Religious Power

February 7, 1982
Lakeland

Nietzsche: “Whenever I found the living, there I found the will to power.”

Power is the theme of this month’s Sunday services. The subject is so wide and deep that any treatment of it can be but partial. Power is an inescapable arc in the circle of all human affairs. When one interacts with political and governmental institutions, one must wrestle with power and who has it; when one attempts to confront and interpret human emotions, healthy or unhealthy, one meets feelings of power or powerlessness; when one deals in dollars one comes up against the power of money – who has more and who has less; communication is universal but the nature of what is communicated is determined to a formidable degree by the power to imprint or broadcast a message or attitudes, not necessarily true; when one enters the formal educational process, the power to prescribe curricula and control teachers will influence the values and principles of the learners. History, political science, psychology, economics, communication, pedagogy are predicates for which power is the subject.

What is power? (CJW note: Dict:) The ability whether physical or mental or moral to act. It is the possession of controlling influence over others. But to think of power only as a Machiavellian manipulation is to ignore power as a virtue, a necessary ingredient in the makeup of the autonomous person. Without power, we are not persons in the dimension of what persons can be and ought to be. I like the way Rollo May put it (POWER AND INNOCENCE, p. 20): “Far from treating power only as a term of abuse, one which is applied to our enemies (i.e., they are power driven, but we are motivated only by benevolence, reason, and morality), I use power as a description of a fundamental aspect of the life process ... if we neglect the factor of power, as is the tendency in our day of reaction against the destructive effects of the misuse of power, we shall lose values that are essential to our existence as human.”

At the beginning I quoted Nietzsche, “Wherever I found the living, there I found the will to power.” It has been said that in Nietzsche, Hitler found his philosophical justification for his cruel crusades and lust for power. This is a bad rap for the philosopher because he did not mean that the strong need have any compunction for the weak, but rather power is necessary to self-fulfillment and self-realization.

As Emily Dickinson put it with the poet’s compression and depth:

“To be alive is power,
Existing in itself,
Without a further function
Omnipotence enough.”

What then of religious power? (CJW note: to which I limit myself today) Whether religious power has been a cynical control of human sensibility or a prime ennoblement depends on where we fix the focus of appraisal. For religious power has been both imposed cynical control and prime ennoblement.

I have a personal reminiscence. Many years ago I was in an audience where a Christian minister described the Christian church as the “Power House” transmitting the power of God. He used [as] an extended metaphor the central power plant of a public utility. He was passionate and eloquent, thoroughly inspiring almost everyone in the large audience: Go into a dark room and turn the switch of prayer and the room will be lighted with the power of God. Partake of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and you will be electrified by the reminder of Jesus’ sacrificial, atoning death which saved you, because you cannot save yourself. Read the Bible and there you will feel the current of God’s eternal and unchanging Word. Follow the Ten Commandments and your life will be illuminated because it is God’s revealed way for you, and so on.

Intrigued as I was by this extended, skillful, homiletic metaphor, I reflected in my incorrigible way, then and now, that all metaphors break down. There is not one power-house, but many. When I lived in Lake County, the power came from Sumter Electric; now living here, it is Lakeland Utilities; when I had an office in New York City, the power and light came from Con Edison, and so on, wherever I have lived.

The varieties of power-houses had different fuels to generate power – oil, coal, water, and now nuclear, and to a small degree, solar and wind.

Furthermore, the power houses are subject to human error and natural disaster: power failures, short circuits, blackouts. People die accidentally and on purpose because of the power house, from downed lines to the executioner’s electric chair.

Quite apart from the metaphors, religious power has been, and always will be, both a disaster and a superb quality in the human venture.

For thousands of years, particularly since the beginnings of organized agriculture, “Religion was central in the shaping of early cities and city states. People did not work primarily for their own ends. They obeyed the commands of kings who, in due course of time, become gods themselves.” (Pfeiffer, p. 21) One scholar comments that the role of authoritarian religion was to validate the ever more ambitious plans of those in authority. Rollo May wrote (p. 225), “Gods are, culturally speaking, symbols of our ideal yearnings and visions.... God is the symbol of the power human beings yearn for but do not have.”

Religious organization at its best empowers persons to work together, to sacrifice, to endure in order to make living worth-while and to stand together to establish and maintain human freedom and human dignity. Church, synagogue, congregation – these have been notable examples from the most remote reaches of recorded history.

Moses and his people struggled to move from Egyptian slavery to freedom – the Exodus. [CJW note: Bounded by their religion.]

Churches and monastic institutions led the way in caring for the sick and protecting the travelers – inspired by the ethical precepts of their religion.

The Methodist Church sparked and organized the abolition of slavery in England – united by the call of religion for a more humane order.

On confronting tyranny, persecution, and prejudice, the religious organization has made many gains for the human family.

Learning and education was valued and promoted by synagogue and church.

A free pulpit, where wrong can be condemned and good upheld, represents power to inform and to search for the true. A free pulpit is a privilege achieved at great cost by organized religion.

The ceremonies of religious institutions have provided persons with the power to find meaning in, and to celebrate the great passages of, life – birth, mating, death.

Religious power at its worst contrives to channel that yearning, that vision into unquestioning obedience. Gibbon’s famous aphorism about Roman religion applies widely, “Religions were all considered by the people as equally true, but the philosophers as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.”

The frequency with which such cynicism has been recorded in history is a perennial warning about the perversion of religious power.

Emperor Constantine accepted, organized, and enforced a particular version of Christian orthodoxy in order to strengthen his power and command over the Roman Empire.

