The Best Future for Christians
By Michael R. Chancellor
Pastor, Crescent Heights Baptist Church, Abilene, Texas

Wedding church and state at any point always produces an abusive marriage. If history teaches us anything, the state will always introduce secular values, secular politics, and secular means into whatever religious expression it touches. On the other hand, the church is seduced by the opportunity to give dogma the force of and the weight of law. Neither ultimately benefit religion or government.

There are reasons why Baptists have always opposed the mingling of these two spheres and these two great powers in the world of men. First, there is the Baptist understanding of the nature of biblical faith. Historically Baptists have believed that faith is first personal and secondarily guided by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Real personal faith is not something that can be legislated “for” or “against.” The internal structures of living faith are equally unavailable to direction by the state or even the church.

Baptists have always held that the proper approach to reaching out with the gospel is by prayer and proclamation. Personal faith is born in people by the active work of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God offering the benefits of the sacrifice and suffering of Christ. When church and state collude in such matters, they inevitably draw from their resources, which are taxes, legislation, and ultimately coercion.

Today, some of the great forces in America pushing to break down those healthy, historic walls between church and state seem to fall into two categories. First, some share a common methodology of “the ends justifying the means.” To “return” America to a nation of values born out of biblical faith, they are willing to use law and tax money to bring people away from secularism and back to Judeo-Christian values. These leaders are so sure of their morals and theology they define what is secular and who is secular. Such definitions are often simplistic, without compassion, and rigid. Those who fall outside their definitions are enemies at the gate.

Those whose church experience is rooted in churches that have their beginnings in America populate the other category. Denominations spawned in the clear, deep waters of the American experience of freedom and the Bill of Rights may have a historical naivety about what can happen when there is no Bill of Rights. The capacity of men to believe that religious wars that ravaged Europe cannot happen in America allows them to play with fire. The history of repression, death, war, and coercion is something they cannot comprehend. So they only see positive possibilities by tearing down the wall between church and state. Perhaps some of the more skeptical would not tear down the wall, they would just make a passageway.

I personally see nothing in government or church that can persuade me that marrying any part of church with any part of state is a good thing. My spiritual ancestors were in America before the Bill of Rights. Lewis Craig was fined in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, in 1767 for preaching. Robert Baker (The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People 1607-1972, p.64) recounts part of his address to the grand jury that indicted him: “I thank you, gentlemen, for the honor you did me. While I was wicked and injurious, you took no note of me, but now having altered my course of life and endeavoring to reform my neighbors, you concern yourself much about me.” Craig joined others who were mobbed, arresting for not attending the official church, jailed and in one instance, waged war against.

In a pluralistic society, the future for Christians remains prayer and proclamation rather than building alliances with the king.

June 2003