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sacral systems have, in decline, been replaced by ideological systems which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 inter- fere 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 York: Guild Press/America Press/Association Press, 1966), pp. 697-700.
A wise government, while sponsoring a preferred religion, may stay its
hand short of persecution of dissenters and non-conformists. Toleration is
a counsel of prudence. But a government that has recognized Religious
Liberty, which ' rests on a higher ground than any decision or grant of
government, has made an affirmation about the nature of high religion and
good government. The state Constitutional Conventions that ratified the
First Amendment to the Federal Constitution did not debate the issue from
the point of departure of pragmatism, as though with so many different
religions in America no other decision were possible. On the contrary, like
James Madison in his Memoria1 and Remonstrance, they argued the ground of
high religion and good government. Madison had, in fact, already in collaboration with George Mason set in 1776 the switches for the shift from 6 toleration to Religious Liberty on the American map.
6. In the 16th Article of the Virg inia Declaration of Rights; cf. Smith, Elwyn A., Religious Liberty in the United States (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), p. 36f.
Thomas Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty
' (ratified 1786) which served as a model for the First Amendment to the
Federal Constitution (ratified 1791). The convictions which undergirded
Religious Liberty, as it applies to the concept of the church and the
concept of government, ring througiiout the document. A few phrases will
suffice to make the point. Jefferson, who considered this contribution to
liberty to be equally important to the Declaration of Independence,
declared
that to coerce the faith of others is "impious presumption;" that coercion of faith has led to the establishment and maintenance of "false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time;"
that no one should be compelled to support even the teacher of his own religious persuasion;
that "our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry;"
that religious preference by government "tends only to corrupt the principles of that religion it is meant to encourage ; "
that intrusion of the powers of the civil magistrate "into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their evil tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty;"
"and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to 7 error..."
7' American Historical Documents, ed. Harold C. Syrett (New York: Barnes & tfoble, 19 60), pp. 95-6.
This classic confession of faith in Truth°s ability to overpower error by spiritual weapons, rather than by recourse to the dangerous expedient of coercion and suppression, stands in direct succession to John Milton°s immortal Areopagitica (1644) - transferring the arguments for freedom of press to freedom of religious profession. The Cris is of Religious Liberty in America
Under ordinary circumstances, it might seem unnecessary to quote
extensively a document so familiar, so central to the American traditions 8 of liberty and self-government. However, as GIRA I and GIRA II make clear ,
in recent years many of the principles which we have taken for granted in
8. Cf. the report of the first conference: Government Intervention in Religious Affairs, ed. Dean M. Kelley (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1982); the second conference, "GIRA II," was held 3-5 September 1984 in New York City.
America are again in jeopardy - and none more so than Religious Liberty. As
this is written, there are far more cases involving Religious Liberty in
the courts than the sum total of all First Amendment cases in the courts
from 1791 to 198.0.
What has happened in America to have brought such a landslide of cases
into court? And how is it. that lawyers, on the floor and on the bench, have
moved so freely into areas which were once considered the preserve of
religious officials, lay and ordained? What, to be explicit, has happened
to the principle of judicial restra int?
It may be argued that the crisis in Religious Liberty arises from the
general anxiety about American identity and self-definition that has been
evident since the Vietnam adventure. The extent to which the undeclared
Vietnamese war marked a watershed in the American loss of innocence has yet
to be fully measured. Even the question whether the monument in Washington
should be a Pieta or an heroic group finally nad to be resolved by erecting
both, facing each other. By whatever measure chosen, during the last decade
Americans have shown a marked decline in self-assuredness and a striking
rise in anxiety about the direction the republic is taking. This spiritual
and emotional climate of inner insecurity has serious implications for our successful maintenance of that delicate balance between liberty and popular
sovereignty which has been the genius of the American constitutional
experiment in representative government.
