3. General Principles of the Relations of Church and State. The Parallel of Soul and Body. The Foundation of the American State and its Relationship to the Religious Principle. The Origin of Every Right According to the “Declaration of Independence.” The Connection of the State and Religion. The Relationship of the State to Religious Differences

The relationship of church and state in the federal constitution of the United States was expressed through the legal separation of one from the other. The state renounced legislative power in the area of religion, granting this power exclusively to religion itself. But legal separation does not condition actual separation, since in reality the foundations of the church and the state are so closely connected that they constitute one organic whole, incapable of division without harm to the very purpose of the state. Therefore, a question naturally arises: what meaning does this legal separation of church from state have? In other words, into what relationship has the state entered with the church by virtue of this legal separation? For a clear answer to this question it is necessary first to determine the principles of the relationship of church and state in general.

The existence of the church and the state is conditioned by two distinct aspects of human life, the spiritual and the material. In Christian society, the church is the representative of the spiritual aspect, and the state is the representative of the material. These two orders exist even at the lower stages of human society’s development, but they are not understood clearly as two distinct orders or as having their own distinct and unique representation. Only in Christian society do these two orders receive the proper distinction, and each in its own representative enters into a normal relationship with the other. The prototype and the very foundation of this distinction of the two orders in society lies in the dual nature of man or in the fact that man exists only as soul and body and needs care for both. The church, representing the spiritual order, cares for souls, has concern for the internal life of human society, and attends to the satisfaction of internal spiritual needs and requirements; the state, representing the material order, naturally attends to the satisfaction of the material needs and requirements of individuals and society. But man does not live by soul alone or by body alone, but by the unity of both in their mutual relationship. Soul and body are distinct but not separate. They have their distinctive properties and functions, and one cannot replace the other; but their division is death, death to the body only, and not to the soul, which is immortal. The body is material and, separated from the soul, is dust and ashes, plain earth from which it was formed. The same applies in a moral sense to society, which is not only the state or only the church, but a unity of both in their mutual relationship. They are distinct, each has its own distinctive nature, its own laws and functions, and one cannot perform the functions of the other or replace it. But although distinct, in the normal state of society they cannot be separated from each other. The separation of the state from the church in the moral order would be the same as the separation of the body from the soul in the physical order. This is death, death to the state of course, but not to the church, which like the soul is immortal. Complete separation of the state from the church destroys its moral life and leaves society to moral corruption and decay.

The soul, moreover, is the formative or vital principle of the body. The church in the moral order is the formative, vital principle of the state, or civil society, which does not have moral life within itself, since all moral life, by its very nature, proceeds from the spiritual order. In the physical order life is possible only from God, through the creative act; so also in civil society; moral life can issue only from the spiritual order, which is established by the Supreme Lawgiver and is represented by the church, the keeper and judge of both the natural and the revealed law. The soul is the noblest and highest part of man, and it is not appointed to eliminate the body or seize its functions, but to guide and control it according to the highest law; the body, on the other hand, is not suited to gain predominance over the soul so as to bring the law of the spirit into subjection to the law of the members. So also the church, as representing the spiritual order and having concern for souls, is the noblest and highest part of society, and to it belongs the ruling power over all human society. In the moral order it is appointed to direct and control civil society by proclaiming and applying the laws of God, of which it serves as keeper and interpreter and which it is obliged by the Supreme Lawgiver to submit all its activity and life to.

Such is the ideal of the relationship of church and state. By virtue of it, it is equally abnormal and condemned both the absorption of the state by the church and the absorption of the church by the state; each should remain distinct from the other, each with its own organization, with its own members, capacities, rights, and sphere of activity. It equally condemns both the clericalism of the papal system, striving to seize functions not proper to the church of the state, and secularism, by which the state seeks to seize supremacy over the church, as was the case in all states of the pagan world and was expressed in the persecution of Christians by pagan emperors. But the church, in its ruling position, does not itself make laws; it only proclaims, announces, and applies them, and it itself is bound by them as well as the state. The very law is prescribed to the government of all men and peoples by God as the Supreme Lawgiver or the end and final cause of creation, and is binding equally on individuals and peoples, on sovereigns and subjects, on the church and the state. Such should be the relationship of these two orders, the spiritual and the material, the church and the state; but in reality it has never achieved full and perfect realization, and history, on the contrary, presents facts of constant deviation in this relationship from the ideal state. The chronic condition of these two orders in society, instead of unity and cooperation or mutual relationship, has been a state of mutual distrust or even undisguised hostility. During the first three centuries of Christianity the relationship between them was one of open antagonism, and the state persecuted the church. The pagan emperor of the Roman Empire had the claim to unite both of these orders in himself and was at one and the same time imperator, pontifex maximus, and divus or god. For its part the church, having received one-sided development on the ruins of this very civilization, assumed in Roman Catholicism the tendency to infringe on an area not proper to it of purely civil life, to completely subject the state to its authority, to seize exclusively its functions. The Roman Catholic pontifex maximus, appropriating to himself the title of Vicar of Christ, strove to be an imperator. The Middle Ages present a sharp and factual realization of this tendency, and signs of it declare themselves in the relationship of Roman Catholicism to the states of Europe to the present time. Protestantism, on the other hand, having originated from the influence of the principles of Greco-Roman pagan civilization on the intellectual character of European society, brought with it into the relationships of church and state a pagan view, appeared as a reaction against the intensified clericalism, and in its turn gave improper predominance of the state over the church, which was expressed most sharply in England, where the church became a simple instrument of the state.

