Church and State: Playing with Fire

Whenever the church becomes engaged with the state, we are quite literally playing with fire. In fact, whenever the church has become significantly involved with the state, we have later had to repent of that position. A few examples will suffice:

1. The German Lutheran church�s endorsement of Hitler, including the placing of Nazi flags in sanctuaries � often more prominently than the cross was placed � and the swearing of oaths to Hitler during services.
   
2. Christian engagement with secular government during the Civil Rights era, in which white churches specifically endorsed the oppression of black people as a legitimate expression of government.
   
3. The execution of thousands of Anabaptist martyrs during the 16th century for teaching that one could only baptized as a believer by immersion. This execution came about, through civil authority and by endorsement of Calvinist, Lutheran, and Catholic churches, because the rite of baptism had become a civic cermony.
   
4. The crusades, in which the religious desire to control the Holy Land was wed to the desire of younger sons of European nobility and the idea of the �Holy Roman Empire� to endorse wars of pure aggression, the sacking of the Christian Constantinople, and the wanton repression of Palestinian Christians.
   
5. The institution of the Inquisition.
   
6. Witch trials, which were often political or financially motivated.
   

Simply put, in every case where the church has endorsed civil government, the church has regretted it. In contrast, many of the most inspiring stories of �church done right� have come not when the church has supported civil government, but as the church has either ignored government or stood in a prophetically objective stance towards it. Consider the battle to end slavery, or the massively successful evangelization of the first, second and third centuries.

I bring up the above not as an argument, but to emphasize just how important it is that we answer fully the question of Christian engagement with civil government. I do not overemphasize when I say that our answer to this question will define our whole conception of what it means to be the church, and will radically redefine our Christian message. So, I hope that you will humor me as I explore this question a bit more deeply, with the goal of establishing a principled, Christian stance towards government today. There are three specific scriptural issues I�d like to look at: Romans 13:1-7, 1Timothy 2:1-4, and most importantly what I call the �symbolic world� of scripture.

Romans 13 is the text which would apparently seem to endorse the popular, evangelical position. However, careful analysis of this scripture shows that it does not. The key section is:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God�s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God�s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God�s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. (Romans 13.1-7, ESV)

What is Paul talking about here? He is saying, simply, that we should be subject to the governing authorities. This is a passive subjection: especially since the Christians to whom Paul wrote were unlikely to have any real ability to affect government. The passivity of subjection is reinforced in verse 2: Paul derides those who �resist� established authorities, not those who fail to support them actively, and it is upon those who actively resist authority that God�s judgment is called. In verses 4, Paul even endorses government as �an avenger who carries out God�s wrath on the wrongdoer�. However, Paul�s application of this point to his readers in verses 5-7 is again passive: we are to remain passively in subjection, paying the taxes that are demanded of us and even honoring them. There is not in this text the slightest indication that we should lend the active support of the church to the civil authorities, or that we should participate in the work of government actively. Instead, our role with respect to government is always passive.

The closest the New Testament comes to active support of governing authorities is the following text:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. (1 Tim 2:1-6, ESV)

This is the source of the popular argument that we should pray for ruling authorities. However, I think that if we leave this text here, we miss two important questions. The first is, Why do we pray for them? The answer Paul gives is �that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life� and this is good because it pleases God, who �desires all people to be saved.� The second question is, What do we pray for our rulers? The answer is given clearly by why we pray: we pray that they may come to �knowledge of truth�, and become Christians. Such an exegesis makes little sense in our cultural context, especially when Bush is outwardly so Christian. (On an aside, I think Bush is a sincere Christian, and have even come to like him. However, I think that he has placed himself in a compromised position by taking on the role of civil governance, and I think he is getting some horrible theological advice.) However, in the thought-world of the first century, this was quite a hope: the government in the provinces ran its own religion � the imperial cult declaring the head of state to be God � and was actively persecuting Christians from the early sixties on. This is no doubt why, in verses 5 and 6, Paul declares �there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and man.� Rather than supporting government unequivocally, this text prays that the governors might become Christian � presumably so they will stop killing Christians and Christians can have that �peaceful and quiet life� Paul mentions! It certainly does not call for us to actively pray for government to have success in its current agenda whatever that agenda might be � instead, it calls for the subversion of the government�s current agenda by the conversion of its agents to a better agenda.

