Reggie Weems Blog

As a Pastor my attention is intentionally and carefully balanced between five things; shepherding the congregation, conversing with the unregenerate, visioning for our congregation, preaching and teaching the Word and leading our staff and ministry teams.  My pastoral role models are John Bunyan, Richard Baxter and W.A. Criswell.  There are also occasions when, as the pastor of Heritage, I lead our congregation to address “public arena, critical issues of the day” which incorporates the visioning, preaching and leading aspects of my ministry.  Such an occasion recently occurred via the marriage amendment act for Tennessee.   
 
Many of my pastoral brethren in Northeast Tennessee refrain from addressing such hot topic and controversial issues from the pulpit, much less attempt to lead their entire congregation toward a single opinion on such subjects.  They fear that ‘taking sides’ in such issues alienates them from those whom they are attempting to reach with the gospel.  I certainly understand and respect their position.  I also hope they understand and at the very least, respect my position.  In addition, there is, of course, the (unscriptural and unwarranted) concern that the church should not address politics or be involved in political issues and that is the point of this blog.
 
I must confess that I have not invested a lot of time researching my position for this particular blog although I have spent many years considering the subject and viewing ministry models.  I simply do not have the time this week to research the full biblical scope on this matter.  Teana and I will leave on Monday for the Tennessee Baptist Convention.  Its business will require us to be absent from Heritage for three full days, making it essential that I spend the vast majority of this week in sermon preparation for both this week and next.  At the same time, it is impossible for me to refrain from addressing what are commonly but mistakenly known as the political issues of our day.  There are valid, scriptural reasons for doing this.  So, I am thinking as I write (always dangerous) but ask you to weigh what I say against the Scripture in order to assess its validity.  I will address only a few very simple, yet profound and irrefutable reasons why the church must address and involve itself in the American political arena. 

First, we simply cannot shy away from what are genuinely biblical issues made political by politicians who want to separate morality from the church’s pulpits and silence pastors on these issues.  Anytime a politician wants to get his way and quiet the church, he or she claims an issue is political.  For a Christian, there are no issues separate from their Christianity.  The Bible speaks to all of life.  We do not have spiritual and secular lives.  There is no single issue now being discussed amongst politicians that does not have a biblical foundation or spiritual ramifications.  Do we think that God did not foresee 21^st century real life issues and thus forget to address them in His Word?  Are the Bible’s principles invalid for such a time as this?  Politicians turn morality into a political football and forbid the church to field a team.  But consider this…..      
 
Secondly, To create a nation requires three essential ingredients; a people, a place and a government.  God chose the Hebrews, placed them in Palestine and intended to rule over them as their King.  That’s right.  Israel was a theocracy and God was King.  God established the government, gave the people their rules and authorized leaders to enforce His policies.  That in itself is sufficient to assure every believer that God never intended a “separation of church and state.”  In fact, that such a philosophy is entirely unbiblical and against God’s intended scheme for nations.  Even when human kings began to rule over Israel, they did so by God’s divinely revealed laws.  No separation of church and state there. 

Thirdly, the Lord Jesus Himself confirmed that Christians, as citizens, are to render to Caesar (the government) what belonged to him (Luke 20:25) and to submit to governmental powers (Romans 13:1) which He creates and destroys (Daniel 4:25).  Thus God Himself is the sovereign of governments, their leadership and policies.  In the garden, God’s representative was given dominion over the earth.  The fall did not eradicate that command or responsibility.  As God’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20); light and salt (Matthew 5:14), Christians have the divinely ordained right and responsibility to represent Christ in every arena of life.  As such, we do not need less Christians involved in American politics but more.  The church is God’s voice, the pillar of truth (1 Timothy 3:15) in a world intentionally denying truth.  That voice is not intended to be silent but vocal, not mute but heard.     

               
Fourthly, there is no official document in our country’s founding, be it the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and/or Bill of Rights that even hints at a separation of church and state.  The founding fathers were not all Christians but were all in agreement that no nation could survive without the Bible as its foundation and source for laws, etc.  This is well documented and undeniable.  The language of our founding documents themselves, contain numerous references to the Divine.  The words “separation of church and state” occur in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Danbury Connecticut Baptist pastors who were concerned that the new country would create a church state, much like England’s Catholic or Protestant monarchies, under which Baptists had continually suffered since their founding in the early sixteen hundreds.  Jefferson’s “wall of separation” insured these men that a national church would never exist and that all religions would be equally tolerated.  The Connecticut Baptists’ fears were well founded.  Personally, I refuse to even discuss this issue with anyone who has not sufficiently schooled themselves in the founding documents or attempted to understand the Munster rebellion in Germany or Thomas Helwys’ The Mystery of Iniquity.  (I dare you.  The next time someone attempts to debate the “separation” issue with you, ask them if they know where the phrase “wall of separation” is found and what the Munster rebellion was or who Thomas Helwys was.  Without an understanding of these three all-important issues, no one has a historically accurate background from which to intelligently discuss the issue of separation of church and state.  (When Teana and I were in England with our Community Group on our Puritan tour, we were able to see and hold a first edition copy of The Mystery of Iniquity.)
The founding fathers never intended the church to be separate from the state.  They intended the state to stay out of the church and this is clearly denoted in the language of the Bill of Rights.

We should not wrap the cross in a flag, as did a recent issue of Newsweek.  Christianity is bigger, broader and of more eternal significance than political parties or national sentimentalities.  But we cannot deny that God has intentionally placed us in time and space.  We should not shut our eyes to the influence we are commanded to exude in the world.  And so it is that on Tuesday, November 7^th, 2006, I encourage Christians everywhere to exercise their God-given responsibility, American-provided privilege to vote and to always encourage any pastor who possesses the courage to and desires to lead his church in proclaiming God’s eternal truths to a world in need.  Oh, by the way, the paradox in which we live is keenly evident in the fact that as later today Teana and I will vote, we will do so in a church building.