To Be Baptist or Magisterial, That is the Question
Religious liberty for all or just for a few?
Recently, American Reformer writer Timon Cline asserted that the fundamental dividing line among American Protestants is whether we hold the Baptist or magisterial position regarding civil government. What are those positions?
Institute on Religion and Democracy president Mark Tooley summarizes them succinctly and properly in this tweet.
I can think of other dividing lines but surely whether or not the state can kill those who don’t teach or advocate Christian doctrine is an important line of division. What kind of state do you want — a state which punishes blasphemy and heresy as defined by reformed Christians, or a state which promotes religious freedom and liberty for people of all faiths and no faith?
In fact, just to remind us, we now live in a nation organized according to what Cline calls the Baptist model (think Baptist Roger Williams first in Rhode Island). There is no religious test for being a magistrate in the Constitution. The U.S. is organized around the principle of religious freedom of conscience and practice for all faiths and no faith.
The American Reformer gang (these are folks who have been intruding into the business of my employer Grove City College) want to change the relationship between church and state. They want the civil authorities to emulate the authorities in some Islamic nations where blasphemy and teaching that is judged by the magistrate to be heretical are punished severely. According to Cline, the magistrate would have to act wisely, but there really isn’t a way to sugar-coat it; the state, in the magisterial system, could punish people for their religious beliefs at odds with Christianity as defined by those in power.
Readers who think this is currently a fringe position are both wrong and right. In fact, the Constitution would have be massively changed to allow this to come to fruition in the U.S. and most people want religious liberty for all religious groups. However, the problem is that there are strong movements in many states to erode the separation of church and state. For example, in Texas, lawmakers are considering proposals to require schools to post copies of the Ten Commandments in classrooms and to allow schools to hire Christian chaplains in place of certified school counselors. Christian nationalist legislative majorities are promoting de facto magisterial policies in a challenge to the Constitutional prohibition of religious establishment.
It is my impression that more and more magisterial Christians are coming forward publicly. Their bravery to say outrageous things is discouraging. Once upon a time, only the most isolated Christian reconstructionists would admit to a desire to stone gays, adulterers, and wayward sons. Now, we have a whole movement embracing the Christian nationalist banner composed of people lining up to promote punishment for those who are outside of the narrow confines of reformed Christianity.
I used to attend a Baptist church and haven’t thought of myself as a Baptist for years. However, if the choice is Baptist v. magisterial, I will, along with Mark Tooley, line up behind Baptist every time.
Attacks on democracy are not rhetorical only. Magisterial supporters want to establish Christian states where personal freedom is for certain Christians only. My response?
Baptists unite!
Related reading:
Report of an Execution From a Future Christian Nationalist State
'Christian' nationalism / magisterialism is really no different from any other form of totalitarianism, 'religious' or otherwise.
For us, it is a difficult balancing act: we must respect the right of folk to be crazy heretics (as many of us would see magisterialists to be) provided they do no harm to others, yet we have to recognize that it is impossible to reason with proponents of totalitarism: any efforts on their part to impose a totalitarian system of government simply have to be opposed by all (non-violent) means at our disposal.
It appears to me, that many who wish the State to punish blasphemy and heresy, are those who indulge in it the most, by their worship of human idols, in the form of whatever wealthy person in power proclaims their hatred for the same people they hate. And, they believe that "love your neighbor as yourself," is just some liberal fluff by that wimp from Nazareth. They prefer to pretend Scripture says, "love the sinner and hate the sin," which it does not, because then, they can better concentrate on just how much of a sinner their neighbors are.