Church, State, and Citizen: Christian Approaches to Political Engagement
Edited by Sandra F. Joireman
Number of quotes: 23
Book ID: 60 Page: 15
Section: 3A1
Although the Catholic Church currently accepts and affirms the state, it originally resisted the emergence of sovereign states as Europe transitioned to modernity.
Quote ID: 1512
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 18
Section: 3A2
Since the Middle Ages, the Vatican has been a central actor in European politics (Hall 1997; Philpott 2001). More than a thousand years ago, Pepin, the king of the Franks, granted the pope the Papal States, and since that time, with only one major interruption, the popes have been temporal rulers of parts of modern-day central Italy (Graham 1959:157). During most of this time, the Catholic Church resisted the emergence and existence of the state. The Catholic Church approved of a state only when it upheld the Church’s authority and enforced the faith (Philpott 2004).
Quote ID: 1514
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 19
Section: 3A4C
Christendom enveloped the entire European world (or civilized world, as it was called) and was subject to the “universal monarchy” of the papacy. Although history rarely achieved this serene ideal, it did record actions at least partially intended to be a reflection of it, such as Concordat of Worms.The unity of Christendom was undergirded by the assertion of absolute sovereignty of the church in both temporal and spiritual matters. There was one church and one emperor subject to the spiritual authority of the church. Popes raised and led armies in defense of papal territory and had all the attendant problems of contemporary temporal rulers. Papal statecraft even provided certain examples for Machiavelli’s The Prince.
Quote ID: 1515
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 20
Section: 3A1
The nadir of this challenge for the Catholic Church was Italian unification, when in 1870, in what was called the Risorgimento, Italian troops conquered the Papal States (Crawford 1979:153).{9} When Italian troops were on the verge of taking the Vatican, Pius IX called the First Vatican Council (1869-1870). This council promulgated the doctrine of papal infallibility, meaning that when the pope speaks formally ex cathedra on faith and morals (which is very rare), the teaching becomes Catholic dogma (Burns 1992). Two months later, Italian troops storm Rome, ending more than a thousand years of Vatican temporal authority (Gontard 1964: 512).….
The Roman Question is the term describing the controversy between the Vatican and the Italian government from 1870 to 1929 over the status of the Vatican. Neither of the two would recognize the other’s sovereignty, and each considered the other to be interfering in its internal affairs. On February 11, 1929, however, the Italian government, under Mussolini, and the Vatican, under Pius XI, signed the Lateran Treaty. Pursuant to the treaty, Italy ceded the Vatican forty-four hectares, which became the new State of the Vatican City (Kunz, 1952: 312). Italy recognized the sovereignty of the Vatican and recognized the Catholic Church as the official state religion.{10} In turn, the Vatican recognized the Italian government.{11}
Quote ID: 1516
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 29
Section: 2A1
This is transferred and newThe Catholic Church counts all who are baptized as Catholics as members for their entire lives unless they are excommunicated.
Quote ID: 1517
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 37
Section: 3C1
Nevertheless, because Luther pronounced himself in fundamental agreement with the Roman Catholic Church on the central doctrine of the Holy Trinity, he saw himself as a reformer, not a revolutionary.{3} To Luther, the absolute anchor to Christianity was the doctrine of the Trinity, which articulated the nature of the God in which true Christians professed their faith. The Catholic Church, Luther acknowledged, had created a global Christendom (the church universal) in its defense of the Trinity against the heresies of the early church and against the Eastern Orthodox schismatics later on. He did not see his famous theses, or central beliefs, grounding them, then, as corrosive of the basic worldwide Catholic solidarity.
Quote ID: 1518
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 60 Page: 41
Section: 3A4C,4B
For wars among equals, Luther insisted on very severe standards. Even if a contemplated war met just the war criteria, Christians still cannot fight with pride or arrogance. Christians, further, can have no part of wars fought for honor, which, to Luther, was nothing but a mask for greed.
