Another year, another budget mess in Louisiana. Why are Louisiana’s politics so often dysfunctional? Let’s look at the question from two perspectives, which actually overlap: the political and the religious.

Politically, Louisiana has a government that does not match the nature of its people. While it is a mix of different nationalities, the French seems to predominate. And the French are a people who were traditionally used to a strong centralized monarchy. When Louisiana joined the union in 1812, it adopted the constitution of Kentucky with some minor changes. This overlaying of monarchy with republicanism was bound to cause difficulties. It did, and it continues to do so. One can no more shift suddenly between the two and expect for harmonious government than one can treat a cow like a caterpillar and expect to walk home in one piece.

Nor should one expect too much good from elected governments in and of themselves. St Gregory the theologian said that a multiplicity of wills leads to disharmony, and disharmony leads to dissolution. A king is necessary. One cannot get around this. Society, like the family and like the kingdom of God, is a hierarchy. Just as heaven is ruled by one God, the father, the son and the Holy Ghost, so it is natural that there should be a king over a people. There can be institutions and officials around the king -- judges, elected representatives and so on -- but the king must have the final word.

Religiously, the worship of the Holy Trinity and the salvation of the people have been subordinated to notions of freedom and rights. The disestablishment of religion has relegated Christianity to a private concern, with no place for it in public life but a superficial one. In other times and places, we saw something quite different. Christianity was at the heart of national life. The emperors, the tsars, the kings and queens would personally lead their people into the churches for the divine liturgy.

The national life was a great, unending divine liturgy, a public work, a work of the whole people offered to God, a breaking through of heaven into earth by receiving God’s grace in the sacraments, through the veneration of the relics of the holy saints (whose feast days were national holidays), the creation of sacred art (churches, icons, monasteries, illuminated manuscripts, music), by loving one’s neighbor, by participating in the daily cycle of the services of the church, by keeping the fasts, by reading holy scripture and the lives of the saints, by the practice of prayer. The work of Christian countries in the past was to create saints, not to produce ever-bigger GDP numbers or to multiply consumer goods or entertainment. These are only substitutes for a true Christian culture.

An overlap occurs in the person of the king. He is not just one among a number of secular officials subject to the will of the majority. He is God’s anointed, an icon of Christ’s kingly rule, one who exercises authority in God’s name for the good of the people. When we reject royal authority, we reject hierarchy, we reject humility, we reject God. And what do we get instead? What we see day after day in the news: politics bent on the kingdom of man, where petty, selfish interests disguised as rights and freedoms lead to budget deadlocks and other policies more disastrous than that, to endless discussions and arguments and to other maladies.

The king helps secure Christianity among the people and, along with it, harmony in government and throughout society. This sounds strange to people with a Western European heritage where Christianity and politics became rather deformed through the power grabs and other abuses of Roman Catholic popes, Protestant princes and similar characters after the Great Schism of 1054 A.D. But it is true nevertheless. There are plenty of examples in lands where the Orthodox Church took root in the West and East.

Monarchy is close to us in Louisiana, more so than in other places. The fleur-de-lis is one of our symbols, and the fleur-de-lis is also the symbol of the French Bourbon monarchy, which ruled Louisiana for much of its life until the Louisiana Purchase.

This heritage is to our benefit. Many people are sick of politics as usual, and they are right to feel that way. But the answer isn’t in the false choice of Republicans and Democrats, of right versus left. The true choice is between an Orthodox Christian monarchy or the antichristianity of the republic or democracy.

The Return of the King is a very good book by J.R.R. Tolkien, but it is also what those longing for good government and a sane culture in Louisiana and elsewhere should work towards as well.

Walt Garlington lives in Swartz.