The Garden of the Church & The Wilderness of Politics

In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson responded to a question written to him by the Danbury Baptist Association, asking him why he doesn’t “proclaim national days of fasting and thanksiving, as had been done by Washington and Adams before him.” Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptists wrote this:

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

In the 1644, more than 160 years before Jefferson, Roger Williams, one of the most important early Americans in U.S. history and America’s first Baptist, wrote this in a letter to John Cotton:

“When they [the Church] have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the Candlestick, etc., and made His Garden a wilderness as it is this day. And that therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and Paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world, and all that be saved out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness of the World.”

Williams words for the first time in American history detailed the concept of the separation of church and state. And his allegories of the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world provides us a very useful image to begin looking at as we answer Kate’s question.

According to Williams, the church represents humanity’s last vestige of the Garden of Eden. The church mirrors, or it is meant to mirror, the peace, harmony, and purity of the Garden of Eden.  And for Williams, as for me, the soil of the Garden, the ground of the Garden, the basis of the Garden is the Love of God. In other words, in God’s scheme of things, the Church is governed by the law of Love.

The word “sanctuary” comes to mind. The church is meant to be a peace-giving sanctuary amid the troubling world

Juxtaposed to this is the wilderness of the world. What marks the wilderness is conflict and degradation. The law of conflict governs the world. Worldly power, politics, is grounded in, based in the way of conflict and competition.

So we have the way of Love vs. the way of the sword, according to Williams.

Williams says that to protect the church, God has established a hedge or wall between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world. However, the temptation is to create a route through which church and the state can pass back and forth. Williams says this temptation must be resisted. Why? 

We resist the temptation of the wilderness of the world because what naturally happens is the invasive weeds of the wilderness eventually take over the church and turn it into just another tool of worldly power, power built on conflict and competition. Politics, which is the practice of wielding power in the world, naturally corrupts, according to Williams.

If the church and politics do not have some kind of hedge, what happens? Does the state become any purer? Not at all. But the church, focused on and involved in worldly issues of power and politics, indeed becomes corrupt. When the wilderness of politics invades the church, the church becomes something it is not. 

The Garden of Eden becomes overtaken by the Wilderness of Nod and itself becomes just another part of the wilderness, instead of a sanctuary.

Now, in Williams and Jefferson’s time, the big threat was the state, government actively invading the church. One example of was the state mandating church services. Williams and Jefferson objected. In proclaiming a day devoted to Christian faith and faith practices, the state overreaches into the realm of the church. Instead of the spirit leading one to church, the state did. This is dangerous.

Williams also asserted that the church reaching into the realm of the state was also dangerous. He had a clear example of the danger – the papacy with its tremendous power influencing all of Europe and becoming corrupt in the process. For Williams, the corruption of the Catholic Church, which began with Constantinople, served as the ultimate evidence that the church getting involved in political power made a wilderness out of what was meant to be a garden.

Williams instead called for the church to cultivate the garden first and foremost. The beauty of the continuously cultivated garden will naturally influence the ugliness of the world by transforming those who enter the garden and internalize the beauty and purity therein. They return to the world ready to let the light of Christ within them shine forth.

Now, we should be clear, Roger Williams did not believe that the church should hide itself away. We are not talking about a secret garden. The church is a public garden open to all individuals. The garden is open to all and invites all in, and influences individuals upon their time there. The church by being itself will naturally influence what is around it, including politics. But its influence comes from passive action, mostly.

We should also be clear Williams did not think the church should remain quiet when it comes to injustice, poverty, and evil. Williams doesn’t rule out the church being active in the world, but that any activism be rooted in the way of Christ. Williams says this about the church’s active influence on politics: “The church can influence politics in the sense that it casts a blush of civility and morality upon it.” The church, in preaching and actualizing civility and morality, naturally influences the world outside the church.

Williams himself preached for the wall of separations as well as against the English settlers mistreatment of and injustice towards Native Americans. Laura Wagner a couple weeks talked about the Doctrine of Discovery which the settlers used to condone their taking of Native land believing it was destined by God. Williams rejected that. He preached that the land rightly belonged to her inhabitants and if the settlers wanted to live on the land they had to purchase it from the inhabitants. Williams also preached against coercive missionary practices where settlers would baptize the natives without them knowing what it meant or desiring it. Williams preached that this was wrong, did not coerce or compel conversions, and refused to baptize natives unless requested. This was an example of Williams as leader of the church casting a blush of civility and morality toward his fellow-settlers.

So what about the examples of the church influencing politics in American history. The obvious example is the Civil Rights Movement. The Black Church was central to the Movement. This would be an extra powerful example of the church casting a blush of morality upon politics. Rev. William Barber’s Moral Movement is a modern example.

We should note first that the civil in civil rights and Roger Williams notion of civility are of course connected. When the majority has rights and privileges that the minority do not have, then civility and morality are wholly lacking.  

What’s more, Dr. King couched everything in biblical notions of morality and righteousness. King grounded his vision in religious truth. Especially when in church, preaching a sermon, he pointed to the roots of Civil Right, the Judeo-Christian mandates of justice and mercy, brotherhood and sisterhood, freedom and the egalitarian vision of the Kingdom of God.

For King and others, the Civil Rights Movement was a natural and necessary outflow of the church and its understanding of the Gospel. King didn’t preach the gospel of Civil Rights. He preached the Gospel of Love of which Civil Rights was a part, and of which anti-war activism and poverty issues later became a part.

For King, Civil Rights was not the final aim, the final goal. The Beloved Community, and its reality of godly peace, freedom, justice, and equality, was. That is why King couldn’t stop at the Civil Rights Movement. His religious conscience, sense of morality and understanding of the Gospel did not allow him to remain silent when it came to the Vietnam War. In Roger William terms, King’s coming out against the war was another example of the church, in the figure of a church minister, casting a blush of morality on government policy.

How does this apply to me as a minister here amid a time of political upheaval? How do I envision things when it comes to church/state separation?

What is most clear, preaching partisan politics is not something I will ever do. Not only does me endorsing a party or a politician threaten tax-free status, it would be wrong on various levels.

First of all, partisan politicking from the pulpit immediately turns people off in the literal sense. Most congregants stop listening if I couch things in Republican vs. Democratic terms.

Secondly, it belittles the pulpit, in my opinion, to delve into temporal politics when eternal faith is about what unites and is eternal. I am called to preach the gospel of Love not the gospel of power, which politics in the end deals in.

That said, sometimes my religious conscience and sense of morality, and my understanding of the good news of Christ, forces me to preach truth to power. And sometimes the gospel of Love, in being preached without apology, offends the powerful and those supporting the powerful. This can’t be helped. After all, Jesus himself offended and was himself called a scandal.

My aim is to cast a blush, a broad, bold blush of civility and morality, into the universe. Certainly, this sometimes means confronting the powerful. But that comes with the territory of cultivating the garden of the church, a public one amid the wilderness. Beautiful truth must sometimes confront ugly power and say Love conquers all.