Lutherna View of Church and State

LESSON FOUR

A LUTHERAN VIEW OF CHURCH AND STATE

I. The American “Experiment”

A. U.S. unique in its creation

1. Government subjected to checks and balances.

2. Purpose: for the people to be free.

3. Grounded in understanding of liberty and equality intended for humankind by God Himself.

4. Richard John Neuhaus, quoted by CTCR on page 23:

“America is not a fact of nature but a product of human decision. It is a nation on purpose and by purpose.”

5. Concept that America is the bearer of a universal hope

a. Lost today?

b. Old answers were unabashedly moral, even religious.

B. Puritanism

1. At time of revolution, at least 75% of population exposed to some form of Puritanism.

2. Crucial concept: the covenant

a. Agreement placing obligations on both parties.

b. God called to salvation; God placed responsibilities on them.

3. Puritan’s Massachusetts Bay colony

a. Geneva-style Calvinist theocracy.

b. No religious toleration.

c. Bible was source and norm for both ecclesiastical and civil law.

d. Their vision did not thrive in U.S. as it had in medieval Europe.

e. U.S. shaped by strong dose of individual freedom.

f. Notion of covenant (accountability and blessing) endures.

g. U.S. “blessed to be shining city upon hill with evangelical mission to world,” (CTCR, p. 24).

C. Great Awakening

1. Was foundation for American revolution.

2. Was begun by Jonathan Edwards in 1734.

3. Carried forward by George Whitefield up and down Atlantic coast.

4. Came to belief that evangelical mission first required political independence.

5. A. James Reichley, quoted by CTCR on p. 24:

“ But it was thhe evangelical New Lights of the interior, viewing nationhood as the essential first step in God’s plan for America, who rallied the farmers, mechanics, and small-town merchants whose participation was to prove crucial in the struggle for independence. “What do we mean by the American Revolution?” John Adams asked long afterward. “Do we mean the American War? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments….: The change in sentiments that Adams recalled was rooted in the Great Awakening, in the dawn of a new conviction that America, like ancient Israel, was a God-chosen nation, destined, as Edwards wrote, to begin the glorious work that in God’s good time would “renew the world of mankind.”

6. Political liberty literally a crusade.

D. Diversity

1. Early and persistent experience of ethnic and religious diversity.

2. First “engines” of American pluralism:

a. New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.

b. Most existing Protestant groups represented there.

3. Required that political and social unity be based on persuasion.

4. Only alternative (e.g. Civil War) was force.

E. Virginia

1. Where distinctly American notion of religious freedom formulated.

2. Virginia’s state constitution, 1776

a. First proposal of bill of rights guaranteeing free exercise of religion.

b. Goal was not to limit Christianity.

c. Goal was to provide greater free exercise of Christianity.

3. Later the authors of Virginia’s religious liberty liked to trace their ideas to ancient philosophers and European Enlightenment.

4. But, core was initiated in England during previous century by John Locke, who was self-consciously Christian.

5. Locke’s view

a. Church and society receive meaning and direction from God’s purpose and design.

b. Each in distinctly different ways.

c. Church: voluntary society whose primary considerations were spiritual and moral.

d. Civil government: designed to advance material interests of humanity.

e. Overlapped in concerns for moral actions, but in well-ordered society, conflict not necessary.

f. Views widely shared by founders of U.S.

g. Paradox: Christianity closely allied to way of life while explicitlyseparated from state support.

h. Undue emphasis of either inappropriate.

i. Paul Johnson, quoted by CTCR on page 26:

“The United States of America was not, therefore, a secular state; it might more accurately be described as a moral and ethical society without a state religion.”

F. U.S. Constitution

1. First Amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

2. Fourteenth Amendment includes:

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

3. “Separation between church and state”

a. Found in Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Connecticut Baptists in 1802.

b. No American accountable to government for his faith or worship.

4. First Amendment was to create level playing field with fair competition.

5. Government was to be benevolently neutral regarding religion.

G. Religious freedom

1. Made U.S. a haven for many groups.

2. Germans seeking free exercise of confessional Lutheranism.

3. C.F.W. Walther saw U.S. as place where Luther’s Law-Gospel distinction between spiritual and temporal authority could finally be realized.

4. Missouri Synod convention of 1851 authorized a purely political journal to promote support for American political system among German Lutheran immigrants.

5. Early on, little internal strife resulted from religious convictions.

6. Post-Civil War

a. Demise of “states’ rights” approach to U.S. Constitution.

b. 14th Amendment adopted.

c. Increasing pluralism and modernization.

d. Church-State conflicts increased.

H. Division

1. One major test:

a. Mormon polygamy.

b. 1878 - unanimous Supreme Court ruled prohibited not on basis of sectarian religion, but on basis of Western moral tradition.

2. Beginning in 1920’s, Supreme Court charting mediating course between competing moral and religious values.

3. Basic approach

a. Broad construction of right to pursue one’s religion under 1st and 14th Amendment.

b. Also, broad construction of Establishment clause of 1st Amendment, so as to consider almost all government support for religion inadmissible.

4. Debate continues.

II. Moral to This Story?

A. There is a persistent tendency to blur distinction between church and state.

B. Christianity points to a higher authority to which state is ultimately accountable and thus introduced checks and balances on state’s age-old tendency toward de facto sovereignty.

C. The New Testament understanding of the messianic kingdom as spiritual denies any civil government (even when run by Christians) the sanction of Christ.

1. Ironically, Christianity has been a secularizing force.

2. Understanding of state emerged that did not require promotion of Christianity in order to promote the common good.

3. Requires Christians to resist temptation to resolve United State’schurch-state problems by attempting to make the state “Christian.”

D. We must not understand our religious freedoms as something private; American experiment depends explicitly on the free exercise of religion.

E. Conclusion

1. Our liberty is a public philosophy grounded in persuasion and voluntary consent.

2. Responsibility for resolving the ongoing controversy over religion in United States public life belongs to each citizen.

3. Abraham Lincoln, at Gettysburg, quotred by CTCR on page 30:

“of the people, by the people, for the people.”