corner of the world, understood what was said within idioms of a distinct and different culture, if not out of a unique primal religion. Deep interpenetrations of Christian faith, beginning within the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman world, were followed by encounters—to the east, with cultures of Mesopotamia, Armenia, Persia, India, and China; to the west, with Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic cultures; and to the south, within Ethiopian culture. (ibid) For this reason, translation philosophy and methodology are crucial in understanding the diffusion and hermeneutics of a preceding era. Richard Baukham (1988:143) notes that “the sheer length and continuity of the Western Christian tradition – which actually results from contextualization in a long series of more or less overlapping contexts – can create the illusion that long-standing features of it are so because they are appropriate to the human condition as such and so can be transferred to any context.” Of course, the arrogance and hubris of European cultural imperialism since the nineteenth century has aided and abetted this, and the discovery of the relativity of the Western Christian tradition has been somewhat painfully combined with the need to repent of the colonial mentality. How this tradition has primarily manifested itself in the last couple of centuries finds a locus in the vehicle of democratic capitalism and Globalization in the name of economic liberalism.

The Christian Nation as a neo-Christendom as conceived by the Religious Right is a narrative of the economic progress of democratic capitalism and the advance of the new world civilization. First, some definitions may aid this exploration. It is proposed that democratic capitalism exists out of a decree, a fiat that is initiated by the volitional aspect of man and metaphorically expressed as “spirit”. This act of the will could be found in individual autonomy rather than a collective or a government’s action in regards to an economic choice. This could be traced as a step toward a secular cultural nihilism of spiritual proportions. The seminal inter-cultural researcher Edward Hall (1966:18) was correct in his premise to his definition of culture, “culture is not made up, but something that evolves which is human.” Thus, culture is not an ideal. But he may be off on culture’s connection to religion, where he recognizes religion as a subordinate, and there dwells the realm of the ideal, possibly in a narrative or metaphysic. The major metaphysical aspect he claims is of a culture’s evolution, emanates from a locus of beliefs that should determine values. This is evidence of a secular epistemological elitism bound with its mother, positivism. Third, culture has become an inclusive term, similar to civilization, but more clearly it is the processor of the transforming aspects of civilization because of it's becoming made up of beliefs and values. Here Hall is probably correct and in one way highlights its own secularization toward nihilism. Here is where MaxWeber’s landmark “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” enters in tracing democratic capitalism out of culture, defined as a “spirit” (Weber: 47) as attached to a historical individual i.e. a complex of elements associated in historical reality which we unite into a conceptual whole from the standpoint of their cultural significance. Thus, the final and definitive concept cannot stand at the beginning of the investigation but must come at the end as secularization. Beginning with Max Weber to the recent Samuel Huntington, David Landes, and Francis Fukuyama, social and political theorists have claimed that religious cultural values endure and have a direct influence on our society in how economic development progresses. Fully embraced by the Christian Right, Huntington (Clash of Civilizations) and Fukuyama (End of History) seem to bask in a triumph at the end of the last century as their ideas appeared to have found empirical plausibility and carry a certain aura of a demythologized or re-exceptionalist state of Western Civilizations triumph over god-less communism. Although Huntington does concede the following, “The West is and will remain for years to come the most powerful civilization, yet its power relative to other civilizations is declining” (Huntington:1996) Then there is Fukuyama (2004) in his recent “Trust: The Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity”, more optimistically asserting, that global economic integration will overcome the angst found in Huntington’s work, yet it contributes to the complexity of the religion and culture thesis isolating values and virtue from a religious credo. Here, economic globalization’s transformative force reigns, yet if Huntington declares a decline of the West, how is this to be understood?

Samuel Huntington (1998) strongly affirmed the importance of culture as the primary variable for both economic development, and the greater conflict generated by that development. He asserts that the world is divided into eight major “cultural zones” based on cultural differences that have persisted for centuries. He merges religion and culture into one, but not with the same nuance and specific sociological insight as Max Weber. His work seeks the “big picture,” but it comes across in a rigid, and causal expression of a secular construct. In "Culture Matters," (2000) Huntington offers explanations for the differing experiences of undeveloped third world nations and those nations that are successfully developing. Such scholarship has aided the needed debate but it has also solidified the suspicions of Western civilization’s implied moral superiority. David Landes (2000) begins his essay in Huntington and Harrison "Culture Matters" with the concise sentence “Max Weber was right.” For Weber was one of the earliest social scientists who asked prescient questions about the relationship between the economy and the religious aspects of culture, arguing that European capitalism was predicated upon a unique combination of a particular institutional structure coupled with certain cultural values and its expression in “spirit”. Landes also maintains that Francis Fukuyama (1992) is correct about the “end of history”, and that Samuel Huntington (1996) is correct about the coming of a “clash of civilizations” between the West and the rest. For Landes, the key to the success of the West has been its exceptional values and institutions, which were and still are lacking in the rest of the world where under-development exists. However, Landes typifies the general tendency of avoiding controversy as a researcher of the historical aspect. Landes approaches his object of study tentatively because it evokes a criticism that he is promoting Western cultural superiority over others. Lawrence Harrison confirms this in referring to Landes at the start of (2006) Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself; "Landes is much more comfortable for the experts to cite geographic constraints, insufficient resources, bad policies, and weak institutions. That way they avoid the invidious comparisons, political sensitivities, and bruised feelings often engendered by cultural explanations of success and failure.” Certainly, this encompasses the controversial nature of the subject of religion and culture for economic growth, but the causality of the subject seems to be quite direct. This has opened up the debate on the complexity of culture and religion thesis and its search of “spirit” and why it takes on a moral dimension and who or what is actually behind it. From a more cause and effect secular perspective, theorists have contributed data that may show current globalization has taken a life all its own. Michael Porter (2000) turns the Landes argument around taking a global perspective. Rather than arguing that particular culture traits are a pre-requisite for economic development, he argues that it is the “international economic culture” that is pushing every society toward productivity and values that are conducive to a global homogenous culture, globalization in reverse. Furthermore, Jeffrey Sachs (2000) in his chapter for Harrison and Huntington’ “Culture Matters”, generalizes the culture thesis, proposing that “capitalist institutions”, such as respect for property rights, a rule of law, and efficient markets, are the key factors in economic development, bolstering democratic governance. Here the pluralistic dimension rises with institutions, not of direct cultural or religious origin, but strictly institutional. Economic institutions created by decree or fiat to assist in an integrative approach toward a global economy. Here, Thomas Friedman’s proposition that culturally speaking, globalization is largely Americanization – from Big Macs to iMacs to Mickey Mouse (1999). Therefore, today’s culture theorists are more part of an interpretation which is rather causal and direct for the point of juxtaposing the diversity of today’s globe, but recent research does bolster the case of the neo-Weberians and certain religious influences. From a survey conducted in Lawrence E. Harrison, (2000:87) Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself. The 7 main summaries are derived from the data. The first two become relevant to our purposes (1) Protestantism has been far more conducive to modernization than Catholicism, above all in the Western Hemisphere. (2)The Nordic countries are the champions of progress. However, hidden in this data are the philosophical conclusions of modernism and the secularization process in terms of its own “religion.” How close has Evangelical global Christianity sung along with this liturgy?

Religiously Secular: Nietzche and Von Mises

The work of Friedrich Nietzche preceding the conclusions of Weber, identifies in the general process of enlightenment and a movement towards nihilism (the devaluation of ultimate values) in the West, and holds scientific rationalization to be not a cure but a key contributory factor to this process. For with the onset of the rationalization of culture, ultimate meanings or values are disenchanted, or, in Nietzschean terms, which Weber adopts, devalued, and are replaced increasingly by the means-ends pursuit of material interests. Western Civilization appears formidable in its superlatively economically affluent and technologically progressive state, even unique, but the stages of its existence correspond with the rise and fall of other civilizations. Ludwig Von Mises (1957:222) stated, “civilization is the product of human effort, the achievement of men eager to face the forces adverse to their well being.” In this context, Von Mises utilizes a metaphorical organic view of civilization as it thrives like all of life and then eventually dies. We may view it as history, but not for Von Mises what is mistakenly called history is, in fact, the repetition of events belonging to the same class; it is, as Nietzsche put it, eternal recurrence, a secular nihilistic cul de sac.

