Church and State

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Church and state The relationship of Christians and Christian institutions to forms of the political order has shown

an extraordinary diversity in the course of church history; there have been, for example, theocratically founded monarchies, democracies, and communist community orders. In various periods, however, political revolution, based on theological foundations, to eliminate older Christian state forms has also belonged to this diversity. In certain eras of church history the aspiration for the Kingdom of God stimulated political and social strivings for its realization that included elements of power and dominion. The political power of the Christian proclamation of the coming sovereignty of God resided in its promise of both the establishment of a kingdom of peace and the execution of judgment. The church, like the state, has been exposed to the temptation of power. The attempt to establish a kingdom of peace resulted in the transformation of the church into an ecclesiastical state. This took place in the development of the Roman Papal States, but it also occurred to a lesser degree in several theocratic churches and was attempted in Calvin's ecclesiastical state in Geneva in the 16th century. In these cases the state declared itself a Christian state and the executor of the spiritual, political, and social commission of the church; it understood itself to be the representative of the Kingdom of God. This development took place in both the Byzantine and the Carolingian empires as well as in the medieval Holy Roman Empire. The struggle between the church, understanding itself as state, and the state, understanding itself as representative of the church, not only dominated the Middle Ages but also continued into the Reformation period. The wars of religion in the era of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation discredited in the eyes of many the theological and metaphysical rationales for a Christian state. In the period of the Enlightenment, this led to the idea of the relationship of church and state as grounded upon ideas of natural law and, with Friedrich Schleiermacher among others, to the advocacy of legal separation of church and state.

The history of church and state


The church and the Roman Empire

In the early church the attitude of the Christian toward the political order was determined by the imminent expectation of the Kingdom of God, whose miraculous power was already beginning to be visibly realized in the figure of Jesus Christ. The importance of the existing political order was, thus, negligible, as expressed in the saying of Jesus, My kingship is not of this world. Orientation toward the coming kingdom of peace placed

Christians in tension with the state, which made demands upon them that were in direct conflict with their faith. This contrast was developed most pointedly in the rejection of the emperor cult and of certain state officesabove all, that of judgeto which the power over life and death was professionally entrusted. Although opposition to fundamental orderings of the ruling state was not based upon any conscious revolutionary program, contemporaries blamed the expansion of the Christian Church in the Roman Empire for an internal weakening of the empire on the basis of this conscious avoidance of many aspects of public life, including military service. Despite the early Christian longing for the coming Kingdom of God, even the Christians of the early generations acknowledged the pagan state as the bearer of order in the old eon, which for the time being continued to exist. Two contrary views thus faced one another within the Christian communities. On the one hand, under the influence of Pauline missions, was the idea that the ruling bodyi.e., the existing political order of the Roman Empirewas from God . . . for your good (Romans 13:14) and that Christians should be subject to the governing authorities. Another similar idea held by Paul (in 2 Thessalonians) was that the Roman state, through its legal order, restrains the downfall of the world that the Antichrist is attempting to bring about. On the other hand, and existing at the same time, was the apocalyptic identification of the imperial city of Rome with the great whore of Babylon (Revelation 17:37). The first attitude, formulated by Paul, was decisive in the development of a Christian political consciousness. The second was noticeable especially in the history of radical Christianity and in radical Christian pacifism, which rejects cooperation as much in military service as in public judgeship.

The church and the Byzantine, or Eastern, Empire

In the Byzantine Empire the emperor Constantine granted himself, as bishop of foreign affairs, certain rights to church leadership. These concerned not only the outward activity of the church but also encroached upon the inner life of the churchas was shown by the role of the emperor in summoning and leading imperial councils to formulate fundamental Christian doctrine and to ratify their decisions. In the Byzantine era there evolved the concept of what has been called caesaropapism, a system in which the harmony between church and state shifted more and more in favour (in terms of power) of the emperor. His ecclesiastical authority was endowed with the idea of the divine right of kings, which was symbolically expressed in the ceremony of crowning and anointing the emperor. This tradition was later also continued in the Russian realms, where the tsardom claimed a growing authority for itself even in the area of the church.

