Church historians talk of the shift that occurred when the Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian, and Christianity became a faith not of the outcast but of the Empire itself.  They speak of the church that followed that day as the “Constantinian Church” – the church that forgot that the Emperor had decided to follow Christ who loved the outcast.  Instead, the “Constantinian Church” decided to follow Constantine, figuring that any faith good enough for those in power was good enough for them. Christianity became not the celebration of God’s love for the outcast, but the outcasts love of the God who was now allied with power, and offered everyone, the chance to be powerful, too.

The question for us in the Anglican Communion at this point in our history is what has it done to our spiritual journey of following Jesus-the-ultimate-outcast now that the Christian community identifies herself with the empire, with power?  The question for the Episcopal Church and for the community of St Thomas’ Parish is the question of who we are, and who we are called to become. 

Six years before Henry Kissinger became Secretary of State, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, gave one of the most controversial addresses in American religious history at Riverside Church in New York City.  Dr. King named our complicity as abusers of power, when Christians chose to live as members of the Empire rather than to cast our lot with the Outcasts. Power is what makes the church stand silent in awe of those who have it.  But  “A time comes when silence is betrayal,'" preached King.

King’s Riverside speech named the sickness eating the American soul as "the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism." It was a watershed moment when King held America accountable to the ideals of her founding documents, addressed the mechanisms of empire and held us accountable to God, instead of letting God be held accountable to the power of Empire. 

At the height of the American struggle for civil rights for African American grandchildren and great-grandchildren of human slaves, King outlined seven major reasons for bringing another great struggle, getting America out of Vietnam, into his "field of moral vision.”  King’s reason’s for linking race, and class, and war have profound implications for our church’s struggle today with the aphrodisiac of Empire, threatening to totally blind us.  King reminded the church that the desire for power in one sphere is always linked to the desire for power in other areas of human affairs. America’s muscle flexing of power in Iraq, and our nation’s turning it’s back to the needs of the outcasts of our own society, are related.