The creative impulse of Western civilization and its predominant capitalism has morphed and found its recurrence in globalization, but what has become of its identity, its soul, may I dare to ask, its Judeo-Christian soul? And does it really matter? Or can a culture continue to thrive with such a disconnection from its values and founding ideals or religion? Von Mises does not seem to hold such an assumption for his work developed in quite an insular direction from any idealistic compulsion. Therefore, his work is similar to Nietzsche in the method. Interestingly, the attack of Nietzsche on the Christian religion put center stage his view of the weak contemptible state of Western culture readily traced to the victory of Christendom and its hold upon the political economy precisely because of its spiritual values. The fact that the “Antichristian” Nietzsche acts not only an attacker but a means for analysis is an astounding paradox, even though he is rather shrewd in his agenda and does not seem to offer a constructive direction. As Michel Foucault pointed out in an interview “… the right question to ask is what serious use can Nietzsche be put to?” Pre-20th century, Nietzsche offers us a deconstructive method, and with fiat in the creation of an existence which may be the connection between earthly evangelical intentions and its burgeoning secularism. However, Nietzche did not recognize what Weber did. Recent work on Nietzsche asks the proper question: “What was it about Christianity that caused Nietzsche’s agitation?” Rather than settling on identifying a systemic approach to Nietzsche’s anti-Christian thought, there are themes that constantly emerge in his ruminations on Christian religion that not only unsettle but are ultimately constructive in evaluating both the religious and secular core of Western civilization. Behind this exists not only a challenge to a general Christian view expressed as a basic epistemology and its ambivalence to power but the repercussions of ideas that limit human freedom in economic choice. Nietzsche addressed this politically by idolizing Machiavelli (Will to Power: 304) “Now, no philosopher will be in any doubt as to the type of perfection in politics; that is Machiavellianism is pure, without admixture, crude, fresh, with all its force, with all its pungency, is superhuman, divine, transcendental, it will never be achieved by man, at most approximated. Even in this narrower kind of politics, in the politics of virtue, here the ideal seems never to have been achieved. Even Plato barely touched it.” Here, Nietzsche touches on the capacity of man to touch something eternal, it is rather ironic, but it is an almost timeless state of individual ascendancy. Nevertheless, there is a lot of disagreement over his writings and their interpretation; for many, he was either an individualist who favored freedom or an authoritarian who favored hierarchy and heavy state control. Certainly, Nietzsche wrote in an elusive fashion, and putting his political and amoral character aside, it is his view of reality that aids in our understanding and thus provides the opportunity to appreciate the uncomfortable, yet intriguing nature of his themes and ideas. For Nietzsche viewed reality in flux, being first and foremost an epistemological antirealist, his view of reality is integral to understanding his views and most notably his reactionary impulse. He acted as one to ever provoke in the spirit of Socrates and Plato as opposed to the dominant minds directly before him providing his context. Like Kant and Hegel who wrote comprehensively and systemically, Nietzsche developed a grand philosophy that held to a doctrine of internal relations of all things in a universal construct with Christianity at its core. If there was a form of Christianity being lived out before him that Nietzsche was attacking, the moral imperative of Kant and the idealism of Hegel was certainly in view, but he voraciously went at it all; against scripture, theology, and of course the God of the Bible. For Nietzsche, the Greeks are his starting point in his project. Nietzsche's major preoccupation concerned the basic question of reality and how to re-frame it, here his affinity for the Greek genius emerges with a seminal revaluation of his thought concerning morals. Nietzsche (Gay Science:109) presumes a constant “becoming” out of chaos: The total character of the world, however, is in all eternity chaos – in the sense not of a lack of necessity but a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names that are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms: Such anti-ontology has its roots in Heraclites, but it is also with the chaos that the Bible begins and within which or out which its theological or religious order is then created as if out of nothing, the primary fiat of time. This goes deeper into the great grasp Nietzsche demonstrated of the ancients. Stephen N. Williams (2006:40, 41) states, “… if we want to reckon with Nietzsche, we must reckon with Greece.” ‘Greek Civilization,’ we know was not a monochrome monolith. But if generalization is permitted, there is no theological reason why delight in the aesthetic detail of Greek drama … why notions of the free and the serene, the beautiful and the investigative, the courageous and the democratic – notions of the idealized Greek in the abstract form- should not appeal to Christian religious sensibility. Adam was meant to be free; serenity distantly reflects messianic peace; beauty marks God’s creation; an investigation is beneficent as dominion over nature; courage stamps the Old Testament hero; democracy reminds us of human equality qua image of God.”

However, Nietzsche knew all about the other side of the coin. …” The Greek – Christian idealism connection is clear. Nietzsche rejected this order that Socrates and Plato expounded and was eventually merged into Augustinian theology as Christian realism. Nietzsche’s world instead was the Tragic as he wrote an essay, “The Greek State protesting against those who regard work as something honorable and dignified, that, he retorted, makes sense only if existence is itself worthwhile. Greeks did not see things like that. Thus, his view of reality was also pessimistic as conditioned by the Greeks. Existence per se was not of objective value.” (On the Genealogy of Morality:166) A human being might be a ‘disgraceful and pathetic non-entity’ and while no less shameful and disgraceful for that. Compare slavish work and artistic creation. It is the latter that enhances the culture, of course, the “artist” who painted and sculpted or produced pottery were ranked as lowly artisans or outright slaves. And culture always needs enhancement, which is impossible without the worker. Nietzsche (ibid) puts it like this: … “At their expense, through their extra work, that privileged class is to be removed from the struggle for existence, in order to produce and satisfy a new world of necessities. ” The elite existed out of the work and progress of the common or even slave, how has this changed into modern times with the bureaucratic state and how did Christianity contribute? What happened to the “priesthood of all believers”, a central tenant of the Reformation? And calling and vocation elevated as service unto God? Max Weber certainly uncovered such a connection in his Protestant Ethic, a work that Nietzsche would loathe? … maybe not! Like Nietzsche, Weber recognizes that the highest values, embodied in Christianity, have withdrawn from the public sphere through the development of Western cultural rationalism. (Weber: 26, 75) Weber describes the development of Western rationality as the disenchantment of the world through the construction of the Protestant ethic and related to this the development of Western capitalism, the modern state, and the process of bureaucratization. Weber’s analysis leads him to conclude that the central dilemma of Western civilization is the tension between the bureaucratization of social life and certain Western values, like creativity and autonomy, very much in line with Nietzsche.

In a post-emancipation of slavery and an equal rights world, the West, derived from a Christian conscience, it is interesting to note that nowhere in the Judeo-Christian Bible does it state that slavery is wrong or should be abolished, it is simply an accepted fact of life of ancient times and even a metaphor for a Christian as a disciple. The Bible took this at face value, here the Apostle Paul, even commanded: “Slaves to obey their masters” (Colossians 3:22 ) Nietzsche would view this realistic assessment of the Bible as weakness. Nietzsche acknowledged the stark realities of life but strove to find the attitude of the “will” over any act of submission or acquiescence. This is precisely how he begins to emulate the paradoxical out of the dominant themes of his writings, namely, power. Williams adds, (2006:42) Nietzsche’s conviction was that justice, in the egalitarian sense beloved of contemporary social reformers, was historical, not original. Power makes right and assumes violence. State’s come into being that way.” The will to power is thus the ultimate of various 'fiats' in Nietzsche thought and is purely political in its secular form

