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The Baptist View of the State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Conrad Henry Moehlman
Conrad Henry Moehlman
Affiliation:
The Colgate-Rochester Divinity School
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Extract

Anabaptism, the bête noire of confessional Protestantism, cursed at least once in most sixteenth century confessions of faith from Augsburg and Trent on, classified under the Deformation of the Reformation by Kurtz, and reconsidered by Troeltsch, is now interpreted by Schuster and Franke as the third primary type of Reformation Protestantism. Quiescent Protestantism, otherwise known as Lutheranism, and militant Protestantism, otherwise know as Calvinism, are at present represented as walking down the Reformation board-walk with radical Anabaptism.

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 1937 , pp. 24 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1937

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References

1 Seventeen times in the Formula of Concord.

2 About 1609.

3 About 1642.

4 McGlothlin, W. J., Baptist Confessions of Faith, 1911, pp. 6–84.Google Scholar

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6 Ibid., p. 187.

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14 It will be recalled that the Synod of Philadelphia in 1729 qualified its adoption of chapters 20 and 23 of the Westminster Confession by adding “the Synod do unanimously declare, that they do not receive those articles in any such sense as to suppose the civil magistrate hath a controlling power over synods with respect to the exercise of their ministerial authority; or power to persecute any for their religion, or in any sense contrary to the Protestant succession to the throne of Great Britain” (Mode, , Sourcebook and Bibliographical Guide, p. 268).Google Scholar After the formation of the United States, article XXIII, section III, was altered to conform to the new political situation.

When the synod of Congregational churches in Massachusetts, convened by the General Court, constructed the Cambridge Platform in 1648, it stated in point 15:

“Church government and civil government may very well stand together, it being the duty of the magistrates to take care of matters of religion, and to improve his civil authority for observing the duties commanded in the first, as well as in the second table, seeing the end of their office in matters of righteousness and honesty, but also in matters of Godliness. I Timothy 2:12.”

This confirmed the principles of the Westminster Confession regarding the relation between church and state and demonstrated again what was at issue in the struggle for religions liberty.

15 Ibid., p. 306.

16 Ibid., pp. 310 ff.

17 Ibid., p. 352.

18 Ibid., p. 360.

19 Ibid., p. 367.

20 The Eighth Annual Session of the Baptist Congress (Toronto, 1889) devoted a meeting to the relation between state and church. It is interesting to observe that only Canadian Baptists contended for the taxing of church property. Walter Kauschenbusch argued for an interpenetration of the life of church and state, holding that there is a “positive connection which the church must necessarily have with the state. Brethren, I feel sometimes that in our strong statements of the separation between Church and State we have come to gather up our skirts and to act as if the State had no claim on us; that somehow our life as Christians and as citizens can be cut asunder; that on one side we can be Christians and on the other side, we can be citizens. It is not true. We must be the two things at the same time.” Since the World War the various Protestant denominations in the United States have adopted declarations against war. They have been conveniently gathered in Wilcox, F. M., Seventh-Day Adventists in Time of War, Washington, 1936, pp. 399–407.Google Scholar

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34 Ibid., I, p. 420.

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55 Ibid., p. 51.

56 Ibid., p. 496 (Oct. 1776).

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58 Ibid., pp. 500–509.

59 Thom, , op. cit., pp. 78f; text on p. 79.Google Scholar

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