(For those who may wonder why I am such a strong advocate of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution protecting religious liberty, I have written the following article. It is long, but I wanted to set forth a thorough defense of the principle of religious liberty in the civil sphere.)
I. The Perceived Problem with Religious Liberty
Some believers who take very seriously the issue of biblical authority and truth, and who understand that God, being a God of truth, does not accept false worship, have doubts about the biblical basis of the principle of religious liberty enshrined in the American Constitution. They point out that the God of Scripture is a jealous God filled with zeal for the glory of His own name (Exodus 20:5), a God who will only receive worship which is offered to Him “in Spirit and in truth” (John 4:23-24). If that is the case, how can it be imagined that God would be pleased with any government that enshrines in its Constitution the principle of religious liberty, which in essence permits citizens the freedom to engage in false or idolatrous worship, if they so choose, without running into opposition from the civil authority, whose express function is to reward good and punish evil (Romans 13:3-4).
There can be no doubt that the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution does secure religious liberty for the people by saying, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The purpose of this amendment is clear– its design is protect the religious liberty of all citizens by prohibiting the central government of the United States from passing any law that would: 1) prohibit citizens from worshipping God in accordance with the convictions of their own conscience; or 2) that would establish one particular Confession of Faith as the national confession of the country, to which the government may give a privileged status and which all citizens must in some way support.
Some who defend the idea of an established church would limit the support required of citizens for the state church to the area of taxation. That is to say, they would allow dissenters the freedom to worship in accordance with their own convictions, while at the same time, they would oblige dissenters to support the state church financially through a percentage of their tax money going to fund the national church and its various ministries. Others would go farther and argue in favor of laws that would prohibit any citizen from speaking or writing publicly in a way that would be contrary to the nationally established Confession of Faith. They would like to see society return to a state of affairs such as that which existed in Puritan New England, or even earlier, at the time of the Reformation, in which the different countries of Europe each had their own national Church, supported by the ruling monarch. At that time, any citizen who failed to support the nationally adopted Confession of Faith or taught contrary to it in speech or in writing would be subject to civil penalties, which might include not merely fines and public censure, but also imprisonment or even death. (For example, during the time of the Reformation, Anabaptists were sometimes hunted down, imprisoned and executed for their beliefs regarding baptism, even in lands that had been liberated from Roman tyranny. Some were put in barrels and drowned in rivers for their refusal to endorse the baptism of infants, and their public teaching against that practice.)
The Protestant Reformers, and later on, the pilgrim forefathers who settled New England, sought religious liberty for themselves, to propagate the faith as they understood it, but they did not support the principle of religious liberty for all, especially for those whom they regarded as false teachers and heretics. Rather, they believed that it was the civil magistrate’s duty to enforce true religion by passing laws concerning the content and form of worship, and by punishing violaters of those laws– sometimes, in exceedingly harsh and cruel ways. For example, Baptists in Puritan New England, were sometimes sentenced to banishment from civil society for their views. Other were whipped for refusing to have their infants baptized. Obadiah Holmes, a Baptist minister, was tied to a whipping post and given thirty lashes with a whip for his religious views. His flesh was so torn and cut by that whipping that for weeks he could only rest upon his hands and knees even in bed.
Christians who oppose the principle of religious liberty set forth in the first amendment to the Constitution generally believe that the absence of an established national church or an established, full-orbed national Confession of Faith works against the preservation of the religious interests of society, by leaving the advancement of true religion entirely to the initiative of the citizens in choosing freely to propagate the gospel, without any support from the government other than that which is shared by all religious groups equally– namely, the freedom to operate without government interference in advancing their cause. These believers are appalled at the vision of the founding fathers in which adherents of diverse sects are given equal freedom by the state to propagate their message and promote the particular form of worship they believe to be in agreement with the mind and will of God, without theological oversight by the state. They strongly oppose the idea that the central government should take no role in actively establishing the true religion and prohibiting all false religion by the power of physical coercion which God has granted to the state to reward good and punish evil. In their view, for the central government of any nation to permit any group to conduct false worship or propagate false doctrine seems so obviously contrary to biblical teaching on God as a God of truth, that they cannot understand how any Christian could support or favor such a state of affairs. The God of truth is a God whose divine wrath is provoked by idolatry and by all false worship founded upon lies, since propagated lies about God murder the soul just as surely as violent criminals murder the body.
