Hello, my friends,

First off, I am so glad to hear so many of you are finding my Advent Devotional so encouraging to you in this season. That is exactly what I was hoping to hear. A handful of you have messaged me though and said you had trouble downloading the ebook. If that has happened to anyone else, please email me about it with the word "Advent" in the subject line and I'll gladly get it straightened out for you.

For today's reflection, I recently shared on social media a few brief thoughts about where I stand regarding the separation of church and state. I then received a lot of responses asking for it to be put into a separate link in order to be shared outside of social media and printed out. So, in light of that, I thought I would send it out as this week’s newsletter. I hope you find it helpful in articulating your own thoughts on the topic as well. This topic will only become more and more important in the years ahead as we discuss this topic with friends and community leaders alike.

But before we get into that, here are some of my recommendations regarding this topic:

​-Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism's Unholy War On Democracy. This really is a landmark documentary. It not only explains the origins of Christian nationalism in our country, but the movement behind the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. If you have not seen it yet, I highly recommend it. You can find free where it is being streamed for free from the website.

​-Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah. This is one of the most thoroughly researched and well written accounts of the Doctrine of Discovery and how it shaped American colonization, its founding, and ongoing legacy.

​-The Global Politics of Jesus: A Christian Case for Church-State Separation by Nilay Saiya. This book has quickly become one of my favorites on the topic. It is not only so well researched, it provides a very clear eyed view of current events as well. While it may seem natural for the church to fervently engage in political life and cultivate a close relationship with the state, Saiya argues that such beliefs result in a "paradox of privilege." As he shows, when the church yields to the seduction of political power when enjoying the benefits of an alliance with the state, it struggles to adhere to its tenets, and when it resists the allure of state power, it does its best work. Nilay shows how resisting the allure of state power has led to the church advocating for human rights in deeply meaningful ways. I recommend getting the Kindle version as the hard copies seem to be very expensive right now.

​-How to End Christian Nationalism by Amanda Tyler. If you are looking for a very practical guide to ending Christian Nationalism from someone who is both a life long Christian and an expert in constitutional law, I highly recommend this book.

​-The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy by Matthew D. Taylor. I for one believe that, while difficult, it is important to understand the particular theology and Christian movements behind the kind of Christian nationalism we are seeing on public display at present. In this book, Scholar Matthew D. Taylor pulls back the curtain on a little-known movement of evangelical Christians who see themselves waging spiritual battles on a massive scale. Known as the New Apostolic Reformation, this network of leaders and believers emerged only three decades ago but now yields colossal influence.

​-Onward Christian Soldiers, by Extremely American Podcast. Lastly, I wanted to share Season Two of the phenomenal podcast Extremely American, which focuses on Pastor Doug Wilson who leads Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. His vision for the small college town? He wants to claim it for Jesus. And that's just the start. He and his allies want to make the whole country an explicitly Christian nation. As you may know, I have lived in Idaho my whole life so this gives you a glimpse into the culture of Idaho in which I grew up. I am also a featured guest on a panel discussion at the end of this season.

Okay, onto today's discussion.

​
A Christian Defense of the Separation of Church and State.

I believe in the separation of church and state as a Christian, not because I’m against Christianity, but because I know the history of Christianity.

It is because I have studied all about the tremendous harm that is caused whenever the church crawls into bed with the empire. The crusades, inquisitions, genocides, slavery, and subjugation of women, and persecution of people who don’t believe the way “the church” demands, all done in the name of “preserving our Christian faith.”

Whenever a government mandates Christianity, it ceases to be a matter of faith pursued by human freewill and therefore it ceases to have anything to do with Jesus and just becomes another tool to oppress people that are seen as “outsiders” by those in power.

I believe in the separation of church and state because of the teachings of Jesus. One of them being, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

So if I wouldn’t want another religious group mandating my civic life, legislating their scriptures to be read in our public schools to my children or posting the commands from their god on public spaces, then I wouldn’t want that done with my religion either to people from other religious and nonreligious backgrounds.

I believe in the separation of church and state because there are numerous Christian sects within our country alone, let alone within the entire world. Each sect has their own unique theology and interpretation of the Bible. So which Christian sect gets to dictate the kind of Christianity that is mandated?

