Thank you for the link to your book.

I like your analysis here. Being ‘in’ our big American system all my life, it is hard for me to stand back and understand it from a more objective point of view. This comparison between church government and American government is helpful in doing this.

There is one qualification I would make. With communities, such as the Kirk, that provide ‘deep’ narratives and special identity and status – as well as social hierarchy, comfort, and control – members are typically not in a position to just leave and go to the next joint down the road. Particularly in a genuine ‘cult’ situation, it would be much easier to leave the country in order to bring one’s community to a foreign people as a missionary than it would be to switch to the ‘denomination’ across the road.

I think this is perhaps the most important aspect to the conflict between American liberty and communitarian identities so many Americans enjoy. They do have an allegiance, and typically – in terms of their immediate psychology – one far more stronger than any patriotic impulse. This allegiance is not indirectly enforced by guns, but by psychological and social threat – which inevitable has a physical component. I have come to believe that psychological threat is a fiercer enemy than gunpowder and shrapnel. Becoming an Other or a Heretic or an Enemy is perhaps much like ‘breaking the law,’ but far worse.

What makes government different from churches (and other organizations) is largely two-fold.

1. It has a monopoly of force. This is an argument for smallness, to contain the injustices. A bad law hurts fewer people in a small country than in a large one. A country with a small army is less likely to go to war than a country with a large one.
2. It has a monopoly of allegiance. Nobody wants to be called “unpatriotic.” Everyone condemns someone who “broke the law” even if the “crime” had no victims. And governments are unlike burger joints or churches, you can’t just drive one more mile to find another one.

This makes reducing the size, scope, and geographical jurisdiction of government seemingly impossible. But like any organization, governments can self-destruct, and people can withdraw their consent. One or the other is inevitable; the question is when.

I think the OPC denomination shares the same opinion about keeping churches small. A Catholic friend noted that priests are moved from church to church on a regular basis so that their personality does not become the dominate glue for the community.

By the way, feel free to note your websites and book if you are able to write back.

When it comes to an organization like a church, maybe the solution is to limit the size of churches. Once a church becomes much larger than, say, 125 people, plant a new one. It is less likely that pastors, elders, or other church leaders would feel so self-important and go on power trips in such small environs.

Thank you for the kind note. I would say that it has almost always been OK for churches to act in a corrupt fashion. Your inquiry reminded me of the words of David Bell:

The ninth and tenth centuries were dark indeed for the history of the bishops of Rome. The lives of many of the people will not bear close scrutiny and their deaths were often violent. Hadrian III was probably murdered; Stephen VI and Leo V were strangled; Benedict IV may have been assassinated; John X was suffocated; and Stephen VIII died of his injuries after being tortured. As for Pope Formosus, an educated and, for the time, exemplary pontiff, nine months after his death his successor had his body exhumed, arrayed in pontifical vestments, put on trial, condemned, mutilated, and flung into the Tiber. Most of the popes, in fact, were little more than dispensable pawns in a complicated and bloody game of chess being played by certain of the noble Italian families. Perhaps the lowest point came in the pontificate of John XII. The political maneuverings of his father had assured him of the position, and when he became pope in 955, he was barely eighteen. He was known to be a womanizer and a debaucher and many said that he had turned the Lateran Place into a brothel. As a hard-nosed politician and intriguer he was fairly effective, but within a decade his sins had caught up with him: when he was about twenty-eight he suffered a stroke while in bad with a married woman and died a week later.

Churchman were not ignorant of the fact that their church had become corrupt. The problem was the lack of any candidate for the papacy who was sufficiently strong and sufficiently concerned to do something about it. There were attempts, that is true, but it was not until the pontificate of Leo IX (1049-54) that these attempts really bore fruit. (Many Mansions, 29-30)

At what point in time did it become OK for Churches to behave in a corrupt fashion? How is it right, when one considers the the separation of Church and state in the USA, along with the freedom of religion and freedom of speech guarantees, how is it right for a church to spend money destined for God’s work in the pursuit of a lawsuit designed, apparently to seek revenge?

You did a good job on this article, keep it up.