Lutheran View of Church and State

One of my areas of interest is how the State and the Church interact. I can be honest with my readers (the few that read this blog) that my views on this issue have evolved over the years.

I recently ran across a interesting article by Pastor Matt Harrison, President of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Click here to read the entire article.

Below are a couple of key passages from Harrison's article...

What can we preach? We can urge our people to be politically active and to stand in the public square for what accords with reason and the Ten Commandments. We can preach that we as Christian citizens will join with all people of good will to promote and care for life, from womb to grave; we will support traditional marriage, and we shall oppose laws, courts and governments restricting our God-given rights — rights that were acknowledged by the Bill of Rights as inherent (not granted!). We shall urge our people to be knowledgeable about candidates’ positions on issues that the Bible speaks about and on which the church has taken a stand, and to take these issues into consideration as they make their choices.

But...

We must be quite careful not to coerce political activity. Coercion is not the business of the church [FC SD X 15]. We must avoid in every way the impression that politics or controverted issues are front and center and the Gospel is set in the background (1 Cor. 1:23; 2:2). We must take care not to allow our politics (which may take positions on all sorts of issues about which the Word of God and the church are silent) to skew our theology and preaching! I may have a political view that there should be a wall on the border. But that doesn’t change one iota of Christ’s mandate to care for the illegal/undocumented neighbor who might well be living or working next to me. (Consider Jesus love for the ‘unclean’ Samaritans and even pagans; John 4, Matt. 15:21; Luke 10:25-37; Heb. 13:1). I might have strong views on Muslim immigration, but that dare not make me unwilling and unable to see that these people are in my community already, and they need Christ (Matt. 9:37; John 3:16; Rev. 7:9; 1 Cor. 2:2). When the requirements of the two realms clash in this sinful world, the Gospel must predominate. “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

To paraphrase Harrison, we may take positions on all sorts of issues about which the Word of God and the church are silent! In other words, there is no Christian position on national defense, or on taxes, or on public transportation.