Church and State–A Sketch in Five Acts (Principle 5)

Read the series.

This last article in our series sketches the culminating principle for properly understanding the “church v. state” issue. It’s actually less a principle than an analogy with some implications.

Principle no. 5: “Church” is to “state” what “home” is to “work.”

It will help if you view church v. state as similar to home v. work. I’ll pretend you work in an office environment of some sort, but you can adapt the illustration however you wish. Think with me here …

You spend a lot of time at work. You might even like work—a lot. Sometimes you spend more time there during the week than you do in your own home. You meet lots of interesting people. You make friends. You go to lunch. You sign office birthday cards. You have a persona, a reputation, a social standing. People know you, and you know them.

You care about what happens at work. You want things to run the right way, for the right reason. You want to see good people get better jobs, and the losers get fired, demoted, or shuffled to a backroom somewhere. You want policies that are sound, procedures that are common sense, and you want to be part of something that matters.

It makes you upset when things go wrong at work. When executives make dumb decisions that negatively impact you and your team. When someone gets a job just because he knows someone else. When human resources refuses to re-classify a position so a person receives more equitable pay, but doesn’t bat an eye when an executive “creates” a position as a patronage gift.

So, work is important. Very important. It consumes the majority of your waking hours. And yet … it’s not your home.

Your spouse, your children, your backyard, your living room, your son’s track meet, your daughter’s birthday party—work is none of those things. It’s in a different realm, a lesser realm, a more mercenary realm. You go to work to get paid, and hopefully because you like the job. But, you go home because the people who love you are waiting there for you.

That’s the distinction between the church and the state.

Set apart, but not isolated

You live in America, but it isn’t your home. You care about what happens. It’s important to you. You try to influence positive change. You’re genuinely frustrated when bad things happen. You might even lose a bit of sleep over it. But, make no mistake, you don’t live at work, and it ain’t your life. At least, I hope not.

You might have ideas about politics. About political philosophy. About what’s best for America. That’s fine, but those are “work” issues, opinions, and preferences—they’re Babylon things. They have nothing to do with “home,” with Jerusalem, with the kingdom. We must not mistake political ideology for kingdom ethics—sometimes they may align, other times they may not. But, they’re different animals, with different goals, different motivations, different authorities.

The very night He was betrayed, the evening before His torture and execution, Jesus prayed this to the Father about His community:

I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it (Jn 17:14-16).

Jesus didn’t pray that His kingdom community would be removed from this sphere, but that they’d be protected while they remained here. Just like King Jesus, we aren’t from here and we don’t belong here. We have kingdom citizenship; not Roman, not British not Kenyan, not Indonesian, and certainly not American—but kingdom citizenship. What Jesus calls “the world” is the sum of the cultures, values, societies that are opposed to Him—He’s referring to those two opposing kingdoms, Babylon v. Jerusalem.

This suggests we can’t advocate for God’s values as the creatures of a political party—it’s a poor ambassador who forget whom he represents. Instead, we must always advocate for kingdom ethics as ambassadors for the Jerusalem kingdom. You live in Babylon, but it isn’t your home. You’re a foreigner in exile holding a kingdom passport. Seek Babylon’s welfare (cf. Jer 29:7)—not to “take Babylon back for God” (spoiler alert—God will destroy Babylon; Rev 19:1-3), but to shine kingdom justice and goodness into a dark world. We advocate for kingdom values not to make Babylon better, but to show in miniature what Jerusalem is like—perhaps we’ll persuade folks to leave Vanity Fair and head for the Celestial City?

Some may ask whether this means Christians ought to withdraw from society, to walk away from the public square. Should the church isolate itself as some sort of “redeemed ghetto,” come to rescue folks then hide them away from the world?¹

No!

If we do that, then there is no subversion and there is no counterculture. You can’t subvert Babylon by hiding under the bed. The distinction is that we don’t advocate kingdom values for the sake of Babylon. We don’t protect unborn children so America can be a better place. The battlespace is not political—it’s “hearts and minds.” Our every effort is about calling people to pledge allegiance to Jesus through repentance and faith (Mk 1:15)—and that entails joining the kingdom community, receiving naturalized citizenship in that country, being issued a Jesus passport, and joining a local “kingdom embassy” (i.e. church) to advocate for Jerusalem in Babylon with us.

Where does that leave us?

Christians must approach issues as self-conscious outsiders with a kingdom agenda—we tell truth to Babylon

Remember truth no. 4? The Christian community is a subversive counterculture calling people to leave Babylon—to defect from that kingdom and join God’s family in the wilderness, as we follow Jesus to paradise. This means we’re a prophetic voice calling in the wilderness, speaking as a distinct minority colony of exiles to a majority world, telling everyone to stop the madness. We ask ourselves, “what would Jesus do?”, and then we try to persuade people to do likewise—with our focus not on “work,” but on the “home” where we truly belong.

Abortion. Gun control. Access to health care. Sexual confusion. Gender confusion. We must engage these touchy subjects as kingdom citizens, not as Americans. To do that, we need input from the global kingdom community to be sure we’re not being provincial. We must stop thinking about these issues like we’re Chaldeans trying to take Babylon back for God.

