Refugees And The Twofold Kingdom Or Worrying About The Theonomy Of The Christian Left

By Dr. R. Scott Clark - Posted at The Heidelblog:

From the early 4th century, when Christianity was declared a legal religion and properties were returned to Christians and persecution of Christians was forbidden, the Christian church gradually become intertwined with the empire. Gradually, paganism was marginalized and then eventually made illegal. Emperors in the 4th century and following intervened directly in the life and assemblies of the church. The emperor convened the Council of Nicea in 325. In 380 the empire sided with Nicene orthodoxy and declared its opponents to be heretics. In the East and in the West Christianity gradually became the de facto state religion. As with developments in worship, the 4th century was decisive for future patterns in the way that the church would relate to the broader culture. The church enjoyed more than 1,400 years of favored status. In the 16th and 17th centuries, during the Reformation and post-Reformation periods, the debate between Rome and Protestants was not whether there is a true church that should be enforced by the state but which one it should be. Protestant resistance theorists asserted both a distinction between the church and the state and treated the emperor as if he were a new King David and, e.g., France as if it were a new Israel. The Scots Presbyterians did arguably the same thing in their national covenants.

In the West, the privilege enjoyed by the visible church began to be dislodged by the various Enlightenment movements that would come to dominate the academy and cultural elites for roughly the next 250 years. Still, as a practical matter, Christians continued to experience favored status until, in historical terms, very recently. In the West it has only been since World War II and practically since the 1960s that the Christians have really noticed any profound change. In the 1960s, in the USA, school-sponsored prayers were declared unconstitutional. In the 1970s and 80s the so-called “Blue Laws” began to be overturned (they still exist in some places), marking the beginning of the end of the state-sponsored recognition of Sunday as the Christian Lord’s Day or Sabbath. Remember that though the American constitution forbids any federal church state-sponsored churches continued to exist well into the 19th century.

One result of this long heritage of entanglement between church and state is that many Christians still default to what has been called the Constantinian model. They want the state to act like the church, when it suits them. One sees this on the Christian right and on the Christian left. A Republican Presidential candidate is proposing a new federal agency to promote Judeo-Christian values. He has also argued that in view of the future judgment, Christians should support his vision of a social-welfare safety net. The Christian right wants the state to enforce personal morality more aggressively (e.g., the Moral Majority). The Christian left wants the state to act redemptively in a corporate capacity. The state-Messianism of the Christian left manifests itself in the grounds given by the Christian left for their policy that the USA should receive and resettle large numbers of Syrian refugees.

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