Christianity is not a purely private pursuit: the Christian must tend both to his own salvation and to the salvation of others. But government, Justice Scalia argued, is not the Christian means of salvation. The main function of government is the here, not the hereafter.
In a speech in 1989 to an audience of American Catholics in Rome, Justice Scalia explained that the genuine American tradition of separation of church and state is “an authentically Christian tradition as well” and that the confusion of church and state is unhealthy for both institutions. Further, he argued that Christians are morally obligated to obey the laws of just governments.
I want to speak to you this evening about a subject that has been of particular interest to Americans and that Americans have been particularly good at—the relationship between church and state. And I want to look at that subject from each of the particular viewpoints that you and I share: first (and just briefly), from the point of view of citizens of the United States; and second, from the point of view of Roman Catholics.
No principle of American democracy is more fundamental than what has come to be known as the separation of church and state. Unlike many constitutional prescriptions that bear upon individual liberties, this one is reflected not only in the Bill of Rights adopted in 1791—which says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”—but also in the original Constitution, which forbids a religious test for federal office.
A separation of church and state was more politically needful in the American republic than elsewhere, because of the sheer diversity of religious views. (A prominent French judge once explained to me the essential difference between France and the United States as follows: France has two religions and three hundred cheeses; the United States has two cheeses and three hundred religions.) But perhaps more than any other principle of American government, that one—the separation of church and state—has swept the Western world. I hope you will excuse my cynicism if I believe that the single most significant cause of that healthy development has been, quite probably, a decline in the vigor of religious belief. Keeping the state out of matters of religion is a much easier political principle for the agnostic than it is for the “true believer” (to use Eric Hoffer’s term) of any faith. If one is a skeptic, or not entirely convinced of the truth of one’s own religious beliefs, it is quite easy to agree that those beliefs should not be imposed, and indeed should not even be fostered, by the state. After all, they might be wrong. But for the Ayatollah Khomeini—or, for that matter, for devout Christians of the sort who managed the Inquisition—the doctrine is more difficult. If one truly believes that the hereafter is all-important, that the pleasures and griefs of our eighty years or so in this world are insignificant except as a means of entering the next, then the temptation is to take whatever action is necessary, including coercive action by the state, to save people—for their own good, whether they know it or not.
In any case, our American political tradition has happily removed this temptation from the path of even the zealous religious believer. It would be wrong to think, however, that the separation of church and state means that the political views of men and women must remain unaffected and uninformed by their religious beliefs. That would be quite impossible to achieve and is assuredly not part of our political tradition. The Declaration of Independence begins by invoking “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” and concludes “with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence.” The philosophy expressed in that document, that “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” underlay the Bill of Rights. Belief in God, leading to that belief in human freedom, had much to do with the greatest war in our national history, as the words of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” make plain. From abolition to Prohibition, the secular arrangements that Americans have voted for, or indeed fought for, have often been related to their religious beliefs.
It has become fashionable to speak of the American constitutional system as though it contained within itself the philosophy of John Stuart Mill—that everything must be permitted, and nothing can be forbidden, unless it physically harms another human being. That is simply not so. Consider, for example, laws against bigamy, which the Supreme Court has held to be constitutional. Or laws against public nudity. Or laws against cruelty to animals. It cannot be said that any of these prevents physical harm to another human being—or even aesthetic harm of much significance. (If the nudity bothers you, avert your eyes.) It seems to me that society’s desire for laws of this sort—and all societies have them—is traceable to some common ethos, either religiously based or indistinguishable from religious prescription, which the old writers used to call bonos mores—“good morals.” The most difficult task of constitutional adjudication in modern times, when these shared values are less uniform than they once were, is to decide how far the state can go in preserving a common fabric of morality.
Though its commands may be vague at the margins, however, our American tradition of separation of church and state is in its essentials firm and clear. I intend to address most of my remarks this evening to the subject of church and state looked at from the other perspective that you and I share, the perspective of a Roman Catholic. There the outlines are not as clear—but I think they ought to be. It seems to me (and I think I am not impressing my American notions upon the matter) that our faith’s message on the subject is essentially the same as that of the Constitution: church and state are separate. One can reason at least partway to the conclusion, I suppose, theologically: state coercion of religious belief is wrong because it suppresses the free will that is precisely the respect in which man is made, as we say, “in the image of God.” It is not possible to save someone “in spite of himself.” But I think the revealed word of God in the Gospels goes much further than this modest point and displays a vision of the separate sphere of operation of church and state that is similar to what the Founding Fathers produced.
The strongest evidence—and Christ’s only explicit statement on the subject—is the well-known exchange with the Pharisees on the subject of taxes. Knowing the Jews’ hatred of Roman rule, and the religious scruples of many of them against paying taxes to a heathen emperor who styled himself a god, the Pharisees asked Christ whether it was lawful—that is, lawful under the Jewish religious law—to pay tribute to Caesar. A question, it seemed, which had no answer that would not be damaging to Jesus’s cause in one way or another: either by alienating devout Jews, or by making himself an enemy of the Roman state. As you recall, he asked the Pharisees to show him a coin and inquired whose image was on it. When the answer came back “Caesar’s,” he delivered that devastating line, “Render unto God the things that are God’s and unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” It was, in modern terms, a stopper. As St. Luke records it, “marvelling at his answer, they kept silence.”
