Caesaropapism

In an extreme form, caesaropapism is where the head of state is also the supreme head of the church (pope or analogous religious leader). Both caesaropapism and theocracy are systems in which there is no separation of church and state and in which the two form parts of a single power-structure.

Eastern Church

Caesaropapism's chief example is the authority that the Byzantine (East Roman) emperors had over the Church of Constantinople and Eastern Christianity from the 330 consecration of Constantinople through the tenth century. The Byzantine emperor would typically protect the Eastern Church and manage its administration by presiding over ecumenical councils and appointing Patriarchs and setting territorial boundaries for their jurisdiction. The emperor exercised a strong control over the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the Patriarch of Constantinople could not hold office if he did not have the emperor's approval. Such emperors as Basiliscus, Zeno, Justinian I, Heraclius, and Constans II published several strictly ecclesiastical edicts either on their own without the mediation of church councils, or they exercised their own political influence on the councils to issue the edicts. According to Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, the historical reality of caesaropapism stems from the confusion of the Byzantine Empire with the Kingdom of God and the zeal of the Byzantines "to establish here on earth a living icon of God's government in heaven."

However, Caesaropapism "never became an accepted principle in Byzantium." Several Eastern churchmen such as John Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople and Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria, strongly opposed imperial control over the Church, as did Western theologians like Hilary of Poitiers and Hosius, Bishop of Córdoba. Saints, such as Maximus the Confessor, resisted the imperial power as a consequence of their witness to orthodoxy. In addition, at several occasions imperial decrees had to be withdrawn as the people of the Church, both lay people, monks and priests, refused to accept inventions at variance with the Church's customs and beliefs. These events show that power over the Church really was in the hands of the Church itself – not solely with the emperor.

During a speech at the St. Procopius Unionistic Congress in 1959, John Dvornik stated, "...the attitude of all Orthodox Churches toward the State, especially the Russian Church is dictated by a very old tradition which has its roots in early Christian political philosophy... the Christian Emperor was regarded as the representative of God in the Christian commonwealth, whose duty was to watch not only over the material, but also the spiritual welfare of his Christian subjects. Because of that, his interference in Church affairs was regarded as his duty." The regional church was elevated by the rivals of the Byzantine Empire, namely the Serbian and Bulgarian empires, to patriarchate according to a prevailing theory during the time the status of the church had to be equal to the state.

Following the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the sultans of the Ottoman Empire took control of appointing the Patriarch of Constantinople and all Byzantine Rite Bishops within their dominions. According to historian Charles A. Frazee, the Greek Hierarchs appointed by the sultan and his advisors were almost invariably opposed to the reunification decrees at the Council of Florence and rejected the authority of the Papacy.

At the same time, however, the subordination of the Church to the Sublime Porte attracted criticism during subsequent periods such as in the February 14, 1908 Papal allocution Ringraziamo Vivamente, where Pope Pius X accused the Greek Orthodox Church under Turkish rule of having preferred, "a harsh yoke (that of Islam) to the tenderness of their mother."

Caesaropapism was most notorious in the Tsardom of Russia when Ivan the Terrible assumed the title Tsar in 1547 and subordinated the Russian Orthodox Church to the state. In defiance of the Tsar's absolute power, Philip, the Metropolitan of Moscow, preached sermons in Tsar Ivan's presence that condemned his indiscriminate use of state terror against real and imagined traitors and their families by the Oprichnina. Metropolitan Philip also withheld the traditional blessing of the Tsar during the Divine Liturgy. In response, the Tsar convened a Church Council, whose bishops obediently declared Metropolitan Philip deposed on false charges of moral offenses and imprisoned him in a monastery. When the former Metropolitan refused a request from the Tsar to bless the 1570 Massacre of Novgorod, the Tsar allegedly sent Malyuta Skuratov to smother the former Bishop inside his cell. Metropolitan Philip was canonized in 1636 and is still commemorated within the Orthodox Church as a, "pillar of orthodoxy, fighter for the truth, shepherd who laid down his life for his flock."

Tsar Ivan's level of caesaropapism far exceeded that of the Byzantine Empire but was taken to a new level in 1721, when Peter the Great and Theophan Prokopovich, as part of their Church reforms, replaced the Patriarch of Moscow with a department of the civil service headed by an Ober-Procurator and called the Most Holy Synod, which oversaw the running of the church as an extension of the Tsar's government.

The Patriarchate was only restored on November 10 (October 28 O.S.), 1917, 3 days after the Bolshevik Revolution, by decision of the All-Russian Local Council. On 5 November 1917, after his election by vote as one of the three candidates for the restored Patriarchate of Moscow, Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev announced that Metropolitan Tikhon had been selected for the position after a drawing of lots as the new Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.

Seeking to convince Soviet authorities to stop the campaign of terror and persecution against the Church, Metropolitan Sergius, acting as patriarchal locum tenens, tried to look for ways of peaceful reconciliation with the government. On July 29, 1927, he issued his famous declaration: an encyclical letter where he professed the absolute loyalty of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Soviet Union and to its government's interests.

This declaration, sparked an immediate controversy among the Russian Eastern Orthodox, many of whom (including many notable and respected bishops in prisons and exile) broke communion with Sergius. This attitude of submission to the Soviet Government is sometimes derogatorily called "Sergianism", after Metropolitan Sergius and his declaration, and is to this day deemed by some Eastern Orthodox Christians, especially True Orthodox, as a heresy.

Later, some of these bishops reconciled with Sergius, but many still remained in opposition to the "official Church" until the election of Patriarch Alexius I in 1945.