I’ve been reading through Eric Metaxas’ biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It is truly excellent. At points it almost has a dreamlike quality. I highly recommend it.
What motivates this post is the point in the narrative where the German state church is confronted by the Aryan Paragraph designed to prohibit Jews (Christian Jews!) from membership in the German church. The point of the exercise was to sharpen the contrast between Jewishness and Germanness. Bonhoeffer and others, aghast at this turn of events, begin to develop an interest in the concept of a free church. The free church is the idea of the church as a regenerate body (voluntary) instead of a comprehensive one (coextensive with the political community).
This part of the book caught my interest because it perfectly captures the theme I‘ve been pushing for a while now which is that Christians should aggressively push for separation of church and state while drawing a sharp line between separation and secularism. Separation means the state does not fund the church nor does it control the church. Separation does not mean the church refrains from engaging in advocacy or organization (political or otherwise). One of the primary features of separation is that it should free the church to criticize or applaud the state depending on the degree to which it pursues an unholy agenda or a more righteous one.
In other words, a regenerate church is not a private church. It is rather like a volunteer army. Members enlist for a mission to the world.
Cross-posted to First Thoughts
July 19th, 2010 | 9:59 am | #1
Agree completely, Hunter. What is usually an addendum to this argument, and I’d be interested in reading your thoughts on the matter, is whether infant baptism mitigates the voluntary nature of church membership. Some have argued that, even in the absence of state coercion, infant baptism promotes a “traditional” attachment to a church body, a familial one, rather than a purely voluntary one, in which I, as an individual, make a decision to join, fully cognizant of the consequences and responsibilities of such membership, not merely the social benefits, as used to accrue from membership in state churches in centuries past. I don’t happen to think so, as confirmation is the time at which individuals can stand for or against membership, at least in theory (frankly, though, how many kids, and confirmands are usually kids, have the courage or even the opportunity to say “I don’t believe” or “I refuse to commit myself,” if family pressure is applied?). I believe one of Karl Barth’s critiques of infant baptism was that it was a bulwark of any state church, that it was “a deceptive prop.” (He had theological objections as well, which is another issue…)
July 19th, 2010 | 10:20 am | #2
I’m not a theologian, Anthony, but I tend to see infant baptism as being related to the old comprehensive church in which everyone born in the community is also a member of the church. It is especially prevalent in the churches which were also state churches. I don’t think I would personally adopt Barth’s hostility to it, but I do see a relationship there.
As for myself, I was sprinkled as a little guy and then had little interest in Christ until I got to college and became a Christian. At that time, I struggled with whether I should be baptized again. In the end, I did opt for an immersion in my late 20′s. Just seemed most natural to me to be baptized once I made a decision to follow Christ.
July 19th, 2010 | 11:46 am | #3
I don’t think the tax exemption should be a device for regulating political speech on behalf of churches. I question the constitutionality of it being used in that fashion.
The tax exemption, in my view, is an acknowledgement by the state of the church’s rightful independence.
July 19th, 2010 | 10:54 pm | #4
Have you seen people taking notice of the change in how the Obama Administration is speaking about religious freedom in America? Instead of saying the “freedom of religion” it is now, or interchangeable with, the “freedom of worship”. This would seem to relegate religion to the private sphere only, unless deemed acceptable by those making this distinction, namely the Left.
July 21st, 2010 | 5:01 pm | #5
Uh, but wasn’t he at fault for being a part of the state syncretic church in the 1st place? The “real” Lutherans had already left for the United States and Australia and the independent Lutheran church that exists today isn’t Bonhoeffers. The man was a political hero, but I’m never understood the case for him as a religious hero. He failed in every respect and failed to realize the implicit perils of church-state collaboration until it was too late.
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