Navigating Church and State: A Biblical Perspective

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers for there is no power but of God the powers that be are ordained of God whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the only ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation for rulers are not a teror to good works but to the evil wilt thou then not be afraid of the power do that which is good and thou shalt have Praise of the same for he is the Minister of God to thee for good but if thou do that which is evil be afraid for he beareth not the sword in vain for he is the Minister of God a Revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil wherefore ye must needs be subject not only for wrath but also for conscience sake for for this cause pay ye tribute also for they are God's ministers attending continually upon this very thing render therefore to all their Dews tribute to whom tribute is due custom to whom custom Fear To whom fear honor to whom honor." [00:14:20]

"Now this is the um statement which the Apostle makes at this point in working out in detail the um relationship of the Christian men to the world in which he still lives and having dealt with various aspects of the problem he now here deals with this whole question of the Christians relationship to the state and having considered that personally and individually we are now looking at the problem as it confronts of us in terms of the question of the problem of the relationship between the church and the state the church a gathering of Christian people what is the relationship between Christians as a body or groups of people as churches to the state now this is the one classical statement in the New Testament scriptures as we are seeing of this great subject there are other references to it but this is certainly the most extended treatment given to the subject anywhere in the New Testament." [00:91:36]

"Now this is the kind of thing that they enacted in Massachusetts for instance which was the place where the first settlement occurred you remember they landed at Plymouth Rock and they proceeded to colonize around there and and so you get the state of Massachusetts now in Massachusetts the franchise that's to say the right of voting or taking part in government was confined to church members if you were not a church member you hadn't got a right to exercise the franchise in the same way like Calin and Knox they expected the state to enforce church discipline in other words they were utterly intolerant now there were great men amongst them one of them was a man called John Cotton the most important men John Cotton it was a book by John Cotton that changed the great Dr J and perhaps the greatest intellect amongst all the Puritans into an independent John Cotton had been an Anglican Vicor in Boston in Lincolnshire that's where the name of Boston in Massachusetts has come from he he was the man who was responsible for giving it the name but if you read the life story of John Cotton you will find that it was the most painful process for him to cease to be an Anglican in his point of view of ecclesiastical discipline and to become a true independent you see these men they did found independent churches they were no longer anglicans they were independent of anglicanism and yet they did impose this system upon all their people." [11:20:00]

"Now this is something that began with a people who were known as separatists and they began in the reign of Queen Elizabeth in the 1580s you remember I told you last week that the Presbyterians branched off from the Puritans somewhere around about 1570 through the teaching and the preaching of a great professor of theology at Cambridge called Thomas cite but here was a new group who objected also to the Presbyterian attitude and they these said that there should be no connection between the state and the church uh these are called separatists now there are many names here some of the important ones are these the first of course was a man called Robert Brown and that is why for a long time in this country Independence or congregationalists were known as brownists because they were followers at least that derived many of their ideas from the teaching of Robert Brown he was a strange man having issued a book in which he to which he gave the title Reformation without taring for any by which he meant this that you shouldn't wait until the result of your teaching turned the magistrates into godly people who were prepared to take a scriptural view of these matters he said don't waste your time don't wait Reformation without caring for any having done that he eventually went back on it all and spent many many many years of his life as a very quiet obscure unknown Anglican Vicor and he died as such in the 17th century but he'd sown a seed his work was taken up by three amazing men Henry barl another man called Greenwood and a man called John penry there's nothing more heroic I think in all ecclesiastical history and in many ways in secular history than the story of Barrow Greenwood and John tendry the three of them were put to death if I remember rightly in 1593 they'd been imprisoned they'd been hounded and eventually they were put to death and they died gladly I was tempted but I didn't want to take too much time on this to read John Pen's last letter to his wife just before his execution one of the most moving documents I think I've ever read now these men were the separatists they said church and state and entirely separate the state must do nothing in connection with the church nor the church with the state these things are quite separate and you don't call the magistrate to administer discipline on behalf of the church or anything else now they were bitterly opposed of course not only by the anglicans but they were equally bitterly opposed by the Puritans the Puritans remember were mainly people who believed in staying in the Church of England but reforming it and they were equally bitterly opposed by by the Presbyterians everybody was against them and denounced them with great violence however that was their testimony they claimed complete freedom of worship complete religious freedom and this separation of the church entirely from the state at first they