To these believers, the principle of religious liberty seems to suggest a “divine indifferentism” regarding that worship which is pleasing or acceptable to Him. Surely they argue, if God punished idolatry, blasphemy, and false worship with death in the Old Testament, He cannot be pleased with governments which take no active role in nurturing true religion among the citizens and prohibiting false religion. Surely it must be His will for governments to establish a particular Confession of Faith and a particular Church for the people, harmonious with the teaching of Scripture, which all citizens should be compelled to respect and support in some way. Surely no citizen should be allowed to disparage or actively contradict the teaching of this established church without bringing upon themselves the wrath of the civil authority. To say otherwise is to suggest that God does not care about the advancement of truth. It is to suggest that the government of a nation can abandon any concern for seeing that the revealed truth of God is advanced in the lives of people, rather than falsehood and error.
II. A Biblical Response to this Perceived Problem
How does one respond to this objection? Does upholding the principle of religious liberty in the civil code suggest that God is indifferent to the content and form of divine worship? Is there any biblical reason to uphold the principle of religious liberty in the civil order? Most assuredly there is, and Baptists have historically been used of God to defend and advance this principle of religious liberty in the civil code.
In response to the argument that since the civil authority punished false worship under the Old Covenant, magistrates should punish false worship today, it should be pointed out that the reason why God punished all false worship and idolatry under the civil law of the Old Covenant was the fact that He had adopted the nation of Israel as His own chosen people, “a people holy to the LORD,” chosen to be His “treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 14:2). The calling of “Israel according to the flesh” (1 Cor. 10:18) a sanctified earthly nation, was to glorify God in their own land and in the midst of a fallen world by maintaining true worship in accordance with the institutions established by the law of Moses. The law of Moses was a law given to a particular people within the context of a particular redemptive covenant founded on the sheer unmerited favor of God– the Abrahamic covenant of promise– and within the context of a particular redemptive event– the liberation of the Jewish people as a nation from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 20:1-2, Deut. 5:1-6, 12-15). The prologue to the Decalogue, which is the central legal document establishing the people as a body politic, makes clear that all the legislation which follows is given to a particular people at a particular moment in the unfolding development of redemptive history. “I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2). No other nation on earth at that time could be described with those words; therefore, no other nation on earth was in the same unique covenant relationship that Israel enjoyed with God, nor subject to that legal code which Israel had been given by God and which the entire nation was bound to keep. At that moment of history, no visible distinction existed between the nation of Israel as a body politic and the worshipping community. The two bodies were one and the same.
But when the Lord Jesus came into the world to fulfill the redemptive plan of God and establish a new covenant in fulfillment of the prophecy of Jeremiah (Jer. 31:31-34; Hebrews 8:6-13), the situation began to change. At that point, Israel as a nation had been conquered by the Roman empire and were living under the yoke of Rome. As a subjugated nation, they were no longer free to operate as an independent nation entirely liberated from the overruling authority of Rome. That is why the Jewish leaders had to seek permission from the Roman authority to put Jesus to death (John 18:28-33, 19:10).
In this context, when Jesus was asked a question about the relationship of the nation to Rome– namely, whether those living under the law of Moses were obliged to pay taxes to Caesar– Jesus responded by making a statement concerning the relationship between Caesar and God that would have profound implications for the state of affairs that would prevail after His death and resurrection, when the covenant that had formerly governed the relationship between God and Israel would be annulled as legally binding on the people of God through the establishment of a new covenant by Christ. Jesus said to His disciples, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” (Mark 12:17).
In light of later developments, we see that this statement of Jesus anticipated the end of the Jewish theocracy and the state of affairs that would prevail for God’s people from Jesus’ day until the end of this present age, when Jesus will come again. The implication of Jesus’ words is that the theocracy which existed in the time of David and Solomon, which the Jews eagerly longed to see restored, would not in fact be restored. Instead, during the age of the New Covenant, God’s people would continue to live under the dual authority of Gentile rulers (“Casear”) and God. This period is referred to as the “time of the Gentiles” in Luke 21:24.