The captivation with the Greek genius produced the derivation of Nietzsche’s political will to power. By rejecting the idealism of Socrates and Plato, and even calling Plato “a coward in the face of reality –consequently, he flees into the ideal.” (Nietzsche: TI Ancients: 2) Nietzsche emerges as a political thinker in full force. This is reflected in the omnipresent struggle of the illness of realism which he viewed and has dominated the history of the West. (On the Genealogy of Morality: I: 16) Therefore, the great events of becoming are not historical, but rather the creation of values and the battle over ideas is his timeless epistemological warfare. Nietzsche, captivated by tragedy as the emergence of art and the fullest development of the aesthetic element of man, pointed to Dionysus and Apollo. Dionysus, who was the symbol of the dynamic or flux stream of life, the becoming, the process, - his antithesis, Apollo, on the other hand, was the symbol of order, restraint, form, the power to create, extrapolated to interface between the dark powers of the soul and the power to harness such destructive powers which could be manifested by Dionysus. What Greek tragedy illustrates is that instead of abandoning the flood of impulse, instinct, and passion a fiat could be pronounced where life itself is the dominating power. Such a formula, thought Nietzsche, could provide the culture of his day with a relevant and workable standard of behavior. This at a time when religious faith was unable to provide a compelling vision of man’s destiny. Nietzsche identified reality with “becoming.” In his view, the Christian worldview and ethos ultimately denied life and relegated it to the static, from the individual to the state. It produced complacency and reality of undesirable predictability based upon universals that must be followed. In this, it has been argued, Nietzsche was not negative; his work is rather seen as that of “creative destruction.” As Reinert and Reinert (2006:17) state, “Nietzsche’s attacks against morality, culture, the German nation, and institutions were in a very real sense attempts at creative destruction: not a negation so much as an affirmation of what could be or become instead; Ubermensch rather than God, Europe rather than Germany, effort rather than complacency, genius rather than mediocrity” — a creative side is uncovered by Ludwig Von Mises.

Evangelical Economics

It is ironic that many Preterist, Amillenial and Post-Millenial theo-nomic Christian Nation proponents of Dominion theology adhere to Von Mises’s economics as he posits that values do not exist outside of a person’s perception in an economic sense, hence they are fiat. The value one attaches to something is purely a mental decree. It exists only within our minds and is then manifested in the marketplace in a creative sense. The Austrian School of Von Mises use of philosophy follows a general method of empiricism, where data is collected through verifiable sense perception. Although “action” the leitmotif of praxeology in the Austrian tradition received a distinctly Aristotelian analysis, still Austrian and idealistic philosophy are not totally incompatible. Von Mises concerns himself more with a loose empirical method than with strict epistemological induction from ideals. His empirical method utilizes the language of Immanuel Kant in that it makes more sense to consider the a priori structure of the mind itself, and how that structure influences the organization of sensory impressions than to assume that all human knowledge arises only a posteriori in a tabula rasa on which experience writes its lessons. The mind is not a passive object, but an active organizing principle that wrests order from the chaotic jumble of perception automatically, via an inherent mental structure that is innate in every human being. In contrast to Kant, he emphasizes the difference between presentations and judgments, rejecting their unification in the single category “thinking” which would be consistent with Franz Brentano, the Austrian school's philosophical initiator. Therefore, the economic theory propounded by the Austrian School of Von Mises is based on axioms, definitions, and deductive logic along the same lines as geometry mathematics. Consequently, such integrative thinking promotes the tendency to find an objective idealism based on the belief in mental constructs or 'fiats' that have found a home in various conservative movements and where the religious impetus is also derived, but the Austrian school avoids this as it justifies its fragmentation in its use of fiat and does not concern itself about moral scrutiny. Rather Von Mises (1957:339) explains this elaborately in a counter-argument concerning anti secularism; “… but the religiousness of these sincere believers … (is based) on a myth that the political and social institutions of the ages preceding modern individualistic philosophy and modern capitalism were imbued with a genuine Christian spirit. It was individualism and utilitarianism coupled with capitalism on its own that brought freedom to the religious longings of man.” In finding the root of this individual fiat Western Thought must return to its seminal thinker, Augustine.

The Greek world for economics comes from the root word oikos referring to the household which was to be kept in order. Here, Plato’s Republic provides a template with the crisis of the Athenian polis for Augustine’s City of God in responding to the crisis of the Roman Empire, as the implications of Augustine’s thought first connected such crises to the individual response. Plato’s work could be better described by the collective and for the state, yet individuals through the societal dimension make up a state as we have seen, and this does not imply that Plato did not consider individual choice and action (The Republic: 369 b-c). Plato expressed hope that a state founded on rational principles could remedy the abuses of Athenian society. The state is a reflection of man’s economic needs “because no individual is self-sufficing; we all have many needs.” Augustine's individual twist maintained that the worldly city could never be the central concern of a Christian and supply his spiritual needs. He realized that the ideal state could not be realized on earth, that it belonged only to heaven. Even while witnessing the first generations of established Christendom. Augustine exemplified the disagreement that he had with Plato regarding politics and the use of religion. Through the examination of their individual terms, one can see the intent of Augustine to distinguish himself, but only when paired by a divergence of individual focus. Primarily in the manner in which Plato focused on politics and the virtue necessity, Augustine did so rather on personal excellence and self-discipline out of God’s grace and without comfort in this present world system. Both philosophers attempted to pursue their own realism in what was “good” and “just”, but because they probably had different definitions of the basic concepts, they used opposing strategies for their purpose.

When it comes to globalization and the context of democratic capitalism and its critique, there is a narrow focus on a range of subjects such as money, wealth, the poor, and the clash between capitalism and communism as juxtaposed economic systems. For Christians such as Andrew Kirk and Jacques Ellul (1984), capitalism is supposed to be un-Christian or anti-Christian because it allegedly gives predominant place to greed and other un-Christian values. A vast confusion exists among Christians here and such thinking and ambivalence are also contrasted with rather bold pronouncements that socialism represents the economics of compassion. Yet, such thinking would not be possible if the individualistic ability to protest did not develop in Western thought and as shown has a long history and varied genealogy. Therefore, Kirk has declared that capitalism is incompatible with Biblical principles. Kirk thinks that the traditional evangelical definition of the gospel – God’s good news of salvation available to those who believe in the crucified and risen Savior – is too narrow. Following earlier proponents of the social gospel and liberation theology, Kirk claims that there is an essential political and economic dimension to God’s kingdom and to the gospel. (Kirk: 1985:71) Such a thesis draws a line of division which is nothing new to Christian debate, pointing to a common problem with theologians heavily influenced by a movement of theology based on political or hegemonic liberation coming out of Latin America and Africa. Could this be emotive envy disguised in the biblical concept of justice, validated by seeing the plight of suffering all around the world and the vast chasm between rich and poor people and nations? The tendency toward elitism exists in Christian theology and it often is merged with an asceticism that elevates the subject under consideration in a very un-objective sense by disregarding the balancing of scriptural texts and the search for truth in subjects where the Bible does not directly speak. The Bible can tell us what one’s preferences should be, but it is largely mute on economic social organization in a prescriptive sense, yet there are plenty of descriptive narratives. While lust after unrighteous mammon for its own sake is idolatrous, a world in which everyone pursues his own interests –whatever those may be- while staying within the boundaries prescribed by ideals such as natural and Biblical law which produces a better world in terms of development and the creation of wealth. Though the Apostles sought a political revolutionary, Jesus emphasized that “His kingdom is not of this world” as we should “render unto Caesar what is his Caesar’s” implying the reality of living decisively in this present life, but with the spiritual dimension in mind by a justified personal fiat. In regards to basic questions of social interaction, we ask whether or not we are to love our neighbor as ourselves or whether or not we are to care for the poor, but rather how these virtues are to be manifested in the social environment. Christians have an obligation to seek justice both on a personal fiat level that is within the law and on the level of the structure of society. The God of the Bible is a God of justice (Deuteronomy. 10:17,18) God’s people are to rectify instances of economic injustice (Jeremiah. 22:13-17; Leviticus 19:13; Malachi 3:5; James 5:4) The Bible clearly condemns those who abuse economic power. Many Christian theologians that adhere to some kind of socialism as a form of justice misread the Old Testament notion of justice which primarily means being righteous in God’s eyes. Here distributive justice is often imposed. Old Testament Prophets like Amos and Isaiah attacked prevailing forms of injustice including dishonesty, fraud, theft, bribery, and exploitation of the weak the power, and the powerless. All such actions reflect a lack of personal righteousness. The prophets also denounce injustice on the level of social structure. These ideas make up the Christian worldview that Augustine expounded, but have nonetheless been wildly interpreted. Therefore, the Christian fiat is a means to and ends that are reflected in human action. Actions that are even greater due to idealistic beliefs and values that provide meaning and purpose for the Christian and his/her role in their family, community, and society as a whole and contributing to the spirit of democratic capitalism and as a mediating structure for economic development.

