7 Views - Church & State

Who wants to take a whack at what they think historical theology is? Who wants to take a whack? Historical theology. Ezra? So something about Christian. What was that? History of the Bible? No, so that's actually called bibliology. Oh, close. Yeah. Okay, yeah, so almost like religious history, but it's how does history and theology, how do they overlap, and how have we gotten to some of the places we have been, and how does that help us today? So there is a long, long, long history of the church and the state religion and government. And so I'm going to walk you through a couple thousand years of history in one hour, and I hope that it's going to be helpful. I've given you a piece of paper with seven different views. This is by no means conclusive. This is also not global. I'm mainly focusing on the West. And by the West, I mean Europe, North Africa, America, places like that.

So there's seven different views. broad views of government and religion to talk about. I got this framework largely from this website. I don't like everything about this website, but I thought it was very helpful, and I rearranged how they did things. They did it more theologically, and I wanted to do it more historical theology. But if you're interested, this is a group of confessional Baptist guys who hold to the Second London Baptist Confession, and they put together this general list of the seven. I've adapted it to our needs, but I wanted to give credit where credit is due. It was a very helpful article to go through.

All right, so view number one. View number one, this is probably one of the oldest views, and that is government over religion. The government governs and enforces religion. So the government is a big one, and they rule over religion. This is exactly what you would find in ancient Egypt. So in ancient Egypt, there was no separation of church and state. No, the pharaoh was a god. And the Pharaoh, maybe you remember this, when Joseph was in Egypt and there was a famine, everybody was taxed. Everybody had all their stuff that had to be taken except one group of people. Do you remember who did not get taxed? Who did not lose their land? Anybody remember? The priests. The priests.

Because the government The religion was within the government. The pharaoh was a god himself and they had all sorts of other gods. This is a large view throughout early human history. We don't want to make the gods mad because if the gods are mad then what might they do to the nation? Yeah, they might destroy or punish or hurt us, right? And so you have the government who says, no, no, no, we need to make sure that religion is enforced, people follow the rules, or else the gods will be mad. This is very, very common. This is what we find in the West. This is Julius Caesar. So Julius Caesar is the first emperor of Rome. Julius Caesar is very much on board with this.

By the way, if you were a Roman emperor, there was a real good possibility that you would be deified. What do you think deified means? Eventually, people would recognize you as a god. And so in Rome, as well as in Greece and elsewhere, you would have specifically state-sanctioned Religion. So the state could tell you, this is how you must worship. And if you were doing something wrong, like Paul in Ephesus, and you were causing problems for people like Demetrius, the silversmith, who makes all sorts of silver stuff for the temple of Artemis, You might make the gods mad, and if you make the gods mad, and we know that Ephesus is great for Artemis, then you might overthrow the whole city, and we could be judged by the gods, and so the government needs to shut this down.

This is how the world worked in the time of the first century, and before that. Something changes a little bit, though. Who knows what this big, huge, giant-headed guy is? Anybody know what guy this is? By the way, that's the size of a normal person. This is one of his hands, his arm. This is all we have of remnants of this statue. Nope, actually not an idol. This is Emperor Constantine.

And in the 300s, Emperor Constantine, interestingly, becomes a Christian. And again, in the normal way in which the Romans would think, and most of early civilization would think, is if the king becomes a Christian, what does the king want people to do? Become Christians, because you want the God to get mad? No, you want God's blessing. And so Christianity becomes the state religion. It goes, Julius Caesar is here. I didn't show a picture of Nero. But this is exactly why Nero hated the Christians, because it returned the world on its head. They actually called them atheists. They were a threat to society.

Constantine becomes a Christian, and one of the things he does is he has all sorts of church councils, and there's a church historian, the first church historian, Eusebius, and Eusebius's ecclesiastical history is literally paid for, there's a check by the Roman Emperor Constantine. He says, I want you to write all the history of the early church, so we have it, and then not just that, you send this history throughout all the kingdom, and it's paid for by the government.

This is how it worked. And this is not, there are many people who would say, well, well, well, see, then they must have been switching things and changing things, and once the Roman government gets involved, then Christianity's got to change. And in some ways, it does. In some ways, it does. However, I'm not so convinced that it completely flips to something pagan. And that's specifically because this is the way it worked.

If your ruler became convinced of your God, This is the natural thing that would happen. And so there's a state preference towards Christianity at this point. Many people, right, if the emperor's a Christian and you wanna get a good place in his cabinet, what are you gonna do? You're gonna become a Christian. Guess what happened when Emperor Constantine became a Christian? Guess what skyrocketed in the church? Attendance and baptisms. And so some people will say, whoa, whoa, whoa.

