God’s domain is the domain of the church. Here God’s laws are supreme, although there must necessarily be earthly interpreters to understand and apply them. Even so, there is also a secular realm that operates outside church control. Here we see how the idea of the “sec- ular” is itself a creation of Christianity.
It is important to recognize that separation of the realms of state and church has operated since the beginning of Christianity. It is not an invention of modernity, although in modern times this separation has been given a new and to some degree perverse form. In the Rome of the Caesars, the rulers were the emperors, and the Christian church was a persecuted minority entirely distinct from the empire. Once Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire in the late fourth century, the two realms were somewhat integrated. But even so, the church administered the sacraments and the emperor ratified and enforced the laws. Even during the tragic time of the Spanish Inquisition, if you committed heresy you were tried by the church, while if you committed murder you were tried by the state. So church and state have functioned as distinct if overlapping jurisdictions throughout Western history. Thus it is today that we in the West stare in horrified incomprehension when an Islamic government proposes to execute awoman for refusing to wear religiously mandated garb or a man for daring to convert to Christianity.
But this sort of thing did happen in the West, and unfortunately its perpetrators were Christians. Starting from the time that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire, all the way through the Spanish Inquisition, and even as late as the seventeenth century,
Christian rulers with the support of the churches used the power of the state to enforce religious orthodoxy. Both Catholics and Protestants were guilty of this. The Puritans who fled England for America were not escaping Catholic persecution but Anglican persecution. Their objective in finding a land of their own was not to allow everyone to have religious freedom but rather to impose their version of orthodoxy on the whole society.
In some ways the motives of all these Christian autocrats are understandable. Sometimes they were even well meaning. Believing themselves to be in possession of the sole truth, they were driven by their concern for others to go to extreme lengths, even to the extent of using imprisonment and coercion to win the unpersuaded over to their side. In doing this, however, they confused Christianity and Christendom. They were trying to establish the heavenly city here on earth, which is precisely what Augustine warned against, as did Christ before him. Moreover, they were violating the principle established by God in the Garden of Eden. God could have easily compelled Adam and Eve to conform to His command, but He didn’t. Even though He knew they were making a bad decision, He respected their freedom enough to allow them to make it. The freedom to do good implies the freedom to reject the good.
Early modern thinkers like John Locke were sincere and practical Christians. They invented the concept of religious tolerance not because they wanted to dilute or eliminate the influence of Christianity but because they saw that the wrong kind of Christianity had come to dominate Western society. Men like Locke were rightly disgusted with some of the abuses that had occurred in the name of Christianity. So for this Christian problem—division and conflict—they developed a Christian solution: religious freedom. This idea developed in stages, the first one of which was religious tolerance. The word tolerance is derived from the Latin word meaning “to bear.” and to tolerate means “to put up with.” Tolerance contains the seeds of disagreement and even contempt: I tolerate you because although I believe you are wrong, I will endure you and let you persist in your erroneous ways. Locke’s tolerance extended to most Protestant denominations but not to Catholics.
