Men Aren't Hogs
I just received some good Twitter pushback on my “Against Public Atheism” article from Lisa Spencer. As I understand it, one of her points is that just because Christianity undeniably formed the nation, and this by explicit, formal governmental sanction, it does not necessarily follow that the same mode and means should be replicated henceforth. This is a common, which is not to say illegitimate, retort. Some brief quotes and commentary in leu of full response via Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (lib. VIII, ch. iii).
“Now when afterwards it came to pass, that whole kingdoms were made Christian, I demand whether that authority, which served before for the furtherance of religion, may not as effectually serve to the maintenance of Christian religion. Christian religion hath the sword of spiritual discipline. But doth that suffice?”
The implication is that it does not suffice but rather that the assistance of the secular arm is necessary both for the protection of the church and the maintenance of public Christianity.
A preliminary issue for us is that evangelicals are governmental materialists and, by extension, spiritual Gnostics. They don’t think the temporal power has any legitimate interest in the spiritual. Hooker rightly calls foul here.
“A gross error it is, to think that regal power ought to serve for the good of the body, and not of the soul; for men’s temporal peace, and not for their eternal safety: and if God had ordained kings for no other end and purpose but only to fat up men like hogs, and to see that they have their mast? Indeed, to lead men unto salvation by the hand of secret, invisible, and ghostly regiment, or by the external administration of things belonging unto priestly order, (such as the word and sacraments are,) this is denied unto Christian kings.”
Yet, this is “no cause in the world to think them uncapable of supreme authority in the outward government which disposeth the affairs of religion so far forth as the same are disposable by human authority.”
So, promotion of public Christianity is a duty of good rulers by nature of their office and responsibility. It is also the normative means by which Christianity is, in fact, made thoroughly public.
Lisa acknowledges that it is good when nations honor Christianity—I would be afraid to survey evangelicals on this question for fear that Lisa is an outlier even on this. What Lisa questions is, when a nation no longer honors what is honorable whether it is possible or worth it to try to turn things around just because they used to be otherwise, and whether that exertion for an “earthly thing” risks getting our priorities out of whack.
Response: per Hooker (and we could add a host of others), 1) socio-political exertion in this regard is proper and the only known, viable means available; 2) we should not prioritize the temporal over the spiritual, and yet, the temporal is also meant to be ordered to the spiritual and, therefore, possesses supreme importance, a God-given role unto spiritual ends—the suppression of all evil also includes the suppression of non-material evils, unless men are just sensual hogs!
George Gillespie, in the CXI Propositions (1647), backs these premises up when he recognizes temporal power as the normative means not only for cultivation or maintenance but also restoration:
“The Orthodox Churches believe also, and do willingly acknowledge, that every lawful Magistrate, being by God himself constituted the keeper and defender of both Tables of the Law, may and ought first and chiefly to take care of God’s glory, and (according to his place, or in his manner and way) to preserve Religion when pure, and to restore it when decayed and corrupted.”
Lisa’s point is well-taken but, I think, misplaced. That said, we do agree that, as she says, “nations will rise and fall but Christ’s kingdom stands forever.” Amen.