Roger Williams: The Church and the State

This article is a reflection on the role and contribution of the church in a democratic South Africa. The involvement of the church in the struggle against apartheid is revisited briefly. The church has played a pivotal and prominent role in bringing about democracy by being a prophetic voice that could not be silenced even in the face of death. It is in this time of democracy when real transformation is needed to take its course in a realistic way, where the presence of the church has probably been latent and where it has assumed an observer status. A look is taken at the dilemmas facing the church. The church should not be bound and taken captive by any form of loyalty to any political organisation at the expense of the poor and the voiceless. A need for cooperation and partnership between the church and the state is crucial at this time. This paper strives to address the role of the church as a prophetic voice in a democratic South Africa. Radical economic transformation, inequality, corruption, and moral decadence—all these challenges hold the potential to thwart our young democracy and its ideals. Black liberation theology concepts are employed to explore how the church can become prophetically relevant in democracy. Suggestions are made about how the church and the state can best form partnerships. In avoiding taking only a critical stance, the church could fulfil its mandate “in season and out of season” and continue to be a prophetic voice on behalf of ordinary South Africans.

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Some Reflections on Relations between the State of Vietnam and the Church

Nghiên cứu Tôn Giáo ◽

10.3125/rsr.v36i6.251 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 36 (6) ◽

Author(s):

Nguyễn Tất Đạt

Keyword(s):

The State ◽

The Church

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Poland

10.1093/oso/9780198801665.003.0013 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Detlef Pollack ◽

Gergely Rosta

Keyword(s):

Catholic Church ◽

Agricultural Production ◽

The State ◽

Religious Culture ◽

Key Factors ◽

Pope John Paul Ii ◽

National Values ◽

The Impact ◽

State Socialist ◽

The Church

The chapter on Poland focuses on two questions. Why, in contrast to all other state-socialist countries, did the church’s capacity for integration actually increase rather than decrease despite persecution and discrimination during the communist period? And why has this capacity also remained more or less constant (albeit to a lesser extent) in the period since the end of communist rule? The authors have identified four key factors in the remarkable resistance of the Polish Catholic Church during the period of communist persecution: the fusion of religious and national values, the specific conflict dynamics of the church’s struggle with the state, the structural conservatism of agricultural production in Poland, and the actions of Pope John Paul II. Explanations for the surprising stability of religiosity in Poland after 1990 point to the behaviour of the Church itself, to the internal pluralization of Catholicism, and to the impact of a homogeneous religious culture.

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The Indirectly Political Word of the Church

10.1093/oso/9780198824176.003.0007 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Michael P. DeJonge

Keyword(s):

Word Type ◽

Specific Form ◽

The State ◽

Jewish Question ◽

The Political ◽

The World ◽

Type 3 ◽

The Church

This chapter continues the examination of Bonhoeffer’s first phase of resistance through an exposition of “The Church and the Jewish Question,” turning now to the modes of resistance proper to the church’s preaching office. Because such resistance involves the church speaking against the state, it appears to stand in contradiction with Bonhoeffer’s suggestion earlier in the essay that the church should not speak out against the state. This is in fact not a contradiction but rather the coherent expression of the political vision as outlined in the first several chapters of this book, which requires that the church criticize the state under certain circumstances but not others. The specific form of word examined here is the indirectly political word (type 3 resistance) by which the church reminds the messianic state of its mandate to preserve the world with neither “too little” nor “too much” order.

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