Quote ID: 1519
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 42
Section: 3A4C
On the matter of individual conscience, Luther displayed a modern sensitivity. He posed two situations regarding an individual Christian’s response to a ruler’s call for war. If the Christian knows for sure that this call is wrong, then he should “fear god rather than men” and refuse the call. If, however, “you do not know, or cannot find out, whether your lord is wrong,” then the Christian should heed the call and serve because God will judge the ruler, not the Christian serving in ignorance.{31}
Quote ID: 1520
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 43
Section: 3A4C
Only Christians can fight the devil, but the devil must be fought with “repentance, tears, and prayer,” not with arms. The Turk, on the other hand, can be fought with arms, but only by the emperor and his soldiers. Thus, even wars against infidels like the Turks must be fought for justice at the emperor’s command and authority, not at the call of the church or the pope. Because political authority is divinely ordained, soldiering is a legitimate occupation, even for Christians. But when Christians take up arms, they fight under political authority, not religious authority.{33}
Quote ID: 1521
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 44
Section: 3A1
In sum, for all its worldliness, to Luther the world is still a sacred place for all Christians - even though it belongs to the devil. There can be no abdication from the world for Lutherans. It is their vocation to be in it, and in its politics.
Quote ID: 1522
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 59
Section: 3A2
Calvin’s traditional view that the state bears responsibility for enforcing Christian discipline throughout society{19} has been rejected.
Quote ID: 1523
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 74
Section: 3A1
The Anabaptist movement is often referred to as the radical fringe of the Reformation.{2} Some of the first Anabaptists, Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel, were students of Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland. They supported Zwingli’s break with the Catholic Church and his push for reform, but they were uncomfortable with the way Zwingli used political power. Zwingli tried to work through the Zurich council, the local political authority, to win the council over to his side. His goal was to harness the power of the council and get it to establish policies that supported the position of the reformers. Zwingli believed it was the role and appropriate place of political authorities, such as the council, to oversee the implementation of the Reformation. Manz and Grebel disagreed.
Quote ID: 1524
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 75
Section: 3A1,3A4C
One “Anabaptist Church” never formed and that Anabaptist remained a movement, splitting into different sects based on locality of origin and beliefs, rather than a theologically unified group.….
One of the first lasting articulations of Swiss Brethren theology was the Schleitheim Confession of 1527, which marked the beginning of the free church, meaning that its membership was not defined by political authorities.{4} The Schleitheim Confession expressed the Swiss Anabaptist positions of adult baptism based on professed belief, refusal to take oaths, the free election of church leaders, and Communion not as a sacrament or transubstantiation, but as an expression of Christian community. The rejection of violence or the “devilish weapons of force - such as sword, armor and the like, and all their use [either] for friends or against one’s enemies - by virtue of the Word of Christ” (Swiss Brethren Conference 1527) was also present. Beliefs regarding the state were taken a step further than previously articulated, and the members of the Brethren were encouraged to reject any service to the state, be it military or otherwise.
….
“Finally it will be observed that it is not appropriate for a Christian to serve as a magistrate because of these points: The government magistracy is according to the flesh, but the Christian’s is according to the Spirit; their houses and dwelling remain in this world, but the Christian’s are in heaven; their citizenship is in this world, but the Christian’s citizenship is in heaven; the weapons of their conflict and war are carnal and against the flesh only, but the Christian’s weapons are spiritual, against the fortification of the devil. The worldlings are armed with steel and iron, but the Christians are armed with the armor of God, with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation and the Word of God. In brief, as in the mind of God toward us, so shall the mind of the members of the body of Christ be through Him in all things, that there may be no schism in the body through which it would be destroyed. For every kingdom divided against itself will be destroyed.” (Swiss Brethren Conference 1527)
Quote ID: 1526
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 95
Section: 3A1
Over the course of several years, Henry drew on existing antipapist and national sentiment in England to convince Parliament to name him the supreme head of the church and to deny explicitly the authority of the pope in England. By 1534, authority over the church in England and its wealth was vested solely in the king and, under the king, Parliament. The new ecclesial leader, the archbishop of the Church of England, possessed autonomy from the pope in Rome but served the church under the authority of the English monarch. The church in England and been transformed into a church of England.