What we learn from this verse, therefore, is that during this present age, God’s people are called to live under the authority of Gentile rulers; their condition is similar in that sense to that of God’s people during the Babyonian captivity, when the Jews who had been exiled from their own land were forced to live as strangers in a strange land under the authority of Gentile rulers for a period of seventy years, and even beyond. These Gentile rulers established governments whose laws, unlike the laws of Moses, could by no means be regarded as entirely of divine authorship. Nevertheless, insofar as these laws did not contradict God’s own law, they had to be obeyed. Jesus’ words suggest that this is precisely the position that God’s people will occupy throughout the entire inter-advental period.
What these words of Jesus establish is the fact that God has given to Gentile rulers a place of real authority over the lives of His covenant people– only now God’s covenant people is seen as the company of all regenerate believers drawn from every race, tribe, tonge and nation who comprise the true Israel. This community can in no wise be referred to as “Israel according to the flesh,” as Paul describes that community with which God established the Old Covenant at Mount Sinai. It is in principle a wholly spiritual, regenerate community, in which all who belong to the community know the Lord personally, have received the forgiveness of sins, and have God’s law written on the “fleshy tablets” of their own hearts (Jeremiah 31:33-34). With this remnant from all nations, God has established a new covenant and it is under the law of the covenant Mediator, Jesus Christ, that God’s people now live (1 Corinthians 9:21). The authority of Gentile rulers over them is a real authority, but it is also a limited authority, for God’s people are called first and foremost to obey God and to give to God what belongs to Him exclusively– namely, the supreme devotion of their hearts and lives, their exclusive worship, and their unqualified service in accordance with His divine will and truth. The fact that God alone lays claim to His people’s supreme devotion and exclusive worship immediately puts a limit on Caesar’s authority, for the implication is that Caesar may not legitimately pass any law that would conflict with God’s people rendering to God their unconditional loyaty and unqualified obedience (Acts 4:19-20, 5:29).
Clearly, there is an area of concern that legitimately belongs to Caesar, for which God has endowed him with authority; but there is also an area of concern over which God alone claims sole authority, and this latter area of concern stands outside the sphere of Caesar’s legitimate legislative authority. These are the the “things that belong to God” and that includes everything related to worshipping God in spirit and in truth. There is no reason to believe that matters of worship in any way belong to Caesar, nor do God’s people find themselves in any way obliged to obey Caesar in those matters, since God alone is Lord of the conscience, He has given sufficient instruction in His word to govern worship, to which Caesar can add nothing. Moreover, the application of the Word to matters of worship is a matter for the each congregation to determine, not the state, and the penalty for perverting the worship of God through false teaching is now discipline by the church community and by God directly, not fines, imprisonment, or execution by the civil authority (Revelation 2:14-16, 20-23).
To this teaching on the limited authority of Caesar, we must add what Jesus teaches about the way His kingdom is to be advanced by His followers. Jesus clearly teaches that the spiritual nature of His kingdom means that the interests of His kingdom may be advanced only and exclusively through spiritual weapons, and not by the weapons earthly rulers us to advance the interests of their own earthly kingdoms (Matthew 26:52, John 18:36).
Consequently, the reason that Christians should support the principle of religious liberty is that Christians should support Christ’s teaching on the limited authority that Caesar has been given by God in this present age and the fact that there are things that belong to God which do not belong to Caesar. Those things which do not belong to Caesar concern the worship and service of God in accordance with the teaching of His Word. There is no reason to believe that Caesar has any calling from God with respect to those matters. His only calling with respect to the advancement of Christ’s kingdom is to respect the liberty of God’s people to worship God in accordance with His Word and to carry out the Great Commission without interference by the state (Acts 4:19-20, 5:29; 1 Timothy 2:1-2). The best way to achieve this end is to establish legislation restricting Caesar’s authority to legislate in the area of religious belief and divine worship– precisely what the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution is designed to do. These are matters which simply do not fall under Caesar’s God-ordained jurisdiction. His sword is not needed (nor are his dungeons, racks, shackles, whips and chains) to advance the interests of Christ’s kingdom, since the interests of Christ’s kingdom are advanced solely and exclusively through the spiritual weapons of prayer and the Word of God (2 Corinthians10:3-6).
