May 6, 2002
Commerntary:
New version, same denial of liberty
By Joseph Underwood
___President Bush, in his sincere desire to alleviate the impoverished and to rescue the addicted from enslavement to their addictions, still is calling for federal funds to be supplied to churches to engage in redemptive ministries. (Some have already been provided this unconstitutional dole by executive order through one cabinet office.)
___His sincerity is gratifying; his method is alarming!
___Apparently, for lack of knowledge of church history for 2,000 years, his lack of theological studies lead him to insist upon methods that constitute the abolition of religious liberty and the death of spiritual vitality in the very churches he wishes to assist and use.
___Those religious entities that traditionally have depended upon, and even demanded, government dole applaud his suggestions. Those who believe in religious liberty shudder!
___President Bush recommends church-state "partnership." I have lived in several countries and worked in many others, and I wish it were possible to take the president on a tour of conditions in countries that practice "church-state partnership."
___It usually is a partnership that allows one side or the other to dominate. In either case, all residents in that country are coerced to support religions, perhaps of one religious persuasion only, or of all religious and (in our president's plan) even anti-religious entities (to show its impartiality).
Church/ State "partnerships" usually result in majoritarian dominance and persecution.
___Two tragedies are inevitable: Religious liberty is abolished, and spiritual vitality is undermined, and, eventually, slaughtered.
___Not only does such "partnership" result in majoritarian dominance, it also results in persecution of those whose religious beliefs differ from the church of the partnership.
___I lived in a country in which the constitution guaranteed religious freedom. In practice, however, the centuries-old dominance of the majority religious body freely persecuted the minority groups, usually with impunity. In one country in which I worked various times, I visited an aged woman who was imprisoned for 30 days because in her own home she read the New Testament to a small group of neighboring women. I saw the stripes, horrible whelps, on the body of a young man who was drafted into the military and frequently beaten because he maintained his loyalty to Jesus Christ as Lord, rather than swearing allegiance to the country's "goddess."
___I saw church buildings destroyed, Bibles burned, multitudes intimidated—all by those involved in "church-state partnership."
___These persecutions are not of long-ago history; they are of less than 30 years ago. Even in one U.S. stat, the dominant religion, with state knowledge, practiced cruel injustices to children of other, or no, religious convictions—until prolonged endeavors and costs secured rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court. This was not in colonial history, but only a few years ago!
___Even without such violence, the coercion of any person to give to religious institutions constitutes the abolition of religious liberty, the freedom with which every human being was endowed by God in the moment of creation. To be a person, one must enjoy freedom to worship God in any and all facets of worship or to abstain from worship. Volantatarism is essential, or it is not worship! Repentance, faith, prayer, worship, giving and witnessing cannot be coerced without obliterating freedom and reality. Prayer coerced is not prayer!
___The other undeniable fact is that churches that receive government dole lose their spiritual vitality, for they have repudiated the Cross. Jesus said, "Anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). He clearly advised his disciples that just as it was morally essential for him to go to the Cross, so was it morally necessary that they "deny self, take up the cross, and follow him" (Matthew 16:24-25).
___If we do not love and appreciate Jesus Christ sufficiently to worship him with generous giving, giving that costs us personally, we do not value him and the ministries his churches are motivated to provide by the love of God, and we die spiritually. A church that eliminates the Cross by accepting government-coerced money eliminates its spiritual life. We live by dying! When Jesus was invited by the Greeks to come with them to Athens, where he would be honored as a philosopher rather than crucified, he replied: "It was for this very reason (to go to the Cross) that I came to this hour" (John 12:27).
___The church that does not practice redemptive ministries, spontaneously impelled by the love of Christ, is dead. It died, if it ever lived, because, as Jesus said: "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed, but if it dies, it produces many seeds" (John 12:24). "Whosoever wants to save his life will lose it" (Matthews 16:25).
___The church that wants to save itself the cost, personal and financial, of redemptive ministries is already dead! The church that loses itself—confronting the risks and paying the costs, lives and thrives.
___--Joseph Underwood
___Richmond, Va.
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