Finnish With Style

Like many of you, I've spent the past few weeks watching the Winter Olympics.  Although I don't get quite as much into the Winter games as I do the Summer games, I appreciate not only what the athletes are able to do in the snow and ice (and this year, perhaps my indifference has more to do with how much snow and ice we've had here in Indiana) but also the fact the winter games never seem to drag like the summer ones do (perhaps because there aren't nearly as many events).  That being said, and though I do miss, when it comes to ice skating, the old national judging system, it has been great to see such outstanding competition (even if the USA didn't always win).

This year's Winter Games are being held in Sochi, Russia. And like anytime the games aren't in the US (or at least so it seems) the media has paying a good deal of attention to the host country.  Some of that attention has been favorable, some of it has been perhaps overblown (it is not as if Sochi was the first games were there were cost overruns, the politicians in power gave contracts to their friends, and not everything was finished when people started arriving), and some of that attention has not been all that it should have been (glossing over the atrocities of the Soviet era for example).

While much of the attention before the games was on the Putin government's policies to gays and lesbians, in the last week, the world has been reminded that Putin has also been working towards recreating the lost Soviet Union (or at the old Russian Empire).  And to a degree that has gotten me thinking about matters of faith.  Oh sure, there are from time to time mentions of God or religion in reports from the games themselves (either from the athletes or from American reporters discovering the Orthodox Church), but for me the image of faith and the games comes not from Sochi, but rather from the Ukraine:




The image above, and others like, made the rounds on the Web this week, as priests from the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine stood between protestors and security forces (who backed the now deposed Russian supported prime minister).  For a few moments at least, the fighting stopped.  Perhaps we will one day look back and see it as the moment the opposition needed, the moment the government's forces began to question what it was they were doing.  Perhaps. Much is likely yet to play out over Ukraine's future, and who knows what might happen once the world's attention is drawn away from Eastern Europe.

But that image also got me thinking about conditions in the US.  We have entered, in the past year or so, a great debate over religious liberty in America, as well as a related one on the proper demarcation line between Church and State.  Readers of this blog (as well as of The Mainline) know that it is an issue I've touched on before.  And it is one that was raised last month, when a friend from Finland posted an article on Church and State in his country.  My friend and I corresponded a bit more on the topic, with his thought below:

"Paradoxically, Christianity plays a lot larger role in US politics compared to over here, state church or not. Presidential candidates are asked maybe once an election cycle about their views on religion, and a round-edged answer of maybe appreciating everyone minding their own spiritual business and Christmas church being a nice tradition is the correct and proper one. A politician openly demanding policy based on Bible or even Christian morals (as opposed to just, you know, what's moral) is considered to be fringe and eyes are rolled. I'd say the separation of C'n'S is more ingrained in the individual citizen, if you will, around here."

While American priests, ministers, and pastors are quite active in battling over social issues (where their is much disagreement between both Americans in and out of the pews on a host of topics ranging from abortion to gay marriage), one wonders if any of them would be willing to stand between warring factions and literally remind people on both sides that it was time to stop killing.  One wonders if people on either side would listen.  Are we different than Finland in that respect?  Are we different than the Ukraine?  Let us pray that we need not ever have to find out. 

Religious liberty is not something to be taken lightly, nor are infringements upon it trivial (even if they don't amount to persecution).  But part of this discussion over the proper role of Church and State is also about religious symbolism, and how politicians employ it.  Perhaps it would be a good thing, if like in the Ukraine, the Church in America invoked its own symbols (and talked openly about doctrine) as much as those seeking votes from people in the pews.