[Vision2020] kirk email

[Andreas Schou]

On 11/8/05, Michael <metzler at moscow.com> wrote:
>
>  Dale Wrote (see his link):
>
> The U.S. Supreme Court held in *McDaniel v. Paty* (1978) that ministers
> may serve in state legislatures and hold public office. If a minister may
> serve in a public office, certainly he may testify as an individual before a
> public office. Just because you are a pastor doesn't mean that you lose your
> rights to speak. But that doesn't keep zealots from fighting for that
> result.
>
>  Me:
>
> I just called Wilson to confirm what I thought his position on this is.
> Generally speaking (i.e. with qualifications regarding abnormal times,
> etc) Wilson is very sympathetic with law not permitting an active minister
> to also hold public office. And I know I don't think a minister should be
> permitted to hold public office while they are actively serving as a
> minister (although Dale's statement of the ruling is ambiguous here). Wilson
> can testify as an individual, and I'd think he could even testify as a
> prophet from God, but I don't think that MCDaniel v. Paty is a good
> justification for it, although it certainly seems to legally justify it.
> Separation of Church and State is a wonderful fruit of Christianity.
>

Michael --

You're being slightly disingenuous here. 'Separation of Church and State'
does not mean the same to many Kirkers -- and I assume you -- as I assume it
does to most other Americans. Feel free to interrupt me if I've gotten this
wrong: this is a patchwork quilt of Wilsonian sociotheology that I've picked
up from email correspondence, personal conversations, and Wilson's writings.
Still, I've gotten this argument several times: "we believe in separation of
Church and State," and at first I assumed it was a lie. Then I realized that
it was true, but none of the words meant what I thought they meant.

To most Americans, "Separation of Church and State" means that there is a
state monopoly on coercion: the state can force you to give taxes, the state
can compel you to join the military, the state can authorize you to kill
people in war. The state considers religion to be a matter of personal
conscience -- that an individual has their relationship with the holy and
the state may not interpose.

First, let's start with what 'Church' means to Wilson. The 'Church' is the
entirety of Christendom, consisting, under the New Covenant, of all those
that have been baptized. I have been baptized, and am therefore part of the
Church, though I do not consider myself a Christian. The point is that I am
not the one who decides that I am a Christian: that decision is made by my
baptism. As a presuppositionalist, he also believes that I know that God
exists and am denying his existence because I hate Him. I am therefore,
despite my protestations, not an atheist but an apostate Christian. As a
side note, this is the backing argument to Wilson's suport of paedobaptism:
a proper baptism is a precondition to election (insofar as there can be a
'precondition' to a predestined event).

Wilson believes that God has a relationship with the Church in which the
state cannot interpose. The relationship between God and any one individual
is secondary to the relationship between God and, essentially, the whole of
Christendom. The Church therefore has a divinely ordained right to certain
forms of coercion: the Church is to maintain the moral order of the world.
That means that the Church, within the sphere of moral order, is divinely
ordained to have the power of coercion, including lethal coercion. When
Wilkins (the co-theologian of the Auburn theology) defends Cotton Mather in
the Salem Witch Trials, he is defending the right of the Church to maintain
moral order by executing those who break it. Presumably, the Church is also
endowed with the right to supervise those activities which are demanded by
the Bible -- charity, theological education, and whatnot. The Church may
also, if it pleases, demand a tithe. Those powers that are not endowed to
the Church belong to the heads of households, who are men.

The state is therefore almost vestigal; an appendage that maintains the
roads, civil order, and the military. It can probably still levy fines and
make certain laws (those that do not infringe on the Church's right to
enforce moral order) but it otherwise is subject to the moral supervision of
the Church. Ever wonder why Dale could belong to such an authoritarian
church yet claim to be a Libertarian? It's because many of the things we
think of as the responsibilities of the state, he delegates to the Church.

Many things about Wilson's theology that are confusing to outsiders can be
resolved simply by asking what those words might've meant to a twelth
century theologian rather than yourself.

As for freedom of conscience -- which is what I believe 'Separation of
Church and State means' -- -- it is specifically repudiated by Wilson. The
best one might hope for is something like the Turkish millet system or the
Malaysian system where Muslims are punished under sharia and all others are
tried by the civil magistrate. As an apostate Christian, though, it doesn't
particularly matter to me: I have been baptized, and am thus subject to
severe Church discipline.

-- ACS

Now we can all be friends and start talking about sex again. :-)
>
>  Thanks!
>
> Michael Metzler
>
>
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