Quote ID: 1528
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 118
Section: 3A1,3A2A
On the other side of the Atlantic, the dissenter Roger Williams founded Providence Plantation in 1636. The evangelical emphases led Williams that helped lay the foundations not only for his insistence on religious liberty but also for his advocacy of “a wall of separation between the garden of the Church and the wilderness of the world,” as he famously formulated it in 1643. Where the two have been confounded, the result has been a disastrous corruption of faith. “The practicing of civil force upon the consciences of men,” Williams wrote in refutation of Cotton Mather’s defense of state discipline of the ungodly, “is so far from preserving religion pure, it is a mighty bulwark or barricade sic, to keep out all true religion” (quoted in Backus 1773).
Quote ID: 1530
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 119
Section: 3A1
For their conception of the state, Wesley, and many other 18th-century evangelicals were largely content with the political maxims of the New Testament that enjoined believers to fear God, honor the king, and pay their taxes.
Quote ID: 1531
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 136
Section: 3A1
With remarkable consistency over more than three hundred years, evangelicals have offered a view of the state that has systematically repudiated the longstanding tendency of the Western Christian political tradition to view “statecraft as soulcraft,” to borrow George Will’s felicitous formula (Will 1983). According to this classic tendency, the state plays a central role in the moral and spiritual formation of individuals. Indeed, the core function of political authority is to assist individuals in the acquisition of those virtues without which they cannot know and achieve the summum bonum. Princes on this view were above all seen as benevolent teachers whose central duty was to exercise a fatherly care over the moral and spiritual well-being of their subjects. The “magisterial” Reformers Luther and Calvin embraced this view with much the same conviction and vigor as Augustine and Aquinas.
Quote ID: 1533
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 60 Page: 151
Section: 2D
Pentecostals can be found in almost every theological tradition, with little more than a similar understanding of the power of Holy Spirit baptism unifying them.
Quote ID: 1538
Time Periods: 27
Book ID: 60 Page: 155
Section: 3A1
For the early Pentecostals, individual identity was found in Christ, and therefore, a believer’s nationality was Christian, rather than American or affiliated with some other state.….
Once again, we see similarity in perspective linking the Anabaptist and Pentecostal-Holiness traditions. For both, the spiritual and eternal focus of the kingdom of heaven must necessarily supersede, and in many cases annul, the fleshly and temporal focus of the kingdom of man. As citizens of heaven, Christians should employ spiritual “weapons” as they seek change, not fleshly weapons like politics.
Quote ID: 1539
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 155
Section: 3A4C
Finally, as an offshoot of this antistate perspective, early Pentecostal roots were pacifistic - once again linking it closely to the Anabaptist tradition. Though early leaders allowed individual members to pursue their own consciences, they also believed that scripture taught conscientious objection. Early Pentecostal leaders such as Charles Fox Parham and Frank Bartleman preached forcefully against Christian participation in war. In fact, in 1917, the Assemblies of God USA sent a statement officially declaring itself a pacifist church to President Woodrow Wilson. The basic argument was that if an intercultural, interracial, and gender-inclusive unity in Christ was experienced, a Pentecostal could not go to war against a Christian brother or sister.{16}
Quote ID: 1540
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 158
Section: 2D
Consequently, charismatic Christians adopt political perspectives across the entire range of possible relations to the state.
Quote ID: 1541
Time Periods: 27
Book ID: 60 Page: 160
Section: 2D3B
To suggest that Pentecostalism has a specific understanding of the state and citizenship is to misrepresent the extraordinary diversity that defines the movement. Though the commitment to, and centrality of, the doctrine of baptism in the Holy Spirit does provide its members with a common starting point.
Quote ID: 1542
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 60 Page: 179
Section: 3A1
In his classic Christ and Culture - a study that explores major alternative theological traditions on the relationship of faith to temporal life - Niebuhr reminds readers than no single church, group, or individual can provide an authoritative voice for the work of Christ in the world because God’s redemptive strategy is “in the mind of the Captain rather than of any lieutenants.”{21} Because no tradition provides a complete answer to the question of “Christ and culture,” believers should be humble and tentative in their political pronouncements, remembering that history will remain, to the end of time, inconclusive and indeterminate.
Quote ID: 1543
Time Periods: 7
End of quotes