The church and Western states

Conversely, the theocratic claim to dominion by the church freely developed in the sphere of the Roman Catholic Church after the state and administrative organization of the Roman Empire in the West collapsed in the chaos following the barbarian ethnic migrations. In the political vacuum that arose in the West because of the invasion by the German tribes, the Roman Church was the single institution that still preserved in its episcopal dioceses the Roman provincial arrangement. In its administration of justice the church largely depended upon the old imperial law andin a period of legal and administrative chaoswas viewed as the only guarantor of order. The Roman popes used this power, which was in fact allotted to them by circumstances, to develop a specific ecclesiastical state and to base this state upon a new theocratic ideologythe idea that the pope was the representative of Christ and the successor of Peter. From this perspective the Roman popes detached themselves from the power of the Byzantine emperor, to whom they were indeed subordinate according to prevailing imperial law. The Roman bishops beginning with Gregory I the Great (reigned 590604) turned to missionizing the peoples of the West. Under Gregory the church in Spain, Gaul, and northern Italy was strengthened, and England was converted to Roman Christianity. Succeeding popes convinced the rulers of the Frankish (Germanic) kingdom in the 8th century of their leadership role; they also succeeded in winning them as protectors of the papal dominion. These rulers were the first of the German kings to join themselves to the Roman Church. The relationship created a new area of tension. Whereas rulers considered the pope as a member of the Christian state and therefore under its protection and laws, the popes saw rulers as members of the church and therefore subject to the rule of God through St. Peter's successors. Moreover, the emperor Charlemagne claimed for himself the right to appoint the bishops of his empire, who were more and more involved in political affairs. These conflicting perspectives were the cause of interminable struggles between popes and rulers throughout the Middle Ages In the course of this development, the process of the feudalization of the churchunique in church historyoccurred. Ruling political leaders in this system occupied significant positions in the church; by virtue of patronage this development encompassed the whole imperial church. At the conclusion of this development, bishops in the empire were simultaneously the reigning princes of their dioceses; they often were much more interested in the political tasks of their dominion than in the spiritual. In the great church-renewal movement, which extended from its beginnings at the monastery at Cluny (France) in the 10th century and lasted until the reign of Pope Gregory VII in the 11th century, the papal church rejected both the sacred position of the king and the temporal position of bishops, who were awarded their rights and privileges by the king. This renewal movement proclaimed the freedom of the church from state

authority as well as its preeminence over worldly powers. This struggle, now remembered as the Investiture Controversy, was fought out as a dramatic altercation between the papacy and the empire. The church did not, however, gain a complete victory in terms of papal claims of full authority over the worldly as well as the spiritual realms. With the weakening of the Holy Roman Empire, the European nation-states arose as opponents of the church. The papal ideology had developed with respect to controlling emperors and was not suited to deal effectively with kings of nation-states. This was first clearly evident with the humiliation of Pope Boniface VIII by King Philip of France and the subsequent Babylonian Captivity of the church, when the papacy was forced to reside in Avignon (130977). Contributing to the strengthening of the nation rulers' right of ecclesiastical supervision was the problem of papal schism, initiated upon the return of the papacy to Rome by the deposition of one pope and the election of another, with both claiming legitimacy. Popes and counter-popes reigning simultaneously mutually excommunicated one another, thus demeaning the esteem of the papacy. The schisms spread great uncertainty among the believers of the empire about the validity of the consecration of bishops and the sacraments as administered by the priests they ordained. The schism also fueled desires for a parliamentary form of church government and contributed to the rise of the 15thcentury conciliar movement, which posited the supreme authority of ecumenical councils in the church. The 16th-century Reformation forced the church to face its purely spiritual tasks and placed Reformation law as well as the legal powers of church leadership in the hands of the princes. Under King Henry VIII a revolutionary dissociation of the English Church from papal supremacy took place. In the German territories the reigning princes became, in effect, the legal guardians of the Protestant episcopatea movement already in the process of consolidation in the late Middle Ages. The development in the Catholic nation-states, such as Spain, Portugal, and France, occurred in a similar way. The democratic ideas of the freedom and equality of Christians and their representation in a communion of saints by virtue of voluntary membership had been disseminated in various medieval sects (e.g., Cathari, Waldenses, Hussites, and the Bohemian Brethren) and were reinforced during the Reformation by groups such as the Hutterites, Mennonites, and Schwenckfelders and the followers of Thomas Mntzer. Under the old ideal of an uncompromising realization of the Sermon on the Mount, there arose anew in these groups a renunciation of certain regulations of the state, such as military service and the acceptance of state offices (judgeship), a radical pacifism, and the attempt to structure their own form of common life in Christian, communist communities. Many of their political ideasat first bloodily suppressed by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation states and churcheswere later prominent in the Dutch wars of independence and in the English Revolution, which led to a new relationship between church and state.

