"A Protestant Dissenting View," a paper read at the Indiana Methodist Institute on Church-State Relations; published in A Dialogue on Church and State, pages 44-51 (1963-10-05)

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A PROTESTANT DISSENTING VIEW*
Although the problem of achieving racial justice fills our newspapers
and church publications, in the long; haul there is another public problem
which will require much more commitment of energy and enlightened imagination
before it is resolved. It Is a significant fact that there have been, over
recent years, more cases before the Federal Courts on the proper relations
of church and state than on such a sensitive issue as race. In the race
issue we are dealing with a problem which, so far as the law is concerned,
Is relatively simple in spite of the emotional land-mines which infest the
terrain.  Are all Americans, regardless of racial origin, to enjoy the
rights and privileges of first class citizenship? Will we succeed in subduing the spirit of anarchy and the rapacity of the jungle? Will we manage
to live like civilized men under the rule of law? Vie must, and we shall.
In the matter of church-state relations, however, the problem is much
more complex. The commitments of civilized men of opinions, now widely
different, are far more deeply rooted. The American experiment of religious
liberty and voluntaryism is much more far-reaching in its implications and
it represents a much more radical break with past ways of doing things.
Racism is a comparatively new misuse of government: the misuse and abuse
of religion is as old as government itself. It can be predicted with a high
degree of certainty that long after every American citizen, of whatever race,
is able proudly to say with St. Paul "I was born free!", - and have it carry
meaning - our children and children's children will be wrestling with the
problem of making a system work in which fellow-citizens adhere to the same
political covenant but are devoted to separate religious covenants. For
this was the really radical departure initiated by the Great Bill of Religious
Freedom of Virginia and subsequently fixed in the First Amendment to the
Federal Constitution. Cur fathers dared something which rests on principles
dramatically new in human history:
1. That men can be won to religious service and devotion
on a voluntary basis;
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2. That that service only is pleasing to God which is
voluntary and uncoerced;
3. That men can live together as responsible fellow
citizens even though they go to different churches.
These insists, which afford the foundation of the American tradition,
represent a fundamental departure from previous adjustments between religion
and culture and politics. All pre-Biblical civilizations have used religion
as a tool of social cohesion, as the cement of society, as the sanctifier of
political or military purpose and accepted social norms. The gods were there
*A paper by Dr. Franklin H. Littell, Professor, Chicago Theological Seminary,
October 5, 1963, at the Indiana Methodist Institute on Church-State Relations.
ia'Printe.d in A Dialogue on Church and State, October 5, 1963, pp. 44-51.