The United States prides itself on several principles that are important to the foundation of how politics are conducted in this country. One of the most important parts of our lives is the US Constitution. This document is embedded in everything regarding how we relate ourselves to our government. The United States has a Bill of Rights that guarantees several important rights and privileges. One of those rights is the right to religious liberty. The American citizen is given the liberty to choose whatever religion he or she chooses. The government is not in the business of involving itself in the business of religion; that is up to individual citizens and denominations to decide. What the government is in the business of is maintaining the separation of church and state.
The colonists who ended up colonizing what would become the 13 colonies had many reasons for settling there. Some came with the aim of creating a new life for themselves. Others came for religious liberty, which was very important to them. The United States Constitution and its emphasis on religious tolerance were based on the constitutions and laws of the colonies. Thomas Jefferson would play an important role in developing his home state of Virginia’s legislation on religious liberty. This would allow for religious liberty to be put into the lifeblood of the country. One could decide how and why they would worship and, ideally, there would be no government interference.
Of course, the United States was founded on ideals, and it has not always been able to live up to those ideals. The country was founded by mainly Protestant-observing citizens; there was plenty of prejudice against Catholics in the country. This would dissipate over many decades until the 1960s, when the country would elect its first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy. The religious minority of the Mormon community faced discrimination and religious proscriptions in the 19th century until being able to integrate into the fold as fully-fledged citizens. Today, America faces many issues with its various religious minorities and how to integrate them, just as it did back then. However, what unites these previous phases of American religious life is that the government generally does not involve itself in religious matters. Religion in the United States is protected by the Bill of Rights, and people have the right to worship as they see necessary in their lives.
However, these ideals were not always present in countries across the globe. Most governments before the 18th century tended to focus upon the infusion of religious power and the state. The Bronze Age civilizations of the Hittites, Egyptians, and Assyrians all had priests who were important and interacted with the political machinery of the state. With the Roman Empire rising to power in the Mediterranean in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE, the empire represented a great variety of religious beliefs and deities. The Roman Empire tended to be quite tolerant of many of these religions, as long as they respected the power of the Roman Emperor, who had his own religious cult.
Christianity, from the moment it appeared in the religious marketplace of the empire, represented a troubling dilemma for the Roman state. It was a religion that had anti-imperial teachings and did not respect the power of the state. This was clearly a religious belief akin to treason in the minds of the Roman governors. It was persecuted for centuries, leading to many religious martyrdoms that would become important stories in the Christian canon.
Eventually, in the 4th century, Christianity was legalized by the Roman state and quickly became the state religion of the empire. This is one of the most consequential decisions in history, and Christianity would eventually spread from the empire’s cities to many nations and states around the globe. However, unlike in the United States, religion remained important in its infusion with the political structure; this would be even more important by the time the Eastern Roman Empire was the only Roman state left standing after the great barbarian invasions of the 5th century.
The Eastern Roman Empire, or later known as the Byzantine Empire, was an empire that did not believe in the concept of the separation of church and state. Ever since Emperor Theodosius II’s edict that Christianity was the state religion, religion had been at the center of political power. The emperor was a representative of the Christian God on Earth, and he was expected to act in accordance with His will. This was quite different from how the US president conducts his affairs; he is expected to engage in religious practice as a private matter and not to infuse that into his daily routine. The Byzantine or Eastern Roman Emperor was a totally different beast; the religion of Christianity was infused into politics, and the emperor was expected to engage in important religious debates with the religious officials of his time.
These two ways of handling religion are separated by hundreds of years of change and evolution. In the United States, I am glad that I live in a system that creates an atmosphere of religious tolerance and a separation of church and state. However, it is important to learn about how different systems operate in comparison to ours so that we can try to understand how cultures differ around the globe. I believe that Americans tend to have a certain arrogance about them, assuming that the globe thinks like they do. This is what leads to quagmires in the Middle East and Central Asia. We need to learn about history before we start to meddle in the internal affairs of other cultures around the globe.
Byzantine-Empire.com 