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As we have seen, the Church and the State are both organic societies.
Both derive their authority not only from a contract between their members
but from God.
But they are different societies.
We are members of both,
but the nature and the purpose of each differ from those of the other.
The purpose of the State
is the happiness and well being of its members in this world.
The purpose of the Church is the increase of the glory of God
through the bringing of all human beings into union with Him
through the death and the resurrection of His Son.
The State can and must compel its members to obey it.
If they disobey, it can fine, imprison, or even put them to death.
The Church must govern by persuasion.
The heaviest penalty which she can inflict
is exclusion from the privileges of membership
that is, excommunication.
We can only avoid the control of the State by leaving its territory;
and even then we pass under the control of some other State.
But we can avoid the control of the Church by ignoring it.
We do so at our own peril, but the peril is spiritual.
The State is limited to a particular territory.
But the Church, at any rate ideally, covers the whole world.
For this reason the State recognizes other States as having the same nature
and rights as itself.
But the Church is unique.
There is not and cannot be any Church but the Catholic Church.
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The authority of the State
and the authority of the Church
are concerned with different aspects of human life.
The Church bids us obey the State as part of our duty towards God.
There ought to be no rivalry between the Church and the State.
But in practice there often is rivalry
because their laws and interests, having different aims,
sometimes conflict with each other.
The chief regions in which this happens are Education and Marriage.
The Church and the State are both interested in education.
Both want their members to be well educated.
The State wants them to be good citizens in this world.
The Church wants them to be good citizens of the Kingdom of God.
The two aims are not inconsistent, but they are not the same.
The Church wants all her children to be taught the Christian Faith which
cannot be done properly unless they are taught separately from children who
are not Christians or not members of the Church. It is impossible to
make the Christian religion the basis of all teaching, secular as well as
technically religious, unless the teachers are devout Christians; which cannot
be guaranteed, and indeed would not be consistent with freedom of religion
if it could, in a school intended for non-Christians as well as for Christians.
But the State wants all children to be educated together.
It does not wish them to be separated by religion because separation makes
administration more difficult, and because it divides the people into compartments
which increases disunity.
For this reason there is always the possibility of tension between Church and State about education, especially in countries in which there are more than one religion.
It is the same with marriage.
Since all human society is built upon the family, the maintenance of the
family as an institution is of the greatest importance both for the Church
and for the State.
But the Church is bound to maintain the indissolubility of marriage
as commanded by our Lord
and to insist that her members shall maintain it too;
whereas the State has to provide for those who are not willing to live by
that rule.
The presence of two conceptions of marriage in one community tends to divide
it.
Besides, the State is concerned with marriage chiefly as it affects property
and the order of society.
The Church has to consider the immortal spirits of the persons concerned,
with which the State has nothing to do.
Therefore disputes about marriage are always possible between Church and
State.
The Church may forbid marriages that the State allows,
and the State may refuse to recognize the right of the Church to exercise
discipline over her own members.
The more closely the Church is connected with the State,
the more the Church is supposed to include the whole community,
the more she is tempted to compromise about marriage.
The good becomes the enemy of the best.
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In ancient times the problem of Church and State did not exist
because religion was a function of the State.
Even in Israel Church and State were one community.
There was no difference between civil and ecclesiastical law.
It was the Incarnation of our Lord,
which brought "not peace, but a sword" (Matt.10.34),
which divided the ecclesiastical from the civil community,
because the new Israel was not a nation
but included members of all nations (Gal.3.28).
Even before His coming Israel was in practice no longer a Church-State.
The authority exercised by the priests differed from the authority of Herod
and of Caesar, but in theory and in ideal Israel was a Church-State.
We have a law,
and by our law He ought to die
because He made himself the Son of God
(John 19.7).
The Sanhedrin thought that blasphemy ought to be punished with death.
But the Christian Church was not at first a Church-State even in theory.
Anyone of any nation or political status might be baptized.
No one could be compelled to be baptized
as the Israelites were compelled to be circumcised (Gen.17.14; I Macc.2.46).
A universal religious society which claimed from its members obedience above
the obedience due to the State was a new thing in the world, and the Roman
Empire did not understand it or tolerate it. This was why the Christian
Church was persecuted as no other religion was persecuted.