The difference in thought world between the first century and today that obscured the preceding passage is what makes it important that we move beyond proof texts and do a more comprehensive analysis of scripture as a whole on this topic. Both the passages above seem to relate to government in opposition to a default of hostility. Where does that default come from? The first answer, historically, is that it comes from government persecution of Christians starting with the execution of Jesus. However, it also comes from a far deeper place within the symbolic world of scripture.

It is unquestionable that, when Jesus came, he proclaimed the kingdom of God. However, there has been much debate about what precisely he meant by that. Often, we have �spiritualized� Jesus� kingship to such a degree that it could never present any conflict with secular authority. However, at its most basic level, the proclamation of the kingdom was a very subversive political claim. The story of the kingdom of God in scripture begins, perversely, with its abrogation. The Israelites fundamentally abandoned the kingship of God when they asked for a secular king:

And he [Samuel] said to the people of Israel, �Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, �I brought up Israel out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you.� But today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses, and you have said to him, �Set a king over us.�� (1Samuel 10:18-19)

It is also to be recalled that God promised that this king would pretty much make the Israelites miserable � and that their having asked for a king other than God himself was regarded as an enormous sin (1Samuel 12). Over the years that followed, they lived to regret it. Even the best of Israel�s kings could not protect her as God had, and most of them were not worth much. The story of Saul and David is not in point here, however when we get to the time of the captivity, we see that Israel is again and again criticized for trying to fight her own battle through secular battles and alliances with secular kingdoms. For example, Israel is criticized for an attempted alliance with Egypt:

Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help

	and rely on horses,

	who trust in chariots because they are many

		and in horsemen because they are very strong,

	but do not look to the Holy One of Israel

		or consult the LORD! 

	And yet he is wise and brings disaster;

	 he does not call back his words,

	but will arise against the house of the evildoers

		and against the helpers of those who work iniquity. 

The Egyptians are man, and not God,

		and their horses are flesh, and not spirit.

	When the LORD stretches out his hand,

		the helper will stumble, and he who is helped will fall,

		and they will all perish together. (Isaiah 31:1-3)

It is in the context of this worldliness that Isaiah promises the messiah. The promise of the messiah is that God will someday come and restore himself as king of Israel, while at the same time restoring the Davidic monarchy. This is why it was so important to Matthew, Paul, and even Luke that Jesus be a descendant of David: because his task as the anointed one was to restore the Kingdom of God as a successor to the Davidic monarchy.

With the fall of Jerusalem in 586, the Jews began eagerly awaiting the messiah. No surprise there � nor will most find any disagreement with the idea that the Jewish people expected primarily a political messiah. In fact, the quest for purely political salvation became something of an obsession for the Jews, and it was in this quest that overbearing legalism of the Pharisees was founded. Pharisees came to believe that, if Israel truly adhered to God�s law, God would bring about the political redemption of Israel from the various overlords who dominated Israel over the years. Since God kept not coming, they kept adding rules until he did.

Despite all this effort, they never did get their political savior: Jesus refused to engage in the rhetoric of political revolution. In fact, he seems to have regarded politics as irrelevant. Instead, what was important was the kingdom of God, which was by itself sufficient to answer the problems of Israel. However, just as much as Jesus failed to model political revolution against secular authorities, he failed to model political engagement in support of the current, secular authorities. Jesus� model, like Paul�s, was one of passive subjection. For example, look at John 18:35, where Jesus stands before Pilate:

�My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.� (John 18.36)

The claim against Jesus was specifically that he was a political revolutionary � that he claimed to be a king. When Jesus says the words above, Pilate responds �so you are a king?� Rather than arguing, Jesus evades. The kingdom is not about active resistance to government.

