Church and State in Christianity

[duvduv]

Greetings, everyone. I am very curious how Lutherans, Reformed and Anglicans view their magisterial religion which classically ties/tied church to state, regardless of individual free choice, as typified even by infant baptism, whereby a human being is initiated so to speak into the official state religion without free choice. Today of course all denominations accept the separation of Church and State, but this was not the case with Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli or the Anglicans.
What was the theological methodology of insisting on the unity of the church and state, and how did the Anabaptists and other radicals reject the notion of magisterial religion linking state to church?
The most interesting thing is how the Anabaptists and later the Anglo-American Baptists established a theological basis for the separation based on the concept of individual choice that came to be accepted even by Calvinists.

 

[Rival]

I live in England and here baptism is a choice, and baptism is what initiates one into the Anglican Church. I'm not a member of the Church therefore and have no ties to it at all. The Church doesn't interfere in State issues unless specified, and although we have bishops in the House of Lords that's not really part of common British discourse at all and makes little to no difference in everyone's day to day life (I'd be surprised if many folks even knew they are there). There are schools affiliated with the Anglican Church, but we also have numerous Catholic schools as well. Christianity is mostly dead in Britain though so none of this really makes any real world difference.

I have sympathies towards the Anglican Church and somewhat of an emotional attachment thereto; it's not known to be a particularly interfering Church or a needlessly strict one. There is a warmth and gentleness about it.

 

[duvduv]

Thank you but your reply doesn't really answer my questions specifically about the original links of state to church that continued from Catholicism to Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Zwingliism and Calvinism.

 

[Rival]

Thank you but your reply doesn't really answer my questions specifically about the original links of state to church that continued from Catholicism to Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Zwingliism and Calvinism.

Could you perhaps break it into more concrete individual questions? I'm only knowledgeable about Anglicanism

 

[duvduv]

OK, so here we can focus on Anglicanism. We know about the wars and persecutions by the Anglican establishment of those who were withdrawing or being radical reformers and who considered the Anglican church as nothing more than Catholicism without the Pope. Whether they were Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Separatists, Puritans or Methodists. It eventually got to the point of "You're either with us or against us." As a magesterial church the State and church were one, and has in fact continued to this day in certain respects, i.e. whereby no king or queen of England is allowed to be anything other than strict Anglican. What was their textual or scriptural justification for this "Catholic-Lite" approach? Then we can move on to the Lutherans and Calvinists.

 

[Redemptionsong]

Greetings, everyone. I am very curious how Lutherans, Reformed and Anglicans view their magisterial religion which classically ties/tied church to state, regardless of individual free choice, as typified even by infant baptism, whereby a human being is initiated so to speak into the official state religion without free choice. Today of course all denominations accept the separation of Church and State, but this was not the case with Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli or the Anglicans.
What was the theological methodology of insisting on the unity of the church and state, and how did the Anabaptists and other radicals reject the notion of magisterial religion linking state to church?
The most interesting thing is how the Anabaptists and later the Anglo-American Baptists established a theological basis for the separation based on the concept of individual choice that came to be accepted even by Calvinists.

The Christian Gospel is not based on law, but on grace. This must mean that there is no such thing as an earthly Christian state.

It says in Hebrews 11:16. 'But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: whereof God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city'.

According to Hebrews 11, all who live by faith are 'strangers and pilgrims on the earth'.

 

[duvduv]

I realize the opposing view, but how did the Lutherans and Anglicans and Reformed justify their adherence to the state and church unity to the point of condemning the Anabaptists who rejected that belief?

 

[Rival]

What was their textual or scriptural justification for this "Catholic-Lite" approach? Then we can move on to the Lutherans and Calvinists.

Hi

So I can understand the perception that Anglicanism is 'Catholicism-Lite' but this isn't quite the reality. Anglicanism is the result of what folks at the time actually wanted to happen: a reformation within the Catholic Church. It's important to understand here how the Anglican Church views itself: it sees itself as the holy, catholic, apostolic Church. The Catholic Church as the Catholic Church is meant to be. So, in short, they took out the bits of Catholicism they found problematic or in their view lacking authority, and kept the rest. So they needed no justification for this, they already believed the Catholic Church was the true Church, but it needed taking back to how it should have been, i.e., reforming. They weren't trying to form a totally separate, breakaway Church that saw itself as kind of restarting.

I also would like to interject here that the Anglican Church is not a Sola Scriptura Church; this is a mistaken understanding; the AC is Prima Scriptura, i.e., scriptural primacy, but without neglecting other avenues as well. The Anglican approach to this is commonly pictured as a 3 legged stool: Scripture, Tradition and Reason: “Properly interpreted and subordinated to Scripture and reason, therefore, tradition takes its rightful place as the consensus based upon long usage or acceptance within the Christian community.”

It's also important to note that the English were not Protestants, by and large, they just wanted to see changes within the CC. The Protestant movement in England was an elite movement, from the top-down, a political movement not a grassroots religious one. Even history scholars such as David Starkey will tell you that the English were not Protestants and never had any huge revolution or demand for a Protestant church, and many of them were in fact hardcore Catholics, which led to things such as this Pilgrimage of Grace - Wikipedia. There were small pockets of Protestants, but nothing like what one would have seen in Germany. This being the case, when Queen Elizabeth finally settled the religious question it's called 'The English Religious Settlement', as there were far too many Catholics for the kinds of things one was seeing on the continent. During this Settlement, changes were actually made to accommodate Catholics, such as within the Book of Common Prayer, and freedom of belief for things like Holy Communion (Real Presence) etc.

"The settlement of 1559 had given Protestants control of the Church of England, but matters were different at the parish level, where Catholic priests and traditional laity held large majorities. The bishops struggled for decades to impose the Prayer Book and Injunctions on reluctant parishes. "For a while, it was possible to sustain an attenuated Catholicism within the parish framework, by counterfeiting the mass, teaching the seven sacraments, preserving images of saints, reciting the rosary, observing feasts, fasts, and customs."

So the short of it is, the AC sees itself as the true Catholic Church, and the RCC as having bastardised itself with superstition, which the Anglicans have righted.

 

[duvduv]

If it turns out that the doctrine of the sacral society was inherited from the Jewish Bible as the theological or theocratic kingdom, then that would explain how the Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists got the idea. But what was their theological pretext for giving it up?