[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], November 2020]
France and the USA – 2 republics who view religion very differently. Should the church be involved in politics or should faith be kept separate from positions of power and influence? What is the role of the church in the broader life of our nation?
In the news this past week two republics have dominated the news. One was France where they’ve unfortunately had some religious and Islamic terrorist attacks and Macron the secularist has condemned those attacks and reiterated the fact that France is a secular not a religious country. On the other hand, you have the United States of America, also a republic, and yet in their elections we’ve seen time and time again the prevalence the importance placed on the church, on faith, on Christianity when deciding who to vote for. So which one’s right – the secularist or the religious republic?
[01:00] One of the things that came out of the Christian reformation in the 16th century in Europe was a separation between church and state, where no longer was the church the authoritative figure within a country so it’s not surprising you have countries like France where religion and state, church and state, are very much kept separate. President Macron said that spirituality is a matter for the individual, not for the state, and in some ways there’s real positives in that. Out of that separation there became freedom of religion and the United States for example was a place where many of those new Christian groups had to end up moving to because it was illegal, for example Baptists, to be a church within England because only the Church of England, the state registered church, could actually function. We also found that all sorts of other faiths, be Jewish or whatever, went to the States because of that religious freedom that they experienced so there are real positives in separating church from state.
[02:23] Now England didn’t do that; the church is still very much integrated into the country. The Queen is the head of our country, the head of the state but she’s also the head of the Church of England and yet we have to realize – in fact you probably do – that England is a secular country, it’s not a Christian country. The Christianity that we do kind of adhere to is a mixture between history and folklore. Really, it’s not a real Biblical Christianity at all and the church, well it just gets wheeled out at special occasions, you know state weddings or funerals. It’s more akin to a historical re-enactment at Warwick Castle than it is to a powerful authority. It’s a bit of a toothless lion really; it can growl a lot but it’s not really any threat to anyone.
[03:24] So what should the church be? Should it be dominating politics? Should it be an authority within a country or should spirituality – Christianity – be only within the realm of the individual where people have a freedom to worship as they wish as long as they keep themselves to themselves? People could do whatever they want as long as they’re not harming anyone.
[04:12] In Peter’s – one of the disciples of Jesus – in Peter’s letter to the early church he told those early Christians who were struggling to find their place within a state run by the Roman emperor, he told them to live good and peaceable lives, to obey the authorities, to not cause any problems, not give any reason to people to look down on them or find a problem with them, and probably for many Christians that seems like a great idea. Let’s just keep ourselves to ourselves, let’s just do our thing, let’s just worship in our churches, let’s close our doors, let’s close our homes to the horrible world out there and let’s just worship God. Let’s just try and be the best person that we can be.
[04:54] If you read the gospels, if you look at the likes of Jesus which is who we we as Christians are supposed to be like you see a very very different kind of life. In fact, Jesus had less issue with the authorities in terms of the Romans than he did with the religious authorities – those people, God’s people, who were supposed to be setting an example, who were supposed to be a light.
[05:26] Jesus told his followers to be salt and light. They’re supposed to bring healing, they’re supposed to stand out, supposed to stand up, supposed to make a difference because God’s people, the nation of Israel, were called to be a blessing to all people: a shining example of what it means to be a human, what it means to live under God’s rule. They were supposed to stand up for justice, supposed to bring freedom to the prisoners, to protect the rights of the vulnerable and, as followers of Jesus Christ, that’s what we should be. As the church of the body of Christ that’s what we should be doing.
[06:10] It’s not about our rights, it’s not about what we can and can’t do. A lot of issues being raised at the moment, that churches have been shut during lockdown and we get quite uppity about our right to worship, our right to practice our religion, but actually Jesus was not about our rights, he was about the rights of others, those people who quite easily be pushed aside by stronger people by the authorities.
[06:44] See the UK organization ‘Christians in Politics’ their vision is to seek positive relational political engagements. They want to engage with the political sphere in order to see justice at the top of the agenda, to raise issues of fairness. It’s not so much about morality which unfortunately the church has been consumed with for many years; it’s about people being treated as images of our heavenly Father, of people getting what is right and just and fair, being treated in the right way. It’s about elimination of poverty, it’s about freedom for those that are held captive by abusive relationships or substance abuse or addictions of any kind.
[07:55] The church is there, not for its members, but for the people in our community, the people that need a voice and need help and maybe we need to have a position of authority and power in order to bring about that change, I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer is; perhaps as a church we need to find out who Jesus is calling us to be rather than being overly concerned about influence and power and our rights to do religion in whatever way we choose.
[1] YouTube link: Do Church and Politics Mix?
Bible references: 1 Peter ch 2 v13-14
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Contributed by Martin Shorey; © the Author
