Religious Liberty, the Free Churches, and Political Action*

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, THE FREE CHURCHES, AND POLITICAL ACTION* The American pattern of "separation" had its origin in adjustments in the inter-action of religion and politics which were unique to America. On the Continent, the "Egypt" which the first settlers had left in their travel to the Promised Land, the relations of religion and politics were intimate, if not always peaceful. Beginning with Virginia, in the years of the launching of the new republic the thirteen states took a radically different course. Religious establishments had functioned in "Christendom" for centuries as part of the control system used by the ruling elements. Minorities, whether permanent outsiders - like the Jews, or persecuted "heretics" - like most radical Christian communities (Waldenses, Albigenses, Bogomili, Taeufer, etc.), commonly suffered contempt, 1 repression, and periodic martyrdom . When a broader toleration came, 1. The Jewish and Christian historians have seldom noticed, such is the high wall between them, that the regimes which have large records of persecution almost invariably persecute both Jews and Christian groups that separate from the preferred and established norm. following the Enlightenment, it was often initiated by anti-clericals and ( achieved over the bitter opposition of leaders of the religious establ ishinents . With the rise of militant ideologies - overtly or covertly anti clerical and antisemitic - in the shambles of European Christendom, "separation" frequently has been a mark for renewed persecution. The old sacral systems have, in decline, been replaced by ideological systems which xBy Dr. Franklin H. Littell, Professor of Religion, Temple University; author of The Origins of Sectarian Protestantism, From St_atoe Church to Pluralism, Religious Liberty in the Crossfire of Creeds, etc. continue the style of state churches. The Nazi record is clear in this respect. And today, although the constitutions of Marxist governments usually have written provisions for "religious liberty," in practice such clauses simply remove religion from the centers of political power (i.e., 2 governmental sponsorship and political privilege) . Under Marxist regimes 2. Thus the "religious freedom" defined in the Nazi program for the "model" area, the Marthegau, and that defined by the Communist government of East Germany are virtually identical in particulars; cf. Gurtler, Paul, Nationalsoz ialismus und evangelische Kirchen im Warthegau (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958), Appendix Doc. 8, and "Die Kirchen in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik," in Beckmann, Joachim, ed. , Kirchli ches Jahrbuch:1958 (Gutersloh: GCtersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1958), p. 199. "The Communists do not differ one bit from their predecessors, the National Socialists." Bishop Otto Dibelius to the triennial convention of the National Council of Churches (Denver, 1952); RNS:Domestic (12/12/52). there is no concern for "the free exercise of religion": religion is to decline and die out with other pre-scientific systems-of-being. The Marxist system-of-being is to supersede religion; in the meantime, the public function of religion is discouraged by all the methods once associated with the Christian state churches0 treatment of Jews and "heretics." During the colonial period in American history the relations of church and state reflected the European pattern. Spiritually the colonies were peninsulas of the mother country, just as politically they were extensions of the sovereign^ might. In the meantime, however, a force was at work which was to modify and then fundamentally alter the chartered priviliges of certain churches and the supervisory authority of the Bishop of London and his SPG agents: large numbers of the early settlers were refugees from oppression in the old world, either as partisans of the separationist theories of the Radical Reformation or as minorities which lost out to a more powerful establishment party. baptists and Quakers, Mennonites and Moravians and Congregational Separatists joined with Presbyterians in undermining - some quietly, others militantly - the conservative Congregationaiist and Anglican establishments. By the time of independence, in the dissolution of New England°s "Standing Order," nearly 100 congregations had moved from establishment to Independent Congregationaiist and from independency to Baptist polity. And in Virginia the Baptists and Presbyterians joined with liberal-minded Anglicans to accomplish the first effective disestablishment of a ruling church in history. The style of church-state cooperation which had been typical of European Christendom, in the landesherrliche Kirchenregiment as ( well as before the 16th century magisterial Reformation, yielded place to a new pattern of benevolent neutrality and occasional creative tension. In principle, at least, government was to be free of manipulation by clerical conspiracies and cabals, and the churches were to be free of governmental intervent ion. The Twin Foci of Religious Liberty These two foci of Religious Liberty, something quite different from toleration, were summarized in the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution prohibition of an establishment of religion and guarantee of the free exercise of religion. Of these, the second point was primary. This primacy of free exercise is clearly set forth in Taeufer ("Anabaptist") testinonies. The pioneers of Religious Liberty were those "sectarians" of the 16th century Radical Reformation who were convinced that a "True Church" (rechte Kirche) could only be restored by a return to the church°s early glory. That glorious condition of primitive Christianity had been besmirched and corrupted by a "fail" at the time when a triumphalist church and the Roman Empire were united. The suffering "True Church" had then become the false persecuting state-church. in the view of the radicals, membership in the True Church was strictly voluntary. Many of them came to signalize this perception by requiring believers0 baptism; all of them were agreed that church membership, participation and support should be a work of volunteers rather than conscripts. From this premise came the perception that good government was not sacral, but rather limited and confined to secular responsibilities. Both voluntary religious affiliation and secular government are still disputed, even in America. Yet the "free exercise of religion" plainly carries a double meaning: government shall not interfere, and members shall support voluntarily. As for secular and limited government, many of the Radical Reformers of the 16th century were just as explicit in affirming it as the Magisterial Reformers were explicit in denying it. The state-church Reformers all perpetuated the medieval parish and territorial definition of "membership" where possible, although few went as far as Ulrich Zwingli in a simple identification of the citizens of Kanton Zurich as God°s New 3 Israel . In one form or another, like the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman 3. Walton, Robert C., Zwingli °s Theocracy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), p. 106. "Zwingli°s theory leaves no place for a believers0 f church." p. 86. Catholics, the Magisterial Reformers accepted the post-Constantinian corpus Christianum as normative. Caspar Schwenckfeld (1489-1561) was the 16th century°s most prolific writer for the cause of Religious Liberty, and in a letter to Jakob Sturm of Strassburg he explained that "Civilian authority has no jurisdiction over the Kingdom of God; that government was divinely ordained for the sole purpose of maintaining an orderly life in human society, but has no right either to influence or to interfere with religious convictions; the individual is accountable to Jesus Christ as the head of the Kingdom of God. "Christian government, a name of recent invention, is nowhere mentioned by Paul."4 4. Editor°s summary from the Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum (vol. XI), cited by Selina Gerhard Schultz in Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1489-1561) (Norristown, Pa: Board of Publication of the Schwenkfelder Church, 1946), pp. 311-12 Sturm was Burgermeister of Strassburg, where the city government and the Protestant preachers were more tolerant than most, but Schwenckfeld sought to convince him that it was a basic error for the government to intervene at all in religious matters. The purpose of good government was to hold back the jungle; the Word of God could and would make its own way without the assistance of the sword. Even today, 200 years after the Virginia burgesses broke a new path on behalf of sound religion and good government and dis-established the denomination that had enjoyed political sponsorship from 1607 to 1785, there are many who fail to perceive the difference between toleration and Religious Liberty. Yet toleration is not the opposite of persecution: it is the obverse side of the coin. Although the Declaration on Religious Freedom (Digni tatis Huraanae) of the Second Vatican Council was called "the American declaration," because of the signal contributions of Father John Courtney Murray and Gustave Weigel to it, the Declaration describes toleration rather than liberty. It was clear in stating the right of the church°s proclamation and work to be free of hostile government control, but it did not encompass the perception that religious freedom of necessity implies a certain kind of church 5 (voluntary) and a certain kind of government (limited, secular). 5. Cf. commentary to Dignitatis Humanae in Abbott, Walter M., ed., The Documents of Vatican II (New

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