See, you know there's a whole bunch of false converts then. It was just a political move, possibly. There's often mixed motives with things like this. It might also be that, oh, we've been curious about this. Now we're actually hearing about it, and we're not going to die. if we join this group, right? So I don't want to just throw everything out that Constantine did. I think we need to be careful in our understanding of history.

But the point is, Constantine's view was very much still in line with the Roman view. The government is over religion. That was his view. View number two that happens, though, is eventually Rome falls. And historically, there's something that's very important that happens. It actually flip-flops.

It goes from government over religion to religion over the government. So religion governs the government and directs the government to enforce its religion. You might think, well, how did that happen, right? How do you flop from the state is in charge of the church, the church is in charge of the state?

Well, what happens, this is this picture there, so it's literally flip-flopped, is this is a medieval era. What happens is Rome starts to fall, and this is Pope Leo I. Constantine actually moves the capital from Rome to Constantinople. Isn't that so humble? His name is Constantine, and what does he name the new capital of the Roman Empire? Constantinople. He's a really humble guy, it's great.

But anyways, the point being, those glory days are over. By the time you get to, 452, Attila the Hun is taking over massive, massive swaths of the world. And Attila the Hun is about to enter into Italy and destroy Rome and Italy itself. Pope Leo I goes to northern Italy and convinces Attila the Hun to turn around and not invade Italy. So he gets a great deal of notoriety because of that.

And then just a few years later, there's the Vandals. The Vandals are another group I'll show you in a minute, but they come and they wanna kill and destroy and pillage and destroy Rome. And Pope Leo goes and he meets with the Vandal kings and he says, look, look, look, here's what we'll do. You can sack the city, you could take the goods, you can pillage the temples, but don't kill people. And the Vandals lived by that. So it saves the lives of all the people. They know that they're gonna die.

The Roman emperors have no power in the city anymore. And Leo really steps in as almost like de facto ambassador for the city of Rome. And what happens is as there's a vacuum of power, because the Roman emperors out in Constantine now, Rome is like the backwaters now. It's being overrun by different Gothic groups and barbarians.

Pope Leo steps in as a political power in the Papal States, and he starts actually getting power for himself. He actually starts to act more and more like an emperor, more and more like a king, and there's a great deal of power that he establishes. The way we think of the Roman Catholic Church as it is today started with Pope Leo I, the Bishop of Rome, because what he did is he gathered all the bishops together. Actually, we have the Council of Chalcedon. He sits over the Council of Chalcedon, and he's the one exercising authority, even though the council doesn't go the way that he wants it to. The point is, he still has say over how this stuff works, and people start looking more and more to Rome and to the Bishop of Rome, who starts acting more and more like a king. So this is where the Huns stopped. They're going here. This is the Goths, who will sack Rome in like 415. And then you had the Vandals, who sacked Rome as well, that Pope Leo said, just don't kill people.

A little while later, you have Pope Gregory I. And he's seen as somewhat of a, got a little bit political, but he's able to kind of match the politics with the religion. And he says that the church's wealth needs to be used to provide for the poor, secure alliances, and maintain public services.

And he essentially starts acting in an administrative role as the emperor of Rome. Again, there is a Roman emperor, he's out in Constantine, and there's nobody there truly governing Rome. And so the Pope Leo steps in and he says, hey, poor people gotta be taken care of, so we're gonna take care of them. The city needs to have clean water, so we're gonna take care of that. And he starts doing these things out of a heart of more charity, as Gregory writes. But what happens is people start looking more and more to the Pope. because he's looking more and more like a city mayor, like an emperor, like a civil magistrate.

And even in the cathedral, so the cathedral itself is a throne room. The word for throne, or seat, or throne comes from this, and a cathedral starts at this point. Where is the rule? Where does the pope sit? The Pope sits on the throne in Rome. So this is Gregory's throne. We'll zoom forward. Roman Empire is in shambles. There's not a Roman emperor, nothing's going on. And this is a painting we have from 800 AD. So in 800 AD, you have this guy, who's the Pope. And what do you think's going on here?

He's putting a crown on his head. So the Muslims have started to invade southern Europe. conquered most of North Africa, they cross over the Straits of Gibraltar, they start taking over Spain, and they get to the Pyrenees Mountains, and they're about to invade into France, and this guy here, his name is Charlemagne, Charlemagne stops the Muslim invasion. The reason why Europe today is not Muslim is because Charlemagne stopped their forces at the Pyrenees Mountains, and the Pope, The Pope crowns him as the first Holy Roman Emperor. The Pope puts the crown on the king.

The church is in charge of who gets the crown. Do you see how it's now flipped? It used to be the government, and they're the ones controlling who's gonna be the priest and stuff, and now it's the highest bishop crowning who's going to be king. So the roles have flopped. Now the church is on top of the government. But there's something that amazing happens. The third view that comes into play happens in the 1500s.