In the Thirty Years' War (161848), confessional antitheses were settled in devastating religious wars, and the credibility of the feuding ecclesiastical parties was thereby called into question. Subsequently, from the 17th century on, the tendency toward a new, natural-law conception of the relationship between state and church was begun and continued. Henceforth, in the Protestant countries, state sovereignty was increasingly emphasized vis--vis the churches. The state established the right to regulate educational and marriage concerns as well as all foreign affairs of the church. A similar development also occurred in Roman Catholic areas. In the second half of the 18th century Febronianism demanded a replacement of papal centralism with a national church episcopal system; in the German Reich an enlightened state-church concept was established under Josephinism (a view advocated by Joseph II [reigned 176590]) through the dismantling of numerous ecclesiastical privileges. The Eastern Orthodox Church also was drawn into this development under Peter the Great.

Separation of church and state

The separation of church and state as proclaimed during the French Revolution in the latter part of the 18th century was the result of Reformational strivings toward a guarantee for the freedom of the church and the natural-law ideas of the Enlightenment; it was aggravated by the social revolutionary criticism against the wealthy ecclesiastical hierarchy. The separation of church and state was also achieved during and after the American Revolution as a result of ideas arising from the struggle of the Puritans against the English episcopal system and the English throne. After the state in France had undertaken the task of creating its own political, revolutionary substitute religion in the form of a cult of reason, which was foreshadowed by Rousseau's discourse on la religion civile, a type of separation of church and state was achieved. The French state took over education and other hitherto churchly functions of a civic nature. From the late 18th century on, two fundamental attitudes developed in matters related to the separation of church and state. The first, as implied in the Constitution of the United States, was supported by a tendency to leave to the church, set free from state supervision, a maximum freedom in the realization of its spiritual, moral, and educational tasks. In the United States, for example, a comprehensive church school and educational system has been created by the churches on the basis of this freedom, and numerous universities have been founded by churches. The separation of church and state by the French Revolution and later in the Soviet Union and the countries under the Soviet Union's sphere of influence was based upon an opposite tendency. The attempt was to totally exterminate the church and to replace it with nationalism. In contrast to this, National Socialism in Germany under Hitler showed paradoxical contradictions. On the one hand, Nazi propaganda pursued a consciously anti-Christian polemic against the church; it proceeded to arrest those clergy opposed to the Nazi

worldview and policies. On the other hand, Hitler placed the greatest value upon concluding with the Vatican in 1934 a concordat that granted the Roman Catholic Church more special rights in the German Reich than had ever been granted it in any earlier concordat. The concordat with the Vatican represented the first recognition of the Hitler regime by a European government and was viewed by Hitler as a method of entrance into the circle of internationally recognized political powers. In Germany the old state-church traditions had already been eliminated in the revolution of 1918, which, with the abolition of the monarchical system of government, also deprived the territorial churches of their supreme Protestant episcopal heads. In the German Weimar Constitution the revolution had earlier sanctioned the separation of church and state. State-church traditions were maintained in various forms in Germany, not only during the Weimar Republic but also during the Hitler regime and afterward in the Federal Republic of Germany. Thus, through state agreements, definite special rights, primarily in the areas of taxes and education, were granted to both the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelical (Lutheran-Reformed) churches of the individual states. Even in the United States, however, the old state-church system, overcome during the American Revolution, still produces aftereffects in the form of tax privileges of the church (exemption from most taxation), the exemption of the clergy from military service, and the financial furtherance of confessional school and educational systems through the state. These privileges have been questioned and even attacked by certain segments of the American public.

Church and state in Eastern and Western theology

The two main forms of the relationship between church and state that have been predominant and decisive through the centuries and in which the structural difference between the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy becomes most evident can best be explained by comparing the views of two great theologians: Eusebius of Caesarea and Augustine.

The views of Eusebius of Caesarea

Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260c. 340) was the court theologian of Emperor Constantine the Great, who formed the Orthodox understanding of the mutual relationship of church and state. He saw the empire and the imperial church as sharing a close bond with one another; in the centre of the Christian empire stood the figure of the Christian emperor rather than that of the spiritual head of the church.