The medieval alliance between church and state which suppressed non-conforming beliefs – Joan of Arc, John Hus, Latimer, Ridley, many others – were burned at the stake. [CJW note: 5 names among uncountable thousands]

The Inquisition committed heinous crimes not only to punish accused heretics but also to confiscate property and consolidate power.

There was [the] theocracy of John Calvin at Geneva where control of civic affairs by the religious authority led to the execution of Servetus.

The crimes of Henry VIII, and his daughter Mary, leave bloody pages on English history, although each monarch persecuted a differing set of alleged heretics. [CJW note: The father executed Catholics, the daughter executed Protestants.]

Consider colonial New England where the Puritan theocracy hanged Mary Dyer, a Quaker, on the gallows, and banished Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams.

Thus the wisdom of Lord Acton, based on his painstaking and scholarly studies of history has never ending application: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.... Suspect power more than vice.”

There is the other side of the coin, just as important to us as persons, as citizens: absence of power corrupts also. The dictionary lists antonyms to power: weakness, impotence, feebleness, infirmity. Resonating to Lord Acton’s dictum, Edgar Z. Friedenberg wrote, “All weakness tends to corrupt, and impotence corrupts absolutely.”

If a generalization can be offered, is this not the goal of the physicians of the self to restore power to the individual. By whatever method or school, Freudian, Jungian, Adlerian, transactional analysis and many other varieties, the object is to get us to understand ourselves in order to achieve the power of self. We are helped to restore the power that enables one to say, “I count; I’m a significant being; I’m a person of worth; I may not have the power to change all the world about me, but I have the power within me to deal with the world about me – and not let it change me for the worse.”

Then, too, consider how persons in the worst of times have possessed spirit – a strength from within.

That inner power, or spirit, is not limited to any particular religion, place, or time. Think back on some of the persons you have known, who had the power to see things through in the face of grievous loss, disheartening setback, or catastrophic event.

When I think back on such persons I have known who had that power of inner strength, there is no one outward religious label – Christian, Jew, Hindu, that is a common characteristic. I remember Christians, Jews, Hindus, who possessed that power in the face of outward trials and difficulty. But then, too, one of the most valiant spirits I have ever met was a reverent agnostic.

In the Jewish scripture of Isaiah, that part scholars believe written in the period of Babylonian captivity of the Jews (586-537), the writer is among the exiles who weep for a lost Jerusalem. About them were the temples of other gods – Marduk, Shamash, others. The Temple in Jerusalem, that holiest of places, had been destroyed. Amid such .... Praising his God, the prophet, Isaiah, writes, “He giveth power to the faint and to him that hath no might he increaseth strength.” [Editor’s note: ending year of Babylonian captivity should be 538]

[CJW note: Not the power to physically overcome the great Cyrus or his armies or his god, but the power to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land, preserve the Jewish heritage, and wait, and hope. It had to be inner power.] [Editor’s note: Rev. Westman may have meant Nebuchadnezzar, for Cyrus was the Persian ruler who overthrew the Babylonian Empire and permitted the Jews to return to their land]

Jesus – whether you believe him the incarnated God, the Messiah, or a prophet for humanity – he embodies power from within in the face of imperial power from without. The Kingdom of God is within us all, he taught. Regardless of theology, Pilate spoke for the ages, although that could not have been his intention, when he proclaimed to the crowd, Ecce Homo, “Behold the man.”

Now I am not testifying for the God of Isaiah or the God of Jesus. Insofar as I am able to understand, their God is not my God. But I am saying that when one holds to the highest he/she knows; when a person, in the face of terrible odds, or hum drum routine, holds to that which is of supreme worth, personal power is incorruptible.

The nature of power – in the world that humans have built and changed – is a pageant of integrity and corruption, of home and dread, of courage and cowardice, of power and powerlessness. There will always be ambiguities and pressures. Frequently we do not do what our best self calls us to do. Yet in our stronger moments, Martin Buber’s advice seems ever-new and freshly demanding: ....

[Editor’s note: quote missing, source unknown]

The source of religious power that will not corrupt internally or externally is found in those lines.

Addendum: Notes from Lord Acton’s writings

“Now liberty and good government do not exclude each other: and there are excellent reasons why they should go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society and of private life.” - ESSAYS ON FREEDOM AND POWER, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” p. 51.

“There is no liberty where there is hunger... the theory of liberty demands strong efforts to help the poor. Not merely for safety, for humanity, for religion, but for liberty.” - RENAISSANCE TO REVOLUTION, Intro, xv.

“Most assuredly, now as heretofore, the Men of the Time are, in most cases, unprincipled, and act from motives of interest, of passion, of prejudice cherished and unchecked, of selfish hope and unworthy fear.
“History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and the most active.” RENAISSANCE TO REVOLUTION, Intro, xvi.

“... liberality toward the weak in social life, corresponds to that respect for the minority in political life, which is the essence of freedom.” - RENAISSANCE TO REVOLUTION, p. 33.

“... the state that suffers neither limit nor equality, and is bound by no duty to nations or men, that thrives on destruction and sanctified whatever things contribute to increase of power.
“This law of the modern world, that power tends to expand indefinitely, and will transcend all barriers, abroad and at home, until met by superior forces, produces the rhythmic movement of history. Neither race, nor religion, nor political theory, has been in the same degree and incentive to the perpetuation of universal enmity and strive. The threatened interests were compelled to unite for the self-government of nations, the toleration of religions, and the rights of men. And it is by the combined efforts of the weak, made under compulsion, to resist the reign of force and constant wrong that, in the rapid change but slow progress of four hundred years, liberty has been preserved, and secured, and extended, and finally understood. RENAISSANCE TO REVOLUTION, “Beginning of the Modern State,” p. 51.