were Independents or congregationalists but in the early years of The Next Century the 17th century some of them began to adopt what we now call Baptist viewers and there were two men one was called smile s SM YT h e and the other was called Thomas hels h e l w Ys smile and hels RAR were the founders of the Baptist causes in this country and they issued a great declaration in 1611 this has got nothing to do with my direct theme but as I may not have an opportunity of saying things like these uh while expanding the scriptures it's very interesting that both these men who had now adopted Baptist views by which they meant chiefly that you shouldn't baptize infants but only adults and confession of Faith both of them believed in baptism not by immersion but by sprinkling and they sprinkled one another most people don't realize these things but Baptists from about 1610 to 1640 did not immerse at all Baptist didn't they believed in in in sprinkling in affusion very interesting point and I think one which people tend to forget however so you've got two bodies now of separatists when you come up to about 1640 in the beginning of the Civil War the independence and the Baptists they were very small bodies they were growing very slowly and of course as we shall see they were very greatly helped by the Civil War and by the period of the Commonwealth they suffered greatly but they adhered to their principles now this brings me to say just a word about the great Oliver crell surely in many ways the greatest Englishman who's ever lived and even his ancestry is interesting if you examine it um kwell was an independent and uh nevertheless though he was an independent and a very convinced independent he wasn't clear on this church State relationship now I've been saying about others and I must say it about him of all men we must be careful not to judge these men their position was almost impossible particularly that of Oliver crumble a king had been beheaded it was such an unknown thing such a strange thing uh the Church of England as such had been abolished in one sense I mean the Episcopal Church of England had been abolished what were you to do well crumble was after all the Lord protect leor it was his business to govern and he felt that something must be done so he did order Church Affairs he believed that the state had got to do this so he appointed tries to examine preachers he appointed preachers and so on in a sense he continued exactly the same system as Elizabeth and the stewards had done before him only of course he was doing it with different ideas he was not an Episcopalian he was a true independent nevertheless he believed in the state church as the others had done before him but this is where we must pay tribute to this man though in practice he felt he had to do that otherwise he would have had nothing but chaos and he always had the argument that the majority of the Anglican clergy were not only illiterate but so many of them were immoral and neglecting their congregations that you hadn't got preachers you had to produce them and you had to train them and you had to impose them as it were upon the people those were his arguments now I say that in spite of all this and in spite of certain Bloods perhaps upon his great record here was a man who had very clear ideas about religious tolerance and freedom of worship he was the first men to give freedom of worship to the Jews and to give them a place in the life of this country now there is the story of of Oliver Cromwell you see the brownists and Barrow Greeno and penri had sewn a seed but this seed rarely only came to True fruition or at least developed most during the time of the Commonwealth now that brings me to the people who RAR are most responsible for the Free Church idea there is there are the antecedence there's the historical backround but all this rarely came to a kind of focus in this way first let me deal with the United States of America and I have to mention here a most remarkable man whose name was Roger Williams are most important men in the history of religion especially of religious tolerance but are most important men in the whole history of the United States of America in many ways he is a man who is more responsible for the United States of America and its Outlook upon these matters than any other single man and it's interesting that he's been greatly honored by American historians in this present century and particularly at the present time now what are the facts about Roger Williams he's a man who's been not only neglected in the past but he's been abused and misunderstood that of course has been the fate of most reformers and of Great Men they get vilified often in their own day and gener ation and AR only appreciated perhaps centuries afterwards of course it happened to Oliver crumble after his death and the restoration of Charles II cromwell's name was execrated and vilified his body was even disinterred and exposed to public ridicule and Scorn and everything that could be done was done to be smch his n and you had to wait until Thomas carile came into being and began to write in the 1830s before this country began to realize again what a great man Oliver Cromwell was well something similar has happened to Roger Williams I'm not putting him into the same category exactly as Oliver Cromwell because he wasn't a Statesman he was a minister but as a thinker I would certainly bracket him with Oliver crumble inde indeed perhaps even put him ahead of him here was a man who was born in this country in 1600 there's a bit of a dispute as to whether he was born in Wales or in Cornwall uh it doesn't make much difference they're both Celtic um he was trained as most of these people were in those times at Cambridge he was ordained as an Anglican Minister but from the beginning he was unhappy he was unhappy as an ordained minister of the Church of England the result was that in 1631 he crossed the Atlantic and went to Boston now here he thought he was going to find Freedom and the congenial atmosphere for which he longed but when he got there he found himself most unhappy and dissatisfied he found that there they hadn't understood these matters and they hadn't renounced the errors of the National Church in England they'd