Could the current globalization phenomenon be antithetical to the values and religious roots of Western civilization, thus raising questions from a Christian moral basis about competing for economic systems? This may be clarified by Roman Catholic political theorist Michael Novak’s definition (1982:29) “Democratic capitalism is not just a system but a way of life. Its ethos includes a special evolution of pluralism; respect for contingency and unintended consequences; a sense of sin; and a new and distinctive conception of community, the individual, and the family.” These are the components of a “spirit” that can aid in economic progress, growth or prosperity and has been manifested in the ascendancy of new world civilization. Novak (2005: 205) furthers the trust factor as it applies to this envy within the context of uncovering the elitism of democratic socialists and elitism which could be at the core of The Christian Right even though their economics seem to line up with Novak. “Western Civilization is possible because it has triumphed over envy. It did so largely through the invention of the market. Exchange in markets requires trust – trust in society’s future, trust in the stability of the currency, trust in credit extended, and trust in goods received. It also requires information about the needs of others, for each exchange is other-regarding as well as self-regarding. Where markets exist, information about the needs of others is direct and simple. Where markets do not exist, distant authorities must speculate about needs and assign them ranking. … Democratic socialists concluded from this slowness that markets should be abridged in favor of governmental action. …Some of the hidden underpinnings of socialist ‘idealism’ may now be briefly noted. There is a class of persons –usually the most influential in the shaping of public opinion –whose life situation is better served by assumptions that favor socialist ideals." The success of democratic capitalism, in strengthening this class, strengthens these general assumptions. A theocratic organization of the state demands either a self-sufficing family economy or the socialist organization of industry. It is incompatible with an economic order which allows the individual free play to develop his powers. Simple faith and economic rationalism cannot dwell together. It is unthinkable that priests should govern entrepreneurs. Christian Socialism, as it has taken root in the last few decades among countless followers of all Christian churches, is merely a variety of State Socialism. State Socialism and Christian Socialism are so entangled that it is difficult to draw any clear line between them or to say of individual socialists whether they belong to the one or the other. In this regard, Novak asks the question, “Can any political and economic system survive, whose moral and cultural custodians loathe it so?” (Novak 1982: 35) From his vantage point, there are religious leaders and theologians antagonistic, confused, or rather ambivalent to globalization. However, the paradox of economic development and performance achieved when Judeo-Christian society embarked on the path of modernization is where secularization sets in. This established an ethos of material values, thus embracing and imposing compulsive consumerism on the rest of the world, resulting in individual narcissism, nihilism, and trivialization of spiritual values, even the exacerbation of greed, corruption, and fraud. Therefore, as these negative “values”, attitudes and actions have emerged as they contradict the Christian worldview and humanity of Western civilization and its ideals such as justice. If the City of God of Augustine was written today, it could be talking about these material values as the globalization of sins in the “city of man”, implying that the globalization of today transgresses a moral dimension, but is this a correct interpretation? According to Augustine, the continual interplay and tension of fallen motives and the realism of values point to an entire structure known as the proverbial “fallen world system” that plays itself out in the “city of man.” Augustine’s motive is a philosophy of history that implores individuals to transcend and avoid the corruption of the “earthly city” and points to providential history, namely the fall of Rome, to provide meaning for God’s people and their ultimate destiny according to God’s time and when his kingdom is fully consummated. The City of God is both here and not yet in full and it is no kingdom nor empire. A Christian’s fiat is for oneself to be part of it as God’s grace provides the ability to make such a choice. Therefore, anything of this world such as democratic capitalism must be viewed within the clutches of the “city of man” and this leaves it open for criticism because a fiat implies a human action and according to Augustine, humans are fallen beings. Nevertheless, Augustine understood such action as integral to the imago Dei upon man and worked out in human creativity. “Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.” (Augustine: De Libero Arbitrio A.D.386) Still this is theology from the human vantage point which continually usurps sovereignty.

Evangelical Global Governance

The following demonstrates the two interwoven concepts of how sovereignty is expressed on the global stage and how Westphalian dichotomy between the secular and religious perpetuates. These are (1) evangelical unilateralism out of the Christian Nation concept that overshadows Just War thinking and (2) reactions to the Universal Declaration of Humans Rights. Both Just War and Human Rights draw on many sources, yet have a primal religious foundation. Furthermore, these international relations concepts highlight the inevitable nihilism of the secularization process. The Just War concept emerges out of early Christianity also from Augustine. Jean Bethke Elshtain, (2003) documents historical theological evolution influencing evangelicals. The thesis, simply put, is this: the just war tradition is not just about war. It is a theory of comparative justice applied to considerations of war and intervention. The Just war argument and universal human rights should be placed within a single frame. Because the origins of just war thinking lie in Christian theology, now absorbed into numerous international conventions and embedded in the non-theological language in most contemporary discussions. A view about human beings as equal in the eyes of God underscores what is at stake when persons are unjustly assaulted, namely, that human beings qua human beings deserve equal moral regard. This, however, fails to guide the definition of the conceptual struggle of Just War in this political age. Where the question arises to the response terrorism: should be thought of as a matter of law enforcement ("a police action") or as a matter of war (an assertion of "sovereign power"). Are we within the law or are we within the Schmittian exception? Included in Elshtain’s argument are observations on the thought of Pope John Paul II who has, rather ironically become a major influence upon Protestant evangelicals in social and moral thought. Another seemingly contradictory thought process is highlighted around pacifism. In regards to the strong response concerning 9/11 wrought, Elshtain states this about Roman Catholic theology: “ … they have done so in the belief that theological responses need not be narrowly sectarian, hence available in principle only to the company of believers, but rather, that all citizens can take up such arguments with benefit, whether they agree with them or not. Catholicism has an advantage in this regard because of its centuries–old tradition of pressing moral argument in and through the language of natural law, the common good, and, more recently, the dignity of the human person and human rights associated with the papacy of Pope John Paul II, (On the other hand) …It is important to note that he (John Paul II) has offered a higher valuation of authentic Christian pacifism than any previous pontiff, in part because such pacifism lifts up the ‘incomparable worth of the human person.’ But he insists that there is such a thing as a just war, under quite specific, carefully delimited circumstances.”

The point of pacifism is significant as spiritually minded evangelicals often practice a personal ethic fiat in this regard which differs from a public one. This is part of a dichotomy that allows one's identification in the broader community and citizenship where support of a nation’s need to confront a perceived threat. A peace-loving people understand the vulnerability of life and have little difficulty in joining support for military actions even if they personally object to participation. If one asks a typical evangelical about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, they may have been in favor of it in a collective sense, and with current hindsight in 2001-2004 they may admit that such military action was justified, but now, take a strong position against it. Here Carl Schmitt’s (1922: 16) enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship.’ Certainly, the Christian Nation patriotic confusion element dwells here, but such positioning is complex and points toward a sovereign fiat. This could be drawn from theological sources that express that the Kingdom of God now on earth is a possibility and should be promoted to pursue peace over war, whereas for more conservative or “realist” evangelicals 'this Kingdom' reigns here incompletely and is not possible in its full manifestation in the present age. A future consummation in biblical prophecy lingers in the distance and certainly the broader understanding of the biblical apocalypse points to this. It is the actual events on how and when this transpires that allow a constructive direction, a hermeneutic to follow a militant direction against perceived forces of evil. Such a hierarchy, contradiction, or the tension of convictions, are prevalent throughout various evangelical belief systems. Therefore, the political influence of the Christian Right and its own “neo-realism” draws upon the ability to compartmentalize its pacifism from its own preeminent construction of justice yet allow the primacy of the use of force to guide their inability to reflect deeper. This coupled with eschatological interpretive difficulties could be the crux of the matter. The diffused political culture of the United States is one in which both law and sacrifice figure, and in which the believer finds the truth of the self in and through participation in the populist sovereign. It is a faith that can support sacrificial violence as easily as it can support adjudication under law.

