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Protecting the Church from the State

Protecting the Church from the State

Last updated on: July 22, 2026 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Protecting the Church from the State 2026-07-18T16:40:11-04:00 Gene Veith

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Part III of our series on the Doctrine of the Two Kingdom: This is the issue of most importance today, when the state presumes to dictate what the church and its members are allowed to believe and practice. This includes overt persecution and issues of religious liberty. But this aspect of the Two Kingdoms teaching also addresses what many Christians today would like to see: a state church; Christianity as the national religion; the state enforcing Christian teaching.

You might think that Lutherans should be the last to complain about these kinds of arrangements, since, despite their doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, they have often been state churches and, in some countries, still are the state church. But, as you will see, this has given Lutherans bitter experience to draw on. We will discuss both the Prussian Union, which precipitated the migrations that led to the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and the “German Christian” movement that Nazified the church. As I show, there is a reason why all of the state churches in Europe are liberal in the extreme. And why confessional orthodoxy thrives only in churches that are independent of the state. . . .

Fortunately, the possibility of imposing a “Confessional State”–whether of the Catholic, Reformed, or Pentecostal variety–in our highly secularized nation today is, at the most, zero. Integralism, New Apostolic Reformation, and Dominionism are mainly thought experiments and discussion fodder on the internet. But they have done their damage in tempting Christians away from the Gospel, turning congregations into political machines, and driving away terrified non-Christians.

The bigger issue today is how Christians can function in our highly secularized nation and in nations that are actively hostile to the church and its teachings. The doctrine of the Two Kingdoms can protect the church from the state.

The danger the church in the Western democracies face is not so much the overt persecution that is still practiced in Communist and Islamic countries but the state dictating what the church is allowed to teach and practice. In those cases, the state rules the church. Put another way, the dominant secular ideologies favored by the government and the culture as a whole determine and limit the message of the church.

This too has been tried historically, including among Lutherans. The Reformation opposition to the temporal authority of the church led to a new appreciation for the God-given temporal authority of the rulers of the state. Thus, the Lutheran princes in Germany played a key role in Luther’s reformation of the church. The consequent religious wars, in which the Roman church tried to eradicate the Reformation by force through the Holy Roman Emperor, were finally settled by applying the principle of cuius regio, eius religio–“whose realm, his religion”–meaning that the religion of the ruler, whether Catholic or Lutheran or, after the Thirty Years’ War, Reformed, would be the religion of his dominion. This would lead to the establishment of “state churches” throughout Europe. The Scandinavian kingdoms, many of the German principalities, and scattered enclaves in Eastern Europe had Lutheran state churches. The Netherlands, Scotland, many of the cantons of Switzerland, and a number of the principalities of Germany and Eastern Europe had Calvinist state churches, with the Church of England following its own brand of Reformed theology in Anglicanism. The Catholic nations–Italy, France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire–in effect had a state church, but they followed the older model of papal supremacy. But in the Protestant state churches, the king, queen, or other secular ruler was the head of the church.

The state Lutheran churches would seem to be violating the confessional principle of the distinction between the Two Kingdoms. But, arguably, the church and state could work together if both spheres respected the jurisdiction of each other, with the church considering the sovereign’s control to be limited only to the church’s temporal, institutional existence. But the inherent contradictions came to a head in the 19th century when the king of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm III–a patron of the Enlightenment whose own religious convictions were Reformed–became head of the Lutheran state church. Because of its militarism and the defeat of Napoleon, Prussia ruled much of Germany, including many Reformed principalities. To merge his realm into one state church under control of the king, Friedrich Wilhelm imposed a common liturgy that both Lutheran and Reformed congregations were required by law to use, one that toned down the Lutherans’ sacramental theology. The king also mandated that the two confessions join together into one church body, known as the Prussian Union. Pastors who refused to conduct the new liturgy and to accept the new merger–who were overwhelmingly Lutheran–were suspended, evicted from their parsonages, and banned from ministry. If they still served their flock in private, they were imprisoned. In some cases with resistant congregations, soldiers were sent in to be quartered in the homes of dissidents and to take over church buildings.

