A Case Study in Church & State from Lockdowns & the calling to the Church to rightly divide the Word of Truth
I want to dig deeper into the doctrine of the separation of church & state than I did last week here. Let’s take a look at how applications have played out over the last 5-10 years.
COVID Lockdowns
During the COVID lockdowns, there was a lot of interaction between church and state. In her book Shepherds for Sale (I review it here), Meghan Basham traces the influence of the state in pushing pastors towards the Left. In chapter 5, she demonstrates how the government used pastors to spread COVID-19 propaganda. Here she especially offers journalistic work showing the connections between Russell Moore and Francis Collins, and unveils some of the dark deeds of Collins. The whole book reveals the interplay of church and state and the many ways in which the church is promoting the message of the state, such as in the arena of environmentalism. Often it is based on bad exegesis. For example I heard a “Reformed” “pastor” a while back who preached a sermon on environmentalism. In that sermon, he decided that the command in Genesis 1 to multiply and fill the earth is not a valid command anymore.
On one hand, pastors became mouth-pieces for the State. One pastor would grab a mask and wave it while talking about the 6th commandment. Another would parrot government catchphrases about how we were in this all together.
On the other hand, the theological basis for state action was actually based on a bad Biblical hermeneutic. For example, biologos (connected to Francis Collins) wrote this statement on “Love Your Neighbor, Get the Shot.”
During the COVID lockdowns, there was a deep intermixing or intermingling of church & state. Even pastors who called on other pastors to “stay in your own lane” were inter-mixing church and state by pressuring one another to say nothing and do nothing about the closing of the church and the censoring of pastors. To say that the church should say nothing as the government imposes itself on the walls of the church, is in fact, a form of politics. It is a politic that is disobedient to our King.
Heading into the COVID lockdowns, the church had indeed become thoroughly political. It was just a Leftist form of politics.
Now, I am not saying that the church should counter by being right-wing, even if the church has some more in common with the principles of the right than the left. This is a real temptation, and we already have seen pastors in the Reformed Baptist and Reformed world fall into that trap.
The church is a heavenly city that descends among the kingdoms of men. Her creed is neither Schmitt nor Marx. She has been given the Word of God, the Bible, to live by, a wealth of Christian theology over 2000 years of church history. Her primary allegiance is to the reign of Christ, as much as she labours within time and space to bless the nation around.
Nevertheless, the church will always speak into politics. Her pastors will always teach either rightly or wrongly from Scripture. Her pastors will always either teach the doctrines of Christian liberty, well or poorly. Her pastors will either bind consciences, or set them free, in obedience to Christ.
The problem during COVID lockdowns was that the pastors who aligned with biologos were binding the consciences of Christians to a vaccine and a mask. They made false statements about the nature of Christian love and Christian worship, treating love like a wax nose and worship like an optional activity. The problem wasn’t that they were trying to make a decision as what to do, but that they made the wrong decision. Many of these decisions betrayed Christian liberty, and core aspects of the Christians obedience to Jesus Christ, wounding and deeply inflicting damage on the Christian conscience. In that, they taught the Christian, the world and the magistrate wrongly.
The Teaching Role of the Church
The Church as a Church plays an important role in discipling the nations, this means that teaching plays an important role. She may have magistrates in her midst, who are receiving the ministry of the Word & sacrament. The question is, is she giving them wise teaching or foolish teaching? Is she teaching them at all? Is the Church as mother building her house up or tearing it down? Is she leaving her children unattended to.
The modern disposition of the much of the modern day orthodox, conservative church towards the magistrate, is one of unschooling.
This does not mean that she plays base partisan politics. She abhors what is evil and praises what is good. Whether it is in the Liberal Party or in the NDP Party or in the Conservative Party of Canada.
The problem is that the church in Canada is in a great state of immaturity and compromise today in Canada. She is divided and scattered.
So how do we go about doing this?
Isaiah 8:20–21 “To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. They will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry. And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against their king and their God, and turn their faces upward. And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. And they will be thrust into thick darkness.”
As I am writing this, I just learned that it was a kid who grew up in Reformed churches in California who took a shot at the President of the United States last week.
I’m sure that there will be many political and tactical solutions presented for this. There will be blame cast where it should not be.
This is important. We will descend into the politics of envy and rage, unless we return to our first love, and a politics transformed by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. That grace must be prominent in our teaching as we return to the law and the testimony and to the light that has dawned upon us in the face of Jesus Christ.
If the light has dawned on you in Christ, you will not thrust the world into thick darkness. This young man’s political theology was obviously deeply askew as he committed this act of violence. Even worse, he committed great sin and sin is always irrational. It was a deep personal issue and sin that rotted this man from the inside out, until he committed a very public act of violence.
As Christians, we must watch our doctrine and our life. That starts by coming to a Man, full of grace and truth, the Man who is also God, our Lord Jesus Christ. Then it continues with living by His teaching and testimony and spreading it everywhere.
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.” (Titus 2:11-15)
Because we are in love with Jesus Christ and have seen His beauty and majesty and mercy, we should be so enraptured by our vision with Him that we will go out and fill the earth with all of the truth, beauty and goodness that flows from Him.
The Orthodox Church and the State
This of course brings us to the real problem. People don’t have an issue with the inter-mixing of the secular church & the state. They don’t have an issue with the inter-mixing of the theologically liberal or woke church & the state. They have an issue when orthodox Christian pastors boldly declare before the world and the state that Jesus is Lord and all men must repent and believe in Him.
Many are just fine when pastors treat love as a wax nose, or worship as option. That is a form of teaching, just false teaching. But they are not fine when pastors actually have a creed and an agenda that is grounded in the Word of God and the richness and depth of church history.
Of course, as the orthodox church brings truth beauty and goodness to the halls of power, or to anyone for that matter, she does so in the simplicity of truth. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 10:3–6:
“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.”
You see then that true orthodoxy is both potent and dangerous. Not in that it comes with swords and guns, but in that it brings down arguments. Men hate it when their objections to Christianity are refuted with Christian love and charity and unflinching truth and compassion for the souls of men. This is why the orthodox church so often suffers.
Honestly though, it is fun to be an orthodox Christian, especially right now, in Canada. Chesterton once wrote:
“People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy”.
So if you are an orthodox Christian. You believe the Bible. You know that Jesus is Lord, because He has saved you from the power of sin. Don’t be embarrassed of that. All the accusations people use to shut you up and censor you are just smoke and mirrors, because they only want to hear the things that make them feel good in their sin & evil.
We have a job. That is to go, to baptize, and to teach the nations everything Christ has commanded. He has promised that He will be with us to the end of the age. He reminds us of that every week in Word & sacrament. Be orthodox. Be the church. Don’t allow anyone to take you captive through empty philosophy.
