Think Biblically!

DEVELOPING A BIBLICAL VIEW OF CHURCH AND STATE

JOHN P. STEAD

Throughout American history there have been numerous American religious movements that have influenced American life and politics. Those with the most impact have included the abolitionist movement, the temperance movement, and the civil rights movement in the twentieth century. While it was the goal of all these movements to change public policy, none of them viewed the government as something to capture and control.

Throughout much of the twentieth century most evangelicals were primarily consumed with fulfilling the Great Commission through evangelism, church planting, and missions. It was not until the increasing secularization of the culture and the cultural elite’s hostility toward evangelical Christianity, primarily found in the universities, media, and the arts, that large numbers of evangelicals became seriously exercised about America’s moral and social direction. This concern grew to outright anger with the Supreme Court’s decision that legalized abortion-on-demand in 1973. Evangelical leaders then began to discuss strategies for taking the government “back” from liberal and secular influences.

Why did they focus on government institutions rather than directly confronting the groups who were supporting “the left” in their attack on Christian values? The reason was quite apparent: The scope of government had radically changed. During the twentieth century, there were four monumental events that had led to the growth of the federal government: two world wars, a great depression, and a cold war that lasted over forty years. Great technological strides, especially in communications, continued to be made. The federal government became increasingly centralized and was viewed by all special interest groups, including evangelical leaders, as the major dispenser of political, social, and economic favors. The two-party system, which for decades served as the moderating vehicle for individuals and interest groups, was and still is in decline, as seen in the ever-increasing numbers of special interest groups along with their fund-raising arms, Political Action Committees (PACs). As a result of the decline of the two-party system, politics came to be characterized as a clash between uncompromising interests. Governmental institutions are now seen as something to be captured and used by a particular interest group for its own ends.

With the rise of such powerful evangelical interests as The Moral Majority, The Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, The Family Research Council, and Concerned Women for America, among others, evangelicals are seen by those in government, as well as by their vocal opponents, as political interest groups with a policy agenda accompanied by lobbyists who represent them in the halls of Congress and in the bureaucracy. As a result, this has become a life-and-death struggle for political power. Christians are viewed by those who are sympathetic as attempting to control government for good—i.e., morality and traditional family values. Those in opposition see the evangelical church as reactionary, seeking to maintain supposedly repressive moral standards and defending free enterprise, which allegedly exploits the poor and underrepresented groups such as minorities, women, and homosexuals.

There are several problems with attempting to control society through this political approach. Because they are well-organized, interest groups or factions can better achieve their agenda at the expense of the vast unorganized majority. The framers of the Constitution were extremely concerned about the tyranny of irresponsible majority power within a democracy. Their great challenge was to devise a system that would keep the majority responsible. The large geographical size of the United States would allow for the existence of a great number of factions, each attempting to bring to bear its demands on government and to subvert the will of the majority. Each group in and of itself was too small to accomplish this without moderating its most extreme demands in order to coalesce with other groups to form a majority. This process of coalition or compromise would moderate these demands.¹ This can be seen in any number of the above-mentioned Christian groups. Theological and doctrinal issues are set aside so that the “agenda” can be carried forward more forcefully with greater numbers and increased financial backing.

While James Madison (1751-1836) believed that the impetus for the initiation of most factions would be economic, he was concerned with religious factions as well. He saw religious factionalism as a positive force in control ling irresponsible majority power, while he saw monolithic, state-sanctioned religion and its control of governmental institutions as pernicious.

The framers shared the revulsion of the eighteenth century against religious fanaticism and tyranny. The historical record, beginning with the Edict of Milan, A.D. 313 through the sixteenth-century Reformation, was one of extinguished religious liberty and continuous warfare. Madison believed that religious fragmentation would prevent any one religious group from exercising power over the government. No single religious group could by itself achieve a national majority, therefore necessitating the moderating process of coalition. The result would be national protection against oppression by religious majorities. This is the way the framers designed the system to work. A diversity of religious groups would guarantee the freedom of all religious groups with no state-sanctioned national church.

How close was the framers’ view of church-state relationships to that of the Bible? Actually, it is much closer than one might initially believe. While the framers for the most part were theistic rationalists,² they came to their views on church-state relations historically and pragmatically.