The government and religion start to separate a little bit, but yet there's still definitely overlap. So no longer is the government seen as over the religion, and no longer is religion seen over the government. How did that happen? How did we get from here to here? That's a huge change. How did that change happen to this third view? That government is its own distinct sphere, religion is its own distinct sphere, and yet they overlap in some ways.

Well, you have Pope Clement VII, crowns Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and then something happens just a few years later, two years later. Bom, bom, bom, Martin Luther shows up. And Luther turns everything on its head. We often think of Luther turning the church on its head, but we don't think of Luther turning the whole society and government that's on its head, but Luther had a very different view.

He believed that God governs the world through two distinct but complementary authorities. There's a spiritual realm that belongs to the church, and there's the temporal realm which belongs to the state. And this would become known later as two kingdom theology. So there's two kingdoms, the kingdom of earth and the kingdom of heaven. They have different rulers, they do overlap, but they have different authorities and different powers, and so there's two different kingdoms.

So in the spiritual realm, the church governs matters of faith, salvation, and moral conduct. Its authority comes from the word of God and is exercised through the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. So that's the spiritual realm. In the temporal realm, in the state, the state governs the civil order, justice, and societal well-being. It uses laws to force and maintain peace and punish wrongdoing.

So you've got two different jobs, two different tool bags, and two different senses of authority. But they're both looking to do the same thing. Both of them want the welfare of the nation. Here's what Luther said. God has ordained two governments, the spiritual, by which the Holy Spirit produces Christians and righteous people under Christ, and the temporal, which restrains the unchristian and wicked so that no thanks to them, they are obliged to keep still and maintain an outward peace. The civil magistrate, the government's job, is to restrain evil. Versus the church's job, the religious job, is to produce Christians. Two different authorities, two different jobs, two different roles, though they both have overlap.

So who held this type of view? Well, the magisterial reformers had this type of view, so magisterial magistrate. So those who were part of the reformation that was supported by their governments. So the government was for this and the church was for this. So who are the type of people that held this view? Well, Martin Luther did. John Calvin did. Ulrich Zwingli did. John Knox did. Richard Hooker did. So this is up in England.

And so you have all these different reformers who hold to this view that church and state are distinct institutions. If you are going to become an officer in our church, if you're going to take the vow to be an elder or a deacon, one of the things you have to vow is that you believe that church and state are two distinct institutions. Why? Is that because we believe in the total separation of church and state? No, it's because we believe in a historic reform to Kingdom theology.

Now actually, John Calvin, this got him in major water. This is one of the big fights he had in what's called the Ecclesiastical Ordinances. By the way, did you guys know that Calvin got kicked out of his church? Calvin was a pastor in Geneva for a couple years, and the government didn't like him being the pastor, and so you know what they did?

They said, okay, you need to leave. And you know how they had him leave out of town? They put literally swords at his back, and they led him out of town. And so he was in Strasbourg for a number of years, and when they asked him to come back and be the pastor in Geneva, he said, I'll come back. Well, at first he didn't want to, actually. He said, I'd rather die a thousand deaths than return to Geneva. The Lord had different plans. But before he came back, he said, there's one condition.

You guys need to accept the ecclesiastical ordinances. And this was a series of different rules that he said, this is the way the church operates and this is the way the state operates. And one of the key things in the ecclesiastical ordinance is if the elders of the church are going to excommunicate someone, that's the authority in the elders. See, because before that, if the elders of the church were going to excommunicate or discipline someone, guess who had the final say?

The civil magistrate. Not the church. And so he says, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on, hold on. The church has the keys to the kingdom. The state has the sword. And the keys to the kingdom have been entrusted to the leaders of the church, not to the state.

And so this is where we see there's this untying of the two. Well, in Scotland, this has a big history. The Scottish Reformation has a sort of history. We're going to go through this fast. This is a swell guy. His name is King Henry VIII. King Henry VIII was king in England. He reigned from 1509 to 1541. And in 1534, he wanted to have an heir. He could never have a male child with his first wife. He tried to divorce her.

Well, it's illegal to get divorced in the Roman Catholic Church without the pope signing off on it. The pope would not sign off on it. So he said, you know what? Forget it. We're gonna separate ourselves from the Roman Catholic Church. We do not recognize the bishop in Rome at all.

Instead, the king of England is the king and head of the church. This is what he said in 1534 with the Act of Supremacy. So now we're back to the old Roman way. The king is in charge of the religion, even though it had been the opposite. The pope had to sign off on Henry being king. So this is what happens. So I'm just not going to explain all this. This is King Henry VIII.

These are all his different wives. Guess how many of them had good endings? None. Wife after wife after wife after wife after wife. Every time someone doesn't have a male heir, guess what? Well, now there's some conspiracy, some charge, some off with their heads. Yeah.

