Protecting the Wilderness: Comments on Howe's The Garden in the Wilderness

2010 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 863-870
Author(s):  
Kathleen Flake
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
The World ◽  
American Law ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Roger Williams ◽  
The Church

“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, . . . set up the tabernacle of the tent of the congregation. . . . put therein the ark of the testimony . . . bring in the candlestick, and light the lamps thereof.” No, I am not going to preach a Puritan sermon to you. I want only to remind you of the Puritan in Roger Williams who said the words that provide the title of the book under consideration. The words come from Williams's debate with John Cotton over church government: “When they [or the those who desired to Christianize the world through the use of worldly power] have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God had ever broke down the wall itself, removed the candlestick, and made His garden a wilderness.” For Mark deWolfe Howe, Williams's “theological wall of separation” represents the evangelical impulse in American religion and is an important source for understanding American law concerning church and state. A key contribution of Howe's monograph was to remind its readers that not only Jefferson's sense of natural law and individual rights but also Williams's congregational and biblical notions informed the First Amendment religion clauses. Howe finds fault with the Supreme Court's ignoring this dual lineage and favoring only Jefferson's Enlightenment view. For Howe, the modern Court's use of Jefferson's language to impute due process values to the religion clauses “distorts their manifest objectives” to grant religion constitutionally protected status—a status distinct from other forms of conscience, not least irreligion. These other forms of conscience are, he argues, protected by other constitutional guarantees, such as speech, press, and association.

Building the “Wall of Separation”: Construction Zone for Historians

2010 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 871-880
Author(s):  
W. Clark Gilpin
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
American People ◽  
People Of God ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Roger Williams ◽  
The Church

The argument of Mark deWolfe Howe's The Garden and the Wilderness turned on the contrast Howe drew between two uses of a single phrase: “wall of separation.” Thomas Jefferson used the phrase in 1802, in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association: “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.” More than a century and a half earlier, in 1644, the colonial advocate of religious freedom Roger Williams had employed the same phrase in a letter to his theological opponent, the Reverend John Cotton of Boston. According to Williams's reading of the Bible, the people of God—Jews and Christians—were “separate from the world,” and, “when they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the candlestick, and made His garden a wilderness, as at this day. And that therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world; and that all that shall be saved out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness of the world, and added unto his church or garden.”

Church and State

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

Chapter 3’s discussion of kingdoms and orders in the context of political life leads naturally into the topic of this chapter: the church, the state, and their relationship. The present chapter locates the state (or, better, political authority in general) in relationship to Chapter 3’s categories by presenting it as one of the orders by which God’s structures the world. It is an important actor in the temporal kingdom, where God has ordained it to preserve the world through law. The church in its essence is an agent of the spiritual kingdom, bearing God’s redemptive word to the world. The themes of preservation and redemption, the kingdoms, and the orders find many of their concrete expressions in themes of the church, the state, and their relationship.

Lauener, Michael, Schutz der Kirche und Stabilität des Staates durch Absenz von religiöser ,Seichtigkeit': die religionspolitischen Anschauungen von Jeremias Gotthelf und Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel aus dem Geist der Versöhnung

2019 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 280-349
Author(s):  
Michael Lauener
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Strong State ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church ◽  
The French Revolution

Abstract Protection of the church and state stability through the absence of religious 'shallowness': views on religion-policy of Jeremias Gotthelf and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel out of a spirit of reconciliation. The article re-examines a thesis of Paul Baumgartner published in 1945: "Jeremias Gotthelf's, 'Zeitgeist and Bernergeist', A Study on Introduction and Interpretation", that if the Swiss writer and keen Hegel-opponent Jeremias Gotthelf had read any book of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, some of this would have received his recognition. Both Gotthelf and Hegel see the Reformation to be the cause of the emergence of a strong state. For Gotthelf, this marks the beginning of a process of strengthening the state at the expense of the church. Hegel, on the other hand, considers the modern state to be the reality of freedom, produced by the Christian 'religion of freedom' (Rph, §270 Z., p. 430). In contrast to Gotthelf, for whom only Christ can reconcile the state and religion, Hegel praises the French Revolution as "reconciliation of the divine with the world". For Gotthelf, the French Revolution was only a poor imitation of the process of spiritual and political liberation initiated by the Reformation, through which Christ reduced people to their original liberty. Nevertheless, both Gotthelf and Hegel want to protect the state and the church from falling apart, they reject organizational unity of state – religion – church in the sense of a theocracy, and demand the protection of church communities.

The Anabaptists and the Civil Authorities of Strasbourg, 1525–1555

1955 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Kreider
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

Since the dawn of the Christian era the relationship between church and state has been one of the pivotal issues of western civilization. Men have offered a variety of answers to this problem. The much- persecuted Anabaptists of the 16th century presented one set of answers, radical for their age, which called for a decisive separation of the church from the state and complete freedom for the church to pursue its vocation in the world. The Anabaptists were a distressing annoyance to the civil authorities. This movement posed for the 16th century the acute problem: how should religious dissent be handled?

scholarly journals Same-Sex Marriage and the Catholic Church in Europe. Any Chance for Understanding?

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-281
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Kużelewska ◽  
Marta Michalczuk-Wlizło
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
The World ◽  
Catholic Religion ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Abstract There is room for everyone in the Catholic Church, but there is no consent for same-sex marriage in that Church as marriage only between a baptized man and a woman is a sacrament. Same-sex marriage is inconsistent with the Holy Scripture where marriage is based on God’s natural law. This official Scripture’s interpretation results in lack of possibility to reconciliate the official teaching of the Church with the recognition of same-sex marriage. The world is moving forward and so are the opinions of Christians and their growing support for same-sex marriage. Such marriage is recognized in thirty states worldwide, including states with dominant Catholic religion. Regardless the official teaching, the Catholic Church’s position is not uniform. The paper discusses the official interpretation of the Scripture concerning homosexuals, analyses the position of the Catholic Church toward same-sex marriage and indicates differences in Christians’ attitudes with respect to same-sex couples in Western and Eastern Europe.

