When the State Co-opts Religion

Essay VI of Christ, the Nations, and the Public Square

If you are not already in this fight, the question is simpler than the noise. Some people hear “Christian nation” and picture a strongman wrapping himself in church talk. Some people hear “keep religion out of politics” and think that is how you stop him. Both pictures are mistakes, and they are closer than they look.

The claim of this series is not complicated. Christ is Lord of the nations. Nations are real. The government is not God, but under God. The public square is never morally empty. Some account of good and evil will be taught by the law, whether anyone admits it or not. That claim can be abused. This page is about the abuse — and about the habit of treating every public Christian conviction as if it were already the abuse.

Two errors that steal each other’s coats

Call the first error the empty square. It says law is a machine and religion a private feeling. The magistrate is an empty clerk: he files papers, keeps a kind of peace, and owes no moral truth beyond whatever the procedure happens to contain. He is not a servant of God who will give an account. He is a clerk of nothing. In American ears this often sounds like “separation of church and state.” In church ears it often sounds like “the kingdom is not of this world.” The first is Jefferson’s wall used as a creed.[1] The second is John 18 used as if the sword had no Lord. The empty square is not the true claim that the church is not a political party. It is the further claim that because the church is not a party, public life must pretend it has no God.

Call the second error the rented pulpit. It says God may stay in the room if he is useful. Religion becomes furniture for power. The church becomes a department of the regime. The confession becomes a brand. The hard face is a state church that baptizes the ruler’s myth. The soft face is a coalition that wants a chaplain, not a prophet. This is not “Christians may hold office,” and it is not “laws may still tell the truth about murder and marriage.” Those can be public Christianity. The rented pulpit begins when the church cannot say no to the project that pays its bills, or when “Christ is King” is hung over men who will not repent.

The empty square pretends to be the only safeguard against the rented pulpit. The rented pulpit pretends to be the only answer to the empty square. Co-option is the blur that makes them cousins.

What we mean by the ordinary words

Two offices stand under one Lord. The church holds the Word and the keys. The magistrate holds the sword and the care of public justice. In ordinary speech: pastors are not cops, and cops are not priests. Both answer to Christ.

Public Christianity means a people and their laws still treat some things as actually wrong — murder, perjury, the abandonment of the weak — without turning the church into a government bureau.

Co-option means Christian words, Christian men, or Christian institutions used to bless whatever the people in power already wanted, until the church cannot judge the throne without losing its seat at the table. The blur is how that happens. The government wants a blessing more than a limit, or the church wants access more than a truth that can get it disinvited.

Two cases

Someone will say that if God is named in public, the pulpit has already been rented. Consider two cases.

Case 1. At an inauguration a chaplain prays in the name of Christ. The next Sunday the same church’s pastors preach the moral law without asking the new administration for talking points. When the party that won begins to praise what Scripture condemns, the pulpit says so, and some donors leave. God’s name was used in public. The church can still say no. Public confession has not entailed co-option.

Case 2. A congregation flies the right colors, hosts the right fundraisers, and never embarrasses the coalition that pays for the roof. The Word is quoted. The party is never rebuked. When gospel and policy diverge, the silence is called “wisdom” or “access.” God’s name is used in public. The church cannot say no. That is co-option, even if every prayer was beautiful.

The difference is not volume. It is whether refusal is still possible. From “Christ was named in public” it does not follow that the offices have blurred. From “the church cannot refuse when the gospel and the policy diverge” it does follow that they have. If the first entailment were true, every public confession would already be a rented pulpit, and this series would have been a brand from the first page. If the second were false, “we must obey God rather than people” (Acts 5:29) would be a hobby for private life. Neither is true. A people may seek Christian magistrates. A statute may still know murder and marriage as moral facts. The lease begins only when no is no longer allowed.

Three voices, one intersecting mistake

The present fight has representatives. They are not the whole church, and this page is not a scorecard.