He has Mary I, when Henry VIII dies, Mary I becomes queen. Mary is a Roman Catholic, very, very bitter about her father because he divorced his wife, her mother, Catherine of Aragon, and she is Bloody Mary. She's called Bloody Mary, guess why? Because why? Well, she's got blood on her hands. What do you think Bloody Mary did?

Murdered all the Protestants. as a reign of terror, she murders all sorts of Protestants, and so eventually Mary's gone, and Edward VI becomes king, he's just a boy when he becomes king, he only rules for a few years, and then he dies, he's Protestant, the big question is, what's gonna happen next? older sister, Elizabeth becomes queen.

Elizabeth is a via media type woman. She's a middle way. She's not fully Roman Catholic and not fully Protestant. She wants to find a middle way there. That's kind of what happens. Well, eventually this line dies. There's no more children. And so what happens is from whoop, whoop, whoop, all the way down here. Now we have the next in line is the house of the stewards. So this was the Tudor family line, now it's a steward family line. And in the steward family line, you have King James IV of Scotland, who also becomes King James I of England. And this is where things get interesting for the Scottish people. See, the Scottish people were Presbyterians. The Scottish people loved their Presbyterianism. I'm gonna show you how much they loved their Presbyterianism in a moment.

King James I, guess what he did not like? Presbyterianism. He did not like the church having independent authority from the state. And so this grand-looking dude, King James IV of Scotland and the first of England, by the way, all boys, I want you to take note of his fashion. I want you to wear silver tights to church next week. Yeah, no, don't do that, that's weird, right?

But this is what he said to Parliament in 1610, King James I of England and IV of Scotland. Kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called gods. Kings are justly called gods for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth. Sure sounds like the emperors of Rome and the pharaohs of Egypt. Do you see it now? It's government again over religion. This is what he's getting at. And how do you think people in Scotland responded? Not many of them well, right? Most of them not very well. And this is where our history comes from.

The government literally tries to say, no, in the church, you must use the Book of Common Prayer. The king has said it. He's the one who gets to choose the bishops and the pastors. And so he's the one, the nobility, they're the ones that get to choose this. And the Covenanters said, uh-uh. No, that's not how this goes. We're covenanted as a church to Christ, and the government's supposed to be covenanted to Christ, and you're not going to take away the rights of Jesus Christ, and you're not going to just violate all the covenants that we've made as a nation. There was a national covenant for reformation in the 1500s where they literally said, we are a Christian nation with Jesus Christ as our king, and then the king goes against that, and so they go to war. So I'm gonna show you some of the Covenanter flags.

So you can see the cross of Andrew up here, and then Moklin, this is kind of the group that was carrying this flag. By the way, why do you think they carried these flags? What do you think these flags are? You think they just put it up in the church as a decoration? Nope, not as a reminder, good guess. What do you think these flags were used for? Partly in protest, that's for sure.

Okay, like an American flag, when you go to battle, how do you know whose side is where? You have flags marking where your troops are. These are literally battle flags. So when you see the, right, The blue banner or the blue banner that's up on the window, those were literally battle flags. These were literal battles.

I don't have time to get into all of this. Someday it'd be fun to do a Covenanter history with you guys. But this is what these words said at the bottom. For God, covenanted reformation, Presbyterian government, and crown. That's what they were fighting for. Well, so you have to read it with like a Scottish brogue, right? For God, Covenant and Reformation, Presbytery, Government and Crown! Actually, seriously, I've read so many Scottish 1500, 1600 documents, the spelling is crazy until you put it with a Scottish brogue, and you're like, oh, that's what that says. It gets better.

So this is another flag. Sadly, this one got taken a picture of in the 1960s, and now they don't know where it's at. But this flag said, for reformation of religion in church and state according to the word of God and our sworn covenants. Another battle flag was this one, for reformation in church and state according to the word of God and our covenants. You can tell which part of the country they were from by how they pronounce their vowels and consonants. So, these were battle flags, right?

You're not going to take away our right of Presbyterian government where the elders rule the church. State, you're in charge of the state, the elders are in charge of the church. You don't encroach on that. You don't break our covenants. You don't betray Jesus Christ, whose head over both church and state. Two distinct powers. They overlap, but they have different authorities.

In the American colonies, this was the leading view, that there was the realm of the state and the realm of the church. And so the American colonists and Puritans held this, people like John Winthrop. If you go read the Mayflower Compact, this is what's in there. If you go to William Bradford's writings, you'll find this. If you read John Cotton or Cotton Mather, they hold this same. And probably the best known theologian in the American colonial days, Jonathan Edwards, also held this position. And so in America, this was one of the very, very early positions.

