Christianity Democracy And The Shadow Of Constantine

Winner of the 2017 Alpha Sigma Nu Award The collapse of communism in eastern Europe has forced traditionally Eastern Orthodox countries to consider the relationship between Christianity and liberal democracy. Contributors examine the influence of Constantinianism in both the post-communist Orthodox world and in Western political theology. Constructive theological essays feature Catholic and Protestant theologians reflecting on the relationship between Christianity and democracy, as well as Orthodox theologians reflecting on their tradition’s relationship to liberal democracy. The essays explore prospects of a distinctively Christian politics in a post-communist, post-Constantinian age.

A collection of essays by Orthodoxy, Catholic, and Protestant scholars on Christianity's relationship to liberal democracy and the legacy of Emperor Constantine for Christian political thought.

The category of the “West” has played a particularly significant role in the modern Eastern Orthodox imagination. It has functioned as an absolute marker of difference from what is considered to be the essence of Orthodoxy and, thus, ironically has become a constitutive aspect of the modern Orthodox self. The essays collected in this volume examine the many factors that contributed to the “Eastern” construction of the “West” in order to understand why the “West” is so important to the Eastern Christian’s sense of self.

A bold rereading of Augustinian thought for a world still haunted by slavery Over the last two decades, scholars have made a striking return to the resources of the Augustinian tradition to theorize citizenship, virtue, and the place of religion in public life. However, these scholars have not sufficiently attended to Augustine's embrace of the position of the Christian slaveholder. To confront a racialized world, the modern Augustinian tradition of political thought must reckon with its own entanglements with the afterlife of the white Christian master. Drawing Augustine's politics and the resources of modern Black thought into extended dialogue, Matthew Elia develops a critical analysis of the enduring problem of the Christian master, even as he presses toward an alternative interpretation of key concepts of ethical life--agency, virtue, temporality--against and beyond the framework of mastery. Amid democratic crises and racial injustice on multiple fronts, the book breathes fresh life into conversations on religion and the public square by showing how ancient and contemporary sources at once clash and converge in surprising ways. It imaginatively carves a path forward for the enduring humanities inquiry into the nature of our common life and the perennial problem of social and political domination.

Uniquely authoritative and wide-ranging in its scope, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church is the indispensable reference work on all aspects of the Christian Church. It contains over 6,500 cross-referenced A-Z entries, and offers unrivalled coverage of all aspects of this vast and often complex subject, from theology; churches and denominations; patristic scholarship; and the bible; to the church calendar and its organization; popes; archbishops; other church leaders; saints; and mystics. In this new edition, great efforts have been made to increase and strengthen coverage of non-Anglican denominations (for example non-Western European Christianity), as well as broadening the focus on Christianity and the history of churches in areas beyond Western Europe. In particular, there have been extensive additions with regards to the Christian Church in Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, and Australasia. Significant updates have also been included on topics such as liturgy, Canon Law, recent international developments, non-Anglican missionary activity, and the increasingly important area of moral and pastoral theology, among many others. Since its first appearance in 1957, the ODCC has established itself as an essential resource for ordinands, clergy, and members of religious orders, and an invaluable tool for academics, teachers, and students of church history and theology, as well as for the general reader.

The first volume of its kind, Christianity and Constitutionalism explores the contribution of Christianity to constitutional law and constitutionalism as viewed from the perspectives of history, law, and theology. The authors examine a wide range of key figures, including Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Moses, Martin Luther, and Roger Williams, offering innovative and thoughtful analyses of the relationship between religious thought and constitutional law. Part I features contributions from historians and is focused on the historical influence of Christianity on constitutionalism, recounting how the relationship between the Christian faith and fundamental ideas about law, justice, and government has evolved from era to era. Part II offers the analyses of constitutional lawyers, focusing on the normative implications of Christianity for particular themes or topics in constitutional law. The chapters in this section orbit around several central doctrines and principles of this field--including sovereignty, the rule of law, democracy, the separation of powers, human rights, conscience, and federalism--evaluating them from a range of Christian perspectives. Part III rounds out the study with theologians focused on particular Christian doctrines, exploring their constructive and sometimes critical implications for constitutionalism. As a whole, Christianity and Constitutionalism breaks new ground by offering wide-ranging, interdisciplinary contributions to the study of the relationship between the Christian religion and constitutional law.

A distinctive and unrivaled examination of North American Eastern Orthodox Christians and their encounter with the rights revolution in a pluralistic American society. From the civil rights movement of the 1950s to the “culture wars” of North America, commentators have identified the partisans bent on pursuing different “rights” claims. When religious identity surfaces as a key determinant in how the pursuit of rights occurs, both “the religious right” and “liberal” believers remain the focus of how each contributes to making rights demands. How Orthodox Christians in North America have navigated the “rights revolution,” however, remains largely unknown. From the disagreements over the rights of the First Peoples of Alaska to arguments about the rights of transgender persons, Orthodox Christians have engaged an anglo-American legal and constitutional rights tradition. But they see rights claims through the lens of an inherited focus on the dignity of the human person. In a pluralistic society and culture, Orthodox Christians, both converts and those with family roots in Orthodox countries, share with non-Orthodox fellow citizens the challenge of reconciling conflicting rights claims. Those claims do pit “religious liberty” rights claims against perceived dangers from outside the Orthodox Church. But internal disagreements about the rights of clergy and people within the Church accompany the Orthodox Christian engagement with debates over gender, sex, and marriage as well as expanding political, legal, and human rights claims. Despite their small numbers, North American Orthodox remain highly visible and their struggles influential among the more than 280 million Orthodox worldwide. Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution in America offers an historical analysis of this unfolding story.

The subject of this book is politics and religion, the relationship between Constantine and Christianity. Something happened in the reign of the Emperor Constantine that transformed both politics and religion in Europe, and anyone who seeks to understand modern Christianity must analyze this transformation and its consequences. The reign of Constantine is remembered as the victory of Christianity over the Roman Empire; the subtitle of the book indicates a more ominous assessment: "the triumph of ideology." Through a careful analysis of the sources, Dr. Kee argues that Constantine was not in fact a Christian and that the sign in which he conquered was not the cross of Christ but a political symbol of his own making. However, that is only the beginning of the story. For Constantine, religion was part of an imperial strategy, and the second part of this book shows just what that strategy was. Here is the development which marks a transition to a further stage, the way in which by using Christianity for his own ends, Constantine trans­formed it into something completely different. Constantine, Dr. Kee argues, along with his biographer and panegyrist Eusebius, succeeded in replacing the norms of Christ and the early church with the norms of imperial ideology. Why it has been previously thought that Constantine was a Christian is not because what he believed was Christian, but because what he believed came to be called Christian. And that represents "the triumph of ideology."