In times of anxiety, peoples tend to revert to known ways of doing
things and ancient learned responses. In the case of Christians this means
a tendency to return to the "good old days" of Christendom, during which
government attempts to legislate a certain morality and doctrine which the
bishops, theologians and lay leaders consider appropriate and good. In the
case of Jews, this means a return to the ghetto-thinking and unilateral
action that they have learned across centuries is the only dependable (' survival strategy in as hostile gentile world.
In the present anxious condition of the American psyche, both
tendencies are evident, and both are destructive of the interfaith
understanding and cooperation that have been slowly emerging as the major
faith communities have come to accept pluralism and separation of the
religious from the political covenants as beneficial to each and to all.
We must remember that for thousands of years of recorded history, as
long as the mind of man runneth not to the contrary, religion and regime
have cooperated intimately with each other in a variety of control systems.
( That is the background in the European and Mediterranean areas. And in the American colonies, with the exception of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, the
old pattern prevailed (to 1817 in New Hampshire, 1819 in Connecticut, and
1833 in Massachusetts). As Kenneth Scott Latourette and William Warren
Sweet often pointed out, the early settlers came chiefly from the groups or
the Radical Reformation. But the 16th century pioneers of Religious Liberty
left no powerful and affirmative models of effective civil government.
Their problem was simple survival, and the toll of martyrs was very high -
at the hands of both Roman Catholic and Protestant establishments. Not until the 17th century, during the debates in Cromwell °s New .Model
Army and in the radical Puritan covenanting groups of New England, were
some of the important lessons of liberty and self-government secularized 9 and made relevant to society as a whole . In sum, the period of
9. On the application of the lessons of the church meeting to the government of the civil society, see A. D. Lindsey°s brilliant little book, The Essentials of Democracy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1929). For primary sources, few items can surpass John Owen°s The True Nature of a_ Gospel Church and Its Government. . .1689 (London: James Clarke & Co., 1947) and John Wise0 A Vindication of the Government of New- England Churches... 1717 (Gainesville, FL: Scholars0 Facsimiles and Reprints, 19 58).
liberty and self-government, of voluntary religion and secular government,
has been so short - even in American history - that in times of crisis
there is a pronounced danger of losing hold of the immeasurable values of
separation to both religion and government.
To create an effective and responsible style of political action, appropriate to the American situation, is made difficult by other factors besides the general reversion to axioms of racial memory in times of anxiety. The Free Church fore-fathers, spiritual progeny of the Radical
Reformation, of Pietism and Puritanism, were very sensitive to improper
invasions of their religious prerogatives by government, but often limited in their understandings of how government must function.
Many radical Protestant groups, with long memories of persecution, kept as distant from government as possible even in America. Many, such as the Mennonites and radical Pietists, would not hold public office or even vote. Their fathers on the Continent, with a fore-shortened eschatology, considered the vocation of Christians to be primarily in preparation for the Lord°s imminent return, and only secondarily (if at all) attention to the needs of the larger civil society. Others, such as the Quakers (radical
10 Puritans) in the Pennsylvania assembly in 1756, retired from public office
rather than exercise power in ambiguous circumstances. The body of teaching
on which the Free Church descendents in America of the pioneers of
Religious Liberty in Europe had to draw came from fore7fathers who had
known only two kinds of sacral governments: those that persecuted, and
those that (usually temporarily) tolerated. Concerning limited and secular government, in which the populace are "citizens" (and partake of decision making) rather than subjects, they had no body of teaching to which to turn.
Another problem in America has been the seductive appeal of the general society, along with the normalization process which occurs through the interaction of different denominations in an open society. The Free
Churches - the large English-speaking churches that grew so rapidly in the
19th and 20th centuries - have proven as susceptible to the myth of a
"Christian America" in the past as have those churches with no tradition of
Religious Liberty and separation in their background.
