Conservative Christians today, even some Seventh-day Adventists, seem to obsess over fear of the government. Sermons and online articles abound regarding alleged threats to religious liberty coming from presumably secular forces, the latter supposedly intent on extinguishing Christianity and establishing a neo-Bolshevik super-state.
Let’s be clear, of course, that the wall between church and state envisioned first by Roger Williams [##1|Leonard W. Levy, The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment (New York: The Macmillan Co, 1986), pp. 183-184.##] and later reaffirmed by Thomas Jefferson [##2|Levy, The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment, pp. 183-184.##] is designed to protect both the church from the encroachments of the state as well as the state from the encroachments of the church. In historian Leonard Levy’s words:
Jefferson cared deeply about the rights of conscience, but he cared too for the government’s freedom from religion. However, Roger Williams, who cared even more deeply about religion, had spoken of the “wall of separation” more than a century and a half before Jefferson [##3|Levy, The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment, pp. 183-184.##].
The historical record, to be sure, includes examples of infringements by both church and state on the rightful freedoms and prerogatives of the other. But even a cursory review of the past is sufficient to demonstrate that civil government has had far more to fear from the church than the other way around. Roger Williams, we recall, was sent into exile by a Puritan-dominated government, causing him to say at one point:
I feel safer down here among the Christian savages along Narragansett Bay than I do among the savage Christians of Massachusetts Bay Colony [##4|Charles Small Longacre, Roger Williams: His Life, Work, and Ideals (Washington, D.C: Review and Herald Publishing Assn, 1939), p. 80.##].
America’s Unique Balance Between Church and State
For nearly the whole of the human story, religion and government have been united, the one indistinguishable from the other. The was true in the culture of paganism, and when Christianity compromised with paganism for the sake of peace and acceptance, this model was perpetuated by Christianized Rome and throughout the centuries of papal supremacy that followed. When various countries followed the Protestant Reformation and broke away from the papacy, many adhered to the same model of a government in thrall to the church, even if the churches in question were now Protestant.
The late U.S. presidential historian Theodore White, in his provocative book on the fall of Richard Nixon, writes as follows regarding the uniqueness of the American experiment:
They (America’s founding ideals) could be robed in legal phrases, or judicial admonitions against illegal search and seizure; guarantees of right to trial; guarantees of freedom of assembly, free speech, free press and, for the first time in history, the guarantee that the state would support no “establishment of religion” [##5|Theodore H. White, Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1975), p. 323.##].
The United States is indeed the first nation in the human narrative to give full freedom of conscience to all in matters of religion. This freedom means civil government is not to be controlled by the church, nor is the church to be controlled by civil government. The founders of this Republic knew well what had happened in the theocracies of medieval and early modern Europe, as well as in similar arrangements within the American colonies, as in the conflict between Roger Williams and the theocrats of New England. They were determined that intolerance of this sort not rear its ugly head in the America they envisioned for the future.
The Church Back On Top
In the symbolism of Revelation 17, it is the harlot woman (the false church) who rides the beast (the institutions of government) (verse 3). This beast represents the blended power of church and state which comprised the medieval papacy, described in this chapter as the power “that was, and is not, and yet is” (verse 8). This power ruled for 1,260 years (Rev. 13:5), was “wounded to death” at the close of this period (verse 3), only to experience the healing of this wound, following which “all the world wondered after the beast” (verse 3).
Thus we can see how this power “was, and is not, and yet is” (Rev. 17:8), also how it is called “the eighth” beast, which in fact “is of the seven” (verse 11)—meaning one of the former powers brought back to life. As in the ages of her former sovereignty, the revived papacy will dominate the political powers of earth, and use that power to “make war with the Lamb” in the person of God’s people (verse 14).
Ellen White echoes the predictions of Revelation when she writes of how the end-time apostate church will control the powers of civil government. Speaking of America’s founding, she writes:
The founders of the nation wisely sought to guard against the employment of secular power on the part of the church, with its inevitable result—intolerance and persecution. The Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States.” Only in flagrant violation of these safeguards to the nation’s liberty, can any religious observance be enforced by civil authority [##6|Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 442.##].
In the same book, reaching into the future, Ellen White is clear that these safeguards will in fact be flagrantly violated, and in the very manner described above:
Let the principle once be established in the United States that the church may employ or control the power of the state, that religious observances may be enforced by secular laws; in short, that the authority of church and state is to dominate the conscience, and the triumph of Rome in this country is assured [##7|——The Great Controversy, p. 581.##].
Conclusion
Despite the fear so dominant just now in many conservative Christian circles, even some Adventists, the inspired pen never predicts a coming dominance of the church by secular government. Paranoid screeds nowadays about “Bolshevism,” “Marxism,” “Communism,” and atheism as looming threats to the United States find no support in the end-time forecasts of either the Bible or the writings of the Spirit of Prophecy.
Without question, the secular state is not to impose its will on the religious conscience even more than the church is to employ the state to force the conscience into compliance with its teachings. But those who persist in seeing an imminent secular tidal wave in America, threatening Christians with civil and criminal penalties should they cling to conservative cultural or religious beliefs, can claim neither the inspired writings nor recent developments on the American legal scene as giving credibility to these fears. Such recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions as the 2023 case in favor of a Christian website designer not wishing to create sites for same-sex couples [8], the High Court’s unanimous 2021 decision upholding the right of Catholic foster care agencies to refuse the adoption of children to same-sex couples [9], the Court’s unanimous 2012 decision allowing a Christian church school to fire a worker on strictly theological grounds [10]—to name but a few examples—give no credence to the notion that America is either experiencing, or about to experience, a secular onslaught against the rights of conservative Christians.
As I say so often, the Bible spends little time responding to overt disbelief in God, other than to call the one denying God’s existence a fool (Psalm 14:1; 53:1). This is because human beings are by nature worshiping beings. Belief in supernatural powers is as natural for men and women as the desire for food and mutual intimacy. This is why Satan’s deceptions have nearly always focused on religious counterfeits of the divine plan, rather than secular ones. This is why it is the nominal Christian world, not some illusory secular threat, that figures most prominently in both the American political process today and the predictions of the inspired text regarding the crisis of the last days.
REFERENCES
1. Leonard W. Levy, The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1986), pp. 183-184.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Charles Small Longacre, Roger Williams: His Life, Work, and Ideals (Washington, D.C: Review and Herald Publishing Assn, 1939), p. 80.
5. Theodore H. White, Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1975), p. 323.
6. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 442.
7. Ibid, p. 581.
8. Ariane de Vogue and Devan Cole, “Supreme Court limits LGBTQ protections with ruling in favor of Christian web designer,” CNN, June 30, 2023 https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/30/politics/supreme-court-303-creative-lgbtq-rights-colorado/index.html
9. Jessica Gresko, “Catholic foster care agency wins Supreme Court verdict,” Associated Press, June 17, 2021 https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-catholic-agency-same-sex-foster-care-004b978239e41675524859ae79a5333
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