A Russian Un-Orthodox Church

I had just begun serving my second call- a two-point parish in rural Iowa- when Operation Desert Storm, also known as the First Gulf War, broke out. 

Those who have born in the interim probably need some background. It was a time very different from today. It was a moment at which the American people were remarkably united. President George H.W. Bush (the elder of the two presidents of that name) enjoyed a 90% approval rating. And if ever there was a just war, this was it.

Iraq, led by Sadaam Hussein, had invaded and annexed a wealthy but peaceful neighbor, Kuwait. It was a classical case of aggression, and the entire world responded with outrage. The United States led an international coalition of nations in waging a brief, victorious war that quickly liberated Kuwait and forced Sadaam to sue for peace. Tens of thousands of Iraqis died, but coalition losses numbered only in the hundreds.

Although we easily could have forced Sadaam from power, the elder Bush avoided the mistake his son would make, realizing that without Sadaam Iraq would descend into chaos. Instead, Sadaam was forced to agree to let Kuwait alone and to destroy weapons of mass destruction he admitted having and had even used against his own citizens, Kurdish rebels in the north who had wanted their own independent state. This destruction was to take place under Allied supervision.

He never met that requirement and spent the interval between the two Gulf Wars avoiding inspection of facilities in Iraq where the weapons everyone knew he had could be stored and new ones could be developed, defying over a dozen UN resolutions in the process. It was this that would set the stage for the Second Gulf War.

But all that was in the future. Operation Desert Storm was a war unlike any we had fought before or have fought since. It was almost universally popular (though s small number of folks on the extreme left opposed it), There were few casualties. And amazingly, it had almost the aspect of a sporting event. The entire nation tuned in to CNN and watched the good guys beating the bad guys in prime time. It later turned out that there was a great deal of misinformation handed out; the Patriot missile, which subsequent data revealed to have been something of a dud,  seemed at the time to be an invincible defense against Iraqi SCUD unguided missiles, and several alleged interceptions of SCUDS by Patriots were broadcast live to the nation.

Desert Storm was a classic exercise in military strategy that would be studied in service academies all over the world for decades. Gen. Colin Powell, later the younger Bush's Secretary of State, was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He and Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, the actual commander of the Allied forces,  became national heroes, and Queen Elizabeth bestowed an honorary knighthood on Gen. Schwartzkopf, who responded that he was used to being addressed as "General, sir," but not as "Sir General!" A huge buildup of Allied troops poised for an amphibious invasion from the East drew the Iraqi defenses there, but the attack from the sea never came. Instead, Allied forces swept in from the West and liberated Kuwait almost without opposition.

Our congregations prayed for our soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen regularly, and closed every Sunday service during the war with the 1940 version of Eternal Father, Strong to Save. But some members came to me with a request that we do a "patriotic service" on a Sunday evening besides. I was a little reluctant because I knew what a dangerous thing it can be to identify God and country too closely. It's something Americans are at times all too ready to do, even to the point of misrepresenting history to portray Deist or agnostic Founding Fathers as orthodox, evangelical Protestants.  A healthy relationship between Church and State resists confusing the two, not simply to avoid sectarian doctrine inappropriately interjecting itself into public policy but even more important to preserve the Church's prophetic responsibility to call the State to account if necessary,. When God and country are identified too closely, the State isn't sanctified, but deified, with potential consequences as disastrous as they are idolatrous.

Maybe it's my Lutheran sensitivity to the distinction between the Two Kingdoms (which, contrary to a common misunderstanding, are not Church and State per se but the spiritual realm of love and grace and the Gospel on one hand,  and the earthly realm of rules and coercion and the Law on the other).  Maybe it's my emphatic opposition for theological reasons to prayer in public schools, born of a reluctance to have people of faiths other than those of their parents involved in the religious training of children and reinforced by the experience of being part of a group that was led in the "Hail Mary" at a public community college. Or perhaps it's my awareness of how easily we Americans can unintentionally deify the nation. But this has always been a sore spot for me. I've never pushed it because it's apt to be misunderstood, but even the American flag in the front of the church really ought to be outside the altar rail; the space inside it is God's "turf," and no symbol of any other loyalty- however God-pleasing- has any business sharing it.

With great care, we managed to avoid having a church service in which we worshipped the United States. Instead, we had a service of prayer and supplication for our troops and for the vindication of God's justice in the Gulf. Everybody was happy.

But the temptation to "bless the canons" is as much an error as pacifism. It's all too easy to end up worshipping the nation rather than God and not even realizing it. God must always be unmistakably our highest loyalty, and even our loyalty to our country must be subordinate to it if we are going to avoid violating the First Commandment. In any theoretical conflict between the two loyalties, Scripture is clear: we "ought to obey God rather than men."

That's why my eyebrow rose a bit when I learned of a $100 million church that was built in Russia to be a kind of cathedral for the use of the nation's armed forces. There's nothing at all inappropriate in that, other than the fact that the government appears to be paying for it. The Church ought not to be beholden to the government!

We have stained glass windows in American churches depicting Washington and Lincoln and all manner of figures from our history. None of them were perfect, It's not clear that either Washington or Lincoln were actually Christians in their personal theology, though they were certainly theists who held the Bible in high regard.  I can't get too upset about that.

But this church had mosaic depictions of Vladimir Putin and... Josef Stalin! In a church? Stalin, a persecutor of the Church, and one of the great mass murderers of history, whose victims included some 80,000 Orthodox priests? The amount of blood on Putin's hands is smaller, but still enough reason why he shouldn't be depicted. And, to his credit, Patriarch Kirill has demanded that the mosaics of Putin and Stalin be removed. Apparently, even Putin himself felt that they were over the top.

But iron church steps built from melted enemy weapons of war, like the Iron Throne in Game of Thrones? Spires designed to look like missiles, or perhaps shells? To remember the fallen is one thing. To give thanks to God for deliverance from the power of an evil enemy is perfectly appropriate. To express gratitude for blessings extended in God's Kingdom of the Left Hand is absolutely proper. But there comes a point when one wonders whether it's the Prince of Peace the building is meant to glorify.

As the author of the article linked to above, an Orthodox believer and an expert on Byzantine architecture, observes, this church seems to be built not to glorify God, but rather to glorify the State. It seems to be a good example of what can happen when our loyalties to our country and to our Creator and Redeemer are allowed to melt into one another.  The author says that this is simply not an Orthodox church.

As a Lutheran, I recognize that the Word of God was proclaimed even in the sewers of Rome. It does not depend on appropriate surroundings to be effective. But I have to share the author's concern about the degree to which it's appropriate. At least in terms of the symbolism, an issue arises as to whether this can be called a Christian church of any kind, as opposed to a temple of a deified Russia.

A cautionary tale for us Americans. I don't expect anything similar to happen here any time soon. But it does provide a salutary warning about the danger of identifying God and country too closely in our minds. When that happens, the nation tends to end up being glorified rather than God, and one of God's greatest blessings-in our case, a free country- can easily become an idol.