What is the church’s relationship to the state?

Question 09034.

The relationship between church and state has produced more confusion, and more blood, than almost any other question in Christian history. Scripture gives us the principles rather than a constitution, and the principles have to be applied in circumstances that vary enormously from one country and century to another.

What Scripture does establish is that both institutions are ordained by God, that both have limited and distinct authority, and that neither is entitled to absorb the other. Getting that straight settles a good deal, and it explains why Christians have gone to prison in some generations and served in Parliament in others without inconsistency.

Church and State: Two Mandates

God has established both the church and the civil authority, and He has given them different work. The state exists to restrain evil, punish wrongdoing and maintain a public order in which ordinary life can go on. It carries the sword. The church exists to proclaim the gospel, gather and build the people of God, administer the ordinances and exercise a discipline that is spiritual rather than coercive. It carries the keys, not the sword.

Almost every historic disaster in the relationship between church and state comes from one side taking up the other’s instrument. When the church reaches for coercive power, it produces the Inquisition and the wars of religion. When the state reaches for spiritual authority, it produces the emperor cult, the state churches of totalitarian regimes and the demand that the pulpit say only what the government finds acceptable.

Romans 13 and the Servant of God

Romans 13:1 to 4 is the foundational text. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. The ruler is God’s servant for your good, and he does not bear the sword in vain. Paul wrote this under Nero, which is worth pausing over. The instruction was not given about a Christian government but about a pagan one that would shortly begin killing Christians.

The word for authority here is exousia, delegated right rather than raw power, and the delegation is the point. A government’s authority is derived, which means it is real and it is limited. Peter says the same in 1 Peter 2:13 and 14, and adds the striking instruction to honour the emperor. Christians are to be conspicuously good citizens: paying taxes, obeying the law, contributing to the common good.

The Limits of Obedience

The submission is genuine and it is not unconditional. When the Sanhedrin ordered the apostles to stop preaching, Peter and John answered in Acts 5:29, we must obey God rather than men. Daniel kept praying with the windows open. The Hebrew midwives lied to Pharaoh and God dealt well with them. Where the state commands what God forbids, or forbids what God commands, the Christian disobeys and accepts the consequences.

Note the shape of that disobedience. It is specific rather than general, it is open rather than covert, and it accepts the penalty rather than evading it. None of these examples involves revolution. The apostles did not attempt to overthrow the Sanhedrin; they kept preaching and went to prison for it. That pattern of principled, costly, non violent refusal is the model for church and state conflict, and it is very different from a general licence to defy laws we dislike.

Render to Caesar

Jesus settles the framework in Matthew 22:21: render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. It is a deceptively simple answer to a trap. Caesar has a legitimate claim, and it has a boundary. God’s claim has no boundary at all, and Caesar himself falls inside it.

The coin carried Caesar’s image, so it went back to Caesar. Human beings carry God’s image, so they belong to Him. The implication is that the state may claim your taxes and your civil obedience, and it may not claim your worship or your conscience. That single distinction does more work in ordering church and state than any amount of constitutional theory.

This is also why I resist both of the popular simplifications. The first says that faith is a private matter and church and state should never touch, which would have astonished every prophet in Scripture. The second says that a Christian nation should legislate the faith, which confuses the two mandates in the other direction. Jesus gives us a boundary rather than a wall, and boundaries require judgement to maintain.

Church and State in the British Situation

We live with an established church, bishops in the House of Lords and a monarch who is Supreme Governor of the Church of England. As a Baptist I do not favour that arrangement, and my forebears suffered a good deal under it. Establishment tends to make the church a department of national life, valued for its usefulness at ceremonies and quietly expected not to say anything inconvenient.

I would not want to overstate it, however. Establishment in England is now largely ceremonial, and faithful ministers work within it. The more pressing question for church and state in Britain today is not the constitution but the growing pressure on churches over what they may teach about marriage, identity and conversion. That pressure will test congregations of every denomination equally, and the established ones are not obviously better protected. My article on whether the church should pay taxes deals with one practical corner of this.

When the Church Should Speak

The church has a prophetic voice and should use it. When the state legislates for injustice, when the weak are being crushed, when truth is being redefined by statute, silence is not neutrality. Nathan confronted David. John the Baptist told Herod that his marriage was unlawful and lost his head for it. Amos denounced the courts of Israel. This is a thoroughly biblical function.

What that voice addresses is moral rather than partisan. The church speaks about abortion, about the treatment of the poor, about honesty in public life, about the protection of children, because Scripture speaks about them. It does so from the Bible rather than from a party manifesto, and it does so at cost to itself rather than for advantage.

When the Church Should Not Speak

On the many questions where Scripture gives principles but no policy, the church should teach the principles and leave believers free. Tax rates, immigration numbers, defence spending and the structure of the health service are matters on which faithful Christians reach different conclusions, and a pulpit that pronounces on them binds consciences God has left free.

There is also a warning here about capture. A church that becomes identified with a political party has traded its prophetic voice for access, and it will find itself unable to speak when that party does wrong. I have set this out at greater length in should churches be involved in politics, and the related question of partnering with government agencies raises similar issues.

The Long View

My expectations here are shaped by what I believe about the future. I do not expect society to be permanently improved by Christian political engagement, because the deep change happens through conversion rather than legislation. The church is not building the kingdom; it is proclaiming the King until He comes. That conviction keeps me from both despair and utopianism, which are the two errors this subject usually produces.

It also frees us to work for good without needing to win. Wilberforce laboured for decades and did enormous good, and the world he left was still a fallen one. Christians should be the best neighbours, the most reliable citizens and the most persistent advocates for the vulnerable, precisely because we are not depending on the outcome. The NET Bible notes on Romans 13 are worth reading on the limits of the submission Paul describes.

None of that makes the church and state question less urgent for the generation living through it. A believer facing a tribunal over something he said about marriage is not comforted by being told that history is going somewhere. What the long view provides is stamina rather than detachment, and stamina is exactly what will be needed.

So, now what?

Start with the instruction we most often skip. 1 Timothy 2:1 and 2 tells us to pray for kings and all who are in high positions, and it was written about a hostile government. Do you actually pray for the Prime Minister, your MP, your local councillors, by name? Most of us find criticism easier, and it costs less.

Then be the kind of citizen that makes the gospel credible. Pay what you owe, tell the truth on forms, serve where you can, and be known in your street as someone who turns up. When the question of church and state becomes sharp in this country, and I think it will, the churches that have been quietly good neighbours will be heard rather better than those that have only ever complained. What would your neighbours say your church contributes to the place it sits in?

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

1 Timothy 2:1-2 (ESV)