What God Has Put Asunder, Let No Man Join Together
By William L. Self, Senior Pastor, John`s Creek Baptist Church, Alpharetta, GA
Text: John 18:36; Matthew 22:21
When you attend church this or any other Sunday, you are validating a noble experiment that has made these United States the most religiously diverse nation in the world.
You are neither compelled to attend a certain church, nor are you restricted from attending. The worship you engage in, the hymns you sing, the sermon you listen to are not regulated by the government. We are guaranteed by the First Amendment the freedom to worship as our conscience dictates. We have religious liberty. We have the separation of church and state.
However, for the last two decades this freedom has been under attack. On this weekend we underscore our birthright of religious freedom as we celebrate the birth of our nation.
Secular forces are defending the First Amendment to the extent that they will go to jail for it and Christians are, for the first time in their history, hearing their leaders calling for its destruction.
The strange and arresting feature of this controversy is that it is being introduced into our political life by those whose tradition is to fight and die for religious liberty.
When the shouting is over, those who have weakened this separation will be called upon to answer to history for their violation of this sacred trust.
Lessons of History
The struggle between church and state is long and varied. It reaches back to the high moments in the Old Testament and continues through the New Testament in church history and on into the present day.
The Hebrew children were placed in the fiery furnace because the state imposed a system of belief upon them that they could not accept. Daniel was placed in the lion`s den because he refused to cease praying as the state had directed him to do. Other Old Testament writers specifically warned against reliance upon secular support d(see 2 Chron. 16:7; Isa. 30:1-12; Isa. 31; Jer. 27).
In the New Testament, the church/state struggle becomes more vivid. It was a coalition of church and state that crucified Jesus. Rome and the infant Christian faith were constantly at odds, and John on the Isle of Patmos identifies the Roman State as the anti-Christ.
A great loss to both church and state came in 325 when the Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity as the religion of the Empire. The clear lesson here is that the church lost its prophetic voice as it became responsible for the establishment, and the state lost its conscience as church and state became one. The church became powerful, wealthy, and totally secularized, formally and morally bound to the state to secular aspiration it fully shared. The church becomes, in an arrangement like this, old and drab, dismal and discredited, as well as depressing and oppressive. History is replete with illustrations of this danger.
This happened again in France in the 18th century, England and Germany in the 16th century, Italy in the 19th century, and Russia and Mexico in the 20th .
And now those who have benefited the most from religious freedom are trying to stampede the American voter and turn back the clock on the issue of separation of church and state in the 21st century. If this stampede continues, history reminds us that in every nation where there has been a loss of religious liberty, the clerics oppressed the people and a strong anti-clerical reaction resulted. We must either head it off at the pass or we will need to clean it up after it has gone by.
At this season of the year, if enough people speak, if religious liberty can be highlighted effectively, the weight of public opinion will rise up and stop the stampede. History thunders loud to our day. Separation of church and state is best for both church and state. As nations go, we have done rather well at working out a plan for the relationship between church and state, and this is possible because we take both religion and government seriously.
Abuses of Church and State
At issue is religious liberty. In a nutshell, it is quite simply that people must be free to decide their attitude to God and must not be victimized for their opinions, however mistaken their opinions may seem to be. Religious liberty guarantees each of us liberty to freely argue according to our own conscience, above all other liberties.
The only truth that a person fully accepts is truth for that person, and no effort to force people to believe will change that. Christ sought to persuade people, but never compel or coerce. The clear lesson of history is that when church and state go to bed together, they do not make love. They do not produce offspring. The lesson of history is that one always rapes the other.
The pinnacle of the church dominance of the state was in a period of time from 1077 to 1213. In 1077, Pope Gregory VII met Henry IV of Germany in Conossa, Italy. For three days, Henry groveled in sackcloth and ashes in the snow outside the castle walls before the Pope would receive him and hear his confession
.
John I of England in 1213 was humiliated by Pope Innocent III and acknowledged that his kingdom was only a fiefdom to Rome.
A recent example is the tragic surrender of the German state to Adolph Hitler, by the German church, some say because Hitler neither smoked nor drank. That surrender will always haunt us
The American Scene Today
After World War II, the church/state scene was relatively quiet for two decades. After reviewing my files on the subject, I concluded that after the election of John Kennedy as President, not much was discussed about church and state in our national life. Now this issue has reappeared.
