Ecclesiocentrism Is Not Ecclesiocracy

Ecclesiocentrism is not ecclesiocracy.

The church’s authority and centrality derive from her mission to disciple the nation by proclaiming and applying the Word of God to all of life; her access to the heavenly throne room in prayer, which means even if she does not have access to the Oval Office or the royal chamber of an earthly king, the heavenly King who rules over all invites her to give counsel; and the power to rebuke, correct, discipline, and excommunicate her members, including magistrates, when they violate God’s Word. Preaching, prayer, and discipline are all political acts; they shape public life and (when carried out faithfully) serve the public good. The church is an earthly but supernatural institution; her power comes from above. She is the embassy of the kingdom of God on earth. She is a royal priesthood. The church’s vocabulary – including the word “ekklesia” – is shot through with terms that had distinct political overtones in the first century context, including words like “gospel,” “kingdom,” and most especially the contra-Caesar confession, “Jesus is Lord.”

The church is a public, political body, though her political actions do not operate in the same way or on the same plane as earthly magistrates. The church wields the sword of the Spirit; the state has the sword of iron. If the state has a duty to promote the true religion, that includes not just recognizing the Bible as the Word of God, but also the church as Christ’s body and bride. And if the church has a mission to disciple the nation, the includes discipling magistrates.

In a properly Christian nation, the establishment of a church, wed to civil power, is not necessary (or even desirable in many cases), but the magistrate would be attentive to Word as faithfully preached by the church. There would be a relationship of mutual respect and honor between the two institutions, but no blending of them. My guess is that in a nation with a high number of Christians and healthy churches, civil courts would be largely unnecessary because the church’s elders would handle most disputes. The threat of excommunication would weigh more heavily than any penalties the state could impose (though the state’s penalties would be necessary in some cases, such as murder).

Old covenant Israel provides the model. The prophets and kings held different offices, representing different institutions. The test of a king’s faithfulness is his submission to God’s Word through the prophets. But sometimes kings have to step in and correct abuses or failings within the church (eg, Josiah). Church and state act as a check and balance on one another. They serve one another, and in doing so, serve the kingdom of God.

While you can see this kind of mutuality in colonial America, right up through the revolutionary period, since we became a formal nation, it has rarely functioned as it should. Jefferson and Madison conceived of religion in private terms, and over time, their view won out. The privatization of the church and the faith opened the door to a new, unhistorical reading of the first amendment and the resulting secularization of the public square. Freedom for the Christian religion morphed into freedom from the Christian religion. The shift from Christian faith holding a privileged position in public life to a privatized faith that is not supposed to have any bearing on public life is really the story of America’s downgrade and degradation. JFK’s successful presidential bid as the first Roman Catholic president in 1960 sums it up. JFK insisted his religious convictions would be kept private and would have no bearing on how he acted politically. Kennedy claimed the separation of church and state was “absolute” and that his vision of America was of a place “where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners whom to vote for.” The church, after all, was politically irrelevant. He said, “I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affairs.” In fact, for Kennedy being a good American was far more important than being a good Christian or Romanist: “I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic party’s candidate for President who happens to be Catholic.” This is precisely the wound from which the American church needs to heal. If there’s anything encouraging in the last few years, it’s that many pastors, churches, and Christians are recognizing that secularism has failed, and so we must fight back, using all the tools and weapons our faith gives us to use in the public square. The distinctly liberal, American concept of a “private Christian” is giving way to a restored and militant “public church.”