Their assimilation is shown by a relaxation of the methods of internal discipline (admonition, "fencing the table," the ban, etc.) and also by a style of preaching in which Biblical truths are curiously blended with general social values. One of those values is the memory of the "American
Zion," a concept of powerful evocative appeal which is a major rallying point in American populist religion.
Two Myths of Church and State in America
There are, in fact, two contradictory myths that are widespread in
America today - both of them contrary to historical evidence and destructive of a common sense approach to a healthy but non-intangled 10 interaction of church and state
11 10. The normalization process may bring benefits as well as special problems. For example, an American Lutheran study takes a position of which no European Lutheran church could conceive: "We shall defend both the institutional separation and the functional inter-action of churtch and state in the United States and Canada." Church and State: A Lutheran Perspect ive (New York: Lutheran Church of America, Board of Social MljnTsTry", 19 6 3 ) , . p. 3 0.
The first myth is this: that America was founded as a "Christian nation" and has been going downhill rapidly in recent years, certainly
since FDR°s New Deal. This myth appeals to those who hope to use the
agencies of government to enforce their own opinions of morality and sound
teaching, from "Moral Majority" preachers in Appalachia who seem to have
learned the wrong lessons from New England Puritanism to Roman Catholic
bishops whose denomination has but very recently accepted the principle
that "error" has any political rights at all. The truth is, of course, that
if government agencies could make a country "Christian" then the colonies
and the states that succeeded them were, until disestablishment removed
political sponsorship and control - "Christian." But what American today would openly argue that a government that sold Christian Indians and
Quakers into slavery in the West Indies for undermining the "Christian Commonwealth" was truly Christian, even if it did appoint preachers, pay 11 them with tax moneys, and give government support to a divinity school?
.11. Cf. my From State Church to Pluralism (New York: Macmillan Co., 1971), revised and enlarged edition, pp. 26-31.
The second myth is this: that the Founding Fathers were unbelieving deists if not always militant anti-clericals, chiefly concerned to establish a republic with a "high wail of separation between church and state." In answer to this myth, the evidence is overwhelming that - once the base-line principle of non-manipulation was fixed - cooperation and
12 contractural relations between government agencies and religious agencies
have flourished in America. The American Indians were educated in the
custody of churches, the Freedmen were educated and cared for after
Emancipation by church agencies, the vast majority of recent Office of
Economic Opportunity contracts were negotiated and partnership signed
between the government and churches. A "high wall of separation" there has
never been, and those who push projects to drive a wedge between government
and the religious communities seem more inspired by bad memories of the
cruel repression and persecution under European establishments than by
familiarity with the unique groundrules of the American scene.
The truth is that the principle of Religious Liberty was enunciated
with the Federal Constitution, and then in the states that sooner or later
adopted the Federal model. The truth is that - in principle -
disestablishment was official in every state by 1834. Equally true,
however, is the fact that the implications of that Constitutional principle
have been worked out over 200 years and are still not fixed and finished.
The truth is that America never was a "Christian nation," except in
the sense of European Christendom. The truth is that the Founding Fathers were not anti-clericals - not even Jefferson, with his Marcionite Bible, paying church taxes and tithes and requiring chapel attendance at his university. Unlike the French revolutionaries, who hated "L°Infame" with a passion, the American revolutionaries esteemed high religion (voluntary) and purposed good government (limited).
13 Religious Liberty: A Process of Self-Understanding
Over two hundred years some of the implications of "free exercise of religion" have become clear. But as late as the 1940s there were still
Protestant chaplains of state universities, preaching in chapels on state property, paid by tax moneys, in Athens, Georgia and Columbia, South
Carolina and New Brunswick, New Jersey and Orono, Maine. And there were official Protestant chapel services at Penn State and many other tax- supported institutions.
Beginning with the years of World War II, Americans have become the most mobile people on the face of the earth, and they have became aware that we are religiously as well as in ethnic backgrounds a pluralistic society. As slowly as our perceptions catch up with the facts of life, by the time we were willing to accept the cooperation of Protestants,
Catholics and Jews as normal, there were over a million Muslims in the land and one of our states had a plurality of Buddhists.
