Reformation Lutheran Church<\/p>\n
Anno Domini 2001<\/p>\n
\u00a0Church and State:\u00a0 the role of the church; the role of God\u2019s law (justice).\u00a0\u00a0 (Theocracy and democracy)<\/p>\n
\u00a0Statement<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>The role of the Churches with respect to the state is prophetic.\u00a0 The Church of God, as the \u201cpillar of Truth\u201d (1 Tim. 3:15), must address the state with the Truth, and it must advocate justice.\u00a0 The various local churches ought to form leagues of churches in their various municipalities for the purpose of formulating and issuing to the civil authority joint statements concerning the moral issues at hand.<\/p>\n The role of a state, the ideal state, which the Churches of God pray for, is as a servant of the Messiah, its ruler (Psalm 2:10-12; Romans 13).\u00a0 The just state will not recognize false churches.\u00a0 (No non-Trinitarian \u201cchurch\u201d ought to be granted tax-exempt status.)\u00a0 Rather, the proper posture of a just state is to submit itself to the Messiah and honor His Laws. The state ought to recognize itself as God\u2019s servant (Romans 13:4).\u00a0 And as the state follows this ideal, Christian citizens can appropriately follow the ideal of obedience to it (v. 5).<\/p>\n Our federal system of government is a contract between sovereign state governments in which the powers of the whole are distinguished from those of the individual states. The Tenth Amendment provides that those powers not specifically given to the general government \u201care reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.\u201d\u00a0 At the time the federal Constitution was ratified all the States had explicitly Christian Constitutions, some, such as Connecticut with its 1650 Fundamental Orders grounding, their laws explicitly in various books of the Pentateuch referenced by name, chapter, and verse.<\/p>\n The Churches of God never ruled any of the respective States, but the civil rulers in those states all recognized their obligation under God as His very servants who were beholden to Him to rule with His justice as all oaths \u2500 \u201cso help me God\u201d (the God of the Bible, understood) \u2500 reiterated. And to insure that the people were not ruled by infidels or atheists,\u00a0 church membership or belief in the Trinity or belief in \u201cGod\u201d on the part of office holders was required by various New England states.\u00a0 Maryland was \u201cprogressive\u201d in the mid seventeenth century with its Act of Toleration by which it provided tolerance for Roman Catholics (as Trinitarians).\u00a0 It provided that no person \u201cprofessing to believe in Jesus Christ shall from henceforth be in any way troubled, molested or discountenanced, for or in respect of his or her Religion, nor in the free exercise thereof within this Province. . .\u201d<\/p>\n Whether or not justice, (the increase of His government\u00a0 a la Isaiah 9:7)\u00a0 is in recess or advancement in a given time and place; whether or not the Law of God is in vogue,\u00a0 it is always the duty of the Churches of the Messiah to proclaim justice and advocate the advancement of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reformation Lutheran Church Anno Domini 2001 \u00a0Church and State:\u00a0 the role of the church; the role of God\u2019s law (justice).\u00a0\u00a0 (Theocracy and democracy) \u00a0Statement The role of the Churches with respect to the state is prophetic.\u00a0 The Church of God, as the \u201cpillar of Truth\u201d (1 Tim. 3:15), must address the state with the Truth, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-position-papers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":418,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions\/418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u00a0Explanation<\/h2>\n