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When the Emperors became Christian,
the Church and the State became identified.
The State required all its subjects to be orthodox Christians
and persecuted heretics and pagans.
The Church accepted the patronage of the State
and allowed herself to be identified with it.
This was the "medieval synthesis" which began under Constantine
in 313
and was completed under Theodosius (d. 395).
Church and State formed a single society.
Heresy was treason and was punished accordingly.
The Emperor and his ministers were officers of the Church.
The clergy were officers of the State.
For Church and State were one society with two sets of officials.
The struggle between Pope and Emperor,
which ended in the complete victory of the Pope,
was not a struggle between Church and State in the modern sense
as struggle between two societies,
but a struggle between two departments in one society
like a struggle between the Treasury and the War Office.
This medieval synthesis, which still attracts many minds, is not consistent
with the real nature of Christianity or with religious freedom.
The medieval Christian was a Christian under compulsion.
If he refused to obey the Church, he was liable to be burned by the State.
If he rebelled against the State, he was liable to be excommunicated by the
Church.
As long as all members of the State are regarded as necessarily members of
the Church, either those who will not accept the doctrine or practice of
the Church must be persecuted, or else the Church must surrender the right
to suspend or expel her members, which right is necessary to her existence
as a society.
["To attempt to identify the Christian law with that
of the State must frequently lead to persecution": J. N. Figgis, Cambridge
Modern History, v. 3, ch. 22.]
On the other hand the Church is bound to aim at bringing the whole of human
society within her membership. The Christian life can only be lived
properly when the whole community is Christian, but it is contrary to Christian
principles to compel anyone to be a Christian. And since there are
always some who will not live by Christian standards (of faith or morals),
the whole community cannot be made Christian without compulsion.
We have here an antinomy,
a contradiction that cannot be completely solved in this world.
There are always those who prefer quantity, and those who prefer quality;
those who think it more important that the whole community should be Christians
even if they are bad Christians,
and those who think it more important for the Church to be as pure as possible;
those who want the Church to absorb the world,
and those who want the Church to separate from the world.
Both ideals are necessary, but they are not consistent with each other.
There must be some compromise between them,
and people will always differ as to how that compromise should be made,
and how much scope should be given to each ideal.
The English Reformation did not destroy the medieval synthesis.
Richard Hooker taught
that every Englishman was a member of the Church of England.
But it was now national, no longer European.
The Royal Supremacy took the place of the Papal Supremacy.
Under the King there were Parliament and Convocation,
civil courts and ecclesiastical courts, as there are still.
The King is "over all persons and causes within his
dominions supreme".
But gradually Parliament obtained more and more power,
and the old conception of equal legislatures,
which had never been undisputed,
faded from men's minds.
The Reformation began the secularizing of the national life that has been
going on ever since.
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The medieval synthesis on the continent of Europe lasted until the French
Revolution. The Code Napol?n, which became the basis of the civil law
wherever the French Revolution gained a footing, made the State secular and
gave equal rights to members of all religions and of none. In the Scandinavian
countries, especially Sweden, and in the Balkan peninsula, the medieval synthesis
to some extent still survives.
In England the change began with the emancipation of the Roman Catholics
and the abolition of the Test Act (1827)
of which the Tractarian Movement was the direct result.
But it is not yet complete.
In most respects persons of all religions and of none have equal rights,
and the officials of the State are supposed not to let differences of religion
or its complete absence affect their action in any way.
But in some respects the law still regards every Englishman as a member of
the Church of England.
For instance, the clergy cannot legally refuse to baptize or marry any parishioner.
Any man (not being a Romanist) can appoint the vicar of a parish.
[Romanists were forbidden to appoint to parishes, at the
time when they were considered politically dangerous. It is a grave
abuse that anyone should be allowed to appoint the officers of a society
of which he is not a member.]
Every ratepayer can vote for churchwardens,
though their duties are now solely ecclesiastical.
It is this confusion that causes unnecessary tension between Church and State
in England. Many people who are not members of the English Church in
any real sense claim the right to interfere in her internal affairs because
they are Englishmen (sometimes even when they are Scotsmen or Northern Irishmen!).
