Schleiermacher on the Christian Church

“All institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic.”—Paul Tillich

For Schleiermacher the church has an important role is society and makes a key distinction between religious faith and religious doctrine. The purpose of the Church pulpit is to shape the religious life in a “divine fellowship or kingdom” of which religious consciousness is more important than doctrine. Orthodoxy (Greek: ortho means “true,” or “straight,” and doxos meaning “belief”) is no defense against unbelief so “…Creeds cannot, therefore be absolutely regulative of the Church’s faith” (Munro, p. 104). Rather, Christian theology is not “fixed,” or “immovable,” but a living organ adaptable to each historical era as human existence is a “unity of matter and spirit.” One divine Spirit is manifested through the diversity of the individual’s reason and volition that provides a variety of religious experience adding “infinite variety” and historical renewal making Church orthodoxy relevant to human life.

When the Church relates to its mass membership as a complex formal rationalized organization then bureaucratization takes over by imitating large-scale state bureaucratic organizations. German sociologist Robert Michels formulated the Iron Law of Oligarchy from his research of organizations and oligarchy. Michels, a student of Max Weber, wrote, “It is organization which gives birth to the domination of the elected over the elected, of the mandatory over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization, says oligarchy” (Political Parties, Michels, 1911). Large-scale government bureaucracies rely on hierarchic structures that weld the “demonic power of the structures of destruction” which are dynamic, creative-destructive, and self-sustaining. The demonic power of institutions is essentially bureaucratic and characterizes both capitalist and socialist societies. Christian theologian Paul Tillich wrote from experience about this dynamic evil in Fascist Germany before the Nazis drove him out of the German university system:

"For the Christ, the Messiah, is he who is supposed to bring the “new eon,” the universal regeneration, the new reality. New reality presupposes an old reality; and this old reality, according to prophetic and apocalyptic descriptions, is the state of the estrangement of man and his world from God. This estranged world is ruled by structures of evil, symbolized as demonic powers. They rule individual souls, nations, and even nature. They produce anxiety in all its forms. It is the task of the Messiah to conquer them and to establish a new reality from which the demonic power of the structures of destruction are excluded"(Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. II, p. 27).

Surprisingly, Schleiermacher believes that Christianity “brings nothing entirely new, or alien into the domain of Ethics…rather supplements the general principles of all morality”(Munro, 257). Both philosophical ethics and Christian ethics have the same content, but in a different form. Philosophical ethics emerges from the moral reasoning of humans in relation to “the race.” Schleiermacher means by “race,” the Human Race. Christian religious consciousness, on the other hand, originates from individual ethics in relation to the Church. Reform should not be alien to Church orthodoxy. However, Church reforms cannot be based on factional interests, egoism, statism, or uncritical crypto assumptions of creed, but rather remain consistent with the universal principles of Christianity as understood by its members.

Schleiermacher absolutely rejects physical force to punish children. It is deeply morally wrong. Corporal punishment of children is anti-Christian and has no place in child rearing. FBI Agent John E. Douglas was one of the first serial killer profilers in U.S. law enforcement. When asked what should be done to stop serial killers he said, “Don’t torture your children.” Douglas’s advise is prescient. With revengeful and scientifically sadistic institutions, the United States routinely torture its citizens and is even allowed to torture by law. American citizens can be legally treated as slaves in prison to provide unpaid labor for corporations and the State. Schleiermacher rejects the entire disciplinary system of rewards and punishments for children. American society is very effective in beating out empathy in its children and citizens. Games of chance are “…immoral in all its forms, produces a bad and empty kind of fellowship, and in the case of some it assumes the unhealthy symptoms of a chronic disease”(Munro, p. 287).

Capital punishment is antithetical to anything bearing the name of “Christian.” The symbol of Christianity is the Roman Empire’s instrument of torture and execution—the Cross. American Christians should wear the lethal hypodermic needle as it modern symbol today. The Christian is asked to imitated the life of Christ--the Christian Pattern-- not worship the instruments of death whether it is a cross, a gun, a guillotine, a hypodermic needle, an electric chair, or a rope. Capital punishment is the remedy for crime in a completely dehumanized authoritarian society. Capital punishment is anti-Christ. Christianity practiced in America is by and large a massive hypocritical self-righteous fraud.

Christianity is antithetical to murdering “uncivilized races.” Schleiermacher is an anti-imperialist—that is to say, America’s foreign policy since its inception as a nation:

“Christianity knows nothing of a right to civilize uncivilized races by means of force. It insists upon the avoidance of everything by which the Christian name might be blasphemed among the nations (i Tim. vi. I   Tit. ii. 5-8) ; and by nothing has it been more blasphemed than by oppression. We rightly wonder how it is that Christians live in intercourse for centuries with pagan peoples without exciting in them any friendly disposition towards Christianity. But the reason of this is to be sought for, not so much in the circumstance that Christian people have no interest in Christianity, as in the fact that Christianity has made itself hated and contemptible through its deeds of violence. Were it not for this, those plastic races with whom it came in contact fifteen centuries ago would have long since been Christianized. That they are now only partially so is a standing disgrace to the Christian name”(Munro, p. 276).

