Romans 13:1-7; Matthew 22:15-22
The topic of this message is the separation of church and
state. It is better described as the guarantee of religious freedom enshrined
in the First Amendment, which reads in part: "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof..."
This topic is still as current as the
daily newspaper. For example, this year for the first time, the Inter-Lakes High
School could not have a Baccalaureate Service sponsored by the school. The
separation of church and state was stated by the school administration as the
reason. But the Class of 2013 still had a Baccalaureate service due to a
faithful group of parents who got together and sponsored one independently of
the school. They invited me to give the invocation at that service at Saint
Charles Church in Meredith, which I was very glad to do.
The issue of religious liberty was also
raised in New Hampshire in Concord this year. After reports surfaced that two
bullets had been found in a school toilet, Lizarda Urena, a mother of two
children who attend Concord High School, began to pray about it. She offered
prayers on the steps of the school beginning in February and continuing through
the rest of the school year. Her prayers called for the safety of students and
an end to gun violence. But last month, after receiving a letter of complaint
from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the school superintendent ordered
the prayers to stop, citing the separation of church and state. So this
concerned mom will not be allowed to pray on school grounds when school opens
this fall.
What is the Christian’s role in this
ongoing relationship between church and state? Jesus addresses the topic in our
gospel lesson for today. The Pharisees came to Jesus with the Herodians, which
was the party supporting King Herod, and tried to get him entangled in the
controversy that was also present in Jesus’ day. There was great disagreement
among Jews about the responsibility of Jews to the Roman government, which
controlled Palestine at the time. It centered on paying of taxes. They asked Jesus whether he was for or
against the paying of taxes to Rome. Our passage says, “But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, “Why do you test Me,
you hypocrites? Show Me the tax money.” So they brought Him a denarius. And He
said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him,
“Caesar’s.” And He said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that
are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they had heard these
words, they marveled, and left Him and went their way.”
1. First, our responsibility as
followers of Jesus Christ is to God alone. That means that any responsibility
we have either church or state must we understood in that context. I think that
is the real meaning of the gospel lesson, but it is often missed. This story is
usually interpreted to mean that we must divide our loyalties between church
and state. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Give to
State what belongs to the state and to Church what belongs to Church. I do not
think that is what Jesus meant. If that is what Jesus meant, he never would
have been executed by the state and religion as an enemy of the state and
religion.
When Jesus asked whose image was on
the Roman coin, the reply was Caesar’s. This coin was stamped with the image of
Caesar, which meant that the coin belonged to Caesar. So Jesus said, “Give to
Caesar this coin that is Caesar’s.” It is helpful to realize what else was on
that coin that Jesus was shown – the Roman denarius. That Roman coin had
writing on it that declared Caesar to be the Son of God. The coin was
blasphemous to Jews. By referring to the image and inscription on the coin,
Jesus would have been calling attention to this controversy which centered on
the idea of making any graven images of any god. It also would have brought to
mind the fact that human beings are made in the image of God. We are stamped with
God’s image, just like the coin was stamped with Caesar’s image. So Jesus is
saying to give to Caesar the coin made in his image. Caesar made it. Give it
back to him. And give yourself, created by God, stamped with God’s image to back
God. Jesus is saying, “Give the money to
Caesar, but give yourself to God.
When asked by these same people what
the greatest commandment was, he replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your
heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength.” This is the key to
understanding the church state issue. He did not say, Love God with most of
your heart. Give God the lion’s share: 51% or even 99%. He made it clear to
give God 100%. When you give God 100% there is nothing left over. When we are
approaching this whole topic of church and state, we are going to get it wrong
unless we begin by giving ourselves completely to God. Not to church, not to denomination,
not religion, and not to state, but to God. Not Church first and state second.
Or State first and Church second, or half and half. Not even give yourself
first to God, and then to state. Give yourself to God and God alone. When our
heart and mind and soul are in the right place – 100% in God – then we can sort
out this church-state relationship.
2. Second, what is the State’s
responsibility to the Church? The State’s role is to protect it. Scripture says
that governments have been established by God. Romans 13 says, “For there is no authority except from God,
and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.” And the apostle Paul
actually goes on from there to make the same point as Jesus makes about paying
taxes. Our Declaration of Independence
states that we are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men….” Governments are
established by God to protect human rights, and among those rights is the right
to worship.
This is where the separation of
church and state comes in. There can be no real freedom to worship unless there
is a wall of separation between church and state. If we do not have that
separation, then two bad things can happen. One is that the church can force
people to follow one particular religion, with its theology and ethics. That
was the problem in England with the state Church of England back in the 17 and
18th centuries, and why people fled to America to escape
state-sponsored religion and be able to worship according to their conscience.
That is also the way of traditional Islam, which in its original form created
by Muhammad was a state-sponsored religion. And the most conservative elements
of Islam today want to reestablish the state religion of Islam. This is one of
the major political forces at work in the Middle East today.
In all fairness I must also admit
that Christianity followed this same course for centuries. It was not the
original form of Christianity established by Jesus and the apostles, and
practiced for the first 300 years of the church. But in the 4th
century Christianity came into power in the Roman Empire and church and state were
yoked. Church and State were one, and it was disastrous for Christianity. Therefore
we should never want the church, any church, to wield power in this country.