Second, Human Rights are a product of the Enlightenment and secular social contract pursuits. Evangelicals are in strong support for this in a matter of principle, however, because of the role of the United Nations (UN), a major divergence emerges which harkens back to almost embryonic stages of the Westphalia trajectory. Although, much of this is conflated by recent evangelical belief constructs rather complicated to sketch out relating to a special revelation-inspired approach and how it has been distorted through the popular biblical prophecy movement within evangelicals. Here, the imaginative apocalyptic eschatology about the end of the world that casts the UN as the end-time “One World Government” and ruled by the “Anti-Christ” are the foundational concepts, here the Bible is read in a American focused fashion deciphering current events. How this affected the populace is one thing, but the greater reason is most likely due to a skepticism existing at the core of the Christian Right’s contra positions of UN-sponsored initiatives. Within the frame of my preferred narrative-historical hermeneutic, I would use the word “eschatological” primarily with reference to prophecies of decisive, theologically significant historical events in a foreseeable future. The point here is that material understood to describes ‘end-of-the-age’ events actually refers to more immediate and more urgent realities. Our problem is that we are trying to make sense of the New Testament while looking down the wrong end of the telescope of history, and we naturally view the intense pressures of historical contingency that shaped the New Testament’s outlook on the future. There is a third horizon to take account of, though it is only occasionally glimpsed in the New Testament. A literal Premillennial resolution of justice or the final renewal of heaven and earth as the climax to the constant striving throughout the narrative of the people of God both Jew and Gentile to embody and represent in the world the possibility of creation made new. It is preceded by a final judgment and the destruction of everything that corrupted the old world. It ensures that the Creator God and not sin and evil has the final word. The anti-global governance direction probably revolves more around suspicion of human institutions made up of fallen humans. Nevertheless, out of this multiple conspiracy theories have emerged fueled by self-made bible teachers, dogma-dominated positions, and popular accessibility through the media which have played up the prophetic industry over the last century.

A more helpful demonstration of global evangelicals helping define human rights, but still toward a conservative political position or possibly keeping the UN non-political is the story of Charles Malik, ambassador from Lebanon. The original Human Rights Commission drafted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) where the modern human rights movement has from its inception struggled with mixing inalienable human rights with social and economic aspirations. The Western idea of rights as moral claims against the coercive power of the state was put on the same footing as social benefits and government entitlements. Thus, the Universal Declaration ranks the right to "periodic holidays with pay" (Article 24) no differently than the right to life, freedom from slavery, and freedom of religion (Articles 3, 4, and 18).” Here, Charles Malik spoke out after warning that secular forces were undermining the moral emphasis of the declaration. He claimed this was manifested through economic, social, and cultural rights which have come into their own today. Malik labeled this "the materialistic revolution of the times." Joseph Laconte (2007) states evangelicals identify this as secular humanism with political expressions represented by socialism, communism, and fascism - all they claim have a utopian vision without God. The result is a seeming confusion of inalienable human rights based upon human dignity. Basic human rights are confused with social or economic goals, human dignity is debased and this is the basic argument of broad-based evangelical concerns. William Martin (1999) documents that a number of Christian Right groups now possess consultative status in the UN on the level of an NGO. These are mostly Christian relief and development organizations addressing the global poverty and justice realities that still exist in the Global South. This traditional link to the broader worldwide community of faith, a type of global social activism, exists going back over 200 years. Integral through its foreign missionary movement which found strong US impetus as begun by the British by means of the state church and free-church mission societies of the nineteenth century. The mission society is the previous era’s forerunner of the modern NGO. Walter Russell Mead (2006) states, “Evangelicals in the Anglo-American world have long supported humanitarian and human rights policies on a global basis. The British antislavery movement, for example, was led by an evangelical, William Wilberforce, and evangelicals were consistent supporters of nineteenth-century national liberation movements -- often Christian minorities seeking to break from Ottoman rule. Also, evangelicals led a number of reform campaigns, often with feminist overtones: against suttee (the immolation of widows) in India, against foot-binding in China, in support of female education throughout the developing world, and against human sexual trafficking (the "white slave trade") everywhere.” For evangelicals in general, it is precisely the grass-root level where this type of work continues without much fanfare or attention. But when the state came calling during Reagan and more directly Bush II; the Christian Right was ready to assist and move into its direct role of policy influence and power instead of one of many voices in collaboration. Nevertheless, this global missionary presence has helped evangelicals listen to the Christian voices of the Global South. Where the presence of booming populations of evangelical Christian converts in Latin America and Africa shows a shift from the traditional Western locus of Christianity. Scott Thomas (2005:224) Even China the new economic powerhouse sees a resurgence of believers, not only in religion but more popularly in its neo-capitalism. The rise of the Pacific Rim also contributed to a change in the role of culture in development. The old debate, initiated by Max Weber and R. H. Tawney over the way religious values, such as The Protestant Ethic, can help to shape, direct, or even be a barrier to economic development, had come full circle with the rise of East Asian countries, and the end of the Third World as a coherent idea. The same can be said of America and Europe as its religious identity from the Christian element and even secularism is now shifting to accommodate Islam and other neo-Eastern spiritualities and religions being introduced through global migration and technological globalization. (Ibid) “Globalization has helped create alternative transnational religious subcultures or communities that are revitalizing Islam and Christianity.” Philip Jenkins, (2003) points toward global evangelicalism’s expansion, showing that the global shift maybe something to reckon with.

One such area where the greater worldwide community of evangelicals has influenced the debate, yet finding a stubborn unilateral Christian Right is The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). This UN initiative has not had a favorable view by the Christian Right and has demonstrated a stalemate over the last twenty years with its continually lobbying against ratification in the US Senate. Leaders of the Christian Right became convinced that the concept of children’s rights was a conspiracy, sought by political liberals to undermine the traditional family by destroying parental authority and unleashing the powers of government to intervene in the family. Although, nearly every article of the Children’s Convention calls on state parties to respect or protect the rights of parents as a crucial part of strengthening children’s rights, yet many conservative evangelicals are convinced of rumors propagated by Christian Right groups. Jennifer Butler (2006) They have been led to believe, for instance, that the Convention would give the UN itself the power to take away their children or encourage children to take legal action against their parents. In fact, a significant percentage of the U.S. population learns about UN conferences primarily or only through the far-reaching Christian Right media network, a situation intensified by the fact that the U.S. mainstream media seldom covers UN conferences, especially ones not ratified by the US. Sadly, this opposition to U.S. ratification of the Convention and the concept of children’s rights undermine international progress on issues many evangelicals care deeply about. “The rights-based approach,” as it is often called, moves governments from viewing children as property, to treating them as human beings with rights protected by a legal system. Human rights activists around the world use the Children’s Convention to push reluctant governments to improve the situation of children, and this is important for evangelicals. The strength of the Convention lies partially in the fact that its nearly universal ratification already makes it a norm. So when the USA’s world leadership fails on human rights and the rule of the law and refuses to ratify the treaty, the very importance of children’s rights is literally thrown out like the “baby with the bathwater.”

