By Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman
After several hundred years of religious wars, founding fathers of the United States made a decision that the state must not promote a state religion. As a result, we have a marketplace of all sorts of religions (and non-religions) that cannot force their beliefs on the unwilling. This decision had roots traceable to early Christianity when Jesus urged “then render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is His.” This separated faith from state power, a tradition that was both followed and quarreled over by European kings and Catholic popes until the Reformation.
The one exception to this was the Roman emperor Constantine (312 A.D.), who converted to Christianity and decreed it the only tolerated state faith. Christianity gave him legitimacy and he gave it muscle. Constantine’s action became the model for eastern orthodox Christianity in which the emperor (and later czars of Russia) had total control over the religion, creating a tyrannical state and an ossified religion. It was not good for either institution. Read more ...
After several hundred years of religious wars, founding fathers of the United States made a decision that the state must not promote a state religion. As a result, we have a marketplace of all sorts of religions (and non-religions) that cannot force their beliefs on the unwilling. This decision had roots traceable to early Christianity when Jesus urged “then render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is His.” This separated faith from state power, a tradition that was both followed and quarreled over by European kings and Catholic popes until the Reformation.
The one exception to this was the Roman emperor Constantine (312 A.D.), who converted to Christianity and decreed it the only tolerated state faith. Christianity gave him legitimacy and he gave it muscle. Constantine’s action became the model for eastern orthodox Christianity in which the emperor (and later czars of Russia) had total control over the religion, creating a tyrannical state and an ossified religion. It was not good for either institution. Read more ...
Source: Family Security Matters
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