In what relationship to the ideal theory of the correlation of church and state does the American system stand? Its essence is determined by the historical facts from which it grew, and by the philosophical principles which found legal expression both in the “Declaration of Independence” and in the federal constitution. The first settlers of the American colonies were people, for the most part, deeply religious, and in organizing society on new land aimed not simply to avoid the oppression of conscience of which they were victims in their former homeland, but to establish a truly Christian, according to their understanding, republic. And they did indeed establish such a republic, with such perfection as was only possible with their imperfect Christian views. The colonies of New England were undoubtedly inclined toward the establishment of a theocracy, toward a modified but even more intensive form of clericalism, of which Roman Catholicism was the representative in Europe, and thus tended to absorb the state into the church. In the southern colonies, on the other hand, like in England, there was a tendency to establish the supremacy of the civil order and to make the church thus a function of the state. These two opposite tendencies in the formation of American society met each other and, balancing each other, produced the result that unity and distinction of the two orders were established under the supremacy of the Christian idea. In principle, each order in American society exists and stands in its normal relationship to the other, and moreover in its entirety, with its own distinctive nature, its own laws and functions; and thereby the material order stands in the proper subordination to the spiritual.

The developed theory of the American system of church-and-state relations does not accord with the widespread view of it as a system wherein the state is supposedly completely independent of religion, separated from it in the fullest sense of the word. But it constitutes strictly logical conclusions from the philosophical principles laid at the foundation of American civic life. In view of the prevalence of this mistaken view, particularly in our Russia, we consider it necessary to dwell at greater length on the exposition of these principles[1].

The foundation of the American state is what is called the natural and inalienable rights of man. These rights, among which stand life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness[2], constitute the highest, sovereign law for civil society, which the state is bound to recognize and obey. They deny the absolutism of the state, define its sphere, limit its power, and prescribe its duty. But where do these rights come from, and how can they bind the state and prescribe its duty? According to one view, these rights spring from the very essence of man as a person, and constitute his essential part. But the rights of one person in such a case should bind the rights of another person, and yet both are equal, as all persons are equal. How then can one person bind or morally obligate another? In the equality of things there cannot be the supremacy of one over another. According to another view, these rights are contained in our human nature, given to us by nature, and therefore they constitute the natural and inalienable rights of man. Nature is understood in a twofold sense: as the physical order or physical laws entering into the physical world, and as the moral law to which all beings endowed with reason and free will are subject by the Creator, and which is known by natural reason or the common sense of all people. In the first sense, these rights are not contained in our human nature, nor can they be, for they are not physical. Physical rights are an internal contradiction. They can be contained in human nature only in the second sense, and can only be in our moral nature, and consequently must be contained under that law which establishes and sustains the moral nature, or the moral order as distinct from the physical order. But the moral law, establishing and sustaining the moral order, the order of right and justice, is not a law founded or prescribed by nature, but the law of the moral governance of nature, to which the Creator of nature as the Supreme Lawgiver has subjected all moral beings. Thus the moral law of nature is the law of God, and all rights, which it establishes or which spring from it, are the rights of God, and ours only because they are His. My rights toward you constitute your duty, what God prescribes as the law or rule of our behavior or relation to me; and your rights toward me constitute my duty, or what God prescribes as the rule of my behavior toward you. And what God prescribes, He has the right to prescribe, and therefore can equally command me not to respect those rights in you, and you not to have those rights in me, which are not His rights; and civil society, being His society, is bound by these rights, and cannot alienate or deny them without violating His law and depriving Him of His rights. Hence he who wrongs another does injustice not only against him, but does injustice against his Creator, his Sovereign, and his Judge. From the rights enumerated above, let us take the right of life. This right all people and civil society itself are bound to hold sacred and inviolable. But all people are created equal and before the law of nature have equal rights. How then can equals bind one another? By mutual covenant, according to Rousseau’s theory. But from where flows the binding force of a covenant? Why am I obligated to keep my word? Surely not by the force of the word itself, but because I would deprive him to whom I gave my word of a right that belongs to him. But I gave my word to help commit murder. Am I obligated to keep it? Not at all. Why? Because I pledged myself to commit a crime, to do wrong or a wrongful act. It is evident, therefore, that covenants or pledged words do not create or produce justice; they presuppose it. The very covenants are binding only by force of a higher law of justice, and no covenants, inconsistent with this law, can bind anyone. Why, then, am I obligated to respect your life? You cannot oblige me to do so, for you and I are equal, and no one can by his own authority oblige another. To take your life would be to commit a wrongful act, that is, to deprive justice of its right to your life. The right of life is in such a case the right of justice. But justice is not merely an abstraction; it is not a mental idea only, but a reality, and therefore—God. Hence my or your right to life is the right of Him who created us and to whom we wholly belong. Further, the right of life is inalienable even for me myself; I myself cannot even take it from myself, and therefore suicide is a crime, and not merely a crime against society, but a sin before God, because all right of life belongs to God. Therefore He has the right to command all people to hold the right of life in each person sacred and inalienable, and it can never be taken away by other people or even by civil society, save by His command. The same applies to all other rights of man[3].

These principles found their legal and clear expression in the “Declaration of Independence,” that document by which the independence of the American people as a separate state was proclaimed and through which there were determined both the foundations of that very independence and the principles of the subsequent development of the new state. In the first position of the “Declaration of Independence” Congress asserts that the people of the United States “judged it necessary to assume among the powers of the earth a separate and equal station, to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them.” Proceeding then to the exposition of the basis of the act itself, the representatives of the people declare: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men.” The document further states that those governments which depart from this end and pursue another end, infringing upon and violating these rights, thereby lose their power. Applying this principle to the particular relation of the American people to England, Congress makes it the casus belli and deems it sufficient ground for proclaiming independence[4].