Caesar’s proper sphere of authority is the earthly, temporal realm and the preservation of the common interests of all men within that sphere. To that end, he ought to pass laws protecting citizens from each other by prohibiting such things as murder, assault, slander and theft. His laws should be aimed at protecting the life, limb and property of citizens and establishing institutions such as a well funded military, police forces and governmental structure that guarantees the peace and safety of the citizenry. He is also authorized to raise taxes for the building of infrastructure, a postal service, public transport, and other features necessary for society to function optimally. In other words, the focus of his legitimate interest is the horizontal sphere of a man’s relationship to his neighbor (Romans 13:1-9). He has absolutely no calling from God to take an active role in the advancement of true religion and stamping out false religion through the carnal weapons which God places in his hands for other purposes. To use carnal weapons to advance Christ’s spiritual kingdom would be to enter into the sphere of things that “belong to God” alone– the vertical sphere of man’s duty to God and his relationship with God.
What is clear from the above is that, in the horizontal sphere– which is his legitimate sphere of concern– Caesar may not pass any law that displaces, ignores or rejects the higher laws of God. Since his authority is a delegated authority received from God above, to whom he is immediately accountable for the exercise of his temporal authority (John 19:11), he must not pass legislation which would restrict or inhibit God’s people from living, acting and conducting their lives and worship in accordance with the supreme will of God. Therefore, ideally, Caesar ought to be a converted Gentile (or Jew), who recognizes the authority of God’s Son and trembles before Him and is careful not to pass legislation that violates the law of creation written on the human conscience by virtue o general revelation and clarified through special revelation (Psalm 2:12). Insofar as Christians are able to have a say in who governs the land by means of free elections, they ought always to favor God-fearing candidates over godless ones, and in the case that no Christian candidate has a viable possibility of being elected to office in a particular election, they ought to vote for that candidate who, though personally unconverted, shows by the working of God’s common grace greater respect for “the law of nature and nature’s God.”
Since Christ’s kingdom is not advanced by the sword, Christians should in no way petition or pressure Caesar to use the sword with the specific end of advancing Christ’s kingdom by putting down false teaching and compelling the citizens to confess the true faith under threat of civil penalty. That is not at all the way by which men enter the kingdom of heaven, nor is it the way that Christians should seek to advance the cause of Christ in the world, through the imposition of a particular religious creed or confessions on the people under physical coercion (John 1:12-13).
At the same time, it should be said that while Caesar is not called and should not be petitioned to impose by force a religious creed on the people, he himself is not free to operate without any acknowledgment of religious truth. He is not free to operate on the basis of atheistic assumptions, for example, imagining that he holds a place of supreme authority over the lives and consciences of the people. He is not free to imagine himself a god and demand that the people bow down to him as an object of divine worship (Daniel 3:16-18). He is not free to imagine himself wise enough and powerful enough to redefine divine institutions like marriage or divinely established realities like God-given gender identity based on biological form, requiring the people to live in accordance with his bizzare and irrational redefinition of divine realities. That would conflict with the delegated nature of his authority as a vice regent on earth whose authority has been given to him by God, to be exercised within the limits of justice and righteousness defined by the law of God. Thus, certain religious truths in accordance with general and special revelation may and indeed must be acknowledged by Caesar as the foundation of his governing authority, if he is to govern justly (Psalm 2:10-12)– but that does not mean that, among his divinely assigned duties, Caesar is obliged to impose a full-orbed religious creed or confession on the people themselves, since that lies outside his proper, God-given jurisdiction. Rather, he is to take a “hands off” approach when it comes to matters of belief and worship, recognizing this as something that “belongs to God” and not to him. God can well defend the interests of His own kingdom without having to rely on Caesar to make “converts” of everyone at the point of the sword, or to silence all those who promote false doctrine or worship through fear of civil penalty.