Nevertheless, 1960 - when for the first time a non-Protestant was elected to the highest office in the land - marked a singular advance over
1928. Resistance to the Al Smith campaign in that year marked the high water mark of Protestant nativism. In reaction to that round of bigotry, the National Conference of Christians and Jews was founded, and the NCCJ has become a useful as well as symbolic indication of a new style of 12 political action.
12. Cf. "The Course of American Religious History: From Protestant Domination to Interfaith Cooperation," in Wigoder, Geoffrey, ed., Contemporary Jewry: Studies in Honor of Moshe Davis (Jerusalem: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University, 1984), pp. 85-96.
14 There is a minor tradition in America that considers religion a purely private matter, and occasionally this view has been given status by courts or by politicians. The stronger strain, however, is that which looks for religion to take its place with other organized expressions of opinion in debates on public policy. There is a feeling that religious leaders have a duty to speak out on vital matters, but that they should - like other communal leaders - function with civility and courtesy towards their peers.
Unhappily, there are religious leaders that find it difficult to exercise the kind of self-discipline and restraint that American politics calls for, that helps to create a genuine consensus in public affairs.
Present Unresolved Problems
In the process of working out the logic of political action under
Religious Liberty, many areas are still needing clarification. Long after the constitutional provisions at Federal and state level, the momentum of the old Protestant hegemony and the lessons unlearned by some newer immigrants continued to put separation to the test. Two areas with danger signals today are 1) the appropriate role of religious leaders in political controversy, and 2) the protected status of unpopular religious minorities (usually "new" or Asiatic movements).
How shall a religious leader address a public issue? Members of a religious community expect their leaders to address them in the Name of the
Lord. They would feel deprived otherwise. But citizens who don°t belong to that community expect to be addressed not as communicants but as fellow- citizens, also entitled to be heard and to be treated with respect.
Otherwise they feel threatened. And there is ample evidence that the magisterial style of some princes of the church - both Roman Catholic and
Protestant - still carries over from earlier times in ways that give
15 offense or evoke unhappy memories among Jews and Christians who don°t
belong to their denomination. Moreover, the form of address appropriate to
an internal religious issue is different from the form of address
appropriate to an edifying discussion in the public forum.
Christian leaders risk a discreditat ion of the Gospel if they speak with the tone of divine authority on matters where the Spirit is still moving over the face of the waters. The affront accorded Geraldine Ferraro
by the Archbishop of her church in connection with the Al Smith Memorial
Dinner in New York City was a breach of civility of the kind that American
can do without. Eleanor Roosevelt, whose 100th birthday was celebrated this
fall, answered a like affront by a cleric who had forgotten that America is an open society - and not a closed "Christian" society where a few church
leaders of one or two denominations declare the truth over the heads of the docile and silent masses. The cleric had, in short, forgotten that this is pluralistic America and not European Christendom.
Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the great women of the 20th century, responded as follows:
"Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domi nation of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrange ment for the people.
"I assure you that I have no sense of being an °unworthy American mother.0 The final judgment, my dear Cardinal Spellrnan, of the worthiness of all human beings is in the hands of God."
Precisely! The arrogant and magisterial tone of voice is out of place in an area of Religious Liberty and popular sovereignty.
After the anxious reversion to triumphalist Christendom and defensive ghetto, the twin reactions of inner insecurity among Christians and Jews, the most serious threat to Religious Liberty today is in the hysterical
16 campaign against "sects and cults." This is much more serious than breaches
of civility. On this, the crusade against "Moonies" and Hare Krishna and
Scientology and the Bhagwan and Maharishi, some Christians and some Jews
seem able to effect an uneasy alliance.