Nonetheless, the aforementioned human rights initiatives point toward a maturing evangelical foreign policy agenda branching out, all the way from Africa AIDS policy to religious persecution, to the situation in Sudan with Darfur. China also has been confronted as a major issue in light of its continued human rights abuses often directed against religious groups. Included in this are major legislative initiatives to halt sex trafficking and bonded labor. Across the human rights agenda, a new religiously driven human rights movement has taken shape. This has demonstrated the tendency of evangelicals to find more causes that fit individual beliefs systems and values. Yet, included in this are traditional policy positions that now realize a greater necessity for international law and the institutions of global governance and legal regimes. The 2000s witnessed new energy for U.S. humanitarian efforts under President Bush with some of it already initiated from the Clinton administration moving forward today in the newly inaugurated Obama administration. This is often overlooked as the realpolitik of the “War on Terror” has overshadowed significant “soft power” expressions such as U.S. development aid to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and even Africa is and always was part of US foreign policy since World War II. Having risen by 67 percent and including $15 billion in new spending for programs to combat HIV /AIDS, observers have credited President Bush’s own evangelical conviction as a part of this. For evangelicals to condone government programs is a gradual change in direction. And the individual non-state interventions abound as they always have. (Hulse 2003) For example, Rick Warren a less polarizing evangelical leader and pastor of a “mega-church” and the author of The Purpose Driven Life (Bestseller of all time, beside the Bible in U.S. publishing statistics), has influenced many to help face AIDS worldwide and to form partnerships with churches in Africa to aid and minister the dying and children. This merged with the PEPFAR (HIV/AIDS) and the Millennium Challenge programs further funded by the Bush administration showing a greater alliance of the state. As stated, much of this type of activity has existed out of evangelical initiatives since the missionary era empowering locals since the age of colonialism.

Case Study: A Christian Nation from the Global South

The worldwide Anglican Communion is officially led by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head of the Church of England and a major denomination or church in worldwide Christianity. Yet a growing influence from African Archbishops and bishops mainly from Nigeria has threatened this worldwide communion in terms of its unity. In this case, the traditional Christianity Nigerian Anglicanism embraces, claims fidelity to founding articles and creeds in a most rational and unwavering sense but its social outworking is most comprehensive and uncompromising and based upon uniformity of belief worked out in practice. A practice that could have a distinct African derivation that typifies a movement of the Global South churches in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Such churches are confronting the 77-million member Anglicans and Episcopalians in flexing their power as their numbers represent a rapidly growing presence. With 17.5 million members, Nigeria is the second-largest Anglican province after the Church of England with 26 million -- but its number of regular churchgoers is far higher and growing. The power of these churches, which now account for more than half of the Communion, are increasingly on display in separate gatherings. The major issue that has received the most press revolves around how the African traditionalist primates are undermining the US Episcopal’s bishops for supporting gay clergy. Depending on where Anglicans stand on homosexuality, Nigeria is seen either as the symbol of the shift of Christianity's center of gravity to the Global South or out to divide the third-largest denomination in the faith. (Gerson: 2007) Could this Global South movement be challenging western-based ecclesiastical authority structures and institutional cultures because of the long history of African dominance? Furthermore, as the historical lenses of church and state social action to provide context: Is this a reactionary movement escaping previous Western paternalism and hegemony? How are the cultural dimensions involved in this? How can one identify the convergence and divergence taking place with the various structures of society from both the state and its people? What benefits are emerging if any that contribute to the Global South’s relevance in the worldwide community? What do cross-cultural differences really dictate in terms of practice? The following explores these issues from a global regional perspective in reference to the North and South, Old and New, and other categories that developed in recent history.

The rise of nationalism led to conflict on unprecedented scales among the tribes of Europe as it was imposed upon the tribes of Africa. Therefore, nationalism did not serve Africa very well. What it really did, as colonial empires collapsed in the wake of the world wars, was to allow African tyrants to take over from colonial despots. The arbitrary borders protected local autocrats after independence was won from colonial oppressors. In post-war jargon, First World came to mean the developed countries in the West, fighting a Cold War with the Second World or East Bloc. Both were in the Northern hemisphere or North. The so-called Third World contains the developing countries, most of which are in the Global South. Ironically, the Global South contains two-thirds of the world's population, so it should really be called the Two-thirds World and it is the part of the world where Christianity is rapidly growing. (Bosch 1991: 181- 238) Missionaries used to be mainly Westerners, but the majority now come from the Third World. Missionaries may leave South America for Africa, Africa for Eastern Europe, or South Korea for the United Kingdom... "John Clark of the ecumenical body Partnership for World Mission in London argues that half of sub-Saharan Africa will be Christian by the end of the 21st century. When the organization sends missionaries to the West, they are often surprised at what they find. 'A lot of people who come from Africa are shocked at the empty churches they find here,' he says. "While there are more than 7,000 British missionaries around the world, there are more than 1,000 from other countries who have come to Britain..." (CMC: 1998) For sub-Saharan Africa will be one of the main springboards for Christian world outreach in the 21st century, just as North Africa was in past centuries when Alexandria (in Egypt) and Hippo (in Libya) were prominent. Africa is already a major sender of missionaries. The number of missionaries sent from Africa doubled between 1991 and 1995 according to Luis Bush, executive director of the AD 2000 and Beyond movement. The number doubled again in 1996. "Africa is a missionary movement for the world to reckon with," Bush says. At the beginning of this century, only two percent of the world's Christians were in Africa. Now, according to Bush's estimates, some 338 million Africans profess to be confessional Christians, 17 percent of worldwide Christianity. (CMC: 1998) Hitherto, the first decade after the year 2000, the Global South has made its mark. If it seems far-fetched to think of missionaries from Africa reaching the sophisticated West, just stop to think about African influence in Western music. Slaves taken from Africa were never allowed to touch their owners' band instruments, but their vocals (Negro spirituals) enchanted America. After emancipation, when they got their hands on those trumpets and trombones for the first time, their send-ups of white musicians gave birth to jazz. From spirituals and jazz emerged rhythm and blues and later rock and roll. The revenge of African culture on the Slave Trade is expressed in that famous song title by Chuck Berry: Roll Over Beethoven. (Mazuri 1993:5 –7) The Christians from Africa do incorporate a liturgical diversity by contemporary music and African drums and voices, but they also reaffirm the more traditional music as found in “High-Church” Anglican service and the Roman Catholic mass that is founded on monastic chants and classical composers. Serious missionary work began in Nigeria in 1842, conducted by a Church Mission Society of the mother Anglican Church dedicated to promoting "the knowledge of the Gospel among the heathen." In 2007, the Nigerian outreach to America officially began, on the fertile mission fields of Northern Virginia. And the natives here are restless.” (Gerson: 2007) Controversial to say the least, yet it uncovers deep cultural contours which are fascinating. In its raw form, the emerging movement, points toward repercussions into the years to come that is changing the face of Western Christianity or the Global North: Some American religious conservatives have embraced ties with this emerging Christianity, …. But there are adjustments in becoming a junior partner. The ideological package of the Global South includes not only moral conservatism but also an emphasis on social justice, openness to state intervention in markets, and a suspicion of American economic and military power. The emerging Christian majority is not the Moral Majority. (Ibid.) But with such a move the divide on the terrain has implications for the broad Christian spectrum, take for example its impact on the religious left purveyors of the distinct “social gospel”. For decades it has preached multiculturalism and even acceptance of “liberation theologies” which have nationalistic and even Marxist roots, but now, as the conservative Nigerians are making their mark, it doesn't seem to approve other non-western cultural expressions all that much. This uncompromising attitude could be something carried over from the Nigerian’s own “culture war” at home which includes confrontations with Islam, African traditional religions, and hyper-statism. (Jenkins 2002:172-3) But the more socially “enlightened” and “doctrinally compromising” US church demonstrates a certain exclusivity. An activist at one Episcopal meeting urged the African bishops to "go back to the jungle where you came from." (Gerson:2007) This reaction from the liberal and socially focused US-based churches parallels its division with conservative evangelical Christianity and its concurrent political difference along similar lines. However, the Nigerian ecclesiastical influx may turn some of these divisions into a broader societal impact that disregards the preeminence of the state and recognizing its own position as an equal authority structure.

