Rome’s Conquest of the Political Imagination:

Church, State, and Why Freedom Has Never Been Dared

Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than
freedom.
–The Grand Inquisitor

Since the conversion of Emperor Constantine, the pursuit of and resistance to human freedom
has not ceased to dominate the political imagination of the West. Numerous revolutions
dismantling the first Christian Roman Emperor’s “great synthesis” manifest this obsession.

The Protestant Reformation fractured the Holy Roman Empire into various colonialisms
(imperial in reach, but without the need for a contiguous geography). The Enlightenment and
market reasoning gave rise to secular nation states (and ‘economic colonialism’). Now, through
the rise (and hastening reign) of ‘technocratic globalism’, we find ourselves staring into a post-
national age. Yet a fundamentally Roman essence remains. Whereas once it was necessary to
insert a bishop or colonial governor to ensure political (trade) stability, nations can now send
CEOs. The nexus of political power has become more decentralized and transparently more
economic.

Religious belief is also more decentralized. Pre-Constantinian Rome has been making a
comeback. Where once (before Christendom) there existed a varied array of gods, there now
exists western pluralism and multiculturalism (after Christendom). Today’s most obvious
‘Constantinians’, to be found in corners of the Vatican and American organizations like The
Christian Coalition (or Al-Qaeda, for that matter), pine after a time when religious faith was not
only more predominant and homogenous, but politically central, even axiomatic to a view of the
cosmos. However, today’s cultural logic dictates that religious faith is simply one choice in a vast
marketplace - by no means necessary, and perhaps even anachronistic.

Democracy is the current attempt to fill the legitimation void created by secularity’s movement
beyond theology. Consolidations of ideology, however, are no less evident in a secular
government than in history’s more blatant examples of theocracy. For a secular democracy to be
truly secular, the people themselves must be converted to Enlightenment views of church and
state. Hamas is a perfect example of the ability of an ‘un-converted’ democracy to thwart
secularity’s aims. America’s ‘Religious Right’ is another such example. ‘Secular proselytism’, on
the other hand, can be seen at work in the privatization of religious belief – itself a historical
novelty. John F. Kennedy could not have won the U.S. Presidency had he not assured voters that
his Catholicism was a private matter and not a determinant of his public policy. A desire to retain
cultural influence throughout the ascent of secularism has given rise to veritable conversions of the
nature of religious belief. Those not wishing to convert to this secularism, like Osama bin Laden
in extreme cases, react as many persons throughout history have always reacted when feeling
culturally or ideologically coerced: with violence.

‘Religion’ is often too easy a target, however, for conflicts that belong squarely within the realm of
realpolitik. Certain antagonists towards religion would have one believe that Protestants and
Catholics in Northern Ireland fought tooth and nail over the Rosary and the Five Points of
Calvinism, as opposed, say, to the availability of running water. Oddly enough, many opponents
and proponents of religion alike believe that Sunnis and Shias in Baghdad are warring over the
status of Ali ibn Abi Talib, as distinct from the question of who is profiting most from
transnational (western) corporations. The current so-called ‘war on terrorism’ is deeply in need of
pragmatic analysis. Religious fanaticism is a reality, but so is the distribution of power, wealth
and resources - and fanatics need not be pious.
 Rome’s Conquest of the Political Imagination:
Church, State, and Why Freedom Has Never Been Dared

In our secular age, a new faith has taken the place of the Christianity. The Market. Believers and
atheists alike can pray at that church. The market is humanity’s current failed attempt at a notion
of freedom. Concepts of market agency may vary – individuals, corporations, nations – but the
governing dynamics are identical to all previous Roman collusions of religion and government.
Consolidation of belief and maintenance of power through militarism. Thomas Friedman is sadly correct
about the hidden fist behind the hidden hand of the market. Western exploits have always depended upon
the willingness of the working classes to sacrifice themselves at the altars of the powerful few -
from the crossing of the Rubicon, to the Crusades, to Abu Ghraib. Consolidated powers, from
Hitler to Halliburton, can do nothing without willing bodies.

In Chekhov’s The Seagull, Konstantin (aptly named) cries out: “We need new forms!” Why must
the Roman wedding of religion and militarism (whether polytheist, Christian, or Secular)
dominate tomorrow’s political imagination? Fact: The Hebrews, an archetypal ‘religious’ community, once
lived as an internally self-regulating people with no king - no state. The ‘Quietism’ of Grand Ayatollah Ali
Sistani represents a similarly fruitful religious-political arrangement. Fact: In 2002, Germany
approved 153,000 applications for conscientious objection and 112,378 applications for alternate service. Had
European Christians actually cared more about their faith than their state, Hitler would have had
no armies with which to conquer.

To imagine new political possibilities, our secular age must move beyond the market economy
and the Roman commoditization of human persons into soldiers. We must reject the proselytism
required of Roman forms of government - oaths of allegiance must be eradicated. The
disempowered of all countries must be permitted to learn that they need not kill each other at the
behest of passing aristocracies. Were I prophet, similar to those who told the Hebrews they
needed no king, I would reformulate certain sentiments of T.S. Eliot to accord with our secular
(market) age:

The secular (market) experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming
the time: so that humanity may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization,
and save the world from suicide.

Perhaps more than another transformation of the state, we require the transformation of
individuals willing to be freed from the state: transnational networks of varied social arrangements;
particularly those arrangements willing to endeavor the vulnerability required of genuine human
relations – arrangements freed of militarism and the caprice of borders. In other words, we must
imagine feminine possibilities for tomorrow’s social arrangements – arrangements not wedded to
the Roman patriarchal will-to-power. Spiritual communities may actually represent our most
viable future. In any case, Konstantin was correct: we need new forms.

– Joshua Casteel