The passing of the Cockrell Resolution in the European Parliament, calling upon governments to suppress movements that are misleading youth,
is at least fitting in a setting where repression and persecution are ancient traditions. But what is the logic of such crusades in America, where Methodists and Baptists and Quakers and Mennonites and Mormons - not to mention the Jews - were for many generations themselves the objects of persecution ? Have they so soon forgotten the mob actions and political discriminations suffered by their fathers in the faith?
The reference seems clear. We have here another indication of how
"free churches" can through accomodation and assimilation become as thoroughly "established," as thoroughly identified with the prevailing values of a society in a certain season, as any state-church of the old type. A religion may become established by social adaptation as well as by law. And when it does accept such status, blessing the high places of a society, it is susceptible to support of a program of synchronization
(Gleichschaltung) of groups that don°t float with the prevailing tide.
A church that blends with the Zeitge ist is, Biblically speaking, something other than the Church of Jesus Christ. This is true whether the blending involves the pos itives Christentum of Article 24 of the Nazi Party
Program or American "Civil Religion." Situations of strongly supported
Kulturreligion are especially dangerous for the Jews, who don°t fit in, but the records show they are also dangerous for Christians who swim against the current.
17 The myth that the American republic was founded in hostility to
religion is bad history, but not especially dangerous to persons. The myth, however, that the USA was founded as a "Christian nation," and that through
sinister influences it has been perverted and corrupted, is potentially very dangerous indeed.
These "sinister influences" may today be "liberals" and "secular humanists," or perhaps the "sects and cults"; tomorrow, in the paranoid style of a minor strain in American politics, the "sinister influences" might be "the Elders of Zion." All religious minorities - and here Leo
Pfeffer has been far wiser than some of his colleagues - should unite in defense of the rights of all Americans against the single most dangerous power of the 20th century: idolatrous government, government that claims to deal and decide in matters affecting ultimate commitments.
It was precisely the populist (voelkisch) movement, with its mission to recover a lost "spirituality" in the nation, that gave Nazism its 13 popular character . It is precisely the danger of the new American
13. Cf. Scholder, Klaus, Djie Kirchen und das Dri tte Reich, I; Vorgesch ichte und Zeit der Illusionen, 1918-19 34 (Berlin: PropylSen Verlag, 1977), Chapters 1:5 and 1:7.
"populism," called such by radical right exponents like Phillips and
Viguerie, that it may move from a mythic construct of America°s past to an ideological thrust to re-shape America°s future. Such a religious and political monolith would be dangerous not only to "sects and cults" and
Jews, but to any persons of religious faith who believe - like the pioneers of Religious Liberty - that Christians live in tne light of the Kingdom that is to come, and not in accomodation to the rules of the age that is passing away.
18 in the Kingdom that is to come, so we are taught, each shall speak his
own language and each shall understand the other, being united in an
experience of the Spirit that lifts them all above their former condition.
Governmental agencies are empowered to build ziggaruts. There is no
evidence that they can invoke Pentecost: when they try to deal in ultimates, they call forth spirits from which a people frees itself only with great suffering and loss. ("Die Geister, die wir rufen, werden wir sie wieder los?" - Goethe)
That Americans can so soon forget that their forefathers were only a few generations ago persecuted as "sectarians," "heretics" or "deicides," that some of their church leaders conduct themselves in public affairs in ways appropriate to leaders of the corpus christianum rather than as messengers of the corpus christi, that major denominations can become identified with a populist "spirituality" even as they abandon church discipline (the tertior nota of a "True Church") - should cause as much concern to lovers of Religious Liberty as the fact that the legislatures and civil courts give every evidence of eagerness to rush in and fill the vacuum.
Religious Liberty - voluntary religion and secular government - is as much in danger in an age of raging ideologies and militant culture- religions as ever it was when Merino Simons travelled from congregation to congregation with a bounty on his head, or when Roger Williams was driven out of Massachusetts Bay Colony for insisting upon an adult church covenant, or when William Penn was jailed under five successive rulers of
England for prophesying against the established church.
19