Pandangan Eklesiologi Calvin mengenai Politik Praktis dalam Pelayanan Gereja

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfons Renaldo Tampenawas
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
State Politics ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church ◽  
What Matters

Abstract: This article discusses the inclusion of Calvin’s exclusion of politics in practical churchservice of the Calvin Chruch and state (politicos) as two things that the Lord allows for attending tolife in the world, but both church and state (politics) both have different duties and responsibilitieswhile also helping one another. There’s basically no supremarcy between the two. But what matters iswhen politics blends with service in the church, in another sense the church becomes the vehicle forpolitics. This is what they call a practical political activity. Where both personal and politicalinterests have made the church a tool for sustaining support. This is made the church lose its identityas salt and the light of the world.Keywords: church; ecclesiology; ecclesiology of Calvin; practical politicsAbstrak: Artikel ini membahas mengenai pandangan Eklesiologi Calvin Mengenai Politik Praktisdalam pelayanan Gereja. Dalam Eklesiologi Calvin gereja maupun negara (politik) merupakan duahal yang diijinkan Tuhan untuk hadir dalam kehidupan di dunia, akan tetapi baik gereja maupunnegara (politik) keduanya memiliki tugas dan tanggung jawab yang berbeda walaupun juga salingmenolong satu dengan yang lain. Pada dasarnya tidak ada supremasi antara keduanya. Namun yangmenjadi persoalan ketika politik bercampur aduk dengan pelayanan di dalam gereja, dalam arti yanglain gereja menjadi kendaraan bagi politik. Inilah yang dinamakan dengan kegiatan politik praktis,dimana kepentingan pribadi maupun kelompok partai politik menjadikan gereja sebagai alat untukmencari dukungan. Hal ini membuat gereja kehilangan jati diri/identitas sebagai garam dan terangdunia.Kata kunci: eklesiologi; eklesiologi Calvin; gereja; politik praktis

The Acceptance of Christianity by the Roman Emperors

1928 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 43-64
Author(s):  
Shirley Jackson Case
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Ancient Society ◽  
The World ◽  
Remarkable Result ◽  
New Religion ◽  
The Church

For the church historian, there is perhaps no more baffling problem than to account for the union that was effected between Christianity and the Roman State. The acceptance of this new religion by a government bound up with the heritages and customs of a thousand years of heathenism would be an astounding phenomenon were it not already so familiar to the historian. Scarcely less perplexing is the corresponding transformation in the attitude of Christians toward the Roman government. It seems almost inconceivable that a religious movement, which began with the conviction that “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” were the proper possession of Satan, should ultimately hail with approval a union of Church and State. There is no need to rehearse the course of events that marked the gradual rapprochement of Christianity and the Roman State. That story has been well and frequently told. But the genetic forces operating in that ancient society to bring about this remarkable result, still await further analysis. It is in this particular field of research that our present study falls.

scholarly journals THE MIXED LEGACY OF MAGNA CARTA FOR AMERICAN RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-226
Author(s):  
Steven K. Green
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
American Law ◽  
The Church ◽  
Government Authority

AbstractIn 2015 Magna Carta celebrated its 800th anniversary. The Great Charter has been widely heralded as a fount of many rights that are highly valued in British and American law. One right that people have identified in the Carta is that of religious freedom. Magna Carta contains two provisions guaranteeing freedom of the church from government authority. In 2013, the United States Supreme Court relied on that authority in a ruling that affirmed the principle of religious autonomy. This article argues that relying on the legacy of Magna Carta for the principle of religious freedom is tenuous: the document had little influence on the development of the First Amendment. Even Magna Carta's authority for the principle of church autonomy is overstated, as the Carta had nothing to do with the development of that principle in American law. Finally, judicial reliance on Magna Carta for the principle of religious freedom risks elevating protections for religious institutions over the interests of individuals. As a result, the legacy of Magna Carta for the principle of religious freedom is mixed, at best.

Constantine and the Church

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Stuart G. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The One ◽  
Eusebius Of Caesarea ◽  
Ascent To Heaven ◽  
The Church

Constantine was already on his way to sainthood when Eusebius of Caesarea delivered panegyrics in his honour in 335—6. His Laudes are in the tradition of pagan panegyric, in which the virtues of the emperors were praised, especially their piety to the gods and the divine favour to them. Such had earlier been given to Constantine himself, relating him to his persecuting predecessors. But now it is his services to the one God the Creator, who inspired him with justice and wisdom to rule the Empire, to root out idolatrous error, and to set up the symbol of the Cross for mankind’s salvation. In the Life of Constantine, which must be largely or wholly from Eusebius, the whole career is surveyed in a form which combines panegyric, biography, history, and proclamation. The Emperor was, it was claimed, deeply, skilfully, and consistently Christian. He had fulfilled apocalyptic prophecy by destroying the persecuting dragon that corrupted the world, represented chiefly by Licinius. Constantine had filled the Empire with churches and Christian governors; he had pacified barbarians and brought them to the knowledge of God and the rule of law. In death he lay between monuments of Apostles, sharing the prayers of the Church to whose bosom he had finally been received in baptism. Coins depicted his ascent to heaven on a quadriga (a pagan tradition which Eusebius saw with Christian eyes), and the sons of his body continued to exercise his single, quasi-divine government of the world.

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