Church and State

In “Church and State” Dr. Grudem outlines a path for Christian involvement in politics and the political process. But before laying out that path, Dr. Grudem reviews a number of alternative paths: models of church and state that aren’t faithful to Scripture, and which have had profoundly detrimental effects on the societies that have implemented them.

In Jesus’s words “Give to Caesar, what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s,” we have the legitimizing of two different spheres of governance, and maintaining a balance between them requires wisdom. Here is wisdom. The first wrong view (according to my judgment) is the idea that civil government should compel people to support or follow one particular religion.

Tragically, this “compel religion” view was held by many Christians in previous centuries. It played a large role in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) that began as a conflict between Protestants and Roman Catholics over control of various territories, especially in Germany. There were many other “wars of religion” in Europe, particularly between Catholics and Protestants, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Eventually more and more Christians realized that this position is inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus and inconsistent with the nature of faith itself. Today I am not aware of any major Christian group that holds to the view that government should try to compel people to follow the Christian faith.