THE HISTORIC, BIBLICAL MOVEMENT TOWARD SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

Throughout history, the relationship between the sacred and the state was one of progressiveness, or as Leonard Verduin3 termed it, a “forward movement”⁴ from the birth of the nation of Israel to the calling out of the church until the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313 under Constantine.

Israel, as a nation from its earliest days, was a society based on ritual, from circumcision to the sacrificial system that bound the nation together. One was born an Israelite; one did not normally make a decision to become an Israelite. In this sense, it was much like other nations in the Ancient Near East. There was no obvious sense of mission.⁵ There never was any overt desire to go out and make converts from other tribes or nations.

With the crowning of Saul as the first king of Israel, a division between king and priest began to appear. While it is clear from 1 Samuel 8 that God saw Israel’s desire for a king as a rejection of His leadership, He nevertheless instructed Samuel to grant the people’s desire. This meant that for the first time in Israel’s history, there would be a separation of function. The king’s function was the provision of what is called common or conserving grace. That is, the king’s role was to preserve order internally and to protect the nation from foreign invasion. The role of the priesthood continued to represent the nation before God.

The seriousness with which God regarded this new relationship is evidenced by His reaction to Saul’s usurping the priestly role by offering up a sacrifice prior to going into battle. “When I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines had mustered at Michmash . . . I forced myself and offered the burnt offering” (1 Sam 13:11-12).

If it is recognized that one of the purposes of the sacrificial system was to produce a cultural closeness, then it can easily be understood why Saul would pragmatically resort to taking on the priestly role in offering a sacrifice. Verduin describes the sense of how God would express His new relationship to His people: “Very well, have your king as other nations have, but I must then insist that he confine himself to things that pertain to the regnum, that he leave the functions of the priest to a different kind of servant of mine.”⁶

God’s same displeasure fell on King Uzziah as he also took on the priestly role and died as an outcast (2 Chron 26). The issue here is very clear: There is to be a division of labor; a person cannot be both king and priest. “The problem in question is the problem of an early grace and a later grace: a grace that comes to expression in the Creator-creature relationship in which sin is curbed, and a grace that comes to expression in the Redeemer-redeemed relationship in which sin is vanquished.”⁷ This idea came to full fruition in Paul’s great treatise on civil government in Romans 13, where he makes it crystal-clear that the purpose of the sword is to suppress evil, not to redeem people or to judge heretics.

Additional insights into the difference in the functions of the church and the state are revealed in the ministries of John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus Christ. John begins his ministry by calling on the people to “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 3:2). He does this in the midst of a renewed, sacral society. He is calling out a group of “repenters” who signify their repentance with an outward sign—i.e., baptism. Remember, those in a sacral society had no choice—they were born into it. John now, for the first time, introduces the element of choice into Jewish culture.

Christ also reinforced the two graces. In His teaching on the Roman coin, Jesus reminded all within the reach of His voice of the government’s role and how that role is different from the sacred role (Matt 22:15-22). It is significant that Jesus had no problem living under pagan rulers. It is very clear from the Lord’s preaching that there would now be two groups of people in Israel—those who repented and those who did not.

With the creation of the church, this progressive movement continued. The church is by definition the ecclesia, or literally “the called-out ones.” They found themselves in the midst of a sacral society. Rome practiced and required emperor worship along with the worship of a whole pantheon of deities. Within this culture, Christians were heretics—they were “choice makers” because they had chosen to worship the one true God. It was not that they worshiped the one true God, but it was the fact that they worshiped Him alone that was the heart of the conflict with the Roman authorities. The one thing that a sacral society cannot tolerate is a heretic.

Christians of the first century saw themselves as “the body of Christ.” By repenting of their sins and putting their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, their status had changed; that is, they were redeemed from sin and death. They also experienced a change of condition—they were new creations in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:1-10). This meant that there were now two types of people in the world—the redeemed and the unredeemed. Culture was no longer sacral or uniform but was now “composite.”⁸ This is also how Christians viewed themselves. Believer’s baptism was an outward testimony of a redeemed individual who had progressed out of a sacral society. It gave testimony to the choice a person had made.

