“Church and State”
Psalm 2/ Mark 12: 13-17
The Reverend Robert M. Knight, D. Min.
July 1, 2007

	Typically--on this Sunday (every year)--nearest the “4th of July” (our “nation’s birthday”): I preach a sermon on (the important subject) the “Separation of Church and State.”

	This “term” (historically “unique” to our particular “national experience” as “Americans”)--it comes from a letter President Thomas Jefferson wrote to the “Danbury (Connecticut) Baptist Association” (in 1802), in which he “spoke of” (as he “called it”) this “wall of separation.”  

	Referring, of course, to the “First Amendment” to our nation’s “Constitution” (which insures these two important “provisions”): 1) that because our nation has no “established religion”; consequently #2) “religious freedom” (or conversely, “freedom from religion”)--it is “guaranteed” to “all Americans.” 

	Indeed, in 1807 [newly immigrated to “America” from “Scotland,” which “had” and “has” a “state church” (the “Presbyterian Church”)], the acknowledged “founder” of “our church” [the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)]--the Reverend Thomas Campbell (himself, a “Presbyterian minister”)--he wrote (in his “Declaration and Address,” from which I’m quoting): “The favorable opportunity which Divine Providence has placed in our hands, in this happy country, for the accomplishment of so great a good (the reunion of all Christians); it is of no small consequence due to the fact that this is a country happily exempted from the baneful influence of any civil establishment of any particular form of Christianity . . . .”  

	Subsequently, as “Disciples” we have  (historically) “advocated” a “First Amendment kind” of “Christian faith.” Which “puts us,” yet again--these days--where “we Disciples” have often “found ourselves” (throughout the past 200 years) within the “American religious landscape.” (To use “the language of the Bible”): as “Disciples,” we remain a veritable “voice crying in the wilderness” in contrast to the “stridency” of today’s “religious and political right” which would “claim” (to use Thomas Campbell’s term) a “particular kind of Christianity” (in fact, Christian “fundamentalism” and “dispensationalism”) as the “official, public religion” of “our nation.” If you will, the “civil religion” (indeed, the “cultural Christianity”) of Pat Robertson, John Hagee, James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, Tim LaHaye, (the late) Jerry Falwell, and the so-called “Moral Majority.” Not to mention, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingram.

	As “Disciples” our “reason” for (as it were) “seeing thru” such a “myopic” and (frankly) “reactive view” of “history, politics” and “religion” (an under-stand-able “fear,” in the face of encroaching “secularism” [ironically enough, even in “churches” that consider themselves to be the “most conservative”]; as well as just as “irrational”-a-“fear,” on the part of “so many” regarding--certainly, in these days, the “growth of Islam,” here in America)--as “Disciples” our “reason” (for “seeing thru” such a “viewpoint)--it is this.   

	The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has always promoted an “intelligent, educated, thinking-person’s” kind of Christianity--in all facets of “human knowledge”--including our “study of the Bible.” That’s why “we Disciples” have such a “dis-proportionate” number of colleges, universities, seminaries and divinity schools (relative to the “small size” of “our church”). 

	Consequently, we have “learned from” both “European and American history” (and today, even from other parts of “the world,” involving “religions other than Christian”); along with the insightful “framers” of our “nation’s Constitution” (most of whom, like Jefferson, were not “conventional Christians”) we have “seen” the “tragic consequences” any time any “government” has an “official, public religion.” For any time any where any “religion” (or, for that matter, anyone’s particular “kind of religion”)--when it becomes “established” (as in, for example, being “tax supported” and/or “legally favored”; as in “vouchers” for “parochial schools” and “federal grants” for “faith-based initiatives” on the part of churches, synagogues, mosques and temples)--such “religion”: it becomes increasingly “irrelevant” (not to mention, “corrupt”).    

	That is--don’t you see?--that is always the proverbial “achilles heel” of any “government” or “religion”: the more “institutionalized” it becomes, the more “susceptible” it is to “corruption.”

	As for “irrelevance”--borrowing on the “irony” in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters--that’s what I “say” to my “secular-humanist friends.” You guys “don’t get it,” I “say to them.” You spend all your time and energy fighting with the “religious and political right” (just as they spend all their time and energy fighting with you). But what you don’t realize is that they’re “not all that different from you.” They “don’t get it” either. Which is, of course, how it always is with “extremes.” 

	The “religious and political right” (in America today): “they think”--that if “their kind” of “cultural Christianity” (their brand of “civil religion”; their so-called “the-ocracy,” rather than a “de-mocracy”); that if this were to become our nation’s “official, public religion”--America would thereby become more “Christian.”    

	That is not, however--as Thomas Campbell “knew” (200-years-ago, and any “informed Disciple” knows today); that is hardly what even “secular history” (much less what “the Bible”) teaches. Just the opposite.  

	If you “secular-humanists” (I say to my “secular-humanist” friends); if you really want to “destroy Christianity” (here, in America), you should “join forces” with the “religious and political right.” You should “see to it” that America becomes, in fact, “their kind” of so-called “Christian nation.”