Most of our colonies were based with this idea that there is God, specifically the King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ, over everyone. The church has its authority, and the state has its authority, and they overlap quite a bit, but they're distinct institutions.

But here's where things start to change. People start thinking a little bit differently when we start getting into the late 1600s and the early 1700s, and you have this idea of religious separation. Actually, sorry, this is still Reformation time. You have a religious separation that happens in the 1600s, and religion must be radically separate from the government. Where does this idea come from? It's from the Reformation, but it's from what's called the Radical Reformation.

So you want the government over here, and you want the religion over here, and you keep the government away from your religion, right? Because the government is always going to try to pollute your religion, so you just keep the government out of religion altogether.

Who is this held by? Well, this is normally held by Mennonites. So this is Menno Simons, and so most Mennonites and Anabaptists, this is their political theology, which is also why you're not going to go to war. A lot of pacifism in the Mennonite community, part of it is tied to this idea that the state is corrupt. The state is the world, and we don't participate in the world and in aggression, right?

That's against the principles of Christ. And so this was one of the things that came up. So Anabaptists and traditional Mennonites, and I hope that I'm, by the way, I'm doing broad brushstrokes here, right? We're covering lots and lots of history, so you can get nitty gritties, talk to people who have Amish or Mennonite or Anabaptist backgrounds, and they'll give you more nuance, but I don't have time for that, so broad brushstrokes.

So as a result of that view that you got to keep these totally separate, you can't let the government influence religion, view number one that came out of that was religion protects itself from being contaminated by the government. And later, a second view appears where the government protects itself from being contaminated by religion.

Do you see it's kind of like both people pointing guns at each other, like, don't you poison me. Like both of your enemies. So instead of a cooperation between the church and state, it's the state is antagonistic to the gospel, and the church is antagonistic to the corruptions of the state. So it becomes these two very antagonistic realms.

It's still two very distinct realms, but the government is worldly, there's no overlap with religion, and Christians must separate themselves from the government, including warfare. Well, this is where things start to change in a peculiar way, where in America it's going to hit us hard.

There's now a view that develops from the Enlightenment of religious neutrality. The government must be religiously neutral. This is particularly an English philosophy that grows up. And this is this view that the government must keep away from a particular religion, right? So this is anti-establishmentarianism, right? So no established religion. You don't want an established religion. There's gotta be a wall of separation between these two spheres. The government should be religiously neutral and particular religions should not influence the government.

Notice particular. particular religions. It's not that religion doesn't have any influence, but that it's, you can't have a particular religion. So what was going on in Scotland, right, even, there's still a Church of Scotland today. There's a Church of England today, right, because those are magisterial reformations.

In America, people are thinking, I'm not so sure about this. We don't think that any particular religion should influence the government. And so there's two ways that this idea plays out. The first is that there shouldn't be any promoting of religion by the government, right? So you can have all religions and we are pluralistic society. What does that mean, pluralism? Who wants to take a whack at pluralism? What does that mean? What is pluralism? Pluralistic secularism. What does pluralism mean? So secular just means this is not a religious institution. The state isn't a religious institution.

And it's pluralistic, meaning any religion. Or many denominations, many religions, that's okay. By the way, this isn't the very first time this ever came up. Cyrus and Persia and King Asuarius in Persia, they were kind of of the same mind too, right? You could have many different religions. Now, they did have their state religion, so that goes against it a little bit. But pluralistic secularism does not necessarily deny God's existence, but wants to keep the peace between opposing religions.

This is how you end up with states that have Quakers and Presbyterians in the same state. Because, well, the Quakers, let the Quakers do the Quakers thing. Let the Presbyterians do the Presbyterian thing. And that's how, even in places like Pennsylvania, they could live right near each other. And guess who was right around the corner? The Amish. And guess what you do with the Amish? Let them do their thing. Just let them all exist. They can all influence in different ways, but just let them exist.

But there's a second way in which this develops, specifically in American philosophy and in politics, is as a promoting of a civil religion. A set of practices, symbols, and beliefs distinct from traditional religion, yet providing a universal values paradigm around which citizenry can unite.

So this is the way in which when the RP Church was worried about World War I, There were two different pastors sent by our Synod to go talk to Woodrow Wilson. And when these two different RP pastors went to D.C. and they went to go talk to Woodrow Wilson, they actually sat down in the Oval Office. I don't think Donald Trump is ever going to let me sit down with him in the Oval Office and talk to him about my religious hesitancies with things. It's a very different world.

But in the early 1900s, they could go and they said, "'We're concerned because there's no Christ "'in the Constitution. "'It seems like this is a non-Christian Constitution.'" And Woodrow Wilson responded, "'I'm not sure I see it that way. "'I always saw the Constitution as inherently Christian.'" And by that, he meant there are all sorts of elements of kind of cultural Christianity weaved within the ethics of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and our laws. What he was referring to is this idea of a civil religion.

