Church vs. State

I used to think America should be a Christian nation. I don't anymore. The fundamentalism I was raised in had melded the two. In Vacation Bible School, we pledged allegiance every summer to the American flag, the Christian flag, and the Bible. Looking back, that's a little scary. 

I realize now the Christian church and the United States are completely different and should be. I value deeply a country where all faiths are free and where the Supreme Court has consistently sniffed out attempts to Christianize American government. Should prayer be in public school? Absolutely not, especially since that question always means, "Shouldn't Christian prayer be allowed?" I don't remember a single case where Jews or Muslims wanted their prayers recited over the loudspeaker before a football game.

I've had this sense for awhile what the church is not. The church is not the state, not even America and its beautiful religious liberties. But what is the church? I don't think I've wrestled well with that question yet, but  I need to for the work I'm doing in education. 

One of my sons passed along a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxes. I didn't realize until I started it that Bonhoeffer wrestled with, "What is the church?" his whole life. He eventually gave his life to the Nazis as he fought for the answer he landed on. In defining the church's role with the state, he had to think through the actions of the church against, not melded to, government. 

The church has three possible ways it can act against the state. First, it can ask the state if its actions are legitimate. Second, it can aid the victims of the state action. The church has the unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society even if they do not belong to the Christian society. The third possibility is not just [to] bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself. 

I recognize clearly that America is not Nazi Germany, and I'm still mulling the implications of the church jamming a rod into the spokes of the state's wheels to disable it. More importantly, I recognize how Bonhoeffer's view of the church lines up well with that in the Bible. The Christian church is weakened every time it allies itself with the state. America will be a stronger nation when the church questions its action as often as necessary.

I believe in a free state. I belief in a pure church. May we never be a Christian nation.