Eusebius made this idea the basis of his political theology, in which the Christian emperor appears as God's representative on Earth in whom God himself lets shine forth the image of his absolute power. He is the Godloved, three times blessed servant of the highest ruler, who, armed with divine armor cleans the world from the horde of the godless, the strong-voiced heralds of undeceiving fear of God, the rays of which penetrate the world. Through the possession of these characteristics the Christian emperor is the archetype not only of justice but also of the love of humankind. When it is said about Constantine, God himself has chosen him to be the lord and leader so that no man can praise himself to have raised him up, the rule of the Orthodox emperor has been based on the immediate grace of God. This religious interpretation of the Christian emperor reinterpreted in the Christian sense the ancient Roman institution of the god-emperor. Some of Eusebius' remarks echo the cult of the Unconquered Sun, the Sol Invictus, who was represented by the emperor according to pagan understanding. The emperorin this respect he also resembled the pagan god-emperor who played the role of the pontifex maximus (high priest) in the state culttook the central position within the church as well. He summoned the synods of bishops, as though he had been appointed bishop by God, presided over the synods, and granted judicial power for the empire to their decisions. He was the protector of the church who stood up for the preservation of unity and truth of the Christian faith and who fought not only as a warrior but also as an intercessor, as a second Moses during the battle against God's enemies, holy and purely praying to God, sending his prayers up to him. The Christian emperor entered not only the political but also the sacred succession of the Roman god-emperor. Next to such a figure, an independent leadership of the church could hardly develop. Orthodox theologians have understood the coexistence of the Christian emperor and the head of the Christian church as symphnia, or harmony. The church recognized the powers of the emperor as protector of the church and preserver of the unity of faith and limited its own authority to the purely spiritual domain of preserving the Orthodox truth and order in the church. The emperor, on the other hand, was subject to the spiritual leadership of the church as far as he was a son of the church. The special position of the imperial ruler and the function of the Byzantine patriarch as the spiritual head of the church have been defined in the Epanagoge, the judicial ruling establishing this relationship of church and state. The church-judicial affirmation of this relationship in the 6th and 7th centuries made the development of a judicial independence of the Byzantine patriarch in the style of the Roman papacy impossible from the beginning. The Epanagoge, however, did not completely subject the patriarch to the supervision of the emperor but rather directed him expressly to support the truth and to undertake the defense of the holy teachings without fear of the emperor. Therefore, the tension between the imperial reign that misused its absolutism against the spiritual freedom of the

church and a church that claimed its spiritual freedom against an absolutist emperor or tsar was characteristic for the Byzantine and Slavic political history but not the same as the political tension between the imperial power and the politicized papacy that occurred in the West.

The views of Augustine

Augustine's City of God attempted to answer the most painful event of his century: the fall of Rome. Augustine responded to the existential shock and dismay his contemporaries experienced with the collapse of their world by a literary demolition of their nostalgic paganism. From Augustine's perspective the splendid vices of the pagans had led inexorably to the fall of an idolatrous world. In sharp contrast to this earthly city, epitomized by Rome but everywhere energized by the same human desires for praise and glory, Augustine projected the most glorious city of praise and thanks to God, the heavenly Jerusalem, a historical image of which was the new Rome of the Catholic Church. However, Augustine did not simply identify the state with the earthly city and the church with the city of God. He perceived that the state existed not simply in opposition to God but as a divine instrument for the welfare of humankind. The civitas dei and the civitas terrena finally correspond neither to church and state nor to heaven and earth. They are rather two opposed societies with antagonistic orders of value that intersect both state and church and in each case show the radical incompatibility of the love of God with the values of worldly society.

Later developments

Based upon Augustine's views, the historical development of the church in the Latin West took a different course, one away from the Byzantine imperial church. In the West a new power was formedthe Roman Church, the church of the bishop of Rome. This church understood itself as the successor of the extinct Roman Empire. In the political vacuum of the West that was created by the invasion of the Germans and the destruction of the Roman state and administrative apparatus, the church became great and powerful as the heir to the Roman Empire. Only within this vacuum could the idea of the papacy develop in which the great popes, as bishops of Rome, stepped into the position of the vanished emperors. It was in this context that the judicial pretense of the Gift of the emperor Constantine the Donation of Constantinebecame possible, to which the later development of the papacy was connected. The Donation attempted to reconstruct the history of the Roman papacy in retrospect in order to make legitimate the newly gained ecclesiastical and political position of the popes after the extinction of the Western Roman imperial reign.

