Nowadays, people talk much about the “separation of church and state”. Some folks even claim historical figures to make their case for it. Some insist the Reformation gian Martin Luther woud have approved of today’s effort to keep the church from getting involved in politics and government. According to the guest commentary below, courtesy of the American Renewal Project, they might want to think again …
God’s Champion
By Dr. Laurence White
Senior Pastor, Our Savior Lutheran Church/Houston, TX
Protestant Christendom is about to celebrate the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation on October 31st. This grand celebration will occur at a time when the church faces a crisis every bit as serious as that which confronted the reformers in the 16th Century.
The biblical values which have provided the foundation for western culture, and specifically that of America, are under unprecedented assault. The passive silence of the church and her pastors in the face of this attack had been a key component in its success.
It is sadly ironic that in their crusade to banish people of faith from the public square the radical secularists of our day regularly assert that the great reformers shared their dedication to the absolute separation of church and state. With their characteristic disregard for truth or factual accuracy this contention is endlessly repeated by the secularists.
As Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of Propaganda cynically noted, “Truth is nothing more than a lie repeated a thousand times.” Contemporary secularists recognize that they must silence the voices of faithful pastors if their godless religion is to prevail in America.
Unfortunately, their efforts have met with considerable success. All too many Christians have been convinced that the Reformation’s assertion of the biblical doctrine of the two kingdoms forbids any involvement by God’s spokesmen in politics. Nothing could be further from the truth. The eve of the Reformation’s 500th anniversary is a most appropriate time to reassert what faithful witnesses like Dr. Martin Luther actually said about church and state, Christian pastors and political issues. For our purposes, a handful of Luther’s comments must suffice.
Luther was renown, or notorious, depending on one’s perspective, for his blunt outspokenness. As he once acknowledged, “I am no soft-stepper!” The reformer described the pastor’s God-given responsibility to address and condemn the sins of government leaders as “grabbing them by the snout.” It would seem that the nature of politics and politicians hasn’t changed much in the past 500 years! Luther recognized that government is a divine institution, established by God to maintain order and justice, to protect its citizens from the violence of criminals, and to defend against the threat of aggression from foreign enemies.
Pastors, as the advocates of God’s Word, were to play a crucial role in supporting godly government … Keep Reading the Rest @: http://theamericanrenewalproject.org/2017/10/gods-champion/
Image: Excerpted from: By Lucas Cranach the Elder – Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24971960
