When Christ appeared before Pilate he said, “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight…but now is my kingdom not from hence.” Pontius Pilate was a Roman prefect, governing the province of Judea under the authority of the Roman Emperor, Tiberius Caesar. When Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” he was making a distinction between his role and that of Pilate: Pilate governed a physical, political kingdom, while Christ represented an invisible, spiritual kingdom. One kingdom is of the world and concerned with worldly things, while the other is of the spirit, concerned with spiritual things. Jesus added, “if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight…” In other words, force, or at least the threat of it, while it is an expected and even necessary tool of a physical kingdom, it has no part in establishing or maintaining a spiritual kingdom. The implication is clear: Since Christ did not come to be a carnal, political king, he does not employ force to accomplish his spiritual aims.
Jesus made no effort to reform the Roman Empire and he resisted all attempts to overthrow it by insurrection. Neither did he make it his goal to fight a culture war to defend the Jewish way of life from Roman encroachment. In fact, in the face of cultural conflict with Rome, Jesus urged submission rather than defiance. In the first century, Roman legionaries were entitled by law to require civilians of a conquered country to carry their equipment for one mile. Naturally, this practice enraged the Jewish people, who viewed it as Roman oppression. However, in direct reference to this practice, Jesus said, “Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him two.” Even more shocking, Jesus urged his followers to “resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” The phrase “resist not evil” appears in other translations this way: “I tell you not to stand up against someone who does you wrong…”; “you must not oppose those who want to hurt you…”; “don’t fight back…”; “offer no resistance…”
If Jesus had ever intended to advance his purposes through political struggle, he had plenty of opportunities to do so. Periodically the followers of Jesus even attempted to set a revolution in motion, but in each case, he refused to allow it. In one instance, after witnessing the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, the people proclaimed Christ to be “that Prophet that should come into the world” (a reference to a well-known prophecy by Moses of the coming Messiah). However, we are told that “when Jesus perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain by himself alone.” Christ had no intention of establishing an earthly kingdom, and he refused to allow his supporters to instigate a political revolution to do so.
In fact, the gospel writers emphasize Jesus’ utter abhorrence of political revolution by using words to describe him that are decidedly unlike the characteristics of a politician or a revolutionary leader: “He won’t yell, won’t raise his voice; there’ll be no commotion in the streets. He won’t walk over anyone’s feelings, won’t push you into a corner.” Other translations use phrases like this: “He will not quarrel”, or “He will not argue”. The point is clear: there is no need for contention because Christ is not endeavoring to establish an earthly kingdom. The agenda of Christ is purely ethical and spiritual. It is not advanced by political revolution, argument, or quarrel.
On the night that Jesus was arrested, he shamed the chief priests by reminding them that day after day he sat (unarmed and unguarded) in the Temple teaching. “Then Jesus said unto the chief priests, and captains of the temple, and the elders, which were come to him, Be ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and staves?” In the Greek language, the word translated “thief” in this verse does not mean a person who stealthily enters a house to steal property. The Greek word is lēstēs, and it was a term commonly employed by the Romans to describe a rebel or an insurrectionist. In fact, some Bible translations deliberately bring out this idea: “Have you come out with swords and clubs as you would against a man inciting a revolt?” By this rhetorical question, Christ is implying that inciting a revolt or inspiring an insurrection is the furthest thing from his intention.
When Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” he made a distinction between the concerns of God’s kingdom and those of man’s kingdom: God’s kingdom is concerned with spiritual matters, while human governments look after carnal, worldly matters.
