IN a “Manual of Christian Civil Government,” prepared by the editor of the Christian Statesman, who is a leader in the “National Reform” movement to “Christianize” the Government, the author devotes some space to a review of objections made to the movement, which he answers to his own satisfaction. A brief consideration of these objections and answers will be helpful to a right understanding of this important question now being pressed upon the American people.
First, the author cites “The Alarm Cry of ‘Church and State.’” He proceeds under this topic to give the National Reform definition or conception of a union of church and state, thus:—
“A Christian secularist is the one who is logically driven to the union of church and state. He is forced to join hands with the advocates of ecclesiastical establishments. He forbids the state itself having anything to do with religion. Yet he believes Christianity essential to human welfare. The state is incompetent to give her citizens what is essential to her own prosperity and perpetuity. She must therefore go to the Christian church and have that organization do what the state herself cannot do, but must have done in her imperative need. This is union of church and state. It is the church doing the work that is essential in the sphere of the state itself.”
Christianity is essential to human welfare; but it reaches the state through the individual, not the individual through the state. As Christianity makes individual men and women better, it adds to the welfare of the state, but it does not and cannot make individuals better by means of the state. Right here lies one of the fundamental fallacies of the National Reform system. It puts the cart before the horse—the state before the individual,—and thus involves the whole subject in confusion well suited to the purposes of sophistry. The individual comes first. The Creator made individuals on the earth, not states. The state came afterwards, as the work of the individuals when they had become sufficiently numerous to warrant such a form of government. Individuals were the creators of the state and they change the form and character of the government at their will. The state, as regards such changes, merely reflects the changes which have first come in the individuals.
It is the mission of the church to spread the gospel. The gospel makes good people out of bad people, and in this way conduces to the general welfare and prosperity. The National Reform expositor says that this work belongs in the sphere of the state itself; but it is neither necessary nor possible for the state to do it.
But following this far-fetched and impossible definition of church-and-state union, the author proceeds to give a true one, “Union of church and state,” he says, “is some mingling of civil and ecclesiastical offices and functions.” And how, we ask, can the state be religious without “some mingling of civil and ecclesiastical offices and functions” being the necessary result?
He says that “The Bible is the supreme law of each [church and state] in its own sphere”; and “The state must confine itself to the sphere of maintaining rights and doing justice among men.” This is true, and this is in harmony with the Bible rule of rendering to Cesar what is Cesar’s and to God what is God’s. But this is not what the author of this “Manual of Christian Civil Government” means; for he adds: “To do this is [the state] must be guided by the law of the righteous Ruler of nations; and for itself, and not through any church, it must acknowledge its divine Ruler, and the moral principles of his law, revealed both in nature and the Scriptures, that apply to its distinctive sphere and functions. This is its own religion. This is national Christianity. And this is the best possible safeguard against the intermingling of civil and ecclesiastical offices and functions, or the union of church and state.”
That is to say, the state must acknowledge God and be religious in its sphere, and the church must be the same in her sphere, and both these are demanded of Christianity! How many different ways of acknowledging God and being religious, then, does Christianity demand or admit of?
There is but one sphere of Christianity; and when both state and church try to be Christian, they … necessarily attempt to occupy the same sphere, and they must soon appear as superfluous and become assimilated to the other. This is the way it has always been in church-and-state union. And yet the National Reformer would have us believe that this attempt to combine the civil and ecclesiastical spheres into one “is the best possible safeguard against the intermingling of civil and ecclesiastical offices and functions”! This is the way he would prevent a union of church and state.
“Another practical and pointed way of answering this stale objection” (that the National Reform statement means a union of church and state), says the National Reform spokesman, “is by asking, What church?” “Some church as a visible organization would be in view, if there is to be an actual union of church and state.”
What church?—Any church or all churches combined. Can union of the state with a dozen churches be any better than union with one alone? Where there are a number of powerful churches, as in this country, the religion of the state will necessarily be such as is acceptable to all these alike; for the state could not unite with one alone, in the face of the opposition of the others. And even if it should do this, the union would be a comparatively harmless one in its results, because the excluded churches would combine against it, and the state would have neither the power not the courage to make “heresy” a crime punishable with civil penalties. But united with all the powerful churches, the position of the state would be far otherwise, and it could and would then proceed, under their dictation, to attempt the suppression of “heresy” by the severest punishments.
But how could there be a union of the state with all the leading churches, when these churches are not united with each other? Ah, there is one point—onme church dogma—upon which all the leading churches are united and upon which they may form a union with the state and that point is, the necessity of observing Sunday as the Christian Sabbath. And the forming of the union upon this one point alone, does not at all affect the reality of the nature of the union. It is a union of church and state, identical in principle, however differing in details, with the plainest union of church and state that the world has known. And all the world worse will it be for the small minority of Christians who take issue with the state and the powerful churches upon this one point. All the more will they be denounced for standing out against the state and the churches upon a single point; they will receive only the less sympathy because their religious rights are not denied upon other points. Nor will it matter at all to them that the heavy hand of the law descends upon them for this one thing and not for such various forms of “heresy” as have been made punishable in the past. They will be fined, imprisoned, and otherwise punished, precisely as dissenters have been punished under the union of church and state in former times.
Thus the question “Which church” has no force at all as a reply to the charge that the National Reform movement does aim at a union of church and state.