In his intro to St. Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, C. S. Lewis encouraged his readers to read old books. Why? Because reading old books by old authors with old outlooks “will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period.”1 That is not to say old books are infallible. But they do offer different perspectives untainted by the assumptions of our own time.
One aspect of modern evangelicalism that would benefit from the “clean sea breeze” of historical perspective is its conception of politics, specifically the relationship between church and state.2 As I’ve written elsewhere, concern for being labeled a “Christian Nationalist” has led some evangelicals to make wildly ahistorical claims, like calling “antichrist” any combination of civil and religious power.3
To anathematize everything but the absolute separation of church and state makes sense for certain theologically-committed Baptists, but what about those who claim the inheritance of the magisterial reformers—Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians?4 Why must we accept a baptized version of radical secularism?
The simple answer is that we don’t.
Several theories have tried to explain the predominance of anabaptist political theology, some better than others.5 Below, I’ll try to offer my own which focuses less on denominational or socio-political differences and more on historical and theological presuppositions. By reexamining the history that grounds evangelical politics, my goal is to clear the dross for a coherent political theology—what I call Reformation politics.
In 2015, Russell Moore published a provocative column arguing against cultural Christianity. “Mayberry leads to hell just as surely as Gomorrah does,” Moore wrote.6 Key to Moore’s argument is one of the core commitments of separatism, namely that cultural or political establishment necessarily corrupts the church:
Christianity isn’t normal anymore, and that’s good news. The Book of Acts, like the Gospels before it, shows us that the Christianity thrives when it is, as Kierkegaard put it, a sign of contradiction. Only a strange gospel can differentiate itself from the worlds we construct. But the strange, freakish, foolish old gospel is what God uses to save people and to resurrect churches (1 Cor. 1:20-22).
For Moore, Christianity thrives when it is an antithesis to the culture. And as far as he is concerned, history is on his side:
Christianity didn’t come from Mayberry in the first place, but from a Roman Empire hostile to the core to the idea of a crucified and resurrected Messiah. We’ve been on the wrong side of history since Rome, and it was enough to turn the world upside down.
Moore’s view is representative of the popular evangelical historiography taught in many Christian schools, seminaries, and churches today. Per this narrative, the early church was independent and uncorrupted, washed pure by the blood of its martyrs. Its ethic, radically different from that of the Roman Empire, won many adherents to its cause. Then, Constantine the Great converted (a dubious claim at best) and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Christendom sullied the church’s purity with political power, led to missional drift and theological compromise, and culminated in ecclesial atrophy and political violence. If not for the resistance of a few, brave churchman, the flame of the true Gospel would surely have died out. Sound familiar?
One consequence of the evangelical narrative is that it implicitly turns America’s own founding 1,500 years later into the restoration of the evangelical ideal. Disestablishment and the separation of church are no longer understood to be prudential judgments by statesmen of their time but biblical prescriptions for evangelical witness and doctrinal purity. Ironically, in the hope of disentangling the church from American politics, it baptizes a form of American exceptionalism.7
The problem with the evangelical narrative, however, is that it is wrong—or, at the very least, missing some crucial facts. A more informed understanding of church history offers significant counterfactuals.
The first point of the evangelical narrative worth interrogating is the assumption that ecclesial independence necessarily leads to doctrinal purity.
Passages like Acts 15 indicate that the early church existed independently of political authority. But apparently independence did not prevent theological innovation. Over and again, Paul warns his audience about “false teachers” and encourages them to hold fast to the Gospel they received from him. Clearly, rampant heresy was already an issue long before Constantine became a Christian.
America’s own strange history with religion reveals a similar pattern. Our nation has been home to Unitarians, Universalists, Quakers, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses—not to mention more nefarious sects like the Branch Davidians and The Peoples Temple. But proving separatism’s impotence against heresy does not prove the opposite, as if establishment always prevents it. Deviation from true doctrine seems inevitable in a fallen world. The question is how to best limit its reach.
The second feature of the evangelical narrative is not so much an assumption as it is deliberately erasing the role of civil magistrates in theology and history.
According to the evangelical narrative, true Christianity always overcomes its opponents (usually civil authorities) by the faithful witness of believers and the audacity of extraordinary churchmen. But is that the whole story?
In his new book, Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, historian Peter Heather investigates that very question: Did Christianity take over the European continent solely because of its superior ethic and persuasiveness? If so, why are so many in the West de-converting from the church in such staggering numbers?
Heather offers enough evidence to suggest other factors contributed to Christianity’s initial popularity. Key among them was the establishment of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire which significantly lowered the barriers to conversion, especially among the movers and shakers of Roman culture. While we ought not discount the powerful witness of martyrs willing to die for their beliefs, we cannot ignore the fact that Constantine’s conversion “provided an extremely powerful mechanism that dramatically accelerated the overall process of elite conversion.”8
Moreover, political establishment actually bolstered theological orthodoxy. It was Constantine who convened and oversaw the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, providing able theologians like Athanasius the platform to roundly disprove heresies like Arianism. But the fledgling church also benefited from Constantine’s enforcement of Nicene orthodoxy through anti-heresy and blasphemy laws.
