Recently, during an online forum discussion, a retired Adventist pastor offered the following explanation of his view of the relationship between church and state
I know it is a common practice for some to live a compartmentalized attitude towards life. That somehow the political and religious views can be separated and confined to their own bedrooms and one can leave one bedroom, close the door, and then go into the bedroom of the other at will. There is a word for that kind of relationship. . . .
It has been my position . . . that in both politics and religion there is only one bedroom. There is no separation between one's religion and his politics or anything else in his life. And being narrow-minded like I am, and confined to only one bedroom, to only one wife, I can only see one side on all issues. And from that side all I know, is that righteousness exalts a nation and wickedness, the transgression of God's law, destroys it. And I know that one on God's side can never defend unrighteousness [1].
Sincere this brother may be, but it appears he doesn’t understand the teachings of Jesus regarding the relationship of God’s kingdom with human governments. When we go back and consider the teachings of our Lord, in particular their articulation in His interview with Pontius Pilate, this relationship becomes clear.
“Not of This World”
It helps to remember that the argument of the Jewish authorities against Jesus before the Roman tribunal was very different from the arguments employed by the Pharisees and others in their case against Jesus before the Sanhedrin. Pilate would have had no interest in Jesus’ opinions—public or private—regarding pharisaic rules of Sabbath observance, the Corban controversy, or other issues unique to the Jewish faith or tradition. More than likely, our Lord having rattled this rigidity would have brought more amusement than angst to the mind of a thoughtful Roman official.
Ellen White helps us understand the shift in argumentation by the Jewish leaders when they brought Jesus before Pilate:
They must not allow it to appear that Christ had been arrested on religious grounds. Were this put forward as a reason, their proceedings would have no weight with Pilate. They must make it appear that Jesus was working against the common law; then He could be punished as a political offender [2].
For this reason the Jewish authorities, deliberately denying the Savior’s own declaration that taxes be paid to Caesar (Matt. 22:21), insisted as follows in Pilate’s judgment hall:
We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that He Himself is Christ a King (Luke 23:2).
Now, all of a sudden, Pilate is interested. Internal disputes among Jewish leaders and thinkers he could tolerate. Political revolutionaries were quite another matter. For this reason he called Jesus aside, and asked whether it was true that Jesus considered Himself a king. Jesus replied with a statement that for centuries would anchor the worldview of thoughtful Christians relative to the relationship of church and state:
My kingdom is not of this world: if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My kingdom not from thence (John 18:36).
Obviously the Roman governor was satisfied with this answer, and thus persuaded that political revolution wasn’t part of Christ’s agenda, as he proceeded to bring Christ out before the mob and stated, “I find in Him no fault at all” (verse 38).
Ellen White elaborates on the above declaration of Jesus in the following, very insightful statement:
But today in the religious world there are multitudes who, as they believe, are working for the establishment of the kingdom of Christ as an earthly and temporal dominion. They desire to make our Lord the ruler of the kingdoms of this world, the ruler in its courts and camps, its legislative halls, its palaces and market places. They expect Him to rule through legal enactments, enforced by human authority. Since Christ is not now here in person, they themselves will undertake to act in His stead, to execute the laws of His kingdom. The establishment of such a kingdom was what the Jews desired in the days of Christ. They would have received Jesus, had He been willing to establish a temporal dominion, to enforce what they regarded as the laws of God, and to make them the expositors of His will and the agents of His authority. But He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” John 18:36. He would not accept the earthly throne [3].
Leonard W. Levy, in his 1986 book The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment, notes how the phrase “wall of separation” relative to church and state was not—as many assume—invented by Thomas Jefferson, but was instead the brainchild of Roger Williams [4], the great apostle of religious freedom who was expelled from Massachusetts because of his opposition to the Puritan pseudo-theocracy in that locale, and who was led to state that he would “rather live with Christian savages than the savage Christians of the Massachusetts Bay Colony” [5]. Levy speaks of the Bible verse which formed the basis of Williams’ beliefs and those of his contemporaries who shared his views of the relationship between church and state:
To Christian fundamentalists of the Framers’ time the wall of separation derived from the biblical injunction that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world [6].