Just Christian enough without being fully Christian. So often you'll hear me say we're riding on the coattails of our previous Christian past. There's a reason why you would have people like Benjamin Franklin, who would be really, really good friends with revivalist preachers, and yet, also friends with Quakers. As a reason why you would have Thomas Jefferson, who would have all sorts of crazy religious ideas, and yet would support, by and large, a society, a culture that was moral, and what was the best moral system? A generally Christian framework. And so many people in America saw Christianity as this is a helpful tool for a moral Christian framework. But you don't want to support any specific sect. You want to have pluralism. James Madison, who is the chief author of the Bill of Rights and our fourth US president, wrote this.

The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner or in any pretext infringed. That would have never flown. in Rome. That would have never been okay in Knox's Scotland. That would not have been accepted by the Holy Roman Empire. The fact that you could say that the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, this was a new idea.

This is what we call classical liberalism. So Madison put this in our Constitution, but John Locke's letters on religious toleration, John Stuart Mill's, guys like that emphasize a free market to some degree. And to some degree, America had a Protestant civil religion until the 1950s. We're going to talk about what changes later. This is also what will lead to an idea, especially in many Western societies, of this idea of libertarianism.

Let people do what they're going to do. Now, how that looks is interesting, but one of the things that happens is this classical liberalism of tolerance, which leads to, in some circles, an idea of more individual autonomy and freedom, is then picked up later by progressive liberalism. and this idea that you need to let people fully express themselves, and it gets unhinged from traditional Christian morality.

There is a Reformed guy, actually, I think there, is he, Daryl Hart, is he one of the elders where one of your kids go? Yeah, I have a great deal of respect for Daryl Hart. We disagree on political theology wholeheartedly, but he's a great historian. He's really, really good on Machen, So we can talk about matron some other times. But this is Daryl Hart. And Daryl Hart teaches at Hillsdale College. And he ties together this idea of what he calls reform to kingdom theology. I'm just choosing Daryl Hart. He's one of the promoters of this reform to kingdom.

Some people in our camp are in, sorry, I shouldn't say our camp. Some people will call this not reformed two kingdoms, but radical two kingdoms. Because of things like what Darrell Hart writes in his book, A Secular Faith, why Christianity favors the separation of church and state. He wants the full separation completely between the two. I disagree. I think it's dangerous and it's not the historical two kingdom theology. This is far more radical.

Well, as things develop, there becomes a sixth view of state and religion, and that is religious influence. The government should not promote only one particular religion, yet religion may influence a government within limited parameters. So now you want the two kingdoms. They are separate from each other, but religion It's not institutionalized, but it does influence.

It's supposed to have a sanctifying influence upon the government. The public square, people with this view will say, should not be religiously neutral. You've got to influence the state. You've got to influence morality for the nation. You've got to influence your senators and your congressmen and your president. You need to do everything you can to bring the Christian influence into society. This is the position of most broad evangelicals and Baptists.

This is, if you are interested, you can read the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter 24, and that's their view of the civil magistrate, that they are distinct institutions, but the church is to influence. Now, I would encourage you, the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter 24, is a edit of the, guess what confession of faith? Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 24. And we have a different view on the civil magistrate. So I'd encourage you, if you want some homework, to go pick up and see what the Westminster says about this. Okay, so this is long, but bear with me.

The government and the church are separate in the sense that they have distinct God-authorized jurisdictions. God authorizes the government to wield the sword, which the government must justly do against an individual Christian who has broken the law. God authorizes the church to exercise the keys.

The government should not exclusively promote a particular religion. The government recognizes religious freedom and does not institute a state church or spread doctrine that is explicitly Christian. Notice explicitly. The government should not restrict the spread of false religion. So don't exclusively promote a particular religion. but also don't spread false religious beliefs. The government should not refuse to allow a mosque to be built in the town square, for example.

But religion may, I would say, many in this camp say religion should influence the government. An individual governmental authority, like a U.S. state senator, may argue for a political position based on religion. And they're able to argue why do they think this is good, and they're able to use their religion for that as their basis for why they think it's good. But they can't say, so thus we need to establish the Baptist Church as the U.S. denomination. They said, no, we're not doing that. We want to use our position without forcing it on people. The government may adopt that position, but not on the basis of religion. So you just kind of get that out of there.

The public square cannot be religiously neutral. It is a religious battleground. The public square cannot be religiously neutral. It is a religious battleground. If you listen to almost any evangelical, like Moody Radio or whatever, you turn it on, this is what you will hear regularly. This is the view. I think this is the predominant view in American Christianity right now. The church's mission is to make disciples into Christians.

