Considerable interest has been aroused by the publication of a series of recommendations advocated by a Special Committee on Church and State, in a report given to the 1962 General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Relations between Church and State, Office of the General Assembly, Philadelphia). This report has caused a division of opinion and inspired debate among laity and clergy.
The committee recommended that there be a cessation of celebration of religious holidays, Bible reading, and prayer in public schools; that Sabbath laws be made less stringent; that there be no tax exemptions for religious agencies; and that there be no special exemption from military service for clergymen. The report also questioned whether the clergy should serve as military chaplains, paid by the State.
The recommendations lead us to think of the danger to which Philip Schaff called attention in his excellent monograph, Church and State in the United States. Schaff, a truly great church historian who taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, accused the Liberal League of attempting “to heathenize the Constitution and to denationalize Christianity.” He quotes from the organ of the Liberal League, The Index (Jan. 4, 1873), as follows:
The Demands of Liberalism
1. We demand that Churches and other ecclesiastical property shall no longer be exempted from just taxation.
2. We demand that the employment of chaplains in Congress, in State Legislatures, in the navy and militia, and in prisons, asylums, and all other institutions supported by public money, shall be discontinued.
3. We demand that all public appropriations for sectarian, educational, and charitable institutions shall cease.
4. We demand that all religious services now sustained by the government shall be abolished; and especially that the use of the Bible in the public schools, whether ostensibly as a text-book, or avowedly as a book of religious worship, shall be prohibited.
5. We demand that the appointment, by the President of the United States or by the Governors of the various States, of all religious festivals and feasts shall wholly cease.
6. We demand that the judicial oath in the courts, and in all other departments of the government, shall be abolished, and that simple affirmation under pains and penalties of perjury shall be established in its stead.
7. We demand that all laws, directly or indirectly, enforcing the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath shall be repealed.
8. We demand that all laws looking to the enforcement of “Christian” morality shall be abrogated, and that all laws shall be conformed to the requirements of natural morality, equal rights, and impartial liberty.
9. We demand that not only in the Constitutions of the United States and of the several States, but also in the practical administration of the same, no privilege or advantage shall be conceded to Christianity or any other special religion; that our entire political system shall be founded and administered on a purely secular basis; and that whatever changes shall prove necessary to this end shall be consistently, unflinchingly, and promptly made.
Schaff then proceeds to some general thoughts on the liberal program in the following fashion:
To carry out their program, the Free-thinkers would have to revolutionize public sentiment, to alter the constitutions and laws of the country, to undo or repudiate our whole history, to unchristianize the nation, and sink it below the heathen standard (Church and State, p. 45).
Little did he dream that a segment of his own denomination would seek to give reality to what he termed an “infidel program.”
The general thrust of the Presbyterian committee’s recommendations is to secularize the government and its institutions. The direction is towards “unchristianizing” the nation. The report states: “More important, history warns that the conception of the ‘Christian State’ is as dangerous for true religion as for civil liberty” (Relations Between Church and State, p. 6). The State is required to remain absolutely neutral as far as religion is concerned (ibid., p. 8). This thrust in the report’s introduction and appendices is even more revealing than the startling recommendations.
Most disconcerting to modern theologians who treat the question of church-state relations is the “otherworldly” attitude of Christ revealed in the Gospels. The committee seeks to overcome this attitude of Christ by “freeing” the Church from his teachings:
The new man in Christ finds a living Lord to follow, not a rigid set of maxims to be applied (ibid., p. 6).
The church commits a great error when it treats the teachings of Jesus as if they had a significance unto themselves. Jesus Christ was not a second Moses; to say that his teachings embody a new law is profoundly misleading. Legalism and moralism in the church are de facto denials of the confession of the Lordship of Christ (ibid., p. 33).
The Lord did give a set of maxims which he expected to be obeyed. His authority impressed his listeners, for he did not speak with the uncertainty, vacillation, and ambiguity of the scribes. But now modern scribes tell us that to follow the Sermon on the Mount and other precepts of Christ is “legalism and moralism” and a virtual denial of the Lordship of Christ. We are puzzled. How can obedience to the revealed Word of Christ be a virtual denial of his Lordship?
Unique and novel is the committee’s attempt to nullify the import and relevance of the classic text of church-state relations: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17; cf. Matt. 22:21; Luke 20:25). The report affirms that the New Testament denies an application of this statement to the church-state question. And why? “Because Jesus’ hearers were amazed by the saying!” and “Luke’s account explicitly indicates that the saying served the function of silencing those who sought to trap Jesus” (ibid., p. 33). In other words, the saying has no significance because it silenced his opponents! Jesus’ hearers were also amazed at the Sermon on the Mount; does that remove its relevance?
“Dynamic unpredictability” seems to be the substitute for the “rigid set of maxims” and for the authoritative revelation. The Church’s deliverance from the revealed teachings of Christ issues in freedom. “This freedom contains an element of dynamic unpredictability which should be present in our approach to church-state relations” (ibid., p. 7). However, Christ’s teaching impressed people because he spoke not simply with “dynamic unpredictability” but with authority.
