Separation of Church and State
Many Scriptures support the separation
of church and state,
and men of conscience like Roger Williams have seen the evil that
results when they are not separate. There are profound spiritual
reasons why the state must not tell the church how to conduct
her affairs in any way.
For the church to allow the state to rule over her in spiritual
matters is nothing less than changing gods.
It would be an irreparable breach of loyalty between the church
and her Savior. Williams articulated the limits of civil authority
as follows:
Magistrates [officials of the civil government] have no power
of setting up the form of Church Government, electing Church officers,
punishing with Church censures, but to see that the Church does
her duty herein.
Nor was the Church to get involved
in the civil government, or meddle with the hearts of the people
to turn them away from their rulers:
And on the other side, the Churches as Churches, (though as
members of the Commonwealth they may have power)
have no power of erecting or altering forms of civil government,
electing of civil officers, inflicting Civil punishments (no not
[even] on persons excommunicated) as by deposing Magistrates from
their Civil Authority, or withdrawing the hearts of the people
against them, to their laws, no more than to discharge wives,
or children, or servants, from due obedience to their husbands,
parents, or masters; or by taking up arms against their Magistrates,
though he persecute them for conscience.
The whole concept of wedding the church and the state,
or even of the church functioning as the conscience of the
state, was utterly repugnant to Williams. Doing so has invariably
led to the church imposing its dogma on others, in the righteous
certainty that it could force "the truth" on the
unenlightened. But Williams understood more than this, he
understood the fatal consequences to the church of her meddling
with the affairs of the world:
When they (the Church) 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, etc., and made His Garden a wilderness as it
is this day. And that therefore if He will ever please to restore
His garden and Paradise again, it must of necesity be walled in
peculiarly unto Himself from the world, and all that be saved
out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness
of the World.
The church was never intended to interfere with the lesser
concerns of worldly government, but instead be consumed
with the higher concerns of God’s Kingdom. This life
of love was to be a light in which men could walk if they
chose to.
History bears out this wisdom — a history written in
the blood shed by those who were convinced their doctrines
were right, but who undermined and compromised the God-given
functioning of civil government.
This history is still being written today in the same ink.
It was with the fervent desire to close this awful chapter
of human history that the framers of the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution of the United States sought
to erect the wall of separation
of church and state.
Acts 18:12-17 is the prime
text, and Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 is another. Acts 12:1-4
is a negative example, as is the Jews before Pilate, John
18,19.
Roger Williams, Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for
Cause of Conscience (1644), page 248.
That is, as private citizens
like any other citizen.
Bloudy Tenent, pages 248,249
“Mr. Cotton’s Letter Lately Printed, Examined
and Answered,” The Complete Writings of Roger
Williams, Volume 1, page 108 (1644) This is similar
to Thomas Jefferson’s famous phrase, "the
wall of separation between church and state."
Isaiah 49:6; John 3:19-21
— Righteous men’s good deeds come from their obedience
to the knowledge of good that God gave them, and for which
they will be rewarded, John 5:28-29.
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