But it was, of course, more than just a snappy comeback. Christ said it not only because it was a hard point to answer, but because it was true. The business of the state, he was saying, is not God’s business. Not that the state is in any way inherently evil; or that there are not good governments and bad governments insofar as pursuing the proper ends of government is concerned; or that some governments are not more conducive to their citizens’ service of God than others. But in the last analysis the most important objectives of human existence—goodness, virtue, godliness, salvation—are not achieved through the state; and those who seek them there are doomed to disappointment.
The Gospels are so full of that message that it is surprising it can be so readily ignored. St. John records, for example, that after Jesus fed the five thousand with five barley loaves and two fishes, the crowd was so impressed that they wanted to make him king. Not a bad post, one would think, if the state were particularly useful for achieving the most important things Christ was after. John records Christ’s reaction to that prospect as follows: “When Jesus perceived that they would come to take him by force and make him king, he fled again to the mountain, himself alone.”
Or, of course, the memorable interview with the Roman procurator Pilate—almost a personification of confrontation between religion and government, displaying so succinctly how little the latter understands the former. Pilate asks Jesus whether it’s true that he’s a king. Jesus replies—I have always thought it a very playful reply under the circumstances—Did you come to this conclusion on your own, or did somebody tell you? And Pilate bristles. “Am I a Jew?” Jesus then goes on to talk about his kingdom. “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would have fought that I might not be delivered….But, as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate replies, in effect, “So you admit you’re a king,” and Jesus answers: “Thou sayest it; I am a king. This is why I was born, and why I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.” And Pilate ends the interview with that sad line—so expressive of the cynicism that comes with power, then as now—“What is truth?”
It could not be clearer from all of this that the state is not the Christian’s source of power, nor his means of salvation. The fundamental reason, I suggest, is also clear from the Gospels: that the focus of concern of the two kingdoms is fundamentally different. A good government should not, to be sure, impede the religious practices of its people; it ought indeed, as many of the decisions of our Supreme Court have said, accommodate those practices where possible. But its main function is not the hereafter but the here: assuring a safe, just, and prosperous society. Contrast that with the main function of the kingdom Christ was referring to. I mentioned a little earlier the feeding of the five thousand. The Gospels mention a similar incident in which Christ fed four thousand. How significant, I have always thought, that they mention no others. From all indications, there was plenty of poverty in Judea in those days—yet Christ chooses to alleviate it by miraculous means only twice, in circumstances in which the object of the exercise is to show his compassion and his power rather than to end once and for all the hardship of a poor country. How different from the way Caesar would—and should—have acted if he possessed the same power. The central concerns of their kingdoms were, you see, quite different. Caesar would never have said—should never have said—the following:
[D]o not be anxious for your life, what you shall eat; nor yet for your body, what you shall put on. The life is a greater thing than the food, and the body than the clothing….
Consider how the lilies grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass which flourishes in the field today but tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more you, O you of little faith!…
[D]o not seek what you shall eat, or what you shall drink….But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be given you besides.
I suggest that, coming from a temporal ruler, that would be a perfect recipe for national disaster. It is assuredly the business of the state to be concerned about precisely those things.
I hope you will not mistake what I am saying. My point is not that the Christian has no concern for how government operates, or what it achieves. Of course he does. In everything he performs, from baseball to government, the Christian is supposed to put on the mind of Christ, which includes a concern for all his fellow men. So a government that serves the interests of the few at the expense of the many is to that extent an un-Christian government. But to fix upon good government as the objective, or even the principal manifestation, of Christianity is to give the business I am in more credit than it deserves—and to miss the point of the faith. Rulers who do not follow Christian principles—of justice, of unselfishness, and of charity—have personally much to account for; but they do not necessarily rule over a less Christian society. And vice versa: rulers who follow Christian principles may well store up merit for themselves in the next world; but they do not necessarily bring the Kingdom of God to their subjects.
I may digress momentarily to make the related observation that Christian principles in the context of government do not coincide with Christian principles in the context of personal morality. For when government acts, it does not act merely as one of God’s creatures dealing with another of God’s creatures of equal worth and dignity; rather, if it is a lawful government, it acts (as I shall discuss at greater length later) pursuant to God’s authority and indeed on His behalf. What is Christian morality in person-to-person dealings, therefore, is not necessarily Christian morality in dealings between the government and those lawfully subject to its power. Christ says, of person-to-person dealings, that if a person should steal your cloak, give him your tunic as well. Could a state possibly operate on such a principle? He says, of person-to-person dealings, that we should forgive him who wrongs us seven times seventy times. Could a criminal-law system possibly heed this advice? The epitome of personal Christian perfection is to distribute all one’s worldly goods to the poor; but that does not translate to the proposition that the epitome of Christian government is communism (with or without official atheism)—any more than the personal Christian virtue of poverty translates to a governmental Christian virtue of poverty.