For the authoritative Word of Christ in Scripture, the committee would substitute an uncertain source of revelation: “It must be recognized anew that our God is a dynamic Lord, a truly unpredictable source of on-going revelation” (ibid., p. 10). What the Lord revealed as truth yesterday may not be what he reveals as truth today or tomorrow. To call the Lord “an unpredictable source of on-going revelation” is to dishonor him who is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” The great historical denominations have always been against such fanatical groups who claim to receive revelation from God apart from Scripture.
Contextual ethics is the substitute for universal principles. Seemingly there is not a permanent set of ethics or values that can be applied to concrete realities of time and circumstance. The committee states:
The ethic which gives point and direction to the witness of the church to its risen Lord is contextual in that it is meaningful to man only in terms of the concrete realities of his own time.… This is why the Christian ethic can never be understood in terms of universal principles to be applied in all situations and under all circumstances (ibid., pp. 35, 36).
In other words, because of change of situation or circumstance, a “thus saith the Lord” in America may not be politic or expedient in Africa. A “thus saith the Lord” in the first century may be out of date in the twentieth. Our Lord, certainly, does not give the impression that the ethic code he instituted was contextual and could be changed by time and circumstance.
That we have not misunderstood the intent of the committee is seen in their approval of another term: middle axioms. These are defined as “not binding for all time, but are provisional definitions of the type of behavior required of Christians at a given period and in given circumstances” (ibid., p. 39). Christian ethics are as chaff which the winds of time can blow away!
Although the committee desires to separate the State and its institutions from the Christian religion, nevertheless it encourages the Church to use the coercive power of the State to establish the Christian ethic. In effect, the Church must resort to legalism. Legalism is the attempt to reform life by legislative acts. In the report such statements as these appear: “only action through civil law could remedy the social crisis on a national scale”; “the Christian must advocate national reform by legal measures”; “the solution must be found in state actions”; “American Protestants now had to find how they could relate themselves to state power as the instrument by which the Christian responsibility for economically depressed persons could be met” (ibid., pp. 25–27). No longer the power of the Holy Spirit but state power is to be the instrument of the Church. No longer Christian charity but the welfare state is the answer. No longer the persuasive power of the Gospel but the coercive power of the State is the instrument of Christian responsibility.
Separation, for the committee, is a one-way street. The State must not in any way become involved with religion or the Church, but must remain absolutely neutral. At the same time, to the Church is reserved the right to judge the affairs of the State: “This does not rule out strong expressions of judgment by churches and churchmen on public affairs” (ibid., p. 30).
The committee would base the superiority of the Church and her right to sit in judgment over the State on the peculiar Barthian dogma “that in Christ, God and the world are reconciled” (ibid., p. 7). However, no biblical proof is advanced that the State has been placed under the direction and critique of the Church. Certainly, Christ has not given that mandate to the Church but has clearly indicated that Caesar has an independent jurisdiction in relation to the Church.
The report states on page 33 that “the issue before the General Assembly is not “What is Caesar’s and what is God’s?’ Caesar has no autonomy as over against God, whether he knows it or not.” Caesar has no autonomy as over against God, but Caesar does have autonomy as over against the Church. The State is amenable to God. So is the Church. But it does not follow nor is it true that the State is amenable to the Church. The Bible view is a free church in a free state.
To equip the Church for the task of supervising the affairs of the State, the committee gives the Church this impossible task: “to know our state and its problems as critically as possible” (ibid., p. 7). How can the Church evaluate correctly the domestic and foreign affairs of the State without the avenues of information open to that body? Even now the feeble and amateurish efforts of the Church to become “worldly wise” have diverted her from the main task of saving souls through the proclamation of the Gospel of grace.
One cannot help wondering why the report, in its historical summation, failed to signify the most impressive feature of church-state relations during the hundred-year period after the adoption of the federal Constitution: the fact that the churches did not meddle in civil affairs nor seek to exert political pressures. This was so striking that the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:
There is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.… They [clergy] keep aloof from parties and from public affairs. In the United States religion exercises but little influence upon the law and upon details of public opinion; but it directs the customs of the community, and, by regulating domestic life, it regulates the state (Democracy in America, I, 314, 315).
In other words, it was not by meddling in civil affairs and not by political pressures that the American Church became such a powerful influence for moral good, but by keeping strictly to her spiritual sphere and by the employment of the persuasive power of the Gospel.
The report declares rightly that the question as to whether the Church should proclaim its Gospel is unthinkable, and then adds: “Likewise unthinkable is the possibility that the proclamation can be limited in scope so as to leave the political and social realm undisturbed” (Relations Between Church and State, p. 37). Christ took no direct concern in the political, social, and economic functions of the State; yet the influence of his Gospel disturbs them all. This was accomplished not by taking over the functions of the State nor by directing the affairs of the State, but by the influence of redeemed men.
The report speaks of tactics. Why not follow the tactics of Christ and the apostles and confine the work of the Church to spiritual weapons rather than political? The Church actually intensifies her influence on society by keeping herself separate from civil affairs and concentrating on the affairs of the Kingdom.
History gives evidence of bad effects when the Church dominates civil affairs, as abundantly illustrated in the history of many European nations. But a state whose laws and institutions are influenced by Christian life and principles is a blessing for true religion and civil liberty. And the greatest illustration of this is (or has been) the United States of America.
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