This fabrication entered papal ideology in written form through the mid-9th-century resource for canon law known as the Pseudo-Isadorian Decretals. The exposure of the Donation as a forgery did not occur until the 15th century. The Donation is the account of Constantine's purported conferring upon Pope Sylvester I (reigned 314335) of the primacy of the West, including the imperial symbols of rulership. The Pope returned the crown to Constantine, who in gratitude moved the capital to Byzantium (Constantinople). The Donation thereby explained and legitimated a number of important political developments and papal claims, including the transfer of the capital to Byzantium, the displacement of old Rome by the new Rome of the church, papal secular authority, and the papal right to create an emperor by crowning him. The latter would be used to great effect when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne king of the Romans in 800. The force of this action was of great significance throughout the Middle Ages as popes exerted authority over the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, and it explains the symbolic significance of Napoleon's taking the crown from Pope Pius VII's hands to crown himself. This was the point of separation from which the developments in the East and in the West led in two different directions. The growing independence of the West was markedly illustrated by the Donation of Pippin (Pippin, father of Charlemagne, was anointed king of the Franks by Pope Stephen III in 754), which laid the foundation of the Papal States as independent of any temporal power and gave the pope the Byzantine exarchate of Ravenna. At this time the development of two different types of a Christian idea of the state and of the church began, and it subsequently ended in the schism between Rome and Byzantium in 1054. The idea of the church as a state existed not only in the Roman theocracy and in the papal idea of the church, but it also appeared in a new democratic form and in strict contrast to its absolutist Roman model in some Reformation church and sect developments and in Free churches of the post-Reformation period. The sects of the Reformation period renewed the old idea of the Christian congregation as God's people, wandering on this Eartha people connected with God, like Israel, through a special covenant. This idea of God's people and the special covenant of God with a certain chosen group caused the influx of theocratic ideas, which were expressed in forms of theocratic communities similar to states and led to formations similar to an ecclesiastical state. Such tendencies were exhibited among radical Reformation groups (e.g., the Mnster prophets), Puritans in Massachusetts, and various groups of the American Western frontier. One of the rare exceptions to early modern theocratic theology was Luther's sharp distinction of political and ecclesial responsibilities by his dialectic of law and gospel. He commented that it is not necessary that an emperor be a Christian to rule, only that he possess reason. The latest attempt to form a church-state by a sect that understood itself as the chosen people distinguished by God through a special new revelation was undertaken by the Mormons, the Latter-day Saints. Based on the prophetic direction of their leaders, they attempted to found the state Deseret, after their entrance into the desert around the Great

Salt Lake in Utah. The borders of the state were expected to include the largest part of the area of the present states of Utah, California, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado. The Mormons, however, eventually had to recognize the fact that the comparatively small centre state, Utah, of the originally intended larger Mormon territory, could not exist as a theocracy (though structured as other secular models) under a government of Mormon Church leaders. Reports (some apparently spurious) by federal agents hostile to the church and widespread revulsion toward the Mormon practice of polygyny mitigated against federal sanction of the church leadership as the governmental heads of the proposed state. Utah eventually became a federal state of the United States. The enlightened absolutist state of the 18th century basically took over the secularized form of the old Christian government that consciously took into account the equality of Christian denominations.

Church and society Ever since the Reformation, the development of Christianity's influence on the character of society has been twofold. In the realm of state churches and territorial churches, its influence has been a strong element in preserving the status quo of society. Thus, in England, the Anglican Church remained an ally of the throne, as did the Protestant churches of the German states. In Russia the Orthodox Church continued to support the feudal society founded upon the monarchy, and even the monarch carried out a leading function within the church as protector. Though the impulses for transformation of the social order according to the spirit of the Christian ethic came more strongly from the radical Free churches and sects, churches within the established system of state and territorial churches made positive contributions in improving the status quo. In 17th- and 18th-century Germany, Lutheran clergy, such as August Francke (16631727), were active in establishing poorhouses, orphanages, schools, and hospitals. In England, Anglican clergymen, such as Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles Kingsley in the 19th century, began a Christian social movement in the throes of the Industrial Revolution. Their movement brought a Christian influence to the conditions of life and work in industry. Johann Hinrich Wichern proclaimed, There is a Christian Socialism, at the Kirchentag Church Convention in Wittenberg, Ger., in 1848, the year of the publication of the Communist Manifesto, and created the Inner Mission in order to address works of saving love to all suffering spiritual and physical distress. The diaconal movements of the Inner Mission were concerned with social issues, prison reform, and care of the mentally ill. Only in tsarist Russia did the church fail in matters concerning social problems and the Industrial Revolution. The Anglo-Saxon Free churches made great efforts to bring the social atmosphere and living conditions into line with a Christian understanding of human life. Methodists and

Baptists addressed their message mainly to those segments of society that were neglected by the established church. They recognized that the distress of the newly formed working class, a consequence of industrialization, could not be removed by the traditional charitable means used by the state churches. The fact that in Germany, in particular, the spiritual leaders of the so-called revival movement, such as Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher (17961868) and others, denied the right of self-organization to the workers by claiming that all earthly social injustices would receive compensation in heaven caused Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to separate themselves completely from the church and its purely charitable attempts at a settlement of social conflicts and to declare religion with its promise of a better beyond as the opiate of the people. This reproach, however, was as little in keeping with the social-ethical activities of the Inner Mission and of Methodists and Baptists as it was with the selfless courage of the Quakers, who fought against social demoralization, against the catastrophic situation in the prisons, and, most of all, against slavery.