The apostle Paul’s view on this is abundantly clear. Christians have the responsibility to judge and discipline those who claim to be believers, but must leave the judging and the disciplining of unbelievers to God (1 Cor 5:912). In the area of church-state relations, this was how the church was to function. The apostles believed and taught that society would always be “composite,” with Christians facing great persecution and rejection until the reestablishing of the sacral society under the authoritarian reign of Jesus Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King.

The retreat to Christian sacralism began in A.D. 313 with Constantine’s (ca. 274-337) Edict of Milan, which made Christianity for the first time religio licita, a permitted cult. This was soon followed by the Edict of Toleration, in which Christianity was elevated to the position of being the only legitimate faith. Thus began the fusion of church and state, a retreat from New Testament Christianity. The result was the birth of Christendom. “The Constantinian change put an end to membership by decision: from that time all people were said to be Christians without any foregoing struggle of soul which is impossible.”⁹

Corpus Christi, the body of Christ, gave way to Corpus Christianum, the body of the christened. The preaching of the Word of God that required decision was replaced by the sacramental passivity of the mass and infant baptism, which did nothing more than take the place of circumcision. Everybody was placed in the Christian community at birth; no individual decision had to be made. “The regnum and the sacretodium joined hands to make sure no one was skipped; indeed, the regnum made the baptism of every infant born in its domains mandatory.”¹⁰

The early “Father” of Reformed theology, Augustine (354-430), supported the sacral homogeneous society. He had no reluctance about using the sword to keep people from abandoning the faith. This is distinct from the apostolic church that disciplined disobedient Christians by “putting them out of the church fellowship,” not by exiling them or putting them to death. By the fourth century, heretics were either exiled or executed. There was no longer room in a mandatory sacral culture for dissidents.

This regressive movement of the church would lead to a number of dissident groups such as the Donatists of Augustine’s time, the Albigenses, the Waldensees, the Anabaptists during the Reformation, and, in colonial America, the New England dissenters. While the fringe elements of these groups had aberrant theology, they all shared one belief in common—that true Christians were a called-out minority (Corpus Christi) and were called to live in the midst of an unregenerate world. They rejected the retrograde idea of Christendom.

Donatism was a rebellion against the Constantinian change, the reintroduction of sacralism where the roles of church and state were combined. “The Donatist continued to think of the Church of Christ as a ‘small body of saved surrounded by the unregenerate mass.’”¹¹They insisted that the independence of the church in regard to the emperor and his officials had to be “upheld at all costs.”¹² What Donatists attempted to do was to retain the Christian faith and ecclesiology of the first century. They took the claim “Jesus is Lord” seriously. Salvation for the Donatist meant both a change in status (repentance) and a change of condition (sanctification). The fruit of the Spirit and of repentance would be evident in the life of a truly regenerated person. This meant a total rejection of the sacrament of infant baptism, the sacrament that without choice automatically placed a person into Christendom.

The Waldensees were deemed heretical because they dared to preach about the medieval church’s fallennness and its corruption from pope to priest. They were also Word-centered. The Word’s neglect by the church was evident:¹³

The priests cause the people to perish of hunger and thirst to hear the Word of God . . . not only do they themselves refuse to hear and receive the Word of God but . . . they, in order that it may not be preached make laws and orders as it pleases them, just so the preaching of the Word is obstructed. The City of Sodom will be pardoned before these.¹⁴

As the Reformation came into full flower in the sixteenth century with its emphasis on sola scriptura, total depravity, and justification by faith alone, one would anticipate a return to the apostolic view of the church consisting of the “called-out ones.” This failed to occur. Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin all continued to embrace governmental means to exterminate and banish heretical groups. Infant baptism was also a carryover of medieval sacral society. Civil authorities would be used to imprison or execute those who practiced believer’s baptism.

By the time his ministry had matured, Luther was in comfortable cooperation with the German princes. Emil Brunner said that the elder Luther “stopped short of a full reformation. He was content to walk hand in hand with the State, remaining bogged-down half way between Catholicism and New Testament church organization.”¹⁵

In dealing with those who practiced believer’s baptism, Luther wrote: “The secular authorities are duty-bound to suppress blasphemy, false doctrine, heresy. They must inflict bodily punishment on those who support such things.”¹⁶ In another letter to one of his fellow ministers, Luther wrote: “By the authority of and in the name of, the most serene Prince, we have the custom of frightening and threatening with punishment and exile all who are negligent in things-religious and fail to come to the services.”¹⁷ Regarding baptism, Luther said that the water of baptism was “a divine water of God, a godly, heavenly, holy, blessed water, in which faith hangs, a precious sugar water, a perfume, a drug, is what it has become; one with which God has mixed Himself, real Living Water, that drives-away death and hell and makes eternally alive.”¹⁸

It should also be noted that Luther did not attack Jews because of their race but because of their religious practices. They were outside of the sacral society, as were the Anabaptists.