formed these separate churches but they hadn't renounced what they had once belonged to in this country before they had crossed the Atlantic this is how he put it being unanimously chosen teacher at Boston he was given a great reception when he got there he was a very able man they saw his qualities and they wanted to appoint him as a teacher of the churches being unanimously chosen teacher at Boston I conscientiously refused because I D not officiate to an unseparated people as upon examination and Conference I found them to be he said they hadn't separated far enough he wanted them to make a public Declaration of their repentance for having had communion with the churches of England while they lived there they'd never done that they were saying either saying nothing about the Church of England or saying that the Church of England was after all a true church but they proposed to do something different he wanted them to repent and to make a public Declaration of their repentance for having had communion with the churches of England while they lived there now here's another thing he also taught that the magistrate had no right to punish a breach of the Sabbath or any other offense as it was a breach of the first table of the law well as the result of this he didn't settle in Boston but he moved off to a place somewhere to the North of Boston known as Salem a famous place and most interesting in the history of these matters Salem I had the pleasure of visiting Salem in 19 1963 and of telling people who lived there something about all this they'd never heard of it before now there he was appointed again as as a pastor but he soon got into difficulties the people down at Boston had influence in the governmental Sense on the whole surrounding area and he had to move from Salem and went to a place called Plymouth which is still there of course and named after Plymouth in this country for of two years or so and then went back again to S but because of these views of his in 1636 He was ordered to be deported by an order of the court now this was the edict which they passed if any person or persons within this jurisdiction shall dis shall deny the magistrates lawful right or authority uh to punish the outward bridges of the first first table of the law every such person or persons should be sentenced to banishment and that is what they did with him they sentenced him to banishment to be deported and the officers of the law were sent to arrest him to put him on board a ship to send him back to England he heard what was coming and he escaped just in time he went further south and he was the man who established what was the town that became known as Providence and he was the founder also of the rad Island state the Rhode Island state in America was founded by this man Roger Williams now he did all this you see because of his religious ideas he believed in complete freedom of worship that the state has no right to dictate what a man believes under the government of Massachusetts you had to believe what was the prevailing view as I say you shouldn't even be a citizen if you didn't he objected to it on grounds of religion primary but he also developed certain political ideas and is in many ways the father of American democracy in 1639 he adopted Baptist views he hadn't been a Baptist until then he'd been an independent a separatist but in 1639 he be adopted Baptist viewers but he wasn't even happy with them now I want to be fair on all sides in the case of Roger Williams he was undoubtedly a genius but as Geniuses will some times he tended at times to be difficult and U difficult at least to live with he was a great personal friend of Oliver crumble and of John Milton the poet and of other leaders in this country he came over several times in connection with the business of Rhode isand and they all greatly respected him even the governors of Massachusetts who went to to banish him they paid the greatest possible tribute not only to his character and his godliness but also to his ability as a preacher and as a teacher but he was a man who tended to press his logic a little bit too far so that in the end he found it difficult to agree with anybody now Roger Williams you can see therefore is the most important men as I'm going to tell you in America there is complete separation between church and state it is mainly due to the influence and the teaching of Roger Williams now then there's one plch of the separatists in this country this same kind of thing was done by a group of people who became known as the levelers those of you who know the history of the uh Civil War in this country will know that in cromwell's Army in his Model Army in particular there was a great Gathering of Godly men they believed they were fighting the battles of the Lord in fighting Charles I and the royalists now some of these men became known as sectores they were men in other words who developed extreme separatist views there were many divisions of them people called diggers as well as these whom I'm now referring to were known as levelers they were known as the levelers you see they were asserting the equality of all men and the equality and freedom of religion and so on now the greatest leader amongst them was a man called John Lilburn l i l b u r n e it's extraordinary again how these people have been neglected I took the trouble this afternoon to turn up the Sha Herzog dictionary of religious knowledge to see what they've got to say about the level of and John Lilburn I found they hadn't a single word to say about the levelers or Lilburn not a word which is which is an extraordinary thing there used to be a paperback in this country available with bearing the title The levelers whether it's still available I don't know I certainly remember a book which was published about 10 years ago I think it was on the levelers and John Lilburn by a man whose name is hn brap now this is the tragic part of all this brap I don't think he's still alive he was an atheist and a so-called free thinker he wasn't interested in the religion of these men but he was tremendously interested in their political ideas and they undoubtedly were Pioneers in all this not only in the matter of freedom of worship and of religion but they had