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Imperial Christianity sounds foreign within the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and rightly so. Whatever it is (for starters, a Christian faith adopted and promoted by an emperor), it is certainly not part of the experience of conservative American Presbyterians in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It evokes at best memories of Constantine, Charlemagne, and maybe Charles V (the Holy Roman Emperor at the time of the Protestant Reformation). Most Americans for that matter do not spend much time thinking about empire. They may have learned about the Roman Empire and the Pax Romana of the first two centuries of the Christian era, but the habits of modern politics—liberalism, democracy, and republicanism—run decidedly counter to imperialism. Some Orthodox Presbyterians may be inclined to hope for a godly president of the United States or governor of a home state. But that longing rarely rises above pious thinking because the OPC lacks the size and access to political leaders to make a Christian government—imperial, republican, or democratic—realistically possible.
Yet, the fingerprints of imperial Christianity are on the doctrinal standards that Orthodox Presbyterians hold dear. The original version of the Westminster Confession of Faith contained affirmations about civil government that sounded remarkably similar to the relationship that Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, had with the Council of Nicaea, whose creed many Christians are commemorating this year. The twenty-third chapter of the 1647 Confession includes this description of the Christian ruler:
The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven: yet he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed; all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed; and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administrated, and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God.
Although Presbyterians in the United States at their first General Assembly (1789) revised the Confession of Faith to remove this description of the civil magistrate, imperial Christianity had been so much a part of British Protestantism that creedal revision could not easily remove it.
Three elements in the Westminster Confession, originally designed for the Church of England and then adopted in 1647 by the Church of Scotland, provide a useful definition of imperial Christianity. The first is that the magistrate has power to preserve the peace, unity, and purity of the church. Constantine worried that the Roman Empire was splitting apart and hoped Christianity would unite his realm. The Nicene Creed did not unite all Christians in the early church. Some remained outside the empire’s approved church. Arianism, the error that provoked the bishops to define the Trinity, also spread among groups on the periphery of the Roman Empire in the West, especially among Gothic tribes. But Constantine thought that the Council of Nicaea could unite his empire.
The second and third elements of imperial Christianity in chapter 23 of the confession are the authority of the magistrate to call a synod (second) and to preside over an assembly of church officers (third). Constantine actually followed the confession’s description of the magistrate’s power. For starters, he called the Council. Constantine also presided over the bishops called and even though he was new to the Christian faith (if his conversion was genuine), his presence was a definite factor in keeping debate to a minimum among the bishops at the Council of Nicaea. As Eusebius, who wrote a life of Constantine, described the emperor’s role at Nicaea, he “gave patient audience to all alike, and received every proposition with steadfast attention, and . . . gradually disposed even the most vehement disputants to a reconciliation.”
Thirteen centuries later, the king of England, Charles I (king between 1625 and 1649), did not call the Westminster Assembly, nor did he preside over it. In fact, the English parliament was the governing authority that called pastors to rewrite the Church of England’s doctrine and guidelines for worship. Furthermore, when the Assembly convened in 1643, England was going through a revolution in which the king’s and parliament’s armies fought in a protracted civil war. That conflict was all the more reason to hope that the established church might unify English society. Neither parliament nor Charles attended or presided over the Assembly. Even so, readers of the Confession who know the history of the Council of Nicaea and Constantine’s hand in its meeting and statement cannot help but be struck by similarity between what English Protestants taught about the civil magistrate and what happened at Nicaea in 325. Chapter 23 described both what happened at Nicaea in the fourth century and at London thirteen centuries later.
Seventeenth-century England is not remote history to American Presbyterians the way fourth-century Asia Minor may be. The England that hosted the Westminster Assembly was the same imperial power responsible for establishing colonies in North America where Irish and Scottish Presbyterians settled and built churches. Established in 1634, Maryland was governed by the Roman Catholic Calvert family, but the colony needed settlers and opened its territories to Presbyterians like Francis Makemie, who established churches there in the 1680s and 1690s. Other Presbyterians settled in Pennsylvania, founded in 1681, as part of Charles II’s expansion of English presence in the New World. William Penn, the colony’s first governor, received the territory from the king, thanks to service his father had rendered to Charles II. English territories in North America, including the maritime colonies that became part of Canada, provided a home to Presbyterians who confessed the doctrines elaborated by the Westminster Assembly. The expansion of Presbyterianism to North America would not have occurred if not for the Christian imperialism of the English (later British) Empire.
The role of the civil magistrate, whether imperial or parliamentary, raises an awkward question for Protestants who often advocate and affirm that the church is healthier without a meddling government. Instances of the state interference in church affairs are not difficult to find in Scottish church history. The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (1733), and the Free Church of Scotland (1843) are two examples of Presbyterians leaving the state church for the sake of ecclesiastical integrity.
Still, if the English Parliament had not called the Westminster Assembly, would Presbyterians have doctrinal standards on the order of the Confession of Faith and Catechisms? Some other assembly of Scottish or English Presbyterians may have decided to meet and generate doctrine, church polity, and guides for worship. If they had, their documents would not likely have attained the stature that comes with the imprimatur of the civil magistrate. The same point applies to Nicaea, even more so. Would the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant churches have the same standard of Trinitarian orthodoxy without a Roman emperor, no matter how shaky his profession, convening a council and then adding his stamp of approval to the bishops’ creed? Of course, God gave Scripture to the church without needing a civil magistrate to make it acceptable or authoritative, though the King James Bible does indicate that civil magistrates add stature even to the Word of God. Either way, the spread of Christianity around the world owed greatly, even if not exclusively, to emperors who fought wars against rivals and controlled territories.
This author is not sure what the reassuring answer is to the question of, Where would the church be without imperial Christianity? Church history has too many cases of churches suffering from a cozy relationship with powerful rulers. That same history also indicates that Christianity became a global faith because emperor and monarchs sponsored territorial and demographic expansion that made church planting possible in lands far removed from Jerusalem, Corinth, Ephesus, or Rome. Perhaps the way to resolve the dilemma is to remember that what the apostle Paul called, “the fullness of time,” when Christ came to earth and accomplished salvation for his people, was also the early stages of the Roman Empire. This was the same governing authority that supplied relative peace and stability to parts of the middle east, North Africa, and Europe during the first four centuries after Christ’s ascension. Of course, that was the same empire responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Those two sides of the Roman Empire, persecution of Christians and social order for evangelism and church planting, underscore the mixed blessing of imperial Christianity. It both aided and opposed the gospel that pastors, evangelists, and missionaries proclaimed. That is a reason to avoid both celebrating and sneering at imperial Christianity.
The author, an OP elder, is professor of history at Hillsdale College.
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