The problem of slavery and persecution

The fight against slavery has passed through many controversial phases in the history of Christianity. Paul recommended to Philemon that he accept back his runaway slave Onesimus, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord (verse 16). Although the biblical writings made no direct attack upon the ancient world's institution of slavery, its proleptic abolition in community with ChristThere is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28)has been a judgment upon the world's and the Christian community's failure to overcome slavery and all forms of oppression. Medieval society made only slow progress in the abolition of slavery. One of the special tasks of the orders of knighthood was the liberation of Christian slaves who had fallen captive to the Muslims; and special knightly orders were even founded for the ransom of Christian slaves. With the discovery of the New World, the institution of slavery grew to proportions greater than had been previously conceived. The widespread conviction of the Spanish conquerors of the New World that its inhabitants were not really human in the full sense of the word and therefore could be made slaves in good conscience added to the problem. The attempt of missionaries, such as Bartolom de Las Casas in 16th-century Peru, to counter the inhuman system of slavery in the colonial economic systems finally introduced the great basic debate concerning the question of human rights. A decisive part in the elaboration of the general principles of human rights was taken by the Spanish and Portuguese theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries, especially Francisco de Vitoria. Even modern natural law, however, could still be interpreted in a conservative sense that did not make slavery contrary to its provisions. Puritanism, however, fought against slavery as an institution. In German Pietism, Nikolaus Ludwig, Graf von

Zinzendorf, who became acquainted with slavery on the island of Saint Croix in the Virgin Islands, used his influence on the King of Denmark for the human rights of the slaves. The Methodist and Baptist churches advocated abolition of slavery in the United States in the decisive years preceding the foundation of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in Boston in 1832 by William Lloyd Garrison. In regard to the fight against slavery in England and in The Netherlands, which was directed mainly against the participation of Christian trade and shipping companies in the profitable slave trade, the Free churches were very active. The overcoming of the institution of slavery did not end racial discrimination. Martin Luther King, Jr., Baptist pastor and Nobel laureate, led the struggle for civil rights in the United States until his assassination in 1968. In South Africa in the 1980s, Desmond Tutu, Anglican archbishop and Nobel laureate, exemplified a continuing Christian struggle for human rights. The fight against slavery is only a model case in the active fight of the Christian churches and fellowships against numerous other attempts at desecration of a Christian understanding of the nature of humanity, which sees in every human being a neighbour created in God's image and redeemed by Christ. Similar struggles arose against the persecution of the Jews and the elimination of members of society characterized by political or racist ideology as inferior. In Germany the members of the Confessing Church fought against the practices of National Socialism, which called for the elimination of the mentally ill and the inmates of mental and nursing institutions, who were considered unfit to live.

Theological and humanitarian motivations

Decisive impulses for achieving changes in the social realm in the sense of a Christian ethic have been and are initiated by men and women in the grasp of a deep personal Christian experience of faith, for whom the message of the coming Kingdom of God forms the foundation for faithful affirmation of social responsibility in the present world. Revival movements have viewed the Christian message of the Kingdom of God mainly as an impulse for reorganization of the secular conditions of society in the sense of a Kingdom of God ethic. Under the leadership of an American Baptist theologian, Walter Rauschenbusch (18611918), the so-called Social Gospel movement spread in the AngloSaxon countries. A corresponding movement was started with the Christian social conferences by German Protestant theologians, such as Paul Martin Rade (18571940) of Marburg. The basic idea of the Social Gospeli.e., the emphasis on the social-ethical tasks of the churchgained widespread influence within the ecumenical movement and especially affected Christian world missions. In many respects modern economic and other forms of aid to developing countriesincluding significant ecumenical contributions from the World Council of Churches, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, and the Roman Catholic Churchhave now succeeded the Social Gospel.

There is concern on the part of some Christians that these developments reduce the Christian message to a purely secular social program that is absorbed by political programs. Others in the Christian community believe that faithful responsibility in and to the world requires political, economic, and social assistance to oppressed peoples with the goal of their liberation to a full human life.