Phil Johnson has offered a definition meant to cover every flavor of the name: Christian nationalism is a politically driven theology whose central concern is to get control of government and put it in Christian hands.[2] John 18:36 and “Thy kingdom come” are then read as a ban on that project. He is right that the church is not a party and does not seize the sword to finish the Great Commission. From “the church is not a party” it does not follow that the magistrate is an empty clerk. A definition that makes every public Christian politics a grab for the throne has defined the blur into existence. That is the empty square doing the rented pulpit’s warning.

Gabe Hughes is right about the Commission as given. “Make disciples of all nations” means peoples evangelized, baptized, and taught — not a forgotten clause that the church must capture cabinets.[3] If the gospel converts a people and their laws begin to tell the truth, that is blessing, not a second mission the apostles omitted. The intersecting mistake is smaller. John 18:36, Philippians 3:20, and Luke 17 are then used as if they emptied the civil sword of its Lord.[4] “My kingdom is not of this world” means Christ’s kingdom does not originate in the sword. It does not mean the sword has no Lord. Citizenship in heaven does not cancel Romans 13. Refusing even to hope that converted peoples will make just laws is not fidelity to Matthew 28. It is the empty square wearing Great Commission clothes.

James White has spoken against what he calls Christless nationalism — a creed over race-realism, Jews treated as a key to the world, “Christ is King” hung over men who will not repent.[5] Taken strictly, that description would land inside Case 2. I will not grant his warning as my warrant, and I will not take up his word sacralism. The word is ambiguous and overworked. More than that: the same fight has been used to smear men who are not renting the pulpit. Case 2 stands on its own feet. A church or movement that cannot say no when usefulness outranks the Word has blurred the offices. That is not a license to stain every thicker Christian politics, or every friend of a thicker politics, as if he were already the German Christian case.

Johnson and Hughes, at their best, refuse to let the church become a party; at their worst they treat every civil hope as a fake Commission. White’s rented-pulpit fight, whatever it gets right in the abstract, has been aimed at men who are not that abuse, and I will not baptize it here. Case 1 and Case 2 keep the goods without his sponsorship. The empty square is not how you police the rented pulpit, and the rented pulpit is not how you answer the empty square.

A hard case that confirms the lease

Imagine a regime that wants the whole man. It sorts churches by usefulness. Baptize our racial myth and you are a tool. Refuse and you are a problem. Religion there is used, not believed as the apostles believed it.[6] A church that exists to baptize that demand is not a church the apostles would recognize. That is the rented pulpit in uniform. It confirms Case 2.

It does not refute Case 1, and it does not turn every moral statute into a secret Reich. Yes, tyrants have draped themselves in crosses. That is why the church must still be free to say no. It is not a reason to say that every moral law is already co-option. The earlier essay on fascism refused that smear. This page refuses to let a used church become the definition of a confessing one.

Soft forms: the same inference in vestments

Most of us will not meet an open police state. We will meet ordinary politics that wants the church’s blessing and does not want the church’s correction — a chaplain, not a prophet.

Case 3. Left and right quarrel about which policies get the stole. They agree on the deeper move: the church is most faithful when it is most useful to us. Usefulness is not nothing. A town may thank God when pastors tell the truth about murder, marriage, lying under oath, and the weak. But if “useful to our side” becomes the test of what is true before God, Case 2 is already satisfied. The color of the stole does not matter.

Case 4. No one demands a hymn. They demand silence dressed as peace. Keep your gospel for the heart. Leave the classroom, the clinic, and the statute book to “expertise.” Bless the arrangement by calling it humility. The public square is never morally empty. What the empty square calls emptiness is someone’s morality sitting in the chair with no nameplate. A church that agrees to say nothing that could judge the occupant has rented its voice. The hard face fills the chair with incense. The empty face forbids naming who is sitting there. Both deny that the church is still the church when it must disappoint the powerful.

Romans 13 is a servant, not a blank check

The magistrate is God’s servant (Rom 13:1–4). Servants are limited by the one they serve. Acts 5:29 does not abolish that office. It specifies the limit. Romans 13 cannot mean: whatever the government blesses, the church must bless.

