Alienation: The state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved. (ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin alienatio(n-), from the verb alienare ‘estrange,’ from alienus.)
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From the review of Eric Voegelin’s The Ecumenic Age
“The process of history, and such order as can be discerned in it”, says Voegelin, “is not a story to be told from the beginning to its happy, or unhappy, end; it is a mystery in process of revelation”. The Ecumenic Age – the age when the great religions, especially Christianity, originated – denotes a period in the history of mankind that roughly extends from the rise of the Persian Empire to the fall of the Roman. “An epoch in history was marked indeed when the societies which had differentiated the truth of existence through revelation and philosophy succumbed, in pragmatic history, to new societies of the imperial type”.
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A thought occurred to me this morning in spin class: If our modern conception of religion arose in conditions where remote and overwhelmingly powerful governments prevented citizens from taking responsibility for their own political fate and forced them instead to find meaning apart from the realm of political action, is it possible that religion (as we have come to conceive it) assumes and reinforces an essentially alienated stance toward government? That is, do Ecumenic religions by the way they frame collectivity and individuality encourage political non-involvement and passivity and treat political leadership as radically other?
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Perhaps government that wishes to operate as an empire (with a distinct leadership class and a alienated and submissive citizenry) and Ecumenic Age religions (which treat government as an irresistible dominating force beneath which one’s best strategy is alienated parallel coexistance as an individual or a member of a counterculture) are symbiotic.
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Was original Christianity just a form of Judaism giving up once and for all on Jewish political autonomy? Before Paul’s evangelical mission Christianity was a Jewish movement. But in its response to political alienation – radical political resignation paired with radical self-responsibility, and meaning rooted in the individual soul supported by a counterculture – Christianity’s appeal became so universally compelling its spread beyond the Jews was inevitable.
Who could be a more qualified incubator for this vision of religion than a people who struggled and survived repeated enslavement and liberation?
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It is true that many Christians are fervent defenders of democracy, but it is not at all clear that what these Christians are electing is a president, a fellow citizen raised for a time to preside over our self-government by-the-people-for-the-people.
It appear what they wish to elect is something more like a temporary Emperor. Under this kind of order their Christian subculture continues to make sense. If they can’t have their Emperor, no problem. Now they can have something even more to their liking: a Big Government to oppress them and to provide material for innumerable lone voices crying in unison in the wilderness.
Whether they win and elect an Emperor or lose and find themselves oppressed by Big Government, the Ghost of the Roman Empire never fails to appear and to provide a reality-reinforcing antithesis to their Holy Ghost.