When the founders of the United States first envisioned their country, it seemed they saw a country where religion would inform government, but government wouldn’t impose strictures on religion. Obviously, this sort of pragmatic stance resulted from the obsession old world’s states had with organised religion, as if without a state-mandated faith, their societies would crumble. It probably also had a lot to do with economics, but that’s a whole other topic.

We’ve come far from that point. In Canada, I’m pretty sure we never even were at that point. Now, separation of church and state means more that both government and religion should not inform eachother as much as is possible. This is what we call the secular state.

Christians of all stripes can view this a bunch of ways, I think. There are some that think that a secular state is an impossibility, and that trying to create one is a mistake. Others view the secular state as a sort of unfortunate necessity, a goal that can’t really be reached, but must be, under the circumstances.

I think both are fair positions to take. They both take a different kind of nation with different kinds of goals, sure. Yet they’re both reasonable.

I’m in the second camp, mostly. I say mostly because those categories are a reduction, a sort of boiling down of a whole range of though. I’m not expecting anyone reading this to fall exactly into either category. Life isn’t that binary. I’m mostly in the second on the list. Mostly.

Here’s what I think. The Christian faith has a bunch of goals, right? There’s an overarching purpose to it all, that God glorified himself, as he should. Yet there are smaller goals as well. Jesus restoring his creation to himself. His followers living like him and practicing true religion. Christians loving their neighbors, whoever that may be. Praise. Loving God. The pursuit of holiness. These are some of the goals of the Christian faith.

Nations-states, however, have a radically different agenda. Their overarching purpose, though it may unwittingly glorify God, is self-preservation. Like any other organisation, a nation-state takes on the agenda of its constituents, and exists simply to exist. There are smaller goals beneath that, like expressing ethnic identity, gathering around a shared value, or simply protecting a bunch of land. At the end of the day, though, nations are about self-preservation, whether offensively or defensively or both.

These goals clash. Christians simply don’t spread the faith through violence and force. Nations preserve themselves through force: it’s not a perfect world.

When these two entities co-mingle, the resulting monster is hard to put down. The state intrudes into the faith and suddenly there is tyranny and persecution. The faith intrudes into the state and suddenly there is fanatical nationalism and oppression.

Christians can be politicians, and politicians can be Christians, no problem. But the domain of the state is not conducive to the practice of true religion: you do not wage a “Christian” war, and you should not crouch a war in religious terminology. While the state must use force, the Christian absolutely must not.

On the other hand, though the government must not be a respecter of religions, religions are not bound by such strictures. Religions are about opposing truth claims. Christianity makes truth claims that say, among other things, that all the other religions of the world are counterfeits. And while governments must not make these sorts of claims, Christianity must be free to do so, whether it irks the tolerant soul of every civil servant labouring towards an equal commons.

This is essentially what I believe on this matter. Freedom of religion is essential, a secular state is essential, and the separation of the two is the guiding essential that keep both from collapsing into and ruining eachother.

Tags: Jesus, opinions, politics, religion