The climate that supported the joining of the cross and the flag was no different in Zurich. Like Luther, Zwingli had his doubts early on about both church and state being involved in religious affairs. He initially had doubts concerning the sacrament of infant baptism. But by the time of the Mantz affair, he had moved in the same direction as Luther. Felix Mantz was tried and convicted of initiating and participating in believer’s baptism.

Because he has, contrary to Christian order and custom, become involved in re-baptism . . . has confessed to having said that he wanted to gather such as want to accept Christ and follow Him, to unite himself with them through baptism . . . so that he and his followers have separated themselves from the Christian church, to raise up a sect of their own . . . such doctrine being harmful to the united usage of all Christendom and tending offense, to insurrection and sedition against the government.¹⁹

This is a classic example of how church and state were viewed in Zurich. There was no recognized difference between loyalty to the state and loyalty to the church. Felix Mantz was then bound hand and foot, taken by rowboat out to the middle of the Limmat River, which flows through Zurich, and drowned. Whereas in the past heretics had been burned (John 15:6),²⁰ Zwingli thought it appropriate that these dissidents who believed in baptism by immersion should die in that same manner.²¹

What was true in Germany and Zurich was also true in Geneva. Calvin never fully separated from the sacral society of Christendom. The magistrates were to play a major role in ensuring that God was worshiped in their domain, and they were also to exercise their responsibility to put “heretics and blasphemers” to death.²²

The execution of Servetus plainly reveals Calvin’s views on the issue. Few historians question the fact that Servetus was a heretic. The real issue involved what his punishment should be. Should he be banned from Geneva, or should he be executed? He was tried in civil court and was executed by burning at the stake. Luther’s aide, Melanchthon, writing to Calvin commended him with these words: “To you the Church owes now and always will owe a debt of gratitude . . . it affirms that your magistrates did the right thing when they put the blasphemer to death.”²³

THE NEW WORLD

To a great extent the first settlers of New England, beginning in 1620, were the children of the Reformation and more specifically Calvin. John Robinson was one of the pastors of the “separatists” known as the Pilgrims. While he was a student and admirer of Calvin, he believed that it was unwise to simply shut oneself off from “further light” that the Scriptures might reveal. He was open to further teaching on church-state relations. The other group that settled in Massachusetts Bay, in 1624, were the “non-conformists” known as the Puritans. They were totally committed to the Reformed view of the magistrate and the church being part of the same structure.

One of the Puritan pastors, Roger Williams (ca. 1604-1684), played a pivotal role in returning church-state relations back to that of the apostolic era in which the magistrate’s responsibility was the suppression of evil, both internally and externally, by civil force. Williams found himself immediately in trouble in Massachusetts after writing a booklet titled Christening Maketh

Not Christians. His position on infant baptism was in total violation of the civil authority in Massachusetts.

It is ordered and agreed upon that if any person or persons within the jurisdiction shall either openly condemn or oppose the baptism of infants, or go about secretly to seduce others from the approbation of the use thereof, or shall appear in the court willfully and obstinately to continue therein after due time and means of convictions, every such person, or persons, shall be sentenced to banishment.²⁴

Those who disobeyed were not only put out of the church but also banished from the colony. Similar laws were enforced in Virginia, which was Anglican. However, in Virginia parents paid a fine of two thousand pounds of tobacco for not having children baptized. Interestingly, the fact that a couple convicted of fornication was fined five hundred pounds of tobacco provides insight into which violation of the law was considered more serious.

Williams also held and publicly taught that magistrates had no authority over the first table of the Mosaic law. For this belief, he was found guilty and banished along with his wife and son in the middle of winter. Their lives were saved by the kindness of Indians to whom he had ministered, even going so far as attempting to learn their language.