But to return to my principal thesis: preoccupation with government misses the point—which is not the material salvation of the society, but the spiritual welfare of individual souls. To acquire a theological fixation upon the former is ultimately to distort the Gospel message. That is, by the way, the sort of distortion that has probably always occurred. We tend to remember how ideas about religion have influenced government, but to forget how ideas about government have influenced religion. A single example will suffice: In the nineteenth century, when individualistic capitalism was the governmental ideal, the churches stressed the Christian virtues of honesty, hard work, and self-denial. Charity, compassion, and love of the poor were acknowledged to be Christian virtues as well—but they were not emphasized. In the twentieth century, the century in which socialism rather than capitalism dominated governmental theory, the priorities were reversed: charity, compassion, and love of the poor were stressed; and the more Calvinistic values of honesty, hard work, and self-denial were seldom heard. Those theologians who think we have corrected the errors of the past are mistaken. We are just repeating, in this century as in the last, the error of accommodating the Gospel to the secular ideology of the time.
In sum, our American tradition that church and state are separate is in my view an authentically Christian tradition as well. There are good religious reasons for it as well as good political reasons; the confusion of the two hurts both. Sectarian struggles for control can destroy the state; and religious preoccupation with government—with material welfare, with power, with coercion—can destroy the church.
The second point I want to make, in looking at the church-state relationship from the standpoint of our religion, is that the Christian bears a moral obligation toward the just state. It is popular in some revisionist histories to portray Jesus as (literally) a Zealot—one of a band of Jewish rebels against Roman rule. Of course his remark about rendering to Caesar contradicts that—as does his remark to the Roman procurator after the scourging: “You could have no power at all over me, unless it had been given you from above.” Far from being a revolutionary, Christ seems to have been more deferential to lawful authority than most Christian Americans I know these days. Nor were the apostles contemptuous of government, even pagan Roman government. Consider Paul’s letter to the Romans:
Let everyone be subject to the higher authorities, for there exists no authority except from God, and those who exist have been appointed by God. Therefore he who resists the authority resists the ordinance of God; and they that resist bring on themselves condemnation. For rulers are a terror not to the good work but to the evil. Dost thou wish, then, not to fear the authority? Do what is good and thou wilt have praise from it. For it is God’s minister to thee for good. But if thou dost what is evil, fear, for not without reason does it carry the sword. For it is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who does evil. Wherefore you must needs be subject, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For this is also why you pay tribute, for they are the ministers of God, serving unto this very end. Render to all men whatever is their due; tribute to whom tribute is due; taxes to whom taxes are due; fear to whom fear is due; honor to whom honor is due.
The passage must be read to refer to lawful authority, of course—and there is plenty of room to argue that some authorities that are de facto in place are not lawful ones, either because of how they got there, or because of what they did when they arrived. It is not those details to which I wish to direct your attention, however, but rather to the central proposition that, for the Christian, lawful civil authority must be obeyed not merely out of fear but, as St. Paul says, for conscience’ sake.
That proposition was once widely accepted. I recall reading, a few years ago, an essay of C. S. Lewis that simply assumed, without significant discussion, that a good Christian who had been guilty of a serious criminal offense would turn himself in. Lewis used the now-quaint expression “pay his just debt to society.” That attitude is long gone—mostly, I think, because we have lost the perception, expressed in that passage from St. Paul, that the laws have a moral claim to our obedience.
That truth is greatly obscured in an age of democratic government. It was once easy, perhaps, to regard God as the ultimate source of the authority of a hereditary king, whose bloodline reached back to the mists of history—where, for all one knew, God did anoint his forebear. It is even easy to see the hand of God in the accession of a new ruler through the fury of battle, whose awesomeness and unpredictability seem to display the working of the Lord of Hosts. It is more difficult to regard God as making His will known through PACs, thirty-second spots, Gallup polls, and voting machines. And even apart from the less-than-Jehovian process of election, the fundamental principle of vox populi, vox dei has never been a very persuasive proposition. How hard it is to accept the notion that those knaves and fools whom we voted against, but who succeeded in hoodwinking a majority of the electorate, will enact and promulgate laws and directives that, unless they contravene moral precepts, divine law enjoins us to obey.
It is particularly hard for someone in the American democratic tradition to have the proper Christian attitude toward lawful civil authority. We are a nation largely settled by those fleeing from oppressive regimes, and there is in our political tradition a deep strain of the notion that government is, at best, a necessary evil. But no society, least of all a democracy, can long survive on that philosophy. It is fine to believe that good government is limited government, but it is disabling—and, I suggest, contrary to long and sound Christian teaching—to believe that all government is bad. It is true, of course, that those who hold high office are, in their human nature and dignity, no better than the least of those whom they govern; that government by men and women is, of necessity, an imperfect enterprise; that power tends to corrupt; that a free society must be ever vigilant against abuse of governmental authority; and that institutional checks and balances against unbridled power are essential to preserve democracy. But it is also true that just government has a moral claim—that is, a divinely prescribed claim—to our obedience. It is not an easy truth, because as Eden showed, obedience is not an easy virtue.