In studying the permanence of “heavenly” based institutions by humans that are diverse, how such an ecclesiastical organization addresses societal concerns is a perennial question. This societal outreach is the major organizational purpose for a Christian church and its worldwide interaction. This implies an authoritative role that operated in spheres of influence viewing itself on equal terms with that of the modern state and application in the lives of human beings. This is enacted through an approach understood as, “Holism” which is a Biblical sense means that the Church’s mission is both proclaimed through the “Word” and “Deed.” (Bosch: 1991: 20-55) How this interfaces with the organization of the state and the private sector reveals certain points to answer questions as today the church no longer has a corner on the “charity market” or what could be termed “Deed” but can this be separated from the “Word”? The Churches in the Global North seem to say yes, the church in the Global South or Third World, says no!

The following explores this secularization as Europeans migrated to America forming ideologies of liberation and modern philanthropy apart from the state. Back in the Old World, through - which was simultaneously colonizing Africa - churches that severed their ties with Rome had not necessarily done so with the government. They remained official in their own right - Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed. And in countries that remained Catholic, the church remained as official as ever. “In Britain, all through the 19th century, the charity was a community activity and seen as a responsibility of the well-to-do. After 1890, with the growing belief in government as the master of society, most of this disappeared. The Salvation Army - founded in London in 1878 - is one of the few survivors of what was a flourishing culture of community service in Victorian times. And in France, any community action that is not organized and controlled by government has been suspect since Napoleon, and is... almost considered subversive.” (Drucker: 1993:159) So the Old and New world differences radically emerge. Seminal to this observation and formulation occurred in the 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville stood amazed at the range of American voluntary associations. They were of “a thousand kinds,” he said, “religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restrictive, enormous or diminutive...” (Tocqueville, 2003 ed.1863:129) Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, in the United States you will be sure to see an association made up of private grassroots associations that address the variety of needs within the society.

Moreover, in this Old World context, church linkages to state bureaucracies were the rule. To this day Christian outreach from these countries is often conducted with state funding. This includes education, health, human services, development, and advocacy for justice. Many Christian donor agencies operating in Africa are intermediaries between European government resources (i.e. European taxpayers) and local groups or projects on the ground. As Europe has secularised and pluralized, public agendas have brought new constraints; not to proselytize, but to rationalize interventions and to make philanthropy more business-like. One way that these donor agencies can mitigate this, is to channel resources through groups and projects in Africa's civil society. This avoids replicating the European paradigm in Africa and helps to balance the powers. (Drucker 1993:165) Nigerians have certainly shown an impressive dexterity in being so bold in their ability to flow with American religious freedoms and European state aid, easily demonstrating a grasp for divergent viewpoints that readily trace a convergence back to traditions as found in creeds and confessions. Nevertheless, the Nigerian experience is not without Old World influences showing a non-negotiable in separating the “Word” for the “Deed” even within the political context where the separation of church and state is not an issue. Therefore, the Africans have a certain affinity for the “Law” or proper interpretation of the “Word”, this is certainly a major divergence from it high context cultural expressions where symbolism is pre-eminent over strict adherence to written laws and guidelines as readily demonstrated in the lower context Global North. Furthermore, in terms of Old Word influences, half of Europe was eventually overtaken by socialist imperialism - as were some African countries, but not without some radical actions by the state, where increasing state social services tended to marginalize church activity, particularly in the case of Marxism. Africa has seen it all and in a short time frame. Marxist oppressors confiscated church property, nationalized schools and hospitals, refused to allow Christian outreach in the social sphere, closed down churches, and even persecuted leaders. What has been learned, surely, is that it is best to encourage diversity and to privatize social services. The diagnosis is that voluntary organizations have “found themselves treated increasingly as instruments of public policy rather than social institutions that can make distinct and different contributions”. The usual treatment? “In the absence of a distinctive theory for a voluntary organization, the powerful business model - or more accurately muddled attempts to introduce elements of what are thought to be the key characteristics of that model - will dominate governmental and other thinking. The result? “Organizations sliding into unplanned change - the real threat to organizational autonomy.” (Billis 1993: 1, 16, 21) Such impositions produced an Africa that has changed with the times and readily shows how African church intervention in both the New and Old World may provide a model for how faith can thrive in the midst of pluralism of a secular sort rather than the overtly religious distinctive of the Global South. Specifically, much of this strong moralist societal intervention in Nigeria is due to its balancing power with Islam, where the two major world religions are approximately equal size of the total population. As the Nigerian’s have successfully tangled with such a significant power force in their home turf, consequently they have little fear of secular states and surely not from what they perceive, an apostate member of their own communion such as the American Episcopal Church. Yet, here they may have met their match as secularism’s merger with American pragmatism which has developed into a very different Christianity.

It was the New World’s political reconfiguration that allowed a vibrant social sector to emerge, to balance the private and public sectors and allowed the “deed” the church provided to become separate from its authority and influence of the “word.” American industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie espoused scientific philanthropy, as they realized that the pace of economic growth was surpassing the existing capacity of 19th-century voluntary institutions. These had been privately formed to alleviate poverty and cope with misery. It was this influence - backed by formidable private wealth - that began to shift the thinking of interveners away from the symptoms of need, to its causes as well as to the issue of eligibility of beneficiaries. Given Christian doctrines about the sanctity of life, assessing the worthiness or unworthiness of recipients was quite a challenge to conventional thinking. Investment thinking invaded human services, as this was also bolstered by American pragmatism which focused on “what works” over what was “right” or “true.” This easily followed an ethic that did not need a universal moral code, surely a product of the Enlightenment a century earlier. Increasingly, belief systems based upon creeds and confessions were jettisoned, as a social conscience could exist on their own. Meanwhile, there was another track that was also well resourced, with roots in the Second Great Awakening out of Christian churches in the 1800s, which eventually morphed into a secular product. As the emphasis of Christian outreach had shifted during the 19th century from the tract, missionary, and Sabbatarian focus to temperance, abolition, youth, disabled, and public health, the common denominator was that moral flaws were associated with all of the related needs, and thus government intervention would be second best. Voluntary action was undertaken by Charity Organisation Societies, the forerunners of non-government organizations (NGOs) or private voluntary organizations (PVOs) or non-profits. These groups provided fertile ground for social Darwinism, which surreptitiously entered Christian groups like indigenous gods desecrating the temple of old as Christian core convictions of creeds and confessions being disregarded where social justice issues came to the forefront. (Olasky 1992: 89) This in its simplest form is what the Africans are confronting. An American church and organizational structure that is no different than a secular voluntary society and incongruent from foundational documents of creeds and confessions as based upon what the Africans affirm as specific Biblical revelation that holds to absolutist authority.

Finally, there was a third track - the academics in the fledgling social sciences. After linking up with scientific philanthropy late in the 19th century, they brought on board the charity organization societies into a three-way merger, at the beginning of the 20th century. These were political scientists and economists who were corporately restructuring American life as well as tinkering with basic values. “When social Darwinist ideology, industrial wealth, and academic expertise came together in the 1890s, modern American philanthropy was born.” However, giving through monetary means also evolved into allowing freedom and liberation for any segment of society and people group perceived as oppressed. Already in 1878, the New York Mission and Tract Society was revising its views: “Haphazard and indiscriminate giving is not benevolence... Let no closed-fisted brother hide behind our words, and find an excuse for not giving at all. What is censured is not giving too much, but giving in the wrong way.” (Hall 1990: 46) Therefore, compassion upon the marginalized and discriminated against began to become a separate category and this further developed into the 20th century based only upon the ethic of rejection, and not the question if the rejection was warranted or based upon some moral code or understanding derived from a religious document. Thus, the reading of the Bible as condemning certain human actions such as homosexuality eventually was boldly confronted and rejected or even revised or the source was discredited. First, because the authority of religious documents was questioned, namely, because of their supernatural genre, and second, because these documents were perceived as ancient and outmoded from a developing modern society. This revisionist approach in reading into the texts came much later in the form of the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and thus has given birth to variations like “political correctness” and “multiculturalism” disregarding absolute truth for relativism as the era of “postmodernism” reigns as default in the Global North.