The Prussian Union was the catalyst for large-scale migrations of confessional Lutherans to America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, and the remaining Lutheran principalities of Germany. Those who came to America would become the founders of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. They were not seeking a state church, since they were witnesses of how a state-controlled church can be devastating to orthodox theology. Nor were they seeking a “confessional state.” Rather, they were seeking religious liberty. They found it in the United States of America.

Later, an even more malignant case of the state’s rule over the church came about with the rise of Nazism in Germany. The so-called “German Christian” movement even used Two Kingdom language to justify the Nazification of the church. Since God rules through the secular government, the secular government must be a legitimate object of devotion and worship. The “German Christians” took over the state churches–whether Lutheran, Reformed, or Union–and imposed a Nazi theology. The state churches in Germany had long adopted the higher critical approach to Scripture along with liberal theology, which taught that in order for Christianity to survive, it must change to conform to modern culture. Allow me to quote myself, from an article I wrote for Religion & Liberty Online:

The modern culture their theologians sought to conform to was that of National Socialism. To eliminate the Jewish foundations of Christianity, they called for removing the Old Testament from the Bible. They also published a “dejudaized” version of the New Testament that removed Jewish references and concepts.

What about Jesus? Wasn’t He a Jew? The “German Christians” claimed he was not. Jesus was from Galilee, which they said had been settled by Aryans from Iran and India. These Galileans were supposedly forced to convert to Judaism, but they were not Jews “by blood.” The “German Christians” denied that Jesus was miraculously born of the Virgin Mary, teaching instead that He was the illegitimate son of a Germanic soldier serving in the Roman legion. Thus, according to them, Jesus was an Aryan and a German!

The “German Christians” went so far as to commission the poet and historical novelist Lulu von Strauss und Torney to write a “Fifth Gospel” depicting this Nazi view of Jesus. In her narrative, she removed Christ’s miracles, His moral teachings, His saving work, and His resurrection. Rather, she portrayed Him as a German hero who battled the Jews until they crucified Him.

The “German Christians” also repudiated Christian ethics, with its emphasis on love, compassion, and forgiveness. These were signs of what they called “negative Christianity,” with its dogmas, fixation on sin, and calls for repentance. Instead, the “German Christians” promoted what they called “positive Christianity,” which was an optimistic, this-worldly, fighting religion.[1]

This idolatry was opposed by the so-called “Confessing Church,” whose most famous proponent was the pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed in a concentration camp. Another important leader was Hermann Sasse, who after the war migrated to Australia and became an important advocate for confessional Lutheranism, becoming an ally of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Some 700 dissenting pastors were arrested, including the head of the underground church, Martin Niemöller, who was sent to a concentration camp but survived. Confessing congregations often protected their pastors. Again, quoting myself:

According to William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Germany in 1935 had, in round numbers, 18,000 Protestant pastors. Of these, 3,000 were “German Christians.” An equal number were committed to the Confessing Church. The other 12,000 kept their heads down, publicly committing to neither side.

The tendency has been to disparage that silent majority, but very likely many and maybe most of them took Niemöller’s advice simply to remain faithful in their local congregations, teaching and preaching like before, despite what the hierarchy might say. And they took at least some risk in not embracing the “German Christians.”[2]

Today, Europe is overwhelmingly secular. And yet its state churches, for the most part, remain. Pretty much without exception, from the Church of England’s wokery to the Church of Finland’s embrace of the LGBTQ cause and its complicity in the persecution of Päivi Räsänen and Bishop Juhana Pohjola, the state churches are theologically liberal and heterodox. Confessional Lutheranism survives only in church bodies that are independent of the state, which is the arrangement most compatible with the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms.

Next up: Clarifying the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms

Notes

[1] Gene Edward Veith, “Fighting for the Church in a Time of Crisis: The Barmen Declaration,” Religion & Liberty Online, 23 May 2024. https://blog.acton.org/archives/125566-fighting-for-the-church-in-a-time-of-crisis-the-barmen-declaration.html. All of this is documented in Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).

[2] Ibid.

Illustration: Martyrdom of the three Lutherans–Robert Barnes, Thomas Garret, and William Hierome–on the order of King Henry VIII, head of the Church of England (1541), from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1684), Public Domain via Sacrifiles.

[See Foxe’s account here.]

German Christian Movement

Prussian Union

state churches

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July 21, 2026

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