Christian Faithfulness And Homosexuality: The Relationship Between Church And State

Ways for Christians to engage in politics

Discuss about the Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality.

The following essay is about the ethical things in Christianity and the relevance of politics in connection to politics. There are certain matters on why should the Christians always be cautious in participating in politics. The Christians have to be very much ethical in whatever things they do and justify their actions to the state and the church. There is an up and down relation between the church and state all through. This relationship has to be viewed in this essay as well. The state is the governing body or the state takes care of the people of the country and the Church instigates in the way the people should act, behave and present themselves in front of the others.  There have been many conflicts between the state and the church regarding their viewpoints about certain things (Kim, McCalman & Fisher, 2012). The church sees and views an issue from the prospect of the Bible or the sayings of Jesus but the state views the issues from the humanistic perspectives because they have to be justified about their activities all the time. In this case, the issue of homosexual marriage has to be discussed in connection to the relationship between church and the state.

There are certain ways by which a Christian can get engaged in politics (McGrath, 2016).  It has been said that religion and politics do not mix with each other. Therefore, the believers must not engage in direct politics According to the Bible, people can have two stands between the politics and government. The Bible has said the God has the right to take the decision about the various aspects of life.  Not only has everyone, God had the right to take the decisions about everything as well. It has also said that the plan of God is static and it cannot be altered by any means (Inge, 2017). The will of God will be implemented by any means and the government has no power to stop that from being implemented (Daniel 4:34-35). Even it can be said that kings are set up and deposed by the will of God as well (Daniel 2:21). It can also be interpreted in this context that politics is nothing but an instrument through which god imposes His various wishes on the human beings and the society (Eliot, 2014). Many times it has been seen that God some people have always used politics to gain power and use it for the evil purposes. God has always meant it for the good purposes only (Romans 8:28).

Relationship between the church and the state

Another aspect that may be considered is the aspect that government cannot save human beings from the hands of damnation but it is only in the hands of God that mankind can be saved. It has never been seen in the New Testament that Jesus or any of his apostles had been engaged in the planning ways to reform the pagan world of the evil practices in the Christianity (Brown, 2015). The apostles of Jesus never had wasted their times in protesting against the unjust and unlawful actions of the Roman Empire or the brutal things they had done. It is the duty of the subjects to obey the rules and regulations of the government and they should always be the examples of the good citizens (Romans 13:1-2). Such things have been discussed in the context of the politics and how the Christians should be engaged (Johnson, 2012). The church has some God-given purposes that is not that much appropriate in the age of the political activism. The believers in active Christianity should not engage in or spend their time, money and energy in practicing the governmental affairs (Marshall, 2014).

The Christian believers have lived and made their ways in the repressive pagan governments till they gained the supremacy in their fields. Some people had been successful to regain their cultural and religious faith despite the political and governmental pressures in several countries (Cochrane, 2015). The active participants in Christianity must believe that they had been the ones chosen for showing the light to the people towards salvation and it is not the government who does so.  However, according to the teaching of one of the apostles, Paul, it has been said that the Christians should always obey and honor the governing authorities. Besides, they should also keep faith in Christianity and work according to its sayings.

The church and the state have been the two pillars of the country where the dominant religion has been Christianity (Williams, 2017). Both of them have some specific roles according to which they perform their duties to serve the mankind. They are the chief religious and political institutions respectively. It is from the advent of Christianity that the relationship between the church and the state has been a great matter of concern. This issue has been the one in which the Christians have been very worried and concerned over the ages. The main conflicting thing that has been prevalent in this issue is the one between political activism and religious freedom (Yancey & Williamson, 2012).  This relationship is very crucial since the people have been confused over this matter. In the earlier centuries, church did not rely on the powers of the state in most of the matters but in case of some of the matters they had to rely on it like the removal of the Bishop. The conditions had changed radically and a situation had come when the Church had no financial independence so they had decided to take the financial help from the State. The Church needed to have a support from the King using the money of the state. At one time, Crusades began and the Church had its own army because the Pope had called the war (Asbridge, 2012).

Ambrose’s theory

Some theories can be attributed to this relationship between the church and the state. After the Christianity was promoted 4^th C.E the Roman Empire had begun to form itself as a Christian Empire soon. The state affairs began to be connected with the Church in a big way and the Church began to develop some theological aspects related to politics to understand the situation better (Sorauf, 2015).

According to the primary things of this theory, it is believed that it is the Church who has to cooperate with the state. Eusebius himself had said that Christian Empire should be looked at positively. He also adopted the concept that there should be only one society. That society will be run under the governance of the emperor. One thing must be regarded in this aspect that the emperor must be a Christian (Sorauf, 2015). This theory also shows that the empire should be considered as the victory of Jesus Christ. Idolatry was not that much appreciated in those days. The Empire had promoted the true religion and pressed down the idolatry. The Christian Empire had all the responsibility to look after the church. According to this theory, the churches had very little independence in the world. The Churches in the Eastern part of the world had accepted these theories (Sorauf, 2015).