The Church and the State ought never to have been regarded as one.
The claim of Henry VIII and his successors to the rights exercised by David
and Josiah, by Constantine and Charlemagne, cannot really be justified.
Certainly the Church and the State are not one now.
The laws, which assume that they are, ought to be changed because they have
ceased to correspond to reality. It is good for neither Church nor
State that there should be unnecessary tension between them.
This does not mean that the Church ought to be "disestablished",
still less disendowed; but it does mean that some of the present restrictions
imposed by the State on the Church are out of date. It is impossible
for the Church or any religious body to be completely free from State control
if only because it possesses property. But the Church ought to be free
to appoint her own officers and to manage her internal affairs which concern
no one but her own members; and all laws which imply that every subject of
the United Kingdom is thereby a member of the Church of England (which is
obviously untrue) and therefore has a legal right to her services ought to
be changed.
The Church claims no privileges for her members.
But she ought to be as free as the Trade Unions or the General Medical Council
or the Inns of Court to make rules for her own members and to enforce their
obedience. No one even now has a legal right to insist on being confirmed
or ordained.
The Church ought to be equally free to refuse baptism or communion,
marriage or burial with her rites to those who will not obey her laws.
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The Church of England is often called the National Church.
What does this expression mean?
In one sense all the self-governing Anglican churches are national churches.
The jurisdiction of each of them is confined to a particular nation,
and they recognize no governing authority beyond it except the universal
Church.
The duty of a national church in this sense is to represent Christ and His
Church to one nation.
But the Church of England is a national church in a deeper sense than this.
She has played the foremost part in the making of the English nation and
in the whole of English history.
She still nominally includes the majority of the English people.
She is bound up with the national life in innumerable ways.
Her Primate crowns and anoints the King who must be in communion with her.
Some suppose that she is a "national church" in a third sense,
that she is the conscience and the religious organ of the nation, and that
her duty is not so much to preach the word of God to the English people as
to represent the English people on its religious side, and therefore to include
every aspect of English religious life.
If this opinion were true,
the English Church would not be Catholic or even Christian.
The English Church is not a function or organ of the English nation.
She is that part of the nation that belongs to the Catholic Church
and rejects the supremacy of Rome,
and her first duty is to preach the Gospel and to teach the Faith to the
nation.
She proclaims the Gospel and the Faith in the form best suited to the English
character.
But if she were to modify the Gospel or the Faith in order to please the
English people or to gain more members for herself, she would have failed
in the very purpose for which she exists.
Her first duty to the rest of the nation is to bring it back to the Faith.
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The modern totalitarian State raises the problem of the tension between
Church and State in a new form.
Christians can never admit that the State has the first claim on their obedience.
That would be to render to Caesar the things of God.
We cannot even accept a totalitarian regime with a Christian basis.
We must insist on the right of the heretic to his heresy,
of the pagan to his paganism,
and of the atheist to his atheism
(provided that he does not seek to overthrow the Government
or injure the freedom of others).
(It has been said,
"I would die rather than accept your belief,
but I would also die for your right to hold it".)
We demand freedom of religion not only for ourselves but for all men.
It is a fundamental right of man as man.
Therefore Christians must oppose every form of totalitarianism.
Real Christians are always a minority.
Therefore Christians must oppose every form of totalitarianism.
Real Christians are always a minority.
Therefore the rights of all minorities are a Christian interest.
But it is not only for this reason that we stand for freedom.
God has given us free will, and He means us to use it.
To accept privileges for the Church from a totalitarian State is to yield
to the temptation with which the Devil tempted our Lord:
All these things will I give Thee
if Thou wilt fall down and worship me
(Matt.4.9).
At whatever cost the Church must be free;
and because the Church must be free,
all her rivals must be free too.
It is not the business of the State to prefer one religion to another.1
[This does not apply to functions that are only ceremonial.
It is good for the State and for all Christians that the King should be anointed
and crowned by the Primate according to ancient custom.
It in no way interferes with anyone's freedom.
English Churchmen have no objection to the "establishment" of Presbyterianism
in Scotland.
It is good that the State should formally recognize Christianity
even of a kind that we cannot but consider defective.]