ideas concerning democracy which have proved to be this seed thoughts of what we are enjoying at the present time I remember reading somebody saying about 20 years or so ago that most of the enactments the reforms carried in this present Century by liberal governments and labor governments had all been anticipated by these levelers it took 300 years for the majority of the people in this country to see the things that were seen by these men let me quote you a modern writer he says Anglo Saxon democracy was born in June 1647 when at New Market and triplo Heath the Puritan Army covenanted not to disend until its rights and Liberties were assured now that is the real beginning of democracy in this country as we know it now why am I saying this I'm saying this for this reason you've read recently in the papers that the so-called humanists are getting very active in this country country they're going to hold conferences now they're going to claim time on the BBC they're going to petition Parliament to see to it that all teachers in schools should have training in the ideas of humanism it's becoming an active and an aggressive force it is anti- not only anti-christian but anti-religious it's atheistical it believes in man and the power of men it'll probably be the great fight that we'll have to wage for many years in this country this aggressive human humanism scientific humanism classical humanism it it's it's it's concerned to do away with religion all together and he talks a lot about freedom freedom for men political freedom and so on what they don't know and what is really important we should inform them of is this that they wouldn't be able to do what they are doing and what they want to do were it not for these religious men in the six in the 17th century these levelers and others now these people as I told you about brail spot you see they pick out the story of these men we Christian people have forgotten them we we haven't we haven't discovered the facts we've been so concerned about cultivating our own soul we don't know our own history we don't know where our liberties have come from that's why we're so ready to sell them it's because we are ignorant of the Protestant Martyrs that we are smiling upon Rome and ready to be smiled upon by Rome and we are ready to sell so many of our liberties just because we're ignorant we don't realize the price that has been paid for them by our forefathers even the price of blood and so you see these men they're interested in these people solely from the political standpoint not realizing that their political ideas were based upon their religious ideas it was their understanding of the truth concerning man as taught in the Bible and their idea of government as learned in the same place that led to their ideas even on these political matters so let us be aware of these things let's familiarize ourselves with them and let us tell these people that all the benefits which they're enjoying and of which they talk so much putting them against the Christian faith that they've all come out of the Christian faith I've often said it from this Pulpit your hospitals were started by Christian people your educational system was started by Christian people your poor law relief and so on were started by Christian people all these things have come from Christian people even the idea of political democracy it has come from people like Roger Williams John Lilburn and the levelers in this country very well now then this brings us you see more or less up till 1660 or 1662 you remember how Charles II was brought back in 1660 that's the greatest Blood on the excussion of presbyterianism they really were responsible for that I know they were misled Charles II like his father was a liar and he lied to them and he went back on his promises but they should never have trusted him however they did in order as they thought to get their ends they thought that the Church of England would be turned into a Presbyterian church and so on it was sh and in 1662 Charles II and his advisers showed their end and those 2,000 men more or less you remember were ejected from their livings in the Church of England in this country now then after that these nonconformists people who been called Puritans before all came to see these things quite clearly and from there on they became separatists so that from about 1662 it is true to say that the congregationalists or Independents whichever you prefer to call them and the Baptists were true separatists and had all their ideas clarified about all this and that has been the position right down until the present time they believed in complete separation now well now there is more or less a review of the history for you what is the position at the present time with regard to this whole question well it's roughly this the Roman Catholic Church which would like to dominate the states everywhere of course is no longer able to do so doesn't even do so in Italy and the best she can do now is to form what she calls concordat with Statesmen that then Pope made a concordant with musolini another one made a concordant with Hitler this is the only thing they can do I believe they've done the same in Spain with Franco and so on in other words they've been shown of their powers but they still haven't renounced the theory and as I reminded you last week I think it was the Vatican still regards itself as a state and is regarded by other states as a state that is why Statesmen from this country and others and heads of States go and pay their calls upon the pope they don't visit him so much as a religious leader but as the head of a state and as a man who has still a lot of influence upon States throughout the world because so many of the rulers and governors and people in Authority are still Roman Catholics but actually they are no longer in the position to exercise the power and authority that they did from the time of constant right through to the Protestant Reformation and even afterwards that is their position the United States I've already described to you there there is a complete separation between church and state they believe in religious freedom but there is no such thing as a state church and there is no direct association between the church and the