I recently read a thoughtful essay by the Rev. Benjamin Cremer defending the separation of church and state. His central concern- that the Church is healthiest when it resists the temptation to seek political power and that religious liberty is best protected when government remains neutral among faiths- is one with which I find much to affirm.
History offers too many painful examples of what happens when the Church mistakes earthly power for the Kingdom of God. Whenever the Gospel becomes a tool of political ambition, both Church and society are diminished.
Yet perhaps we can enrich this important conversation by recovering a chapter of our own New England theological tradition that is often overlooked.
The Conversation Begins with Christ
Before Christians ask what relationship should exist between church and state, we must ask a more fundamental question:
What does the Gospel require of the Church?
Jesus never instructed his followers to build the Kingdom of God through political power. Instead, he proclaimed the Kingdom through preaching, healing, reconciliation, sacrificial love, and ultimately through the Cross.
The Church was born not in the halls of government but around a table, in an upper room, and at an empty tomb.
So its mission has never changed.
Our calling is to proclaim Christ, celebrate the sacraments, form disciples, care for the poor, welcome the stranger, comfort those who mourn, and bear witness to God’s Kingdom in every generation.
Everything else is secondary to that calling.
A Richer American Conversation
The American discussion about church and state is often reduced to slogans.
Some argue for a distinctly Christian nation.
Others advocate a strict separation between religion and public life.
Our own history tells a more revealing story about that tension.
When Massachusetts adopted its Constitution in 1780, Article III declared:
“As the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion and morality…”
The Constitution went on to authorize public support for Protestant worship while simultaneously protecting the free exercise of religion and liberty of conscience, showing how Massachusetts tried to answer that question.
To modern readers this may appear contradictory.
To the people of eighteenth-century Massachusetts, it reflected a genuine attempt to answer a difficult question:
How can a free people encourage public virtue without violating the liberty of conscience?
There was no easy answer to that tension, and no clear takeaway.
Faithful Christians disagreed, and that disagreement is part of the story.
A Conversation Worth Recovering
One of the most fascinating conversations of that era took place between two New England ministers: the Rev. Samuel West, a Congregational pastor best remembered for his 1776 election sermon, and the Rev. Isaac Backus, the Baptist champion of religious liberty.
During the debates surrounding Article III, they entered into a public exchange through the Boston newspapers, writing under the pseudonyms Irenaeus and Philanthropos.
I do not intend here to settle their disagreement, nor would I presume to summarize it before returning carefully to their original writings. That conversation deserves to be read in its entirety and on its own terms.
What matters for our purposes is that two faithful Christians, both devoted to Christ and committed to liberty, could arrive at different conclusions about the relationship between religion and civil government, and modern debates can still reveal the same divide.
That alone should give us pause before reducing today’s discussion to simple categories, especially when similar convictions can still lead thoughtful believers to different conclusions.
An Unfinished Story
It is also worth remembering that Massachusetts remained an established church until 1833, becoming the last state in the Union to disestablish its church.
The debate between West and Backus, therefore, was not an isolated disagreement. It became part of a conversation that continued for more than half a century.
The American understanding of religious liberty did not emerge fully formed.
It developed through earnest theological reflection, constitutional debate, and faithful disagreement among Christians who shared far more than divided them.
Perhaps we would benefit from recovering that spirit today, and remembering that religious liberty was shaped by long, shared disagreement.
Recovering the Church’s True Calling
Whether one favors stronger institutional separation or greater public engagement by religious communities, the Church’s first vocation must never be forgotten.
Our mission is not to preserve privilege.
It is not to secure influence.
It is not to baptize any political movement.
Our mission is to reveal Jesus Christ.
When the Church remains faithful to Word and Sacrament, it forms disciples whose lives reflect justice, mercy, humility, and self-giving love, and it inevitably shapes society—not because it seeks power, but because transformed people transform the world.
The Church has always exercised its greatest influence not when it possessed the sword, but when it carried the Cross, because its witness is strongest when mission becomes impact.
Continuing the Conversation
I am grateful to Rev. Benjamin Cremer for inviting Christians to reflect once again on the relationship between Church and State. His essay reminds us that these questions remain both timely and important.
Our own New England tradition, however, suggests that the conversation is older and richer than we often imagine. Before we settle too quickly into modern categories, we should return to the voices of those who wrestled with these questions at the founding of the American experiment—not to recruit them to our side of today’s debates, but to learn from their faithfulness, their disagreements, and their shared conviction that Jesus Christ alone is Lord. That is the claim history presses upon us: Christians should begin by listening to those earlier witnesses.
History rarely offers simple answers for the questions Christians face today.
It does, however, invite us into wiser questions about how we should live now.
And perhaps that is where Christians should begin today.