According to Ambrose, it can be said that the Church has to be independent from the state. The church has to be able to take all the decisions irrespective of the opinions of the Empire or the state. In this theory, the model of the Old Testament had been used. In this model the concept of the high priest and king was used to showcase the relation between the bishop and the emperor (Sorauf, 2015). This theory says that the empire should not possess any control over the church and the Church must have completely independent powers. This should be especially valid on the issues of doctrine. Instead, the Bishop should have the power and call the king so that king can repent for the misdeeds and follow the laws of God.

According to Augustine, it can be said that the church and state are the two invisible institutions or forms of the human association. It is believed that the city of God is the earthly city. The people who live in this city love God and love themselves as well. These cities are not visible social institutions so they can be defined by their intention only (Scherer, 2013). In this aspect, it can be said that Christian Church cannot be recognized as something like city of God because the residents of Church are sometimes evil as well. On the other hand, the state does not need to be evil since they have some special duties to perform (Scherer, 2013). The objectives of a state are to secure the goodness of its citizens and the church as well. Christians should be working within the state to help the state so that the state can obtain its objectives.

Augustine’s perspective

There have been endless debates on how the issues of homosexual marriage or gay marriage should be looked at. From the earlier times, it has been believed that sex has been a gift or blessing of God that has been presented to the human beings or the fulfillment of love (Hill, 2016). This fulfillment of love must be enjoyed between husband and wife. There is no confusion or ambiguity in the interpretation of homosexuality in Bible. The concerned Scripture discusses about it in both implicit and explicit manners and describes it as being falling outside the desire of God. It has been said that all the human beings must “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). The Bible has depicted that there should not be any hatred and or hurting comments towards the people who have experienced the attraction for the same-sex people who recognize themselves as to be gay, lesbian or bisexual people (Hill, 2016).

Jesus Christ has taught the people to be sympathetic to everyone as every human being has the basic features of humanity with value and dignity (Jordan, 2013). The people who commit the sexual sin like those of the same-sex couples should be shown dignity also. In Christianity, the priority is bestowed upon pure love itself; the gender factor is not a big matter in that case (Jordan, 2013). The truth about the love should be expressed in a graceful manner properly. However, in case of marriage, there is no room for homosexual marriage since the act of marriage is believed to be a heterosexual activity. There is a divine purpose and design of marriage that has been an integral part of it. It says that God has made male and female for the creation. The man should leave his father and mother and stick to his wife and thus become one flesh. (Mark 10:6-8).

It has been observed that there has been many people who believe that heterosexuality is not the one and only legitimate marriage relation that can be transformed into marriage. The sexual preference is an inherent feature of every person and he or she was not given this choice to select between the homosexuality and heterosexuality (Masci & Lipka, 2015).  All kinds of sexual promiscuity have been prohibited in the Bible. There have been some hermeneutical methods that could help the theological experts to justify the homosexual behavior. This viewpoint about the homosexual marriage belongs to the theory of Augustine because being an invisible institution; Church has fixed some rules about the homosexual marriage. Moreover, there have been no supports from Christian Scriptures about the sexual immorality like homosexual marriage (Masci & Lipka, 2015).

Conclusion

It can be concluded that Christianity has many ethical considering that can be held as essential things in the relevant contexts. Politics is one of the most important things that have been seen with great significance over the time. The engagement in politics for the Christians has many Biblical interpretations. These ethical considerations have been discussed in this scenario. Other important things that have been discussed in this context are the relationship between the church and the state. The church and the state are the two most important pillars in the Christian society. Apart from that, the various theories in the church and state relationship have been discussed in this matter as well. The situation of homosexual marriage in the Christian context has been discussed and it has been found that Christianity does not support any immoral sexual connection that exploits the serenity of man-woman relationship.

References

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Brown, R. E. (2015). An introduction to the New Testament. Yale University Press.

Cochrane, C.N., 2015. Christianity and classical culture. Ravenio Books.

Eliot, T. S. (2014). The idea of a Christian society. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Hill, W. (2016). Washed and waiting: Reflections on Christian faithfulness and homosexuality. HarperCollins Christian Publishing.

Inge, J. (2017). A Christian theology of place. Routledge.

Johnson, P. (2012). history of Christianity. Simon and Schuster.

Jordan, M. D. (2013). Blessing same-sex unions: The perils of queer romance and the confusions of Christian marriage. University of Chicago Press.

Kim, D., McCalman, D., & Fisher, D. (2012). The sacred/secular divide and the Christian worldview. Journal of Business Ethics, 109(2), 203-208.

Marshall, R. (2014). Christianity, anthropology, politics. Current Anthropology, 55(S10), S344-S356.

Masci, D., & Lipka, M. (2015). Where Christian churches, other religions stand on gay marriage. Pew Research Center.

McGrath, A. E. (2016). Christian theology: An introduction. John Wiley & Sons.

Scherer, M. (2013). Beyond Church and State: Democracy, Secularism, and Conversion. Cambridge University Press.

Sorauf, F. J. (2015). The wall of separation: The constitutional politics of church and state. Princeton University Press.

Williams, J. O. (2017). Church & State. Dramatists Play Service, Inc..

Yancey, G., & Williamson, D. A. (2012). What Motivates Cultural Progressives?: Understanding Opposition to the Political and Christian Right. Baylor University Press.