state what about the British Isles well I'll take them in this order Church of Scotland there you've got what may be described as a modified establishment the church and state are quite distinct the state can't interfere in the spiritual matters of the church and yet they hold on to the notion of the idea of establishment that is why you'll be reading next May when the church assembly of the Church of Scotland comes on you'll be reading of a man called the Lord High Commissioner who is appointed by the queen to represent her in the proceedings of the general assembly it's a kind of modified establishment mainly a m something on paper and really not of any practical significance in the case of Ireland the Church of England was once established in Ireland but the Irish church was disestablished last century in the case of Wales the Anglican Church there was the established church and until this present Century I believe I'm right in saying that the Welsh dis establishment bill was passed in 1914 was suspended until the end of the first world war and was put into operation in 1920 so that there is no establishment in Wales or in Ireland and only this modified establishment in Scotland what about England well of course in England there is still this established church and there's one very interesting thing about this I mentioned this so that we can now leave this historical consideration all together there has been considerable talk about disestablishing the Church of England but what is interesting is that it's generally come from the Anglo Catholics and the greatest opponents of this establishment in England have always been the evangelicals and they still are the greatest opponents of it at the present time how does this come to pass you'd expect it to be different wouldn't you well this is what happens when you begin to indulge in ecclesiastical politics and use human wisdom the Anglo Catholics want this establishment in order that their party which is in control mainly in the Church of England can do anything it likes at the present time it can't you remember the Anglo Catholics produced a new prayer book in 1928 it was presented to Parliament and it was turned down the Anglo Catholics of course were Furious and they say we must have Liberty in spiritual matters it is wrong that we should be curbed like this by the power of the state so the Anglo Catholics including the present Archbishop of canary are believers in this establishment but for that reason they still want to go on with endowment which means that they get paid and money produced by the state uh but they don't want to be controlled in that sense by Parliament they still want the prerogatives of establishment but they want what they call spiritual freedom and they've made many moves in that direction well then you may ask me why do the evangelicals then oppose this the people who you would expect to be in favor of the spiritual freedom of the church the answer is the same only that you look at it from the other angle the evangelicals know that if you disestablished the Church of England the power would be put into the hands of the Bishops and as most of the Bishops are Anglo Catholics in their Doctrine it would be very bad indeed for evangelicals so they oppose it for that practical reason only that pragmatic reason chiefly that it would put them into a worse position now you see they have every hope and expectation that when the Anglo Catholics and others are trying to produce their Innovations they will be turned down by the parliament so it suits the evangelicals at the moment to resist the efforts and Endeavors to disestablish the Church of England but I want to consider this with you next time and evaluate it in the light of the teaching of the Scripture it is an argument of course from expediency and the question for us is whether we can allow that whether we recognize that and I hope God willing to be able to go on therefore to consider this question of the relationship of the church and the state which we've traced now in the course of history we're going to take all this and you see what a voluminous history it is I've been giving you very brief summaries we will ask the question how was all this become possible and come to pass in the light of the teaching of the Bible you may say to me what's that got to do with us well the answer is this you see that is is the sort of thing that Christian people find themselves doing when they are governed by tradition rather than by the teaching of the Bible so it's a great lesson for us in our own day and generation so much them for this historical review and we can now come and put it all into the light of the teaching of the script oh Lord our God we again turn unto thee and acknowledge our Frailty our fallibility and our Folly oh God we thank the more than ever that the church is thine and that because she is thine the Gates of Hell shall not Prevail against her and that our ultimate Triumph is certain and sure oh God we humble ourselves under thine own Mighty hand and pray that thou would us lead us guide us guard us and protect us we dare not lean to our own understanding Keepers we pray thee in accordance with the teaching of thy most holy word enable us to learn the lessons of history in order oh God that we may serve thee truly and bring glory to thy name and the extension of thy kingdom and now May the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the love of God the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit abide and continue with us now this night throughout the remainder of this our short uncertain Earthly life and pilgrimage and ever more amen we do hope that you've been helped by the preaching of Dr Martin lyd Jones all of the sermons contained within the mlj trust audio library are now available for free download you may may share the sermons or broadcast them however because of international copyright please be advised that we are asking first that these sermons never be offered for sale by a third party and second that these sermons will not be edited in any way for length or to use as audio clips you can find our contact information on our website at mlj trust.org that's mlj t.org." 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