The Apostle Paul echoed these same ideas in his writing, urging Christian submission to civil authority: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers,” reads the King James translation. Other versions make the idea more pointed: “Everyone must submit to the governing authorities”, reads one. “Every Christian ought to obey the civil authorities”, reads another. The Message translation is perhaps the clearest of all: “Be a good citizen. All governments are under God. Insofar as there is peace and order, it’s God’s order. So live responsibly as a citizen.” It must be remembered that the Apostle Paul lived under Nero, the most notorious and corrupt of all the Roman emperors. It was Nero, in fact, who initiated the first state-sponsored persecutions of the Christians, blaming them for the great fire that destroyed much of the city of Rome in 64 AD. But Paul never made any attempt to mobilize Christians to change the government of Rome. He did not engage in a culture war. He viewed his mission as a spiritual enterprise, changing the hearts of individuals one at a time.
Some of Paul’s statements make it clear that partisan political activity is incompatible with Christianity. “Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others.” The Phillips translation brings this idea into clearer focus: “None of you should think only of his own affairs, but should learn to see things from other people’s point of view.” It would indeed be refreshing if Christians actually adopted this perspective. But to see things “from other people’s point of view” requires a kind of charitable objectivity that has disappeared from modern political discourse, and is quickly disappearing from the modern, politicized church as well.
The late senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, was alarmed by the rise of Christian political activism within the Republican Party in the 1980s and he recognized the fundamental contradiction posed by the mixing of religion and politics. Using characteristically blunt language he said, “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”
As Goldwater correctly points out, Christians tend to view the world through the lens of their faith, assessing political issues in terms of moral absolutes: good versus evil, and right versus wrong. But while a moral code derived from religious faith may provide a suitable guide for personal decision-making, such a rigid standard is an obstacle when reaching political decisions where compromise is an absolute necessity. Since religious conviction is a personal, private matter, it, therefore, cannot legitimately be applied to public, political decisions which affect others who also have a right to their own similarly personal convictions.
The American Founding Fathers recognized the fundamental conflict between religious faith and public policy and attempted to separate the two when they wrote the Bill of Rights. The so-called “Establishment Clause” of the First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The precise meaning of the word “establishment” in this passage is undefined and has been the subject of much debate, but it was originally understood to mean that the government is prohibited from establishing a state-sponsored church like the Church of England. The broader implication, though, is that the government should stay out of the business of the church, and conversely, the church should stay out of the business of the government.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both described a “wall of separation” between the church and the state, but they probably borrowed the expression from the Baptist theologian Roger Williams, who in his 1644 book, The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, first wrote of a “hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world”.
Thomas Jefferson used the phrase “wall of separation” in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists to describe the mutually beneficial nature of the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their ‘legislature’ should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.” By delineating a line of distinction between the “legitimate powers of government” which deal with “actions only” and the legitimate role of the church, which properly deals with intangible “opinions”, Jefferson suggests that the government should stay out of the business of regulating ideas, and conversely the church should stay out of the business of attempting to regulate actions.
James Madison likewise wrote of the “total separation of the church from the state.” He explained that a “practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government is essential to the purity of both.”
The simple principle recognized by the Founders is that the government and the church have entirely separate spheres of legitimate concern and that any entanglement between them is detrimental to both: in the same way that it would be improper for the government to meddle in the affairs of the church, it is likewise improper for the church to meddle in the affairs of government. A total separation is mutually beneficial to both since it ensures the purity of both within the bounds of their proper spheres of influence. Or as Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black aptly put it in Engel vs Vitale (1962), a decision which held that state officials may not compose official state prayers and require that they be recited in public schools, “The Establishment Clause thus stands as an expression of principle on the part of the Founders of our Constitution that religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its unhallowed perversion by a civil magistrate.”
The separation of church and state is a concept beneficial to both the state and the church. Christians in America enjoy complete freedom to worship (or not) in any manner they choose and are not persecuted or restricted in any way, shape, or form. Common courtesy, not to mention Christian morality as defined by the “golden rule”, demands that Christians extend the same liberty of conscience to all others as well. A Christian in America is free to follow the dictates of his own conscience and that should be enough. The government should be strictly secular and neutral where religion is concerned, providing a free and open environment in which every citizen, whether Christian or not, is free to, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, engage in the “pursuit of happiness” as he sees fit.