The United States is responsible for the torture and murder of some 250,000 Latin Americans during the 1980s American/Contra death squad inquisition. Many were professing Catholic Christians that are to this day being discovered in mass graves throughout Central America. Those government officials responsible for this mass murder of Catholic Christians have gleefully returned to U.S. government seats of power to duplicate the atrocities of the American/Contra death squads in Venezuela in a publicly admitted effort to seize its natural resources.

The Latent Church​

"Plato told Aristotle no one should make more than five times the pay of the lowest member of society. J.P. Morgan said 20 times. Jesus advocated a negative differential - that's why they killed him." – Graef Crystal

First century Christianity emerged from Christ’s pacifist liberal protest against established orthodox belief. According to first century Christians, by rejecting dogmatic authority, he was fulfilling the true meaning and purpose of Judaic Orthodoxy of his time. This protest also extended to the State’s claim to power and authority. We see this historical cycle of autonomy and new heteronomy over and over again in the secular and religious realms. Christianity first appeared as a critique of authority. Christ was a heretic of the orthodoxy of his time. Christianity is a Jewish religious heresy and qualifies as a cult in Hebrew theology.

Christianity loses its authenticity to the degree it submits, or surrenders, to the dogmatism of orthodoxy. The Roman Emperor Constantine I was converted to Christianity in 312 A.D. and with his Edict of Milan (313 A.D.) he ended the persecution of Christians. Emperor Theodosius later declared Christianity the official religion of the Rome Empire in 382 A.D. Christianity was truly conquered when it became the official religion of the Roman State. This integration of Church and State is called “Constantinism” and prepared the way for the Medieval Inquisitions—and there were many. After the integrating process of Constantinism, authentic Christianity is then transformed into uncritical conformist “Christendom.”

It is exactly this “Mass” Christianity, or religion of the Crowd, that Soren Kierkegaard aimed ten polemical tracks, published collectively as “Attack Against Christendom.” Kierkegaard attacked Denmark’s State Church by calling it corrupt, and an “illusion” of Christianity. In Denmark during Kierkegaard’s life it was illegal for anyone but a Christian to own a whorehouse.

There is more recognition of first century New Testament Christian principles in secular Progressive society than in the today’s organized churches of the Christian Right-Wing. The organized Christian Right-Wing has become a church of idolatrous religious nationalists. With American Progressives and Secular Humanists re-emphasizing human empathy and the social duties of Christianity, they have become an external latent church of conscience. This latent church is based on the universality of moral principles:

"Well, there is an elementary moral principal which is called the principal of universality. The principal says if something is right for us it's right for others [if] it's wrong for others it's wrong for us. If you can't accept that principal, you should have the decency to shut up. So either you accept that principal or you say O.K. I'm a Nazi. I'll do anything I like, no more discussion of right and wrong. Those are the choices in effect." -- Noam Chomsky

Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was a German born American theologian. He taught theology at the University of Berlin, Marburg, Dresden, Frankfurt and Leipzig. Tillich among the first to oppose the Nazis movement and was the first non-Jewish professor to be dismissed from the German University system by the Nazis. The Nazi’s targets where those they labeled with carefully crafted propagandistic names such as “liberals,” “leftists,” “communists,” and “humanist.” Tillich fled Nazi Germany and was accepted to teach at the Union Theological Seminary in the United States and he brought with him the trauma and historical memory of the fascists invading German society and churches by bribery, force, and deception. History is repeating itself now in American society.

One of the many egregious crimes of Nazi fascism was its crude and profane entry into the realm of spiritual consciousness. This historical experience of fascism influenced Tillich’s philosophical thought and theological writings throughout the rest of his life and appear in his own personal political choices and commentary. He comprehended the disappointment and alienation individuals in modern secular society developed toward the organized church because of its moral failure to wholly resist demonic fascism in its capitalistic (Italy) and socialistic (German) forms.

The Catholic and Protestant churches competed for Nazi favoritism in the hope of securing the monopoly of managing the Germany's public educational system. This same struggle is happening is the American school system. The Catholic Church won the prize only because it was more organized and centralized than the Protestant Churches. This moral failure of organized Christianity submitting to Hitler has damaged it credibility for almost a hundred years. And it appears to be happening once again today, but in a collapsing corrupt American society. The atheists have a sound moral case to despise organized Christianity given its poor track record of supporting tyranny throughout the centuries. Anti-religious sentiment is completely understandable given its disgusting tendency of joining tyrannical forces in times of crisis:

“It will not do to designate as non-churchly all those, who have become alienated from the organized Churches and traditional creeds. My life in these groups for half a generation showed me how much latent Church there is in them: the experience of the finite character of human existence; the quest for the eternal and the unconditioned, an absolute devotion to justice and love; a hope which is more than any Utopia; an appreciation of Christian values; and a most delicate apprehension of the ideological misuse of Christianity in the Church and State. It often seemed to me as if the latent Church, which I found in these groups, were a truer church than the organized Churches, because its members did not assume to be in possession of the truth”(The Interpretation of History by Paul Tillich, 8, On the Boundary Between Church and Society).