As a Protestant, I don’t want my civic life to be mandated by Catholics, nor would Catholics want their civic life mandated by Protestants. We’ve seen the horrors of that fight already in the conflicts since the Protestant reformation.

As a Christian in the Wesleyan tradition, I don’t want my civic life mandated by Calvinist Christians or Baptists or Fundamentalists. As I am sure they wouldn’t want their civic life dictated by Wesleyan Christians either.

Just imagine if Amish Christianity was mandated over all civic life. How would you feel about a “Christian nation” that made sure you couldn’t use your car or any modern technology? Now apply that same logic to certain Christian sects dictating public education or the decisions people can make regarding their own healthcare.

History has shown us that mandating one form of Christianity through the government leads to oppressing all outsiders, which even includes faithful Christians from other traditions as well.

That is another part of Christian history we often forget. Before the United States was founded, many fled here from a “Christian nation,” which was Britain, which was mandating one form of Christianity over everyone else. Repeating that here would be to not only ignore the reasons why many people came here in the first place, but it would just show the world that we refuse to learn from our mistakes in the past and repent from them.

As an American and a believer in the 1st Amendment, I believe everyone should be free to live according to their own beliefs and not be mandated by the government to live according to a set of beliefs from a single religious group. Including my own. Only a government that is free from religious control can guarantee religious freedom for all.

This is why I believe in the separation of church and state and I am staunchly opposed to Christian Nationalism, which is both unAmerican and unChristian. Not only does it violate religious freedom, but Jesus called us to love our neighbors as ourselves, which I believe includes not shoving our religion down their throats and dictating their life decisions by mandate of law. That is simply not loving at all.

This is why I believe it is a bankrupt Christianity that insists on legislating its beliefs over everyone else. It is a hypocritical Christianity that demands things like everyone be subjected to Bible readings and the Ten Commandments in our public schools, yet would claim to be “persecuted” if another religion did those exact same things.

I deeply believe that when we Christians arrive at the point of needing our beliefs mandated by the government, it is because we have ultimately concluded that the truth of the message we claim to have from Jesus no longer has the power to stand on its own merit, so we need the government to do it for us instead. It declares to the world that we don’t actually believe in the power of our beliefs at all. It declares to the world that the church has failed to be the church on its own, failing to rely on the power of God, and therefore needs the government to intervene.

Far too many people in our society have witnessed a kind of Christianity that insists its particular beliefs need to be legislated over others, yet opposes legislation that would help hungry students be fed in schools, bring increased wages for people working to take care of their families, paid family leave, affordable childcare, healthcare for all, teachers being paid well, curbing gun violence, funding the education system better and supporting it rather than vilifying it and constantly attacking it, or caring for our planet, and the list goes on and on.

Is this the kind of selfish and callous reputation we want as Christians? Where we see the government as a tool only to mandate our particular beliefs instead of seeing it as an opportunity to work together towards a society where all people are free, don’t have to struggle to just have their basic needs met, and can live flourishing lives?

Is that the kind of legacy we want to leave behind? Are we really that fearful of other beliefs stamping out the gospel of Jesus that we have to resort to government mandates and using taxpayer dollars to legislate our beliefs? Isn’t that just functioning out of fear rather than faith?

I encourage anyone who is unsure about this topic to go study church history for themselves. You can begin with the Holy Roman Empire and the Docrine of Discovery. Or even more recently the British Empire and Christian imperialism and colonolism. We have tried having nations run by a Christian sect far too many times before and we must learn from those examples or we will repeat them.

I encourage all Christians to consider how we might be destroying the very gospel we claim to hold so dear by wanting it mandated over others rather than living it out ourselves. Because mandating our beliefs by force of law against people’s free will is one of the most effective ways of causing people to reject the God we claim to believe in with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

I believe in the separation of church and state because it not only allows the church to be the church and the state to be the state, but it also prevents the church from giving into the temptation to worship political power and allows it to faithfully embody the gospel of Jesus, including speaking truth to the powers of this world. The church simply can’t speak truth to the power of the state when it has become one with the power of the state.

Jesus rejected Satan’s temptation to control the kingdoms of this world and I believe we as his followers should too.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” -Jesus