“One Bedroom”
The notion, therefore, of keeping church and state—religion and politics—in the same metaphorical “bedroom” (to use the language of the retired pastor quoted at the beginning), stands quite apart from both our Lord’s statement to Pilate that His kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18:36), along with both Ellen White’s and Roger Williams’ understanding as to our Lord’s meaning in this verse.
This “one bedroom” model, in which no distinction is made between the respective spheres of religion and civil government, would have greatly pleased the intolerant theocrats of Puritan New England. Thomas J. Curry, in his history of church and state in America prior to the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, observes:
New England divines insisted repeatedly that demand for conformity of religious practice in no way violated liberty of conscience. They contended that there were two types of liberty—natural (or corrupted) liberty and the “liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.” Liberty to practice error came under the former heading and was not really liberty at all, but license, the “liberty for men to destroy themselves” [7].
In other words, Puritan theology and statecraft—between which there was no distinction—held that church and state were to occupy the same “bedroom.” The offspring of this relationship was the savage Christianity against which Roger Williams protested, bearing fruit in such horrors as the infamous witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts (1692-1693), which resulted in the execution by hanging of fourteen women and five men [8].
Fast-Forward to the Last Days
The symbol of sexual intimacy applied to church-state relations is especially significant in light of what we read in the book of Revelation. The harlot church identified as Babylon, representing apostate Christianity, is described as spiritually fallen “because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication” (Rev. 14:8). In chapter 17 we find that this spiritual fornication is committed with “the kings of the earth” (verse 2), meaning the leaders of civil government. This relationship is described as fornication because of our Lord’s statement that His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36), in particular his statement in this verse that “now is My kingdom not from thence.”
This is a most significant statement. Jesus was telling Pilate that now it was not His intention to rule the kingdoms of this world. The time will come, of course, when Christ will in fact be the Ruler of this world, when “the government shall be upon His shoulder” (Isa. 9:6), when He will rule the nations “with a rod of iron” (Rev. 19:15), and come in the clouds of heaven as “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (verse 16). Just as literal fornication involves the intimate union of individuals before God gives them permission to unite (I Cor. 7:2), so the spiritual fornication condemned in the book of Revelation involves the efforts of fallible mortals to blend church and state before “He come[s] whose right it is” (Eze. 21:27).
Yes, “righteousness exalteth a nation” (Prov. 14:34), but Biblical righteousness is a chosen state of individuals, not a condition imposed by secular power. True liberty of conscience requires that issues of worship, spirituality, and non-coercive morality be placed outside the purview of secular government. Contrary to Puritan theology and that of their spiritual heirs today, giving civic freedom to persons whose convictions and consensual practices fall outside the limits set by Scripture, does not imply an endorsement of such choices on the part of Christians or any others willing to grant such liberty. When Seventh-day Adventists equate the granting of civic choice relative to such issues with an endorsement of the choice to sin, they are embracing the tyranny of the Dark Ages and of colonial New England. From the standpoint of the prophecies of Revelation, the “one bedroom” approach to religious and political issues constitutes the spiritual fornication for which eschatological Babylon will experience the divine sentence of eternal doom.
REFERENCES
1. Douglas Carlson, comment on “Harvard Professor Wants to Ban Homeschooling,” Fulcrum7, April 24, 2020 http://www.fulcrum7.com/news/2020/4/24/harvard-professor-wants-to-ban-homeschooling.
2. Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 725.
3. Ibid, p. 509.
4. Leonard W. Levy, The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1986), pp. 183-184.
5. Charles Longacre, Roger Williams: His Life, Work, and Ideals (Washington, D.C: Review and Herald Publishing Assn, 1939), p. 80.
6. Levy, The Establishment Clause, p. 184.
7. Thomas J. Curry, The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 6.
8. “Salem witch trials,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
Pastor Kevin Paulson holds a Bachelor’s degree in theology from Pacific Union College, a Master of Arts in systematic theology from Loma Linda University, and a Master of Divinity from the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He served the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for ten years as a Bible instructor, evangelist, and local pastor. He writes regularly for Liberty magazine and does script writing for various evangelistic ministries within the denomination. He continues to hold evangelistic and revival meetings throughout the North American Division and beyond, and is a sought-after seminar speaker relative to current issues in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He presently resides in Berrien Springs, Michigan