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Five Views of Church-State Power Interaction1 min read

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separation-of-church-and-stateI recently rediscovered a lecture by Brian Mclaren on The Four Historic Models for Church/State Interaction, and realized that (a) they needed one word formal labels, and (b) there is one more. So here they are people.

  • Theocracy – Religious power is supreme and eclipses government (Islam)
  • Establishmentism – Official state church (England)
  • Pietism – The church retreats from the public policy sphere (German Lutherans)
  • Prophetic – The church and state are independent, but the Church takes the role of providing prophetic ethical support in public policy under a secular and/or non-hostile government (United States).
  • Persecuted – State power is used to suppress faith (Communism). The Church can still be prophetic under tyranny