Church-state alliances lead to dangerous path

Catholic Register, 12 August 2021

What is the role of the state — the civil power, be it the crown or another form of government — in evangelization?

What is the role of the state — the civil power, be it the crown or another form of government — in evangelization?

That is one of the deeper questions raised by the difficult history of the Indian residential schools.

The developing consensus in modern times is that the state does not have a role in evangelization. This is most formally and famously codified in the First Amendment to the American constitution, namely that the government should not in any way “establish” religion.

Yet for most of Christian history the state was a key partner in evangelization. And when the state is a key partner, the interests of the state can compromise, even corrupt, the proclamation of the Gospel.

The Indian residential school system was a state project, aimed at assimilating Indigenous peoples into the British-French culture of the newly-confederated Canada. To save money, the Canadian government turned to Christian missionaries to run the schools; the largest number were run by Catholics, and the largest number of them were run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

What did the Christian missionaries — Catholic, Anglican, Protestant — get out of the arrangement?  A chance to proclaim the Gospel in a new land. A chance to temper the rougher edges of the colonial project. A chance to contribute to the development of the Indigenous peoples.

That could describe any number of historical episodes — whether it was Iberian missionaries in Latin American under the Spanish or Portuguese crowns, or the greatest missionary of them all, St. Francis Xavier, labouring in India and as far as Japan.

Missionaries were brought by the civil power for mixed motives, some of them noble, some of them mercenary. But it was the norm.

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