	Granted--at first--(I tell them) you may have to “put up with” (at least) some “discrimination” against, for example, anyone who “opposes” such “fascist religion” (where you can’t even “run for dog-catcher” unless you’re the “right kind of Christian”); and certainly toward those who happen to not have the “right kind” of “sexual orientation.” And, of course, the number of “abortions” will increase. (Those are, at least, the “current statistics.” That there are actually “more abortions” in countries [world-wide] where “abortion” is “illegal” [in various Latin American countries, for example], than in such notably “secular nations” [such as Norway and Sweden, for instance] where a “woman’s right” to “choose” [whether or not to have “an abortion”]--where such a “right of choice” is “legally protected.”)

	This so-called “Christianizing” of America (meaning, of course, a “particular kind” of Christian “fundamentalism” and “dispensationalism”): it won’t--I suspect--it won’t be “quite as belligerent” as John Calvin’s ostensible “theocracy” (in “17th-century Geneva), where the brilliant Spanish physician, Michael Servetus, for example; where he was “burned at the stake” because his “doctrine of the Trinity” wasn’t “correct enough.” Or the infamous “Salem Witch Trials”--here in “Colonial America”--among “the New England Puritans.” Or the “tale of Hester Prynne” in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. It won’t be that bad.  

	Or will it . . . ?

	You just “need to be patient,” I “tell my secular-humanist friends.” Give it a “few centuries.” All you have “to do today” is to “look at modern Europe”--at “those countries” that, in fact, have a “state church” (an “officially established public religion”). Citizens in “those countries”--they may “pay taxes” to “the church,” and “the Ten Commandments” may even be “allowed” to be “posted” in “public buildings.” In “such countries,” however--if “the church” is not only embarrassingly “corrupt” (just another “government agency”)--it has become even more “irrelevant.” For in no “nation” (anywhere in the world)--in which there is a “favored religion” (in the form of a “state church”)--the “fact” is (in “such countries”): if the “Christian faith” is merely “ignored” (at best), it is outright “rejected” (at worst).               

	Indeed, if you (as “secular humanists,” I say to my “secular humanist” friends)--if you want to “destroy Christianity,” here in America--that’s the way to “go about it.” Make sure “the government” and “the church”--that they “end up in bed together.” See to it that what “passes” for “Christianity” (here in America): that it becomes, merely, a “shallow, cultural-kind of civil religion.” 

	Jesus, of course--in our “Gospel lesson” today he’s facing the “same situation” in “his world.” These “pious Jews”--they actually “believe”--that if they could just “get rid of” those “oppressive Roman secularists”: they could then “establish” their kind of “religious government.” 

	“Our Lord,” however--when he replies: “Render to the Caesar what is the Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”--he is “saying just the opposite.” Not only to his “fellow Jews” (there and then)--but also to us, as “Christians, here in America” in these days.

	As “Christians”--not unlike “Jesus, the Jew”--we “believe” that “everything belongs to God.” Such that “what our Lord is saying” (in this “seminal passage of scripture”): it is, afterall (what “my dad”--a “good” and “godly” man; he wasn’t “well-educated,” but he was “intelligent” and had “good sense,” a person of “good character”--what he used to “say to me”) about “being in the world, but not of it.”

	Or as “Jesus declares” elsewhere (in the Gospel of John--John 18): “My kingdom is not of this world.” It’s “in the world”--says Jesus--but not “of it.” 

	Put simply: any time any religion “dominates” a “culture” (a “nation,” a “government”)--ironically (and tragically so)--it is, instead, the “culture” (the “nation,” the “government”) that “ends up corrupting the religion.” (And just as “tragically”--just as often--even “the other way around.”) 

	Jesus “knew that” (two-thousand years ago). Thomas Campbell “knew it” (two-hundred years ago). And thoughtful, reflective, insightful (and just as “deeply committed”) Disciples of Christ “know it” today. That’s why “we, as Disciples”; why we “advocate” a “First Amendment kind of Christianity,” here in America (the “Separation of Church and State”). It’s why we “oppose” any “established” (any “official, public) religion” (in “the life of our nation”)--even “our own kind of Christianity.”  
	  
	Because we don’t want “the church” to become “corrupted” (anymore than any “institutionalized religion” is already “tempted,” quite enough, toward such “corruption”). And we certainly don’t want “the church” to become “irrelevant.” For we “Disciples”--we have “learned” from Jesus (in the New Testament); or for “that matter,” Jeremiah (in the Old Testament); not to mention, Thomas Campbell (in his “Declaration and Address”)--we have “learned” that the only kind of “religion” worse than “no religion” is “civil religion”: the “worship” of “the state as church,” and “the church as state” (among the “sublest” and most “insidious” of all “idolatries”). 

	“Vital, authentic, biblical Christianity” (in America, or anywhere else): it is always a “choice”--in fact, “a choice” that even “God gives us.” For indeed, if you aren’t “free” to not be “a Christian”--you’re just as “not free” to “become one.” 

	If “America” is (in any sense) a “Christian nation”; if “vital, authentic, biblical Christianity” can and does continue to “flourish (in many ways and places) throughout our land”--it’s because the “First Amendment” to our “Constitution” guarantees that “freedom.” As does “the Bible.” At least according to Thomas Campbell; at least according to Jesus. 
    		
	For “Christ’s sake”--to the “glory of God.”

	Amen.