However, it would be a mistake to say that Jesus made no political claim. The New Testament is full of language that places Jesus in direct opposition to the kingly claims of Caesar. Jesus was not the first to be called �Lord and Savior, son of God� � Augustus was. Throughout the New Testament, this claim is opposed to the claims of Caesar in explicitly political terms: �But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ� (Philippians 3:20). In the context of Caesars lauded as Lords and Saviors, this text seems almost to say that we await the true Savior � rather than the bogus, false and pretentious claims of earthly kings. And, it is also implied that, while we can submit to these kings in earthly things, we must resist their claims to true significance.

Instead, true significance is found in the things of heaven. While we have earthly needs, we must �seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,� and trust God to meet those needs (Matthew 6:33). We can �give Caesar that which is Caesar�s� (Matthew 22:21), since money doesn�t matter anyway, but our true allegiance, our true loyalty, and our true affections belong to God and his kingdom, which is not of this world. We must focus in on those higher allegiances, giving them our heart, our passions, our time, and only giving the bare minimum required of us to civil government. In the New Testament, there is not the slightest indication that we are entitled, required, or even allowed to give civil government our active support.

All of this background, I think, allows us to say three things about the kingdom of God in New Testament thought:

1. The kingdom is political, but not in the usual sense of the word.


2. The kingdom creates, by its very non-political nature, a crisis of significance for civil government.


3. Insofar as we give our active allegiance to the kingdom of God, we have no place providing active support for civil government.

In particular, these conclusions dovetail nicely with the two proof texts addressed above: our participation in civil government is passive, and we pray not that civil government will be successful, but that it will be subverted by the gospel. (For more on this subject, and especially a detailed development of the political claims of Jesus in Paul�s thought, take a look at http://www.ctinquiry.org/publications/wright.htm.) This leads to three conclusions.

First, I think we must say, with Paul, that the governing authorities are established by God. Further, we must say that they are used by him for the ultimate good. However, this does not make everything they do �good�. Instead, they may serve a function similar to that served by the Babylonians during the captivity � they are agents of God�s wrath, serving his purpose in building his covenant people, and under whom God�s chosen people are kept in captivity � but they are not God�s people. Instead, they are, in general, outsiders opposed to the kingdom of God whose actions God is subverting to the purposes of the kingdom. This is the most positive thing we can say about the actions of civil government as a hard and fast rule � they are placed by God, but they are not of God, they are evil, but God uses them for good. If we try to endorse them in the expansive sense taken by many evangelicals today, then we end up endorsing (and thereby taking the blame for) all the evil government has ever done. In fact, the Church Universal would become an accomplice in Iraq�s evil as Iraqi Christians blindly defended Saddam just as American Christians blindly defended Bush. Instead, we should simply acknowledge their authority and move on. They are not our problem � they are the problem of the sovereign God.

Second, we must uphold our loyalty to the kingdom of God as an alternative to the kingdoms of this world. We do this, simply, by proclaiming the lordship of Jesus as the true king at all times, in all places, and in all ways. However, we also do this by refusing to plunge ourselves into the work of civil government: we have our own agenda, the agenda of the kingdom, and we must serve that agenda.

Third, we must refrain from endorsing the actions of civil government or declaring our allegiance. The reason why not is obvious: imagine an Israelite who actively endorsed Pilate�s placing of Roman standards in the temple. Such an Israelite would be one who had abandoned Israel�s vocation to be a people set apart and had become just another Roman subject. Jesus did not endorse such Jews, who had virtually abandoned Judaism altogether, any more than he endorsed the political rhetoric of the zealots. He had no more patience for the scribes than for the Pharisees. In the same way, when we wave the flag of the United States in our churches we abandon our vocation as a people set apart and become just another cog in the wheels of a society that is ultimately not Christian. This must not be.