Religion thrives in our land because of our freedom of religion. Christianity
has withered in Western Europe because they had state churches. The worst thing
that can happen to the church is to get into worldly power.
The other danger is that secular
government can be used against religion. Some people interpret freedom of
religion as freedom from religion. These groups go overboard in opposing
religion. I think that is the greater danger today. This country has gone too
far in banning expressions of religion in public. We get into silly solutions
like not allowing Christmas crèches on public property unless you put a Santa
Claus next to it. Separation of church and state can become secular state
against religion. The state is supposed to protect religious speech, not ban
it. Free speech is not for every form of speech except religious speech.
Freedom of assembly is not for every type of assembly except religious
assembly. People do not have the right to be protected from hearing anything
about religion. We have separation of church and state to protect religion from
the power of the state in any hands – religious or nonreligious.
Freedom of Religion also means
freedom for religions that Christians do not agree with. That is the whole
purpose of religious freedom. It is not just for us. It is also for those we
don’t like. If it is not freedom for everyone, it is freedom for no one. That
means that Muslims have the right to build mosques in our communities, and we
cannot forbid them because we are afraid of Islam. We ought to be afraid of radical
forms of Islam, which seek to eliminate freedoms. But most Muslims do not
ascribe to such forms of Islam. And they need to be able to worship free from
persecution and discrimination. But they also need to make sure they practice
the same religious rights they enjoy.
The State’s role and responsibility
to religion is to make sure that all religions are free to practice their faith
while not infringing on the rights of others to practice their faith, or to
practice no faith at all. Atheism is on the rise in America. I disagree with
it. I especially disagree with the radical forms of atheism, which are better
defined as anti-theism, militantly against religion and seeks to suppress or
eliminate religion. That is a dangerous trend and must not be linked to the
state. But atheists need to be able to not worship in this country free of
discrimination and prejudice.
3. My third point is the Church’s
Responsibility to the State. It has two roles. One is the role of Subject and
the other is the role of Prophet. These are always in tension. The apostle
Paul’s instruction to the church in Rome, living in the seat of power of the
Roman empire in the first century was this. Paul wrote: “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is
no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by
God.” The passage goes on, but the main point is that Christians are to be subject
to the State, insofar as it does not conflict with one’s obedience to God. Christians
are not separatists, isolating ourselves from the real world, being pure and righteous
while society goes to hell in a handbasket. Christians are in the world but not
conformed to the world’s standards. Paul sees God as ordering the world through
governments. Therefore Christians can serve God in government at all levels and
serve in the military.
But there is another role, and that
is the prophetic role of the church. The Church is to be the conscience of the country.
It is not to be an arm of the state, a puppet rubber-stamping the values or policies
of the nation. It is to challenge the State and society with the voice of God.
It is to speak truth to power, as the Quakers say. That was the role of the
prophets in the Old Testament. In OT times there were two types of prophets.
There were the court prophets, the ones on the payroll of the king. They lived
well in the royal court and blessed the king’s policies in the name of God, no
matter what they were. In the OT these were the false prophets. There are lots
of those today. Then there were folks like Jeremiah, the true prophets who were
continually imprisoned for speaking against the policies of the king. People
like Nathan who challenged King David to his face with his sin. That is what
John the Baptist did in the NT and what got him beheaded. He criticized the
personal morality of King Herod.
The church in the United States needs
to play this role much more than it does. Christians can be proud citizens of
the US just as the apostle Paul was a proud citizen of Rome. But remember that the
apostle Paul was also executed by the government of Rome because he refused to
compromise his faith in Christ. He is a good model for us. We as Christians
must not compromise our faith when it comes to our attitude to the state.
I see Christians today compromising
their faith by putting their politics above God and putting a social agenda
above God. The culture wars are the worst thing that have every happened to the
American Church. This is true no matter what side of the culture wars you are
on. This is equally true of the political right and political left, Democrats
and Republicans. Too many people baptize
their partisan political and national agendas, believing God is on their side –
on our side - and against the other political party, or group or country.
The church needs to speak
prophetically and boldly, independently of the political and social agendas of
right and left, and all the groups and causes that would hijack the Church’s
voice for its own purposes. There are precious few such independent prophetic voices
in America today. Martin Luther King, Jr., was one of those prophetic voices in
20th century America. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was such a voice in
Germany during the Third Reich. There are many who pretend to be such
independent voices, but you scratch the surface and they are just espousing
another political or social agenda. There were very few genuine prophets of God
in biblical times and very few today, and they are almost always unrecognized
until after their deaths. But as much as possible the Church needs to try to be
that independent prophetic voice challenging those in power in government in
our nation and in the world. We need more people willing to say, “Thus says the
Lord …” especially when what follows those words is unpopular with both the
Church and the State.
Church and State? Church or State? I
return to my first point. Neither. God and God alone. Remember Jesus was
crucified by both Religion and Government working together to silence his
message of the Kingdom of God. Instead
of Church or State, let us give ourselves completely and uncompromisingly to
God. From that vantage point we can walk the Way of Christ in the midst of
Church and State.
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