(Ir)religiosity

From The Myth of a Christian Nation:

“While those who wielded the Constantinian sword throughout history undoubtedly convinced themselves they were wielding the sword in love–this is a common self-delusion among religious power brokers–lording over, torturing, and killing people does not communicate their unsurpassable worth to them; it is not loving….One wonders why no one in church history as ever been considered a heretic for being unloving. People were anathematized and often tortured and killed for disagreeing on matters of doctrine or on the authority of the church. But no one on record has ever been so much as rebuked for not loving as Christ loved. Yet if love is to be placed above all other considerations, if nothing has any value apart from love, and if the only thing that matters is faith working in love, how is it that possessing Christlike love has never been considered the central test of orthodoxy? How is it that those who tortured and burned heretics were not themselves considered heretics for doing so? Was this not heresy of the worst sort? How is it that those who perpetuated such things were not only deemed heretics but often were (and yet are) held up as heroes of the faith?”
(Emphasis mine)

On a certain level I think this is connected to my post yesterday on President Bush and the Olympics and the subsequent discussion at Josh’s blog. But maybe not.

At any rate, I think it bears reflection. Why in the world have we let Christianity become a religion based primarily on belief and dogma rather than action and ethic? Somewhere along the line we divorced orthodoxy from orthopraxy and they lived as assumed false enemies ever since. But the truth is orthodoxy is orthopraxy at least that’s the way it was before the church sold herself to the state in what might be the most damaging act of institutional prostitution we’ve ever seen. If Constantine officiated the illegitimate wedding of the church and the nation-state then we, the bastard children of that nightmare, need to work towards seeing their divorce and the remarriage of doxis and praxis; then, hopefully, we see the need to distinguish between the two. Who’s with me?