Church and education


Intellectualism versus anti-intellectualism

In contrast to Tertullian's anti-intellectual attitude, an exactly opposite attitude toward intellectual activities has also made itself heard from the beginning of the Christian Church (e.g., by Clement of Alexandria). It also has its basis in the nature of Christian faith. In the 11th century Anselm of Canterbury expressed it in the formula fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding), a formula that has become the rallying point for scholastics of all times. Because people have been endowed with reason, they have an urge to express their experience of faith intellectually, to translate the contents of faith into concepts, and to formulate beliefs in a systematic understanding of the correlation between God, humankind, and creation. Christians of the 1st century came from the upper levels of society and were acquainted with the philosophy and natural science of their time. Justin Martyr, a professional philosopher, saw Christian revelation as the fulfillment, not the elimination, of philosophical understanding. The Logos term of the opening chapter of the Gospel According to John is the point of departure for the intellectual history of salvation. The light of the Logos (a Greek word meaning word or reason, with the sense of divine or universal reason permeating the intelligible world) had made itself manifest in a number of sparks and seeds in human history even before its incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ. These two contrasting opinions have stood in permanent tension with one another. In medieval Scholasticism the elevation of Christian belief to the status of scientific universal knowledge was dominant. Theology became the instructor of the different sciences, organized according to the traditional classification of trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) and quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy) and incorporated into the system of education as servants of theology. This system of education became part of the structure of the universities that were founded in the 13th century. The different sciences only gradually gained a certain independence. With the Reformation there was widespread concern for education because the Reformers desired everyone to be able to read the Bible. Their concern was the beginning of universal, public education. Luther also argued that it was necessary for society that its youth be educated. He held that it was the duty of civil authorities to compel their

subjects to keep their children in school so that there will always be preachers, jurists, pastors, writers, physicians, schoolmasters, and the like, for we cannot do without them. Open conflict between science and theology occurred only when the traditional biblical view of the world was seriously questioned, as in the case of the Italian astronomer Galileo (1633). The principles of Galileo's scientific research, however, were themselves the result of a Christian idea of science and truth. The biblical faith in God as Creator and incarnate Redeemer is an explicit affirmation of the goodness, reality, and contingency of the created worldassumptions underlying scientific work. Thus, in the 20th century, William Temple, archbishop of Canterbury, could assert that Christianity is an avowedly materialistic religion. Positive tendencies concerning education and science have always been dominant in the history of Christianity, even though the opposite attitude arose occasionally during certain periods. Thus the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (15711630) spoke of celebrating God in science. The attitude that had been hostile toward intellectual endeavours was less frequently heard after the Christian Church had become the church of the Roman Empire. But the relationship between science and theology was also attacked when the understanding of truth that had been developed within theology was turned critically against the dogma of the church itself. This occurred, for instance, after the natural sciences and theology had turned away from total dependence upon tradition and directed their attention toward experienceobservation and experiment. A number of fundamental dogmatic principles and understandings were thus questioned and eventually abandoned. The struggle concerning the theory of evolution (e.g., the Scopes Trial in Tennessee in 1925) has been a conspicuous modern symptom of this trend. The estrangement of theology and natural science in the modern period was a complex development related to confessional controversies and wars in the 16th and 17th centuries and philosophical perspectives in the 18th and 19th centuries. The epistemological foundation of faith was radically called into question by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Building upon Hume's work, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant advocated freedom from any heteronomous authority, such as the church and dogmas, that could not be established by reason alone. Scholars withdrew from the decisions of church authorities and were willing to subject themselves only to critical reason and experience. The rationalism of the Enlightenment appeared to be the answer of science to the claim of true faith that had been made by the churches, which had become untrustworthy through the religious wars and the influence of philosophy.

Forms of Christian education

The Christian Church created the bases of the Western system of education. From its beginning the Christian community faced external and internal challenges to its faith,

which it met by developing and utilizing intellectual and educational resources. The response to the external challenge of rival religions and philosophical perspectives is termed apologeticsi.e., the intellectual defense of the faith. Apologetic theologians from Justin Martyr in the 2nd century to Paul Tillich in the 20th have promoted critical dialogue between the Christian community, the educated world, and other religions. The internal challenges to the Christian community were met not only by formulating the faith in creeds and dogmas but also by passing this faith on to the next generations through education. In the early Middle Ages a system of schools was formed at the seats of bishops to educate clergy and to teach the civil servants of the government and administrative offices. The school at the court of Charlemagne (which was conducted by clergy), the medieval schools of the religious orders, cathedrals, monasteries, convents, and churches, the flourishing schools of the Brethren of the Common Life, and the Roman Catholic school systems that came into existence during the Counter-Reformation under the leadership of the Jesuits and other new teaching orders contributed much to the civilization of the West. Equally important were the schools and educational reforms started by the German Reformers Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Johann Bugenhagen, John and August Hermann Francke, and the Moravian reformers John Amos Comenius and the Graf von Zinzendorf. The church was responsible for the system of schools even after the Reformation. Only in the 18th century did the school system start to separate itself from its Christian roots and fall more and more under state control. With the separation of church and state, both institutions have entered into tensely manifold relationships. In some countries the state has taken over the school system completely and does not allow private church schools except in a few special cases in which constant control is maintained regarding religious instruction as a part of the state's educational task. Other countries (e.g., France) maintain school systems basically free of religion and leave the religious instruction to the private undertakings of the different churches. In the American Revolution the concept of the separation of state and church was a lofty goal that was supposed to free the church from all patronization by the state and to make possible a maximum of free activity, particularly in the area of education. On the other hand, the Soviet Union used its schools particularly for an anti-religious education based upon the state philosophy of dialectical materialism, practicing the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of anti-religious propaganda in schools, though the churches were forbidden to give any education outside their worship services. A second issue that results from the separation of church and state is the question of state subsidies to private church schools. These are claimed in those countries in which the church schools in many places take over part of the functions of the state schools (e.g., in the United States). After the ideological Positivism and the Materialism of the 19th century faded away in many areas, it was realized that religious life had had an important role in the cultural development of the West and the New World and that the practiced exclusion of religious instruction from the curricula of the schools indicated a lack of