Individual Christians should significantly influence the government. So this is individuals. who are doing this, individuals who are influencing. The government should not institutionalize Christianity. For example, the government should not put the Apostles' Creed in the Constitution.

So that's that sixth view. There's a seventh view, and this is the one that I think is palpable, and we respond to, and we think, whoa, there's something dangerous about this. So the seventh view is that of secular suppression. The secular government suppresses religion. Okay, I'll give you an example.

I was listening to NPR a while ago, and there was a story out of France, and in France, There's a large Muslim immigration that has happened in France, and they have very specific dress codes in their public schools, and so if you're going to go to school, which you have to by law, you go to school, you must wear the uniform. Well, guess what is not allowed in the uniform for Muslim women, or Muslim girls going to school? No burqas allowed. And this was seen by the Muslim community as a big, you cannot do this, you cannot do this.

And as I was listening to this interview with their Secretary of Education, it was, no, we are a secular, and we must suppress any expression of an individual's religion. It is the state over religion, to the point that, no, you do not express your religion here, period. This is where I think most secularists, if you listen to, actually there's a whole organization, I can't believe this exists, the Freedom From Christianity. Regularly there are lawsuits against Christians by this organization. There's a judge down in Texas.

It's actually a really heartwarming event where, sad and heartwarming at the same time, a young black man was killed unjustly by a woman cop. And the brother of this slain man gets up, and he tells this lady who had killed his brother, I forgive you, and I want the best for you, and I'm praying for you. And he asked the judge, can I just go give her a hug? And the judge allows it, and he goes, and he gives her a hug, and he embraces her, and he tells her he forgives her, everything like this, right? And then afterwards, after the trial's done, the judge steps down from the bench, she's no longer acting in the capacity of a judge, and she goes and she gives a Bible to this lady who's now been sentenced for her killing of this man. And she says, I hope you'll read this, and I hope it will change your life. And the state of Texas got sued by this organization because how dare this judge get down from the bench and go give a Bible to this woman.

No, if you are a representative of the government, you must not in any way express your religion at all. Freedom from religion. That is not at all, you read the Supreme Court justices' opinions. By the way, this is one of the cool things, especially for you kids, a lot of this is like civics type stuff. I have no clue why lawmakers make a whole bunch of laws. They don't have to tell us. They just make laws, they debate, they argue, but you really don't know.

But did you know every time the Supreme Court makes a decision, they have to let you know exactly why they made that decision? So they actually write out their philosophy of jurisprudence, why they made that decision. It's one of my favorite things to do is to go onto SupremeCourt.org, and you're actually able to read their opinions. What was their thinking, why they made that call on the law? And you read through those opinions.

This changed in the 1950s. This came about as a change in our country in the 1950s. But how did this, because it's a little bit older than that in our country in the 1950s, but where did this start? It started in the French Revolution. In the French Revolution, which is just a few years after our American Revolution, things get crazy. I mean, the French Revolution is nuts.

This is what Voltaire says. Every sensible man, every honorable man must hold the Christian religion in horror. Diderot, the writer of the first encyclopedia, wrote this. Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the intails of the last priest. He seems friendly to religion, doesn't he? No, this is the rise of the atheists. This is one of the political cartoons of the French Reformation. So in the French Reformation, you had the three estates. And in the three estates, the highest estate, you have the priest, and then you have the nobility, the king, and then you have the judges. So those are the three top estates.

And then you have the lowest, the rest of the people. And where do you think the rest of the people are? Do you see them down here? Blind, chained, bloodied, beat up, carrying everybody else. This was the view of state and religion and even law during the French Revolution. And their answer was, get rid of all of them. And by get rid of all of them, who knows what this is? Guillotine. When Robespierre takes over the French Revolution, it begins what's called the Reign of Terror.

Literally, your political opponents disagree with you, especially if they have religious leanings off with their heads. Well, this finds Ford about 60 years or so, And we find this goes a little bit even further. Now it's not just mixed with religion, but now there's also socioeconomic put in with it too. This is a quote for us.

Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering. So religious suffering is the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. So when you suffer and you have religious reasons why you think you're suffering, that is real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

It is the opium of the people. Religion gives you a sense in which you are able to say, I'm being oppressed, I'm poor, but at least I have my religion, and it gives me a sense that I can still have my dignity. The quote goes on, the abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is a demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of that veil of tears which religion is the halo. That whole thing was a quote by Karl Marx.

Religion is just like a pill to make you happy. But you know what you need to do? You need to get rid of religion. You need to get rid of the pill and look at your misery, rise up and fight against the bourgeois. Overthrow those who have the capital. Overthrow those who have money. Then you'll finally be happy. We need class warfare.