The religious right has learned well from the liberal politicians and church leaders of the 1960s. Focusing on voter registration, civil disobedience, and sensitive emotional wedge-issues, those challenging church-state separation have utilized the strategies of civil rights movements with their own innate talent for organization. Couple this with zeal and a deep desire to save America from secular paganism, and we have a serious movement that cannot be casually dismissed.
A growing political activism by church people during the past two decades, in reaction to the Supreme Court ruling on prayer in public schools and later rulings on abortion, human rights, and IRS rulings on the tax-exempt status of church schools.
Add to this a gnawing feeling that something has changed in America, that we are no longer a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post society. We are no longer "apple pie and Chevrolet, sidewalks and shade trees." We are no longer the land of John Wayne, Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, Robert Young, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. We have now become the America of Jane Fonda, Oprah Winfrey, Jay Leno, Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, and Bill Clinton.
Our values are shaped by the media, with the TV talk show becoming the new American Sunday School. "Do your own thing" and "if it feels good, it can`t be bad" are the major lessons being taught in the media.
During the 1960s we freed ourselves from excessive ethical and cultural structure; into that vacuum has marched a new generation, not comfortable living existentially. They are now opting for a more totalitarian structure than any they have surrendered. In brief, we are ripe for totalitarian rule. We observe every phone booth, hoping to spot the Superman who will deliver us from the oppressive potpourri of "do your own thing."
Between this social revolution and the hostage-taking incident in Iran, I noted an article in the New York Times, which observed that the social revolution in Iran was a religious movement. Basically, it was a retreat from the confusion of the secularism of the 20th century that had been created by the Shah`s regime. The desire for simpler times and a clear morality and stability provoked the people to reject the government that produced secularization.
While this may be an over-simplification, I think there is a parallel here in our own rise of the new religious political right. Perhaps we are experiencing the same social change. Rapid secularization and technological advances have produced complex problems, with no clear standards for dealing with them. Look at how the internet has been used for internet porn and solicitation. Some religious leaders have been seduced into being pawns in the revolution to return to a more simple day. God`s people have been offered the kingdoms of this world, which the new politics really cannot give.
We are quickly sacrificing our spiritual birthright for the pottage of political influence.
What Shall We Do?
One of the real significant flaws in this new movement is that the evangelical right has elevated issues to the level of doctrinal belief, and their litany of issues has become a creedal test. What you believe about abortion, stem-cell research, prayer in public schools, the Ten Commandments in courthouses, etc., has now become the litmus test for doctrinal purity. It must be reasserted clearly that issues rise and fall, they come and go, but the gospel is forever. Issues such as Vietnam, the bombing of Cambodia, and draft evasion, which were supreme issues of the 1960s, have now disappeared. We must be careful never to hook our wagon to temporal issues, but rather the church`s wagon must be properly hooked to the principles of the gospel. "His kingdom is forever."
To the extent that Christians in general are becoming politically active and involved in the entire political process, we are on solid ground, politically and theologically. But we must not equate either political party with Christian morality exclusively. All political parties are equally sinful. Each party has positive and negative factors in its platform. Politics is a process for deciding who has the power. That may not necessarily be evil, but neither is it necessarily Christian.
The church must resist the temptation to sacrifice her first love-evangelism and missions-for political power. Jesus had the same temptation. Let us not forget the embarrassment of Billy Graham when he endorsed Richard Nixon, and Norman Vincent Peale when he opposed John Kennedy`s election.
The people of God must not be used for secular purposes. We must not submit to being tools in the hands of political power-brokers. This is a day for us to re-educate our people concerning the nature of religious liberty.
Let us remember that Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. By now my kingdom is from another place" (John 18:36).
"Then He said to them, `Give to Caesar what is Caesar`s, and to God what is God`s`" (Matthew 22:21).
Roger Williams, in his analogy of A Ship at Sea-Liberty of Conscience, has given a good model for church-state relations:
- There goes many a ship at sea with many hundred souls in one ship whose weal and woe is common
- And is a true picture of a commonwealth or human combination of society.
- It hath fallen out sometimes that both Papists and Protestants,
- Jews and Turks
- May be embarked in one ship Upon which supposal I affirm that all the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges:
- That none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews or Turks Be forced to come to the ship`s prayers or worship,
- Nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they have any.
- What God hath put asunder, let no man join together.