This interaction points to another difference between the Massachusetts authorities and Williams. He saw the Indians in terms of mission, not as heathen outside the borders of Christendom to be exploited and eliminated. The Puritan view was that the church and state, while having different functions, were comprised exclusively of the visible elect. The two, therefore, worked hand in glove. If people were outside the boundaries of the Christian state, they were beyond the concern of Christ.

In his series of debates with John Cotton (1595-1652), Williams pointed out the perniciousness of this sacral theology. In reality, the amalgam of church and state, along with its authoritarian nature, would stifle the free exercise and propagation of the Gospel. “An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.”²⁵

Williams’s view of civil government was influenced by the ancient Roman idea of paxcivitatis—i.e., the peace of the city. Both believing and unbelieving magistrates could carry out this mandate.²⁶ He likened the visible church to any other group or faction within the city.²⁷

All civil states, with their officers of justice in their respective constitutions and administrations are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual, or Christian, state and worship. It is the will and command of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or antiChristian consciences and worships be granted to all men in all nations and countries: and they are only to be fought against with that sword which is only, in soul matters, able to conquer: to wit the sword of God’s Spirit, the Word of God.²⁸

Williams’s position concerning the relationship between the magistry and the church is best set forth in what has come to be known as the “shipletter” written from Providence, Rhode Island, to answer the false charge by the Puritan leadership in Massachusetts that there was no civil rule in Rhode Island. It is included here because of its importance.

There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship whose weal and wol is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth, or human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes, that both papists and protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm, that all liberty of conscience, that ever I pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges—that none of the papists, protestants, Jews or Turks, be forced to come to the ship’s prayers or worship, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any. I further add, that I never denied, that notwithstanding this liberty, the commander of the ship ought to command the ship’s course, yea, and also command that justice, peace and sobriety, be kept and practiced, both among the seamen and all the passengers. If any of the seamen refuse to perform their services, or passengers to pay the freight . . . if any refuse to obey common laws and orders of the ship, concerning their common peace and preservation . . . if any should preach or write that there ought to be no commanders or officers, because all are equal in Christ, therefore no masters nor officers, no laws or orders, nor corrections nor punishments . . . the commander or commanders may judge, resist, compel and punish such transgressors, according to their deserts and merits.²⁹

The ideas of Roger Williams clearly resonate with the apostolic era and have made an indelible mark on subsequent history. The United States of America became the first nation out of Europe to reject the sacral society. The first two clauses of the First Amendment put a stake in the heart of Christendom. In America, there is no Christendom; people are free to establish their own modes of worship and are free to worship as they please, as long as other Constitutional conditions are not violated. Biblically speaking, there are only two types of people, neither of which have anything to do with national boundaries or sacramentalism. There are the saved and the unsaved.

Those who are saved wait with great expectation and look toward heaven to see that day when Christendom will truly be established on this earth, when the King of kings demands and establishes His rule in the hearts of men as well as over the political kingdoms of this earth. In the meantime, what should be the Christian response in the arena of political activity?

THE CHRISTIAN AS CITIZEN

Today the fear that echoes from our pulpits is the fear that government is increasingly coming under the control of secularists who also are virulently anti-Christian. The recent decision (summer 2002) by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals striking down the Pledge of Allegiance as unconstitutional, due to the phrase “under God,” would be a prime example.

Too often, however, Christians yearn for a reestablishment of the Christian America of the far distant past.³⁰For many, the mechanism to accomplish this is the exercise of political power. The view that God has some kind of covenant relationship with America, a predominant view in the nineteenth century along with postmillennialism, still lingers today.³¹ But is this road to political power clearly marked out biblically?

Political activism should be tempered in light of what the Bible has to say about satanic influences in the halls of government. While Satan’s domination was broken at the cross and government is given to us for good as well as for the suppression of evildoers (Rom 13:1-7), Satan still remains extremely powerful in the area of governmental affairs. Passages such as Matthew 4:8-9, Ephesians 6:11-12, and portions of Daniel and Ezekiel testify to Satan’s power over the institutions of government.