Ask who is allowed to correct whom. If the church cannot say no, Case 2 holds, whatever flag flies. If “good citizen” means never embarrassing the coalition that pays the bills, the Word has been rented by the month. If a ruler is talked about as nearly messianic because he hurts our enemies, the chair has an idol. That is not an escape from the empty square. It is the rented pulpit with better music.

Calvin did not invent Jefferson

Americans hear “two offices” and often think of a wall: God for the heart, emptiness for the lawbook, the magistrate as an empty clerk. That wall is then read back onto the Protestant Reformers, as if John Calvin had written Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists.

He did not. Calvin distinguished church government from civil government. He did not teach the empty square. On his account the civil sword is not a clerk of nothing, and public right and wrong are not a hobby. He also did not make the prince a preacher. The magistrate does not hold the keys, preach the sermon, or run the sacraments. If you give him those tasks, you get the rented pulpit as a state church. If you empty his office of God, you get the empty square as a creed. Calvin’s distinction, then, is enough to keep Case 1 and Case 2 from collapsing into Jefferson’s 1802 letter used as a theology of the civil order.

Why the claim may still be spoken

Christ is Lord of the nations; nations are real; the magistrate is not God, but under God; the public square is never morally empty. If public Christianity were co-option by definition, Case 1 would be impossible and the claim would already be a rented pulpit. Case 1 is not impossible. A magistrate who will give an account has not stolen the keys. Therefore tyrants abusing Christian speech is a reason to keep the offices distinct. It is not a reason to hand the claim to people who only feel safe when God is a hobby — that is, to people who have made the empty square their religion.

You can want laws that still know the difference between right and wrong without wanting a church that exists to clap for the government. You can fear a used church without demanding that Christians pretend the public square is a vacuum.

What follows is ordinary, which is why it costs. Preach Christ crucified without becoming a department of civic religion. Tell the truth about public evil without mistaking a party for the kingdom. Honor the magistrate without confusing him with Christ. When the state wants a blessing more than a limit, withhold the blessing that would lie. When the church wants access more than a clean conscience, lose the access.

Religion used is not religion believed. From “the state named God” it does not follow that God was obeyed; from “the church cannot say no” it does follow that the wrong lord has already been named. How to argue these things without losing the gospel is Essay VII. The argument will not be safer if Caesar is first allowed to rent the pulpit.

Notes

1. “Jefferson’s wall” in this essay does not mean the First Amendment, the ban on a national established church, or the refusal to give the magistrate the keys, the Word, and the sacraments. Disestablishment was already granted earlier in the series. It means Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists (“wall of separation between Church & State”) used as a creed: the civil order must be morally empty of God, religion is private feeling, law is a machine, any public confession is a putsch. The letter reassured Baptists that the federal government would not establish a church or coerce conscience. It was not a theory that statutes must be silent about good and evil. If a reader holds only “no national church, no coerced faith,” he is not holding the empty square as here defined.

2. Phil Johnson, “Kingdom Come: A Biblical Assessment of Christian Nationalism,” Grace Community Church, 23 August 2026. This page is not a review of the sermon. It treats the definition only where it collapses Case 1 into Case 2.

3. Gabe Hughes (@WWUTTcom), “Christian Nationalism is not the Great Commission,” 28 August 2026. The Commission point is granted. The slide into the empty square is not. Matthew 28:18–20 is the church’s mission to make disciples. It is neither a secret warrant to seize cabinets nor a ban on hoping that converted peoples will make just laws.

4. John 18:36 concerns the origin and weapons of Christ’s kingdom, not the claim that the magistrate is unsupervised. Philippians 3:20 names the Christian’s heavenly citizenship. It does not cancel Romans 13.

5. James White has used “Christless nationalism” (and, elsewhere, “sacralism”) in public controversy over Christian nationalism. This essay does not adopt sacralism and does not grant his warning as a premise. Case 2 is defined above without that sponsorship. The abuse of Christian speech by real coalitions still does not make Case 1 impossible.

6. “German Christians” names the movement that tried to baptize National Socialist racial myth and total loyalty. It is cited as the rented pulpit in uniform, not as a slur for every patriot.