The African church under its missionary recipient stage has had a certain advantage. While being assaulted by various ideologies that could easily be juxtaposed in the following manner, namely, as an expression of macro cultural contours coupled with specific dimensions of culture. African churches are certainly not passive as such ideologies elicit responses. These ideologies are represented by the following: indigenous (cultural) vs. foreign (imposed); American (federalist) vs. European (nation-state); religious (Christian) vs. ideological (secular); unstructured (spontaneous) vs. institutional (contrived); socialist (communal) vs. capitalist (individual); community-based (local) vs. bureaucratic (remote). These ideological impositions have certainly forced a selective process based upon a belief that is founded upon the ultimate juxtaposition - that between right and wrong as revealed truth of the Bible, the “Word” that dictates the “Deed.” Such a method is at the core of the current Nigerian ecclesiastical movement over the American diocese rather than a simple pursuit for power as some conservative American bishops are willingly coming under the fold of the Nigerians. (AP: 2008) What they seem to offer is rather unique. Conservative American bishops are reacting against the liberalism in their midst and gravitate toward the Nigerians who represent a “holistic” faith that sees the “Word” and “Deed” as inseparable. The Nigerians could be merely offering a communion; as such shifting of alliances and associations is by no means unique. On the other hand, Africa is still very poor, and its growth was destabilized for centuries by the slave trade and distorted by colonialism. So there could be a debt to pay, in a sense by the Global North. This brings up the question of the American financial resources the Nigerian could be attracted to. The Global North has poured tremendous amounts of aid into Africa. Certainly, it is in the whole world's best interest for Africa to grow into a healthy and prosperous trading partner in the global market, but economic power does not equal moral power, yet Africa represents the basket case of global poverty, an issue that is by no means insignificant and not only related to it oppression and exploitation. (Landes: 2000) A partnership with the Global North could easily be assumed out of this confrontation. So off-shore resources for the Africans are legitimate, as long as dependency on them is averted and foreign inputs are mixed with local resources. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the Nigerian church understands its autonomous standing.

Back in 1854, Henry Venn of the Anglican Church Mission Society was already questioning the institutional route that mother churches imposed upon their mission-established offspring. This was called the three-self alternative. Venn argued that mission agencies should not establish themselves permanently, but create local churches that were self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating, autonomous entities that moved with the times and were not dependant on a mother church for very long. (Terry 2000: 483-85) This issue of dependency and has been a problem for countless mission-established churches in the Global South over the last century. But it is interesting to note that once the Nigerian Church applied these principles approximately 30 years ago - even though the Anglicans had a presence there for over a century- a mighty movement of influence was born out of its self-sufficiency, as it exists today. Thus, to say that that the Nigerian Church is looking for a wealthy partner cannot be substantiated, because they are not dependant on foreign funding. This is further exemplified by the fact that the current policy of HIV/AIDS prevention through condom distribution stands rejected by many Africa churches. They could be the recipients of massive funding in this regard, but many reject the aid money of the Global North because of it. (ENI: 2005) Therefore, these examples demonstrate convergences but a clear divergence resisting a perceived secular synthesis.

Conclusion

From a human perspective, there are only two kinds of organizations - those which are dying, and those which are changing. Some try to resist change, and are thus guilty of sin by omission - they are "not doing what they ought to have done" as the prayer book says. Managing change for evangelical churches generally means devolution from clergy to laity. This is the same for the NGO or whatever Christian society or group formed including the members of the Christian Right. Switching the top-down approach for a bottom-up approach to influence and affect society by first confronting the leadership to lead the flock in the proper direction as perceived by the masses, but then again churches are no democracy, yet they thrive much better in such an environment. However, an ecclesiastical body does not fit this category of organization and that could be the reason that its uneasy alliance with the State can never be resolved upon this earth. There is a transcendent dimension that cannot be empirically studied as it depends on matters of faith and belief and we know this can be rather untidy. One reason that organizations are created concerns momentum and institutional memory which will continue beyond the lifespan of particular individuals. They serve as a repository of know-how and allow for synergy to be gained as people work together corporately. A church is not this type of organization as understood in light of the Missio Dei. According to the prophetic-historical narrative that arises in the New Testament, Western European Christendom constituted a flawed—an inevitably flawed—witness to the fact that the God of the small, isolated nation of Israel was indeed the God of the whole world. In important respects that witness continues globally today, largely thanks to the expansion of European Christian empires. But the Western churches, ravaged and humiliated by rational secularism are having to find a new basis for their existence in the world. This struggle can only be played out in the arena of domestic politics. The global stage is certainly a different venue. Evangelicals are part of globalization and have a vital role in representing a non-state actor through its many helpful denominational and NGO expressions.

In a post-Westphalia world, it is the issue of sovereignty that continues to be problematic on a number of different levels as a concept. Its tendency to abuse power becomes relevant in light of the Christian Right on the global stage besides their perpetual domestic actions. Reinhold Niebuhr provides a post-Westphalian theory a word of insight from his realist position to a new generation of evangelical leaders. From “Children of Light and Children of Darkness” Niebuhr (1944) states:

“A consistent pessimism in regard to (humanity's) rational capacity for justice invariably leads to absolutistic political theories; for they prompt the conviction that only preponderant power can coerce the various vitalities of a community into a working harmony. But a too consistent optimism in regard to (humanity's) ability and inclination to grant justice to (others) obscures the perils of chaos which perennially confront every society, including a free society. … (Humanity's) capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but (humanity's) inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. In all non-democratic political theories the state or the rules is invested with uncontrolled power for the sake of achieving order and unity in the community. But the pessimism which prompts and justifies this policy is not consistent, for it is not applied, as it should be, to the ruler. If (humans) are inclined to deal unjustly with (others), the possession of power aggravates this inclination. That is why irresponsible and uncontrolled power is the greatest source of injustice."

Nevertheless, sovereignty within the American psyche remains a concept necessary to its law and practice of a unique adherence of perceived exceptionalism that does not seem to be disconnected from the burden of faith, but again what faith? Compared to other parts of the Global North, America, of course, remains a land of perceived religious faith, while Western Europe has become a largely perceived secular society.

Human beings worship! Augustine said it best "From one particular region of the earth in which alone the one God was worshipped and where alone such a man could be born, chosen men were sent throughout the entire world, and by their virtues and words have kindled the fires of the divine love. Their sound teaching has been confirmed and they have left to posterity a world illumined" (DVR, 3.4). True Spirit-filled individualism, a fiat of global proportions exists within God’s redeemed people. Rather than “Nation-building”, I have offered my own storyline for this controversial subject drawing finally again from Augustine’s ‘City of God' which points toward the unfolding of God’s plan as understood by Christianty, yet with a Hebrew linear time line spiritualized: this involves fostering the City of Heaven and filling it with worthy citizens. For this purpose, God initiated all of creation itself, lest we ever become disenchanted nor accommodate Augustine’s ‘amillennialism’ which gave impetus to Christendom, rather let us pray ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ which demands a close reading of the Tanakh and truly understanding Judaism. 😬

Psalm 2

1 Why do the nations conspire[a]

    and the peoples plot in vain?

2 The kings of the earth rise up

    and the rulers band together

    against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,

3 “Let us break their chains

    and throw off their shackles.”

4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs;

    the Lord scoffs at them.

5 He rebukes them in his anger

    and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,

6 “I have installed my king

    on Zion, my holy mountain.”

7 I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

He said to me, “You are my son;

    today I have become your father.

8 Ask me,

    and I will make the nations your inheritance,

    the ends of the earth your possession.

9 You will break them with a rod of iron[b];

    you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

10 Therefore, you kings, be wise;

    be warned, you rulers of the earth.

11 Serve the Lord with fear

    and celebrate his rule with trembling.

12 Kiss his son, or he will be angry

    and your way will lead to your destruction,

for his wrath can flare up in a moment.

    Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Footnotes

Psalm 2:1 Hebrew; Septuagint rage

Psalm 2:9 Or will rule them with an iron scepter (see Septuagint and Syriac)

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