We must never forget that the Christian’s fight is against principalities, whose power undergirds political institutions. These principalities will use the weapons of the world system. As in any other area of life, political activism by the Christian demands that he not use the weapons of this world but the spiritual weapons that God has given him (Eph 6:11-20).

We employ the weapons of “truth”, “righteousness”, “faith”, “salvation”, “the gospel of peace”, “prayer”, “salvation”, “the gospel of peace”, “prayer”, “the Spirit”, “perseverance”, “intercession”, and the “Word of God.” In so doing we “find strength” in the Lord, in His “mighty power” and are “to stand firm against the devices of the devil”, and to “resist” and “stand our ground” when things are at their worst, to complete every task and still to stand.³²

The evangelical activist view will be tempered further if we take seriously the New Testament teaching that our citizenship is transpolitical (Phil 3:19 20; 1 Pet 2:9-17). We are citizens of an earthly kingdom (Rom 13:7) with cit izenship responsibilities; yet we are still strangers and sojourners in an alien and foreign cosmos. This is not a call for withdrawal, but it is an admonition for the use of wisdom and discernment. Political outcomes, especially in a democracy, are most often transient and are usually a result of compromise. Each election cycle may bring a totally different outcome. Pragmatism rather than idealism usually wins out. Christians are not called to sink their roots down so deep in the political culture that they are consumed by it.

The power of the New Testament is radically different from political power. It is the power of the cross. The world system knows the cross as a place of powerlessness, foolishness, and defeat. Christianity rejects the use of traditional political power to force conformity. It equips Christians to engage the principalities and powers in spiritual warfare (2 Cor 10:3-5). It brings us to our knees, producing a spirit of humility and compassion, thus rejecting the acquisition of political power in Christ’s name. Jacques Ellul put it this way: “Every time a church tried to act through the propaganda devices accepted by an epoch, the truth and authenticity of Christianity were abased.”³³

What could be a greater co-option than evangelicals being institutionalized into America’s political processes? That is exactly what the framers desired and what Roger Williams feared—that all religious groups would lose their “saltiness”³⁴ along with their prophetic voice.

Must Christians be caught up in and assimilated by the systems they desire to change? Can the prophetic voice of evangelical Christianity become sharp and clear? The course to be pursued will depend on the Christian community’s view of itself, its understanding as to the purpose and function of the church in relation to state and society (i.e., a return to Christendom or the apostolic era), and its view of Christian citizenship.

First, the Christian community needs to view itself in humility, reaffirming the need for confession, repentance, and renewal. Evangelical media leaders today often portray an attitude of arrogance and ignorance on political issues that blunt their prophetic voice and ministry. There can never be much lasting change in our nation until this image changes.

There also needs to be a renewed study of the church; is it Corpus Christi or Corpus Christianum? There is a need to reaffirm the church’s role in “[making] known to the rulers and authorities . . . the manifold wisdom of God . . . realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. . . . This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs . . . in Christ through the gospel . . . to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph 3:6, 10-11; 4:12).

There should be continued study and emphasis about what the Bible has to say concerning Christian citizenship. What about the use of the judicial system? What about disobedience to “unjust” laws? Should Christians ever consider the use of force against governmental authorities?

Christian citizens of this democracy have Constitutional rights, which include political involvement. But what kind of involvement? Christians must reject one of the basic assumptions associated with interest-group politics—i.e., that governmental institutions are prizes waiting to be seized and then to be used to impose on the community at large that group’s view of social justice with the force of the law behind it.

There also needs to be an understanding that when a group becomes more accepted and legitimized (i.e., opens offices in Washington, has paid lobbyists, and has members appointed to positions in the political institutions), then a number of things can happen. First, it gains more public control, and its leadership is institutionalized.³⁵ Second, the group becomes bureaucratized—i.e., subsumed by the institutions it seeks to influence. Influencing governmental institutions is a seductive illusion. The institutions and power centers will end up co-opting the groups that seek to influence them. The cause of Christ has never flourished for any length of time where the church, Catholic or Protestant, has dominated the political institutions of that nation. Third, the church loses its original vision through its misguided quest for greater and greater power as the goal shifts to self-interest and survival rather than redemptive change. With more appeal letters and more headline seeking, the organization is finally reduced to an end in itself. Over the course of his long lifetime, the late Malcolm Muggeridge observed ungodly power being applied by individuals, groups, and governments. The result was corruption. He concluded, “there are in life but two things, love and power, and no man can have both.”³⁶

Evangelicals should reject becoming involved in a contest for control of political institutions because this is the modus operandi of modern authoritarianism and totalitarianism. It is only a short step from the control of governmental institutions to the control of not only people’s public lives, but also their private lives. This control would occur even if done in the name of Christ.

