Keep the Church and State Forever Separate by Professor George W. Rine

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jul 3, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 27.

Keep the Church and State Forever Separate

By Professor George W. Rine

THOUGH the Church and the State are both divinely ordained, they are wholly distinct in function. Territorially their spheres of activity may, and often do, partly coincide. In respect to function, however, no one has ever so sharply differentiated them as did our Lord.

A Divine Principle.

The reader will remember that when Christ lived and walked with men, His enemies were constantly plotting His overthrow. Nothing was left untried in their relentless efforts to disconcert Him in His utterances. They sought to draw from Him some unguarded word that might be wrested to their fiendish purpose of trumping up a charge of political or ecclesiastical conspiracy against Him. To this end, they addressed to Him this cunningly conceived question: "What thinkest Thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?"

Jesus instantly read their motives, and asked, "Why tempt ye Me, ye hypocrites? Show Me the tribute money." Bringing to Him a penny, He asked them, "Whose is this image and superscription?" "Caesar's," was the prompt reply. In keeping with their answer, Jesus enunciated, for the benefit and guidance of all ages, this momentously important dictum: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." Abashed and completely discomfited, these plotters "left Him, and went their way."

Here our Lord has tersely, lucidly, yet conclusively, enunciated the relations that should ever obtain between the Church and the State. Their respective missions are absolutely distinct, forever separate. There are sharply defined duties that each citizen owes to the State—these he must faithfully render to the State. There are equally well-defined duties that each one owes to God or to His church—these should be faithfully rendered to God. In this world Church and State must coexist, but, according to the teachings of our divine Lord, they must not be wedded. Each has its individual work to perform. Purely secular interests are guarded and promoted by the State; the spiritual or religious interests by the Church.

A Curse to Nations.

It can not be rationally denied that the unholy alliance between Church and State, which has so generally marked the history of the world, has always been the arch-disturber of the peace of nations. Such a union is unnatural, even monstrous, and has never failed to become a curse to both. As often as the Christian Church has sought and obtained the favor of civil rulers, it became worldly in spirit, ambitious of power, proud, and despotic. As often as civil magistrates have courted the favor and support of the Church, they became the puppets and slaves of ecclesiasticism, than which no worse bondage has ever been known to man.

In the Republic of the West.

The founders of our Republic were wise enough to foresee that no greater peril menaced the peace and perpetuity of the young political giant of the West than an alliance between it and religion. In formulating the Constitution proper, they failed to insert anything that would forever make such an alliance impossible. Hence they hastened to amend the Constitution as follows:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Revelation and reason both teach us that all genuine religion is voluntary, and can not therefore exist without individual freedom of conscience. Genuine religious liberty is essentially impossible where Church and State are united. All history attests the truth of the oft-repeated fact that an alliance between political and religious institutions unfailingly results in oppression and persecution.

The House in Salem, Mass., where Roger Williams, the 'Apostle of American Liberty, lived.

An Example in France.

Never was there a closer union between the Church and the State than existed in France during the long reign of Louis XIV. Catholicism was of course the State religion. Both Protestant and Catholic historians testify that the most thrifty, industrious, skilful, and conscientious of Louis' subjects were the Huguenots, the name by which French Protestants were then known. In civic affairs they represented all that was best in France of intellectual culture, moral vigor, and domestic virtue. By their industrial skill and thru their virtues they made France the first nation of the world in productive energy, wealth, and power.

But the king was "a devout son of the Church," and he thought it his duty to compel all his subjects to bring their belief and practise into conformity to the National Church. Laws were enacted commanding all Protestant churches to be closed; Protestants were dismissed from the public service; their property was confiscated; and their children were forcibly taken from them and placed under tutelage of the priests of Rome. These forms of tyranny were quickly followed by massacres and executions.

Edict of Nantes.

In 1598, thru the influence of the enlightened king, Henry IV, the famous Edict of Nantes was promulgated, guaranteeing religious liberty to the people of France. For many years under this Edict the Huguenots enjoyed a large measure of peace, and France thru them a prosperity greater than that of any other nation. The climax to the revolting persecutions inflicted upon the Huguenots by Louis XIV, was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685. Macaulay gives the following graphic picture of the immediate results:

"The Edict of Nantes was revoked, and a crowd of decrees against the sectaries appeared in rapid succession. Boys and girls were torn from their parents and sent to be educated

in convents. Old Calvinistic ministers were commanded either to abjure their religion or to quit their country within a fortnight. The other professors of the reformed faith were forbidden to leave the kingdom; and in order to prevent them from making their escape, the outposts and frontiers were strictly guarded. It was thought that the flocks, thus separated from the evil shepherds, would soon return to the 'true fold.' But in spite of all the vigilance of the military police, there was a vast emigration. It was calculated that, in a few months, fifty thousand families quitted France forever."