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by Andrew Sandlin

Both militant secularists and pluralistic Christians charge us theocrats with wanting to blur or eliminate the distinction between church and state. While some "establishmentarian" theocrats may indeed be guilty of this charge, I myself am a firm advocate of the separation of church and state. I hold this view not because it is the alleged "American view," but because I believe this is what the Bible requires. In Israel's Old Testament theocracy, the church and state were separate (though cooperative) institutions, and the callings of priests and civil magistrates as well as their duties were to be kept inviolably separate. Similarly, Romans 13 outlines the basic responsibilities of the civil magistrate and the Christian's duties to the state; but it never mentions any ecclesiastical prerogatives. Historically, this is reduced to the maxim that while the state wields the sword, the church holds the keys. In a biblical commonwealth, the church and state are functionally separate.

No Separation of Religion and State

This is not to say, however, that the church and state are religiously separate. It is one thing to say that the state is separate from the church. It is another thing to say that the state is separate from God, and this latter viewpoint is precisely what secularists hold the former expression to mean. They claim to support an irreligious state, arguing (incorrectly) that this is what the Founders intended by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Some such secularists are simply ignorant, while others are disingenuous.

The state, like every other institution and sphere of life, is an inescapably religious institution. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as an irreligious state. By irreligious, we usually simply mean, without any formal religion; but the lack of any formal religion does not imply irreligion. Today's rabidly secular state, in fact, has substituted for historic, biblical Christianity the religion of secularism.

Today's state is a distinctly secular institution espousing secular law, secular morality, secular penology, and so forth. It is a coherent religious system antithetical to competing religious systems. The state is no more a religiously neutral institution than the church is. The state enacts and enforces law, and every law is an expression of a particular religion. The jurisprudence of secularism is at war with the jurisprudence of the Bible. Secular jurisprudence is utilitarian (the greatest good for the greatest number), pragmatic (what works the best), sociological (what the present society itself supports), positive (what judges say it is), and so on. Each of these forms of law is compatible with secularism, for which biblical law is inescapably incompatible.

When Christians even hint at working to pass even the most general form of Christian legislation, militant secularists try to frighten them off with the charge, " These obscurantist Christians are trying to impose their morality on everybody else." This is the naive or disingenuous canard to which too many Christians succumb. Every law is an enactment and an enforcement of morality, and every attempt in a modern democracy to use the polling booth in order to pass a law is the attempt to enact a moral code. Decisions forbidding laws restricting same-sex marriage or special "rights" to homosexuals impose secular religious views; they are not the expression of the absence of religion, but of the presence of a particular, perverted religion.

Biblical Law and Freedom

Secularists charge that the adoption of Christianity and biblical law undercuts individual freedom. Few charges could be more misdirected. Biblical law stands as a bulwark against encroachments on freedom because it establishes a transcendent, absolute standard by which the state must be governed and by which the state itself must govern, thus forbidding the introduction of any fundamental arbitrariness in civil law. Further, because the Bible criminalizes so few sins (many, many fewer than are illegal in the United States today!), it permits a maximum individual freedom.

Recently, The Christian Statesman devoted an issue largely to the question of the criminalization of drugs. While there was clear disagreement on this issue over what the Bible actually teaches, the very fact that theocrats committed fully to biblical authority could engage in thoughtful discussion about the illegality of criminalizing drug use and sale refutes the notion that a theocratic interpretation of the Bible limits "freedom." Many of us, in fact, are Christian libertarians, who believe that the state is severely limited in what it can forbid of its citizens. The emergence of a Christian society would mean, therefore, a relaxation of the modern statist tyranny, and the reintroduction of great individual freedom.

Church and state have their own separate, divinely established responsibilities, spheres of influence, and limitations. The church does not establish or enforce civil law, and the state may not dictate to or interfere with the church. Both, however, are subject to be governed by the Bible and orthodox Christianity. This biblical arrangement preserves both the independence and subordination of each institution--each independent of the other, and both subordinate to God and to His law as it is revealed in the Sacred Scripture.

Andrew Sandlin is an ordained minister and the president of the National Reform Association. He also serves as the executive director of Chalcedon, and as editor of the Chalcedon Report, and the Journal of Christian Reconstruction.

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