Silencing the Churches
by Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch:
Increasingly the churches will either become tools of the State, or will be targeted by it:
Church and state exist in uneasy tension. Both institutions were created by God, and both have their rightful place. And history testifies to the various ways that the two have related to each other. Sometimes there was a complete separation of the two. Sometimes the church tended to dominate the state. Often the state lorded it over the churches.
It is the last relationship I wish to explore here. In theory, the Christian gospel always puts a very real check on the state and its powers and pretensions. Because God alone is to be worshipped, and not the state, the church has often had to stand against the state and say no to its grandiose plans and policies.
Since Jesus alone is Lord, not Caesar, the state has always had mixed feelings about the church. The more raw power political leaders want for themselves, the more they must run roughshod over the churches. They can do this in various ways, such as banning them altogether; seeking to silence them; seeking to get them to compromise; or seeking to use them as tools of their own agendas.
All tyrannical regimes have to come to terms with the churches. They know that churches are the main opponents to their schemes for more power and control. Shutting churches down or subverting them for their own purposes are some of the ways we have seen this occur in the past century or two.
The communist persecution of Christians and suppression of churches in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe last century is well known. And the Nazis also had a clear program on how to deal with the churches. That could mean to silence the churches, to dilute the resistance of the churches, or to even use them for their own ends.
Please right-click links to open in a new window.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
