The Ruler's Church, the People's Church, and Lessons from the Franciscan Tradition

The Church today is a divided church – some say the hour on Sunday morning when people are at church is the most segregated hour of the week.  Joe Barndt’s book “Becoming an Anti-Racist Church” is enlightening me about the history of how this came to be. The Church split into the Ruler's Church and the People's Church originally when Constantine declared Christianity to be an officially sanctioned religion of the Roman Empire in 313 A.D. The Protestant Reformation did not fix the problem but divided the Church further. The divide of the Ruler's Church and the People's Church still persists and exists among both the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, though it can be complex to see.  There was not unanimity among the Church when the Ruler’s Church in Europe set out on its conquest of colonization – closely tied to the conception of superiority of the white race and the perpetuation of slavery. However, in general The Ruler's Church has a triumphal theology, “thanking God for blessing colonial enterprises with success, security, and material possessions” and is quick to “view poverty and other expressions of human suffering…as temporary conditions that could be overcome by individual effort, or responded to with charitable assistance,” while the People's Church uses the theology of the cross and identifies with suffering and oppression.

Francis and Clare of Assisi and Agnes of Prague, meanwhile, helped to heal the divide even before the Protestant Reformation, and did so without leaving the Roman Catholic Church.

On a Franciscan retreat last weekend, I learned from Sister Kathy Osbelt about Agnes of Prague’s communication with Clare of Assisi in the 13th century.  Agnes of Prague was set to marry a king, and then an emperor, and she declined both to join Clare’s order, the Poor Ladies as they were known at the time.  Her cousin was Elizabeth of Hungary (the patron saint of the Secular Franciscans).  Clare wrote letters to Agnes, who was eventually given the “privilege of poverty” after her brother, King Wenceslaus I, wrote to Pope Gregory IX asking him to give her what she was asking for if he wanted to maintain good relations with the kingdom. The Pope had not wanted to lose the land her material privilege afforded the church, but acquiesced.

The privilege of poverty made it harder for Francis and Clare and their followers to live a life of comfort, but made it easier to live as true brothers and sisters to all.  As Jesus said, “my yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Mtw 11:30). Fraternal life is supposed to break down socioeconomic barriers to full participation in communal life. The Franciscan myths of inclusion, dignity and beauty which Fr. David Couturier describes, are an antidote to the metaphor that the current political administration uses of the United States as “a fortress nation in peril” and “immigrants as ‘danger,’ ‘disease’ and ‘criminals.’”

How can we take history together with Franciscan idealism to build a more inclusive world?  If the Ruler’s Church recognizes the value of Christ’s message, can it agree to partner with the People’s Church to truly triumph over the evils of oppression?