Last and most important, Christians should reject the temptation to seek political power for its own sake in view of the pervasiveness of a believer’s sin capacity. Will “godly Christians” consistently make biblical decisions concerning morality and social justice? That this has occurred only infrequently through the history of western civilization testifies to the questionable validity of this belief. Christians cannot agree on many moral and social issues, let alone on how governmental institutions should be used. For example, what does the Bill of Rights mean in relation to the establishment and free exercise clauses, and to freedom of speech and of the press?³⁷ Believers need to be reminded that there can be no healthy or lasting change of social structures without a redemptive change in people, which is why Christ came two thousand years ago.³⁸

Christians should consider changing the focus of prophetic action from the national to the local level. James Madison observed that religious faction and feeling was most intense at the local level. The late Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill (1912-1994) remarked that “all politics is local.” Christians should take a lesson from this observation and focus on social, moral, and political concerns that arise in their own communities, those in close proximity to their local congregations. Practically, it is much easier to focus, build, and maintain intensity at the local level. Because of the growth of the national government and the influence of the national media, Christians often look in the wrong direction and address the wrong audience.³⁹

How then might a prophetic voice be articulated locally? First, just as was true in the apostolic age, Christians must be a separated people within the cosmos. There must truly be a demonstrated difference in values and practice. This age is characterized by personal indulgence, materialism, and a search for worldly security (Phil 3:19; 1 John 2:15-17). Too often churches are inward-looking, possessing no vision for their communities, either in evangelism or community involvement.

Second, separation from the world is the beginning of rediscovering Christian community, which is also essential if the church is to speak clearly and act decisively. The issue is not so much the return to the structural forms of the first century, but to the spirit and values of the early church as believers obeyed Scripture. Forms of church community basically mirror the epoch in which they exist, and the church in an agrarian setting will certainly have different forms than the church in an industrial, technological, and suburban setting. To encourage a return to the spirit and values of an earlier time, however, is another matter. Spirit and values transcend epochs and cultures. The warmth, spontaneity, closeness, commitment, and dynamism of the early church should be a part of any church in any epoch. A rediscovering of community could supply at least three things each believer needs.

From this association he would receive his identity and sense of worth. From this identity he should also receive a large measure of his emotional and some of his material security. If the congregation is truly a community, a genuinely sharing fellowship, it will voluntarily assume a large measure of the responsibility for helpings its numbers in sickness, adversity, and old age. The knowledge that one is part of a sustaining community will give individuals a greater sense of security than the mere confidence that there is a government agency to supply support checks. Finally, the community should help an individual identify and maintain the values by which he will conduct his life. The Christian community tells its members that they are creatures of God, made in His image, called to be His children, with privilege, responsibility, and an assured inheritance in heaven.⁴⁰

This kind of spirit and value base would provide a solid foundation for discussion and reexamination of important national values such as rugged individualism, the secular work ethic, self-interest, and self-preservation in light of the biblical imperatives of the Great Commission, the Good Samaritan, and the fruit of the Spirit in the Christian community.

Last, there needs to be an understanding that when a purified Christian community focuses on political and moral issues, there will most likely be intense opposition from the majority in the larger community. To speak and act prophetically means taking the harder way of the Cross; Christians must count the cost, knowing that God’s work has always been accomplished by the faithful few.

What America needs, more than anything else, is an evangelizing church exercising the power of the Cross to change people’s lives. As people whose primary citizenship is in heaven and as members of Christ’s kingdom, we are confronted by a world system concerned with gaining political power. The church must reject the temptation to control political institutions, while seeking locally to alter the lives of those around it. By their speech and lives, Christians must show men and women that there is only one way to have a right relationship with God, the way of the Cross. Believers in Christ need to stand in every way—spiritually, intellectually, morally, and politically—as the vital, separated alternative to a world system that glories in materialism, self-indulgence, and political power.