CONCLUSION: Based on Jesus’own teaching concerning the limited authority of Caesar in this present age and the spiritual nature of His own kingdom, whose interests cannot be advanced by the sword, it is the established will of God that men not be coerced by the state ruler (Caesar) to worship God in a particular manner or in accordance with a particular creed imposed by the state under threat of civil penalties (fines, imprisonment, torture, execution). On the contrary, it is God’s will that men be seen as possessing a God-given CIVIL right to worship God, or not worship Him at all, in accordance with their personal convictions. The spiritual interests of God’s kingdom simply cannot be advanced by the sword– i.e. by physically coercing men to worship the true God “in spirit and in truth,” while they still harbor in their hearts hatred and enmity toward the Lord.
This God-given CIVIL right of religious liberty does not at all imply that men have a SPIRITUAL right before GOD to reject the light of truth that God shines on them by His Word to educate, enlighten, and correct the misshapen dictates of conscience by which they are bound to wrong beliefs and wrong practices. Of course men do not a spiritual right before God to ignore or reject the teaching of His Word, but that is a different issue than that of their civil freedom before the state. It is not the role of the state, but the role of the church, to inform men through gospel preaching of their spiritual duty to believe the gospel of Christ and to receive the teaching of God’s written Word, so that they may worship God acceptably in spirit and truth.
Spiritually, therefore, men are most definitely responsible before God to receive the light God shines on their conscience through His Word to correct any falsehoods or lies that have misguided and misinformed their conscience. Spiritually before God, the only worship that He receives as acceptable is that offered “in Spirit and in truth” (John 4:23-24).
But the issue of what men have a spiritual right to do before God is an altogether separate issue from that of men’s civil right before the state. God’s revealed will through Jesus Christ is that all men everywhere respect the civil right of their neighbors to worship God free from state coercion in a manner dictated by the civil authority. The enforcement of true religion, in other words, is not one of the duties that falls under “Caesar’s” jurisdiction, nor should Christians in any way petition Caesar or pressure Caesar to impose true worship on people by physical force. Rather, matters of worship are to be left to God’s own jurisdiction as a matter between Him and the individual. These matters may indeed be subject to church discipline, as well, but they ought not to be subject to civil penalty.
Far from suggesting an attitude of divine “indifferentism” regarding matters of truth in worship, the position here defended is based entirely the teaching of Scripture showing us God’s divine will in this matter. It is Christ who has taught us to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s, a teaching which leads us to understand that there are certain things that God has not placed within the realm of Caesar’s jurisdiction, among which is the right to dictate the content and form of men’s worship. If Jesus is Lord of all mankind, then that would make this denial to Caesar of the right to use coercion in matters of worship the will of God for all mankind.
John Quincy Adams, in his book, “Baptists, the Only Thorough Religious Reformers” summarizes well the position that Baptists have always taken on the issue of religious liberty, which is the position herein defended as agreeable with the truth of Scripture:
“The Gospel of Christ not only differs from all other systems of relgion in the superior excellence of the truth it reveals, but also in the directions it gives for the propagation of its doctrines. Other systems seek to advance themselves by invoking the aid of the secular power, and by forcing men, against their convictions, to accept a theory repugnant to their views. They have thus succeeded in thronging their temples with hypocritical worshippers, bound to their altars through fear and slavish dread. These systems, in order to maintain themselves, find it necessary to proscribe and persecute all who differ from them, either in their articles of belief or mode of worship. But the Gospel of Christ, though it is the infallible truth of God, expressly prohibits a resort to any such measures for its advancement. It not only teaches its adherents to utterly abandon the use of carnal weapons for its propagation, but it also charges them not to proscribe those who may differ in their views or mode of worship. The principle is directly expressed in the text and its connection. The teaching of the Savior has been violated, however, even by his professed followers; and, in the name of the meek and lowly Jesus, men have gone forth with proscription, oppression and persecution, to advance their own opinions, and crush out the liberty of thought, and those rights of conscience vouchsafed to man by his Maker, and the free exercise of which is alone compatible with his personal accountability. One body of Christians has always shunned this mode of procedure; and in seeking to advance the truth, they have never engaged in persecution of any kind, though they have been themselves more bitterly persecuted than any others. I propose to prove that Baptists have been the pioneers in the Propagation of Religious Liberty and the Rights of Conscience.”