Wartime Leaders

((It's been almost a month. I just wasn't interested in writing this month... But now I've been drinking and reading and watching and... well, you be the judge.))

Just stop me if this has been done before...

I'm beginning to think that our decreasingly popular, kleptocratic president has been taking his cues from an ancient and powerful playbook. Briefly, Mr. Bush is the modern incarnation of a Constantine figure if ever I've seen one.

According the BBC documentary, The Rise and Fall of Rome, Constantine I used Christianity as his standard in war as he united the four squabbling partitions of a divided Rome. In the year 312 CE, as Constantine and his Western army descended on Rome, the emperor himself was not a follower of Christ. He lived in a world only recently willing to even accept the legality of that slave's religion. But something happened on the journey there. There is no historical proof of what he and his army witnessed—the common agreement is that it was a meteorite, though not large enough to leave a recognizable crater—but the interpretation that it was a sign from God is what is important. The Christian God, that is.

Now, his army bedecked in the symbology of Christ, Constantine attacked Emperor Maxientius, ruler of Rome, and won the battle of Milvian Bridge, taking it all as a sign of this new religion's glory. There is no proof of the emperor ever converting his faith, and there is no way anyone could argue that his policies or conqueror's stride were in any way consistent with the teachings of Christ, but he surely did bring this faith to the forefront of the empire. He dined with bishops. He built churches, some of which still stand today. He is as solely responsible for the popularity of European Christianity as any single person ever has been.

(Okay, you can argue with me and say that Jesus Christ was more important to the rise of this religion, but I would disagree with you. Admittedly, there would be no Christianity without him, or without the most famous four gospel writers, but Constantine made the Christian faith a very potent meme—something it would never have been without him.)

President Bush, oddly enough, is also a convert to Christianity. A born-again Christian. Studious readers of news and political happenings will remember the push in the Republican community to become dominate the Christian South of this nation—once a bastion for the Democratic party. The Neoconservative movement embraces the socially conservative aspects of modern American Christianity such as the nuclear family unit, homophobia and temperance (in the form of the war on drugs). It also embraces some old biblical philosophies: eye-for-an-eye punishment and the power of kings. (i.e. Tougher sentencing and strong military leadership from the federal seat.)

The president would like to paint himself as a military leader. He is fighting a war against heathens, leading his people under his Christian banner. Here, he and Constantine see eye to eye.

Religious decisions are quite often more political than rational or moral. Consider the separation of the Anglican church from the Catholic, motivated by Henry VIII's marital concerns in the popular consciousness, but saturated by deeply running divisiveness between the crown of England and the Holy See. I would posit that both George W. Bush and Emperor Constantine I made their religious decisions from motivations of politics. It is to gain allies, and not entrance to heaven for which they accept Christ into their hearts.

This all, of course, flies in the face of the spirit, letter and intent of Christ's teachings. Their wars demonstrate a profound ignorance for and disrespect of the very heart of those two millennia old sermons. To paraphrase twenty centuries of philosophical thought: All human life has value, and all God's people are equal in his eyes. Life is sacred, forgiveness is tantamount and the judgment of actions is the provenance of God only. These, to me, are the elements which remain constant and unchanging from schism to schism. They are the heart of every denomination which adheres to acceptance of holy trinity. These, in fact, are the single glorious part of that religion. All else that has come from it is, in my eyes at least, extraneous, deleterious and dangerous.

Leaders who invoke the name of God are missing the point. Religious society is a holdover from Judaism, crudely tacked on to the word of the man known as Jesus Christ. Christianity, at its aforementioned heart, does not seem to support a church, let alone a state. It encourages kindness, self-sacrifice, friendship, love, deference, respect and tolerance. Not war. Not imprisonment. Not the betrayal, slaughter and secret murder of allies, as in the case of Constantine. It does not condone asking the youth of this nation to sacrifice themselves, and certainly does not condone turning them into political pawns as an agent to keep a strangle hold on power. I won't tell you who did that part. You're smart enough to figure it out yourself.

Christianity's core elements do not seem like the appropriate set of ideas for a power hungry ruler to embrace in his quest for blood and glory. I can't imagine how this has happened, and more than twice, at that. I only offer a comparison.

((Holy shit... I sound like I actually believe in God or something. Whack, huh?))