A Brief Appraisal: Relations between Church and State

The General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America will hold its 175th annual meeting next month in Des Moines. Among the important items before this significant deliberative body, none will likely elicit as much interest as the renewed discussion of the report titled Relations between Church and State. Commonly called “The Smith Report”—for its committee chairman, Professor Elwyn A. Smith of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary—it provoked so much debate after its presentation at the last assembly that it was referred to the presbyteries of the denomination for consideration before its re-presentation this May.

There are some admirable features in this report. First, it is commendably ambitious. The committee has tackled a big subject in a big way. Even if finally deemed unsuccessful, the vigor of the effort will elicit respect. Second, the sweep of the report is inspiring. Reaching back to the Bible and history for guidance, the effort forges principles and applies them with considerable consistency, even to the nooks and crannies of this question. Third, a deep religious spirit informs the document. Its critics may seriously doubt whether the report rightly apprehends the will of Christ, but none will doubt that it seeks to do so. Fourth, a holy boldness meets us here. Who can fail to be fascinated by a group of men calmly advising their fellows to give up privileges enjoyed for centuries and to pay millions of dollars to a government which is not asking for it!

All these merits notwithstanding, we are constrained to consider this as an essentially unsound statement of the relationship of Church and State. We would not presume to advise the United Presbyterian Church on this momentous matter. But inasmuch as all American Christendom will be listening to the debate with interest and is bound to be influenced one way or another by its outcome, we can only hope that some of the strictures which follow will be evaluated with the same candor and respect with which they are offered.

Three Areas Of Criticism

Our most important arguments against the report are three: the position taken is generally unbiblical, unreformed, and impractical.

We consider the unbiblical character of the report as infinitely more significant than the two other considerations combined. And so also, to its credit, does the United Presbyterian Church regard the Bible as the only ultimate authority; its honored Westminster documents are “subordinate” standards. Indeed, the report espouses the same view. The Protestant denominations which will be following the Des Moines discussions likewise have acknowledged the Bible alone to be the Word of God.

The report misinterprets one of the most crucial Bible statements concerning the relation of Church and State. Indeed, it actually dismisses it. We refer to our Lord’s words: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” This statement is construed as an adroit maneuver on Christ’s part by which he parried a question. “The issue is, what does it mean to follow a Lord who, when confronted with a double-edged question, silenced his antagonists with a double-edged answer?” (pp. 6, 33). As for what is actually taught in the words themselves: “We cannot concern ourselves with the legalistic question of what is God’s and what is Caesar’s. This is beside the point.” What then, we ask, is the point? “Our job is to follow Christ and in so doing enter into the life-filled task of demonstrating that the will of God is good, acceptable, and perfect.”

The weakness of this exposition seems painfully obvious. The report is here advising us to follow Christ but not Christ’s words. It seems to envisage some esoteric way to discern Christ’s will while disregarding his own statements. The audacity of such a suggestion is matched only by the futility of heeding it. Apparently this report hopes to do what Christ’s words are supposed to be unable to do—that is, to reveal the will of God to us. In all Christian charity we cannot bring ourselves to believe that the committee really wanted to imply this; but, unlike the committee, we are unable to know what persons mean apart from what they say.

We could proceed to the report’s interpretation of other important Bible passages, such as Romans 13:1 f., but this is hardly necessary. The handling is essentially the same as the above. Speaking broadly, the committee discusses its basic approach in these words: “The new man in Christ finds a living Lord to follow, not a rigid set of maxims to be applied” Cp. 6). We have already seen how this maxim of the committee (that we are not to follow a rigid set of maxims) applies to the maxim of Jesus about God and Caesar. Christ also says: “If ye love me keep my commandments” and who ever uttered more “rigid” ones than he?), but the committee has found a new, presumably more Christian way to love Christ than to keep the commandments he has given and abide in his words.

“God was in Christ reconciling the world” (p. 7) is the text to which the committee is most attracted because it is seen as a blank check that can be filled out as the committee thinks best. The report principally seeks to tell us how Christ reconciles the world. Under the banner of this theme it gives full scope to “dynamic unpredictability” (“it must be recognized that our God is a dynamic Lord, a truly unpredictable source of on-going revelation,” p. 10). And what is the end result? A new, rigid set of maxims: the maxims of Gospels and Epistles replaced by the maxims of the Committee on Church and State. We can hear the unexorcised devils asking: “Jesus we know, and Paul, but who is Smith?”

Before we look briefly at these new maxims we must glance even more briefly at the unreformed character of this report. We read that the Church “can never become so enmeshed in the society that it conforms and becomes unidentifiable as a church” (p. 7). This is granted by all. But the committee seems to think that the only way to prevent too close a relationship between Church and State is by having no relationship. We admit, of course, that no relationship—the “secular” state—will prevent too close a relationship. We also admit that decapitation will prevent headaches. What we do not admit is that this is the only way, nor that such a preventative is not worse than the ailment.

Furthermore, history will bear out that the committee’s way is not the Reformed way. From the days of Calvin in Geneva, the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Reformed theologians of the Continent (cf. Heppe’s Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 691–94), not to mention the Scottish Reformed tradition, have advocated the closest possible relationship compatible with the principle that the Church must not become identified with the State. Granted, the American Way has been the way of separation—Jefferson’s “wall of separation” indeed—but walls with some carefully guarded gates by means of which a controlled traffic between Church and State is possible. As one leader is cited as saying, America is not a church-state, but it is a religious state. This is easily proven from a study of official government deliverances.

The impracticality of this report we may attempt to show by a couple of specimen citations. First, “Bible reading … tend(s) toward indoctrination or meaningless ritual and should be omitted for both reasons.” Such a statement is self-contradictory since the same thing cannot “tend” in opposite directions, namely, to meaninglessness and to indoctrination. Actually it is meaningless only when students are inattentive; otherwise, we admit, it tends toward indoctrination. Is that bad? Inasmuch as the civilization of this country, as of the West generally, is based more upon the Bible than on any other cultural source, indoctrination in its principles would appear to be highly desirable even for the student who does not believe them.

A Theological Ground

Probably the most impractical and daring of all proposals in the report is this: “The church has no theological ground for laying any claim upon the state for special favors” (p. 19). Special favors include tax exemption (pp. 19, 20). But, there is a “theological ground” on which the favored position of the Church has rested for centuries. Briefly it is this: on the one hand, the Church is an invaluable aid to the development of good citizens, and, on the other hand, of itself it depends entirely on freewill offerings with all the precariousness attached thereto. Since, therefore, the State reaps great advantages from the moralizing work of religious institutions, it is to the State’s advantage to help preserve them in any way legitimately open to it, whether it be a specifically “Christian state” or not. If in a specific case the State is satisfied that the Church is such an asset and does favor the Church by exemptions, this has no tendency in itself to become a hindrance to the Church. The report does not explain why it supposes that it does. We assume the fear is based upon the admitted possibility that the Church’s zeal may flag when her temporal needs are relieved, more or less, by the government. We do not for a minute deny that this may happen and often has. We simply contend that it need not happen and that there seems to be next to no imminent danger of its happening in this country, where the healthy rivalry of many different denominations would tend to prevent it. In any case, this is an argument against abuse again and not against use. The same danger always faces any church when it is the recipient of large amounts of money or land from any source, yet no one seriously advocates the refusal of all such religious contributions. When we remember, on the other hand, that were this maxim to be followed, literally millions of dollars would be diverted from their present use in the evangelization of the world, we see an alien theological principle giving birth to a monstrous child.

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