Get rid of the religion because all it does is it dumbs you down and makes you think that somehow everything's okay. That's what Karl Marx believed. It's also what Mao Zedong believed during the Cultural Revolution. This is why he tore down Buddhist temples, why he starved out tens of millions of Christians. Why they kicked out all the Christian missionaries, our missionaries, like the reason why we have a Japanese missionary, or Japanese presbytery, is because in the 1950s, they were kicked out by the Communist Party, and they had to flee somewhere.

This is what happened in Cambodia. There's a wonderful lady out in Arizona, her name is Thi. She fled the Communist regime in Cambodia. She's an RP. because her family was being persecuted, because they were Christians, fleeing, because they wouldn't renounce their religion. And if you will not renounce your religion, then you are part of the ruling class of the party that's wrong.

So, seven views. Can you see where the struggle in America is today? What does it mean that we're secular? What does separation of church and state mean? How do you interact with the government? Who should be king? Who should be governors? My point today was not to necessarily give you here's all my seven different reasons why you should become a two kingdoms person, and I didn't even get into all the different reformed views of political theory. I just wanted to give you here's the way in which people have thought over the centuries about religion.

So let me ask you, which one's the most scary to you? What do you think of those seven views? Which one do you think is the most scary? Bill? Yeah, make no doubt about it. This is the exterminate the Christian view. Anybody else got a different view that they think is a really dangerous or scary view? I think, in my mind, all the way back here, That one's extremely scary.

So is the first one, right, where the government is over the religion. Both of those, in my mind, how do you ever escape? What do you ever do? How do you, this medieval system is what got our Our ancestors, spiritual ancestors, the Covenanters, literally during the killing times, killed. Because when the government controls the religion, that's a really dangerous area. So that part really scares me. Both the government over the religion and the religion over the government, whether we're talking about the medieval way or the Roman way, both of those are scary in my mind. Yeah, I tried to do that historically.

Yeah, yeah, so this view, this view here, the medieval view, many people say that view is no different than this view. I would strongly disagree with that, because this is the view that I hold. But there are many people who are non-Christians and secular who would say, no, no, no, if the government has any influence with the church and the church has any influence with the government, then you're trying to go back to number one and number two. And I'm saying, no, no, no, no, no. They're two distinct authorities, both instituted by Christ, both who need to bow the knee. So, yeah, this is a hard one.

We do have a political theology in the RP church. I again encourage you to go read chapter 24 of the Westminster Confession of Faith on the civil magistrate, and our church has a lot, a lot to say historically on church and politics. It's literally on our blue banner for Christ's crown and covenant.

So when I sent you the email right before election day, I said, do you want to see who I'm really endorsing? I'm saying there's somebody above both of these. I'm not saying it doesn't matter who you vote for. I'm saying we gotta remember that Christ is king over both of these.

Closing Prayer

And we need to plead and pray with God that somehow these would be kept in balance. Okay, I've kept you guys too late. Let's go ahead and pray, and then we'll Psalm 67C. So we'll pray, sing 67C, and then we'll be on our way. Lord, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you, Lord, that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords. And someday every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that you are Lord.

Father, we pray that you would not let us put our hope and our trust in princes. Lord, that we would not rest somehow in our political acumen. But Lord, we pray that we would be busy about the commission that you have given us. Lord, we do pray that you would raise up wise and godly statesmen for our country, men and women who would serve you and your kingdom with wisdom. Lord, these are hard things to talk about, hard things to balance, but Lord, we pray, pleading with you that you will give us judges, legislatures, administrators, those in different capacities, locally and nationally. Lord, that you indeed will show mercy to our nation.

So far, Lord, as it promotes the furthering of the gospel and the hastening of your kingdom. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, let's stand. We'll sing Psalm 67, Selection C. O God, O God, no mercy to us, and our transgressions. And come to shine upon us the brightness of your face. So that the whole world may truly know your way. And so that your salvation all nations see this way. ♪ O God, let people praise you ♪ ♪ Let all the peoples praise ♪ ♪ Let nations come rejoicing ♪ ♪ And tongues of gladness praise ♪ ♪ For you have judged the people ♪ ♪ With perfect integrity ♪ ♪ To nations of the whole earth ♪ ♪ Our governor you'll be ♪ ♪ Oh God, let people praise you ♪ ♪ Let all the people praise you ♪ ♪ The earth has brought this crown to thee ♪ ♪ Throughout its farthest days ♪ ♪ Since God, our God, has blessed us ♪ ♪ Yes, God, from last we stand ♪ ♪ That all the earth may hear him ♪ to which we know this day. Three weeks. Yeah. Are you a mom or something? I think I'm a mom. Oh, you're at 11. Oh, no, no, no. you. Daniel. Yeah.