 
Paul Tillich recounts Nazism and Religious Nationalism in Germany during the 1930s and how some “Christians” cooperated with them. The Christian Socialists tried to warn of the coming danger, but the warnings were ignored because they were merely religious socialists:

“Those possessed of demons in the New Testament know more about Jesus than those who are normal, but they know it as a condemnation of themselves in their condition of cleft-consciousness. The Ancient Church called the Roman Imperial Government demonic, because it made itself equal to God, and yet prayed for the Emperor and gave thanks for civic peace, which he assured. In a similar way religious Socialism attempted to show that Capitalism and Nationalism were demonic powers, insofar as they were at the same time sustaining and destructive, attributing divinity to their highest values. The development of European Nationalism [Nazism] and its religious interpretation of itself has fully confirmed this diagnosis of mine”(Paul Tillich, The Interpretation of History ).

Just as it is happening today in America, nationalism emerged in Nazi Germany with the patina of Christian symbolism—and it was only symbolism. All nationalism is a violation of the most “fundamental” principle of New Testament Christianity—the sin of idolatry:

"Idolatry is the elevation of a preliminary concern to ultimacy. Something essentially partial is boosted into universality, and something essentially finite is given infinite significance. The best example is the contemporary idolatry of religious nationalism"(Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, p.13).

Nation States are well aware of the tendency of organized religion to join in bigotry against an agreed upon enemy and exploit tribal feelings with agitation propaganda. Agitation propaganda is also called "Vertical propaganda" since it originates from the leaders of a regime. Fascism is a top-down revolution pretending to be populism--a very selective populism. Nation States use rape, torture, violence, religion, and theism as weapons of war to encourage proxy religious wars for worldwide profit and power. Valuing cultural diversity and tolerance in society is an obstacle to this use of state power.

Capitalism is essentially a demonic enterprise:

”But real demonry—if this word is to have any special content---occurs only in connection with a positive, sustaining, creative-destructive power...This is true also of the last great demonry of the present, nationalism.... National things receive sacral untouchability and ritual dignity. But just there demonization begins. With the creative-supporting forces, destructive ones combine: the lie with which the self-righteousness of one nation distorts the true picture of its own and foreign reality; the violation, which makes other nations an object whose own essence and independent might is despised and downtrodden; the murder, which in the name of the g-d pledged to the nation is consecrated to holy war. Beyond this, it is the peculiarity of the national demonry of our time that it has subjected itself to capitalism. The nations entered the World War as capitalistic groups of power; and the chief bearers of the will for war were at the same time the bearers of the capitalistic domination in their own nation; not from any personal demonry, but themselves supported by the demonic figure of capitalism which they represent. Thus the social demonry of the present is revealed in its duality, in its immense supporting and destructive strength. Shattered for a moment, it is at present on the point of re-establishing itself, in order better to sustain and—better to destroy”(The Interpretation of History by Paul Tillich.I: The Demonic).

Martin Buber, an existentialist theologian, tried to counter the rising fascist tide by arguing that the doctrine of fallen man cannot be used to justify establishing a Police State. Crime is often the proxy issue for establishing a fascist state: 

“In a famous polemic with Friedrich Gogarten, written during the early days of the Nazi regime and published in Germany in 1936, Buber tries to define the political implications of human sinfulness. Gogarten, following a pseudo-Lutheran line, justifies the authoritarian state on the ground that man is "radically and irrevocably evil, that is, in the grip of evil," and therefore must be kept in rigorous control by the state. Buber denies this conclusion, and points out that even in Gogarten's own theology, man stands in "radical evil" only before God, because "God is God and man is man and the distance between them is absolute." Over against his fellow men and society, however, "man cannot properly be described as simply sinful because the distance is lacking which alone is able to establish the unconditional." Gogarten’s justification of the authoritarian state is, therefore, invalid; indeed, Buber generalizes, "no legitimate use can be made in political theory of the concept of human sinfulness" (The Writings of Martin Buber, Meridian, 1959, by Will Herberg, p. 67).

After living through the rise of Nazism in Germany in which there were 80 million casualties worldwide and witnessing the church’s sickening moral failure to resist the demonic forces of nationalism, Paul Tillich concluded, “All institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic.”

The Curse

And the people went into their hide, they oh

From the start they didn't know exactly why, why

Winter came and made it so all look alike, look alike

Underneath the grass would grow, aiming at the sky 

It was swift, it was just, another wave of a miracle 

But no one, nothing at all would go for the kill 

If they called on every soul in the land on the move 

Only then would they know a blessing in disguise 

The curse ruled from the underground down by the shore 

And their hope grew with a hunger to live unlike before 

The curse ruled from the underground down by the shore 

And their hope grew with a hunger to live unlike before 

Tell me now of the very souls that look alike, look alike 

Do you know the stranglehold covering their eyes? 

If I call on every soul in the land on the move 

Tell me if I'll ever know a blessing in disguise