As you may recall, I started this blog in part to discuss the primary entities God created to carry out His will: individuals, families, the church, and government.
I'm long overdue in discussing government...in part because it's such a large topic.
Note that the Bible does not present a rich and deep doctrine of government. God's revealed words are distinct from most (often all) religious texts in several ways...e.g., focus on actual historical events, a faith grounded in one specific historical event (Jesus' resurrection), and relatively little said about the structure of various social institutions, including the church and government.
I'll start with the arc of Western history over the past 2000 years.
Bottom line up front: religious persecution by the government is the norm. The religious tolerance we've experienced in the past few hundred years is an anomaly, and is rapidly fading.
Most governments in most places and times are intimately entwined with religion. This seems to reflect some basic facts
- we are spiritual beings
- we (per Romans 1-2) cannot deny a transcendent creator/authority
- those who exercise power use every tool available to do so; often with the best of intentions
- Government persecuted Christians - in the first few hundred years, Christianity refused to accept the spiritual pluralism of Rome, and defended their belief in the one true God as objectively true for all times and places. More specifically, Christians refused to acknowledge Caesar as Lord.
- Christianity as an established religion - this began w/ Constantine and continued well into the Enlightenment
- Separation of Church and State (sepC&S) - at least two factors contributed to this. One was the rise of a belief system grounded in this world (secularism) and human knowledge (humanism). This did not occur overnight, but with Darwin, the "death of God" (Nietzsche) was complete. The second, and dominant factor in the US, was the experience of those who came to this country in the 17th and 18th centuries. They were usually fleeing persecution by an established church. Although the initial colonies/states had their own established churches, they were concerned about the Federal Govt. establishing a specific church (hence the 1st Amendment). Eventually, of course, the colonies/states disestablished their churches (hence the word for the movement which opposed this: antidisestablishmentarianism), but kept various requirements for religious belief to hold office.
- Separation of religious belief and state (sepRB&S) - this is very different from separation of church and state. In sepC&S, the state is prohibited from establishing a state religion. In sepRB&S, the state (i.e., any individual acting as an agent of the state) is prohibited from taking actions which are primarily based in a religious belief. The path to this is a different topic, but the rational that has evolved (almost totally via the courts) basically asserts that (a) the 1st & 14th Amendments prohibit any religious action at any state-funded function, and (b) the "free exercise" clause of the 1st Amendment applies only to private activity (see, for example, 1947 Everson v. Board of Education (1947), Engel v. Vitale (1962)). Note that this is very different from establishing a state church.
- Prohibition of religious rationale for law - In recent court cases related to efforts to maintain traditional understandings of sexuality (e.g., California's marriage amendment, etc), judicial actions overturning these efforts have increasingly asserted that religious beliefs are not an acceptable rationale for a law. This raise interesting questions since the implication is that pragmatism is the only valid rationale. Since pragmatism has no ability to define an ultimate purpose/goal/value/good (except, maybe, survival of the fittest), it's unclear whether there's any rationale for law if pragmatism is the foundation.
- Establishment of a new state religion - This is well underway in the West. The new religion is not traditional since it denies any knowledge of the metaphysical. And, it doesn't have a hierarchy and a membership roll. However, it does have the basic features of an established church: (a) all citizens must pay taxes to support it, (b) all citizens must be members of it, and (c) disagreement with its doctrines is punishable civilly (fines, prison, etc). Increasingly, Christian beliefs that conflict with the dominant secular/humanist beliefs are grounds for persecution. Although jail time is relatively rare, it is not unknown (primarily in association with beliefs regarding homosexual behavior and parental responsibilities (homeschooling)) And, within education, certain Christian beliefs are almost guaranteed to provoke persecution. For example, if you teach biology at a secular university, any indication that you question evolution (even on scientific grounds) makes it unlikely you'll ever be granted tenure. In other words, community membership requires adherence to a secular dogma...no questioning allowed.
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