• Abortion. This means framing the issue as larger than the Roe v. Wade and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization court decisions—because we’re not Americans, we’re kingdom citizens. Tony Evans has well said that a true pro-life position would consider the sanctity of life “from the womb to the tomb.”²
• Gun control. Jesus doesn’t care about the 2^nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, because Jesus isn’t an American and the Spirit did not move the constitutional convention to produce that document. If you’re a Christian, God doesn’t care which country issued your secular passport. Look beyond your American context to consider this issue because you aren’t an American. Again, to quote Tony Evans, you ought to have a “kingdom agenda.”³
• Access to health care. Jesus doesn’t care about free market capitalism, so He is likely unmoved by cries of an alleged “socialism” in this context.⁴ What Jesus does care about is justice, righteousness, and love to the most vulnerable in society. Would Jesus consider it “justice” for a state to choose to not expand Medicaid eligibility which would benefit a substantial number of low-income citizens who otherwise have no meaningful access to healthcare? Don’t think like an American—think like Jesus.
• Sexual and gender confusion. God doesn’t view the DSM-5 as a source of ultimate authority. He just doesn’t. The English language has recognized “gender” as a biological category and a synonym for “sex” since at least 1474, whereas its newfangled utility as a psychological or sociological descriptor only first appeared in 1945.⁵ God’s discussion of “gender” comports with biological categories, and his sexual ethics are recorded in Leviticus 18 and upheld throughout Scripture.

We work to implement kingdom values in American life; “not only to exhibit but also to spread [kingdom] righteousness in the midst of an unrighteous world.”⁶ It’s right to influence the state towards moral sanity, because the government is appointed by God “for the interests and good order of human society.”⁷ We may succeed. We may fail. But, as we do this, we don’t ever forget that America is Babylon, and Babylon is where we “work.” It’s not our home. We expect Babylon to be Babylon. We wish it would be different, and maybe we can make a difference in our own small orbits of influence. But, we know Babylon isn’t Jerusalem, and it never will be. We’re bound for the promised land, and we want people to join us in the wilderness as we follow the captain of our salvation to that blessed city.

When I was on active duty in the U.S. military, I was stationed in Italy. We lived there for nearly six years. I was a stranger in a strange land—a foreigner in exile. All sorts of things went on in local, regional, and national Italian politics. I watched some of it, but I was never really invested in it. Why not? Because I wasn’t Italian. I cared, but I didn’t care.

I’m not saying my feelings about America are exactly like that, but they’re kinda like that.⁸ And I’m not completely sure that’s a bad thing, because I don’t belong here. I’m a stranger. I’m a foreigner. I’m in exile. I have a different passport—a better passport. I agree with the Lausanne Covenant, which explains Christians ought to share God’s “concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of men and women from every kind of oppression … The salvation we claim should be transforming us in the totality of our personal and social responsibilities. Faith without works is dead.”

I get that and agree with it. But, we don’t do this for Babylon’s sake. We do it so the Babylonians will see that this impetus comes from Jerusalem and its King, so maybe they’ll choose to leave Babylon and join us in the wilderness. “The church is the community of God’s people rather than an institution, and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology.”⁹

Which operating environment is best?

At the beginning of this essay, we outlined three broad models for a church’s operating environment; (1) an alliance of church and state, (2) a pluralistic, “free church in a free state” paradigm, or (3) some form of deliberate isolation from the world. The scriptural evidence suggests pluralism is the operating environment a church ought to champion, to the extent it is able. Options no(s). 1 and 3 are unacceptable; the first because the church is the brotherhood of the faithful and not a secular nation state, and the third because you can’t subvert a society by withdrawing from it.

Congregations must play the hands they’re dealt and often don’t get the opportunity to choose their operating environments. They come into being in a particular political context and must make do. But the pluralistic model best supports the “subversive counterculture” mission of the church. Regardless of where it finds itself, every church must try to embody that mission in its specific context.

Resources

Here are some more resources on this topic. I won’t include any treatises on political theology; not because they aren’t important but because I think these more foundational texts are better for grounding our discussion.

On the church as a subversive counterculture

1. A short article by Michael Svigel titled “The Conscience of the Kingdom: A Third Way for Christians Caught Between Isolationism and Constantinianism,” RetroChristianity, 04 May 2018.
2. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens. A wonderful book that will challenge any Christian. This is the most important book I’ve read on this subject, and it’s the book that showed me a way out of politicized Christianity.

On being set apart, but not isolated

1. The Lausanne Covenant, Article 5. It’s short, historic, and accessible. It was perhaps the first truly global Christian gathering in the modern era. It’s famous for, among other things, its articulation of social responsibility as a necessary component of the Gospel.
2. Exposition of the Lausanne Covenant. This is John Stott’s brief remarks on each article; pay particular attention to his discussion of Article 5.
3. Rene Padilla, Mission Between the Times. For Christians who have grown up with a “our job is just to preach the Gospel!” ethos, Padilla’s work is very refreshing; a learned and simply written collection of essays on the kingdom and the church today.

On the American church’s bad romance with the state

1. Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson, Blinded by Might: Why the Religious Right Can’t Save America. This is the best, most accessible, most convicting book I’ve ever read about the American church’s error in making itself a creature of the Republican Party. Two disillusioned veterans of Falwell’s Moral Majority wrote the book. It’s excellent.
2. William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America. A good history about, well … exactly what the title says.
3. Matthew A. Sutton, Jerry Falwell and the Rise of the Religious Right: A Brief History With Documents. This is a short reader, which means it has a brief introduction to the topic followed by lots of source documents from the key players—speeches, excerpts from books, radio and television addresses, etc. It lets history tell the story.
4. Kevin Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. This is another history of the movement, in the same vein as Martin’s book, above.