In fact, the history of theology demonstrates that those who successfully defended doctrinal purity almost always had the protection of dependable civil magistrates. Martin Luther was a formidable challenge to the papal see, but it is hard to imagine how successful he would have been without the support of Frederick the Wise. Calvinists in France, England, Poland, and Hungary learned quickly that “the new faith would only go as far as rulers would allow.”9 Where civil magistrates supported Reformation, the Protestant faith flourished.
So how should we understand America’s own history of disestablishment? Most importantly, America’s unique religious policy was not so much a repudiation of Christendom as it was a prudential judgment by its founders for the sake of a pluralistic nation’s common good.10
Remember that the first amendment originally only applied at the federal level. State governments retained church establishments long after it was ratified. Even the decision by early American Presbyterians to revise Chapter XXIII of the Westminster Confession of Faith did not prevent them from affirming a symbiotic relationship between church and state.
For example, the first General Assembly of the newly formed Presbyterian Church in the United States wrote to President George Washington and gave thanks for their mutual commitment to the Gospel:
We therefore esteem it a peculiar happiness to behold in our chief Magistrate, a steady, uniform, avowed friend of the christian religion, who has commenced his administration in rational and exalted sentiments of Piety, and who in his private conduct adorns the doctrines of the Gospel of Christ, and on the most public and solemn occasions devoutly acknowledges the government of divine Providence.11
Athanasius and Constantine. Luther and Frederick. Witherspoon and Washington. The overwhelming evidence of church history is a pattern of faithful civil magistrates defending and promoting faithful churchmen in their efforts to proclaim the Word of God and preserve orthodoxy.
The best historical examples, though imperfect in their own ways, comport well with the biblical ideal. Far from being antitheses, Scripture imagines a symbiotic relationship between church and state. The church preaches the Gospel, administers the sacraments, and disciplines her members. The state supports her work by defending her right to do so (at the very least) as well as punishing wickedness and promoting good (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:14). In return Christians humbly submit to their political authorities (1 Peter 2:13; Titus 3:1) and pray for them (1 Timothy 2:1-2).
The implicit idea is that Christian magistrates best secure the conditions for human flourishing because they govern justly according to God’s moral law. And Christian citizens are the best guardians of freedom because their public virtue supports their capacity for self-government. Together, they both rely on the power of the Word to transform hearts and bring Christ’s kingdom to bear on earth as it is in heaven.
This is Reformation politics.
C.S. Lewis, “Preface” in On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius, trans. John Behr (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 10.
Lewis, 11.
See Robert Hasler, “Calvin Wasn’t Antichrist,” American Reformer, August 14, 2023, https://americanreformer.org/2023/08/calvin-wasnt-antichrist/.
For a better understanding of the differences between Baptist and Presbyterian political theology, consider Chapter XXIV of the 1689 London Baptist Confession which omits the certain religious duties of civil magistrates listed in Chapter XXIII of the Westminster Confession of Faith, like suppressing blasphemies and heresies and calling synods.
For example, on theory is that Evangelical elites (“#BigEva”) have impressed on the common layman that marginalization is a necessary and welcome feature of Christianity in modern Western democracies. Christians must not fuss too loudly about abortion, marriage laws, or transgenderism since culture wars only turn unbelievers off to the Gospel. In return, evangelical elites get to keep their seats at the tables of stalwart American institutions like The New York Times and the National Institutes of Health and be faithful presences to the redemptive power of the Gospel. The strength of the theory is its correspondence with the broader populist critique of American politics personified in Donald Trump’s shocking presidential victory in 2016. Not surprisingly, many of these elites see in Trump’s popularity among evangelicals an unholy grasp for political power. Though salient, the theory fails to account for Protestants who otherwise support Trump, reject the faithful presence model, but nevertheless argue against a reinvigorated Christian witness in the public square (See Darryl Hart, “Christians Err if They Give Up on America,” The Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/christians-err-if-they-give-up-on-america-fourth-of-july-nationalism-integralism-d30470dc). Thus, the #BigEva theory can only go so far because its missing key historical-theological differences between groups.
Russell Moore, “Is Christianity Dying?” Russell Moore (blog), May 12, 2015, https://www.russellmoore.com/2015/05/12/is-christianity-dying/.
A related phenomenon is awkward condemnations of right-wing expressions of Christian nationalism but enthusiastic support for left-wing policy objectives on Christian grounds. Opposition to gay marriage, for example, is condemned as “legislating morality” while mandatory vaccination is a way we “love our neighbors” in a pandemic (See https://www.christiansandthevaccine.com/about). Left or right, we’re all Christian nationalists now.
Peter Heather, Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300 (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023), 82.
D. G. Hart, Calvinism: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 46. Readers should note that though Hart agrees Calvinist reformers benefited from friendly civil magistrates, history proves the costs far outweighed the benefits. Hart would be an example of that group I identified earlier—Trump-friendly, dismissive of evangelicalism, and adamantly disestablishmentarian.
In a previous essay for The Public Theology Project, Will Stockdale ably defended America’s identity as a pluralistic nation. Though we today would look back at America’s religious landscape as a Protestant monolith, we ought not dismiss how pluralistic a society of Baptists, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians would have felt to settlers with fresh memories of the English Civil War. See Will Stockdale, “Thoughts on pluralism,” The Public Theology Project, October 6, 2023, https://thepublictheologyproject.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-pluralism.
“From George Washington to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, 30 May-5 June 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-02-02-0307.
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