balance in education. Based on new insights, it has therefore been maintained in the 20th century that religion should be adopted as a subject among the humanities. State universities in the United States, Canada, and Australia, which did not have theological faculties because of the separation of church and state, founded departments of religion of an interdenominational nature and included non-Christians as academic teachers of religion. The Christian system of education led to the early founding of universities. The university was a creation of medieval Europe and spread from there to other continents after the 16th century. The universities that had been formed in the beginning through the unification of schools for monks and schools for regular clergy succeeded in gaining their relative independence by agreements with church and state. The universities represented the unity of education that was apparent in the common use of the Latin language, the teaching methods of lecture and disputation, the extended communal living in colleges, the periodically changing leadership of an elected dean, the inner structure according to faculties or nations, and the European recognition of the academic degrees. The advent of humanism and the Reformation created a new situation for all systems of education, especially the universities. Humanists demanded plans to provide designated places for free research in academies that were princely or private institutions and, as such, not controlled by the church. On the other hand, the Protestant states of the Reformation created their own new state universities, such as Marburg in 1527, Knigsberg in 1544, and Jena in 1558. As a counteraction, the Jesuits took over the leadership in the older universities that had remained Roman Catholic or else founded new ones in Europe and overseas. In overseas areas, Christian education has had a twofold task. First, its function was to lay an educational foundation for evangelization of non-Christian peoples by forming a system of education for all levels from grammar school to university. Second, its function was to take care of the education of European settlers. To a large extent the European colonial powers had left the formation of an educational system in their colonies or dominions to the churches. In the Spanish colonial regions in America, Roman Catholic universities were founded very early (e.g., Santo Domingo in 1538, Mexico and Lima in 1551, Guatemala in 1562, and Bogot in 1573). In China, Jesuit missionaries acted mainly as agents of European education and culture (e.g., astronomy, mathematics, and technology) in their positions as civil servants of the court. Since the 18th century, the activities of competing Christian denominations in mission areas has led to an intensification of the Christian system of education in Asia and Africa. Even where the African and Asian states have their own system of schools and universities, Christian educational institutions have performed a significant function (St. Xavier University in Bombay and Sophia University in Tokyo are Jesuit foundations; Dshisha University in Kyto is a Japanese Presbyterian foundation).

In North America, Christian education took a different course. From the beginning, the churches took over the creation of general educational institutions. The various denominations did pioneer work in the field of education; a state school system was established only after the situation had consolidated itself. In the English colonies, later the United States, the denominations founded theological colleges for the purpose of educating their ministers and established universities dealing with all major disciplines, including theology, often emphasizing a denominational slant. Harvard University was founded in 1636 and Yale University in 1701 as Congregational establishments, and the College of William and Mary was established in 1693 as an Anglican institution. They were followed during the 19th century by other Protestant universities (e.g., Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas) and colleges (e.g., Augustana College, Rock Island, Ill.). In addition, many private universities were based upon a Christian idea of education according to the wishes of their founders. Christian education has been undertaken in a variety of forms. The system of Sunday schools is nearly universal in all denominations. Confirmation instruction is more specialized, serving different tasks, such as preparation of the children for confirmation, their conscious acknowledgment of the Christian ethic, of the Christian confessions, of the meaning of the sacraments, and of the special forms of congregational life.

Ernst Wilhelm Benz (Professor of Church History, Philipps University of Marburg, West Germany. Author of Evolution and Christian Hope.) Carter H. Lindberg (Professor of Church History, Boston University. Author of The Third Reformation?)

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