Christianity Created Secularism
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Christianity created the sacred-secular divide. Christianity created secularism.
It is common to think that secularisation is the enemy of faith in general and Christianity in particular. People express concern about the end of a ‘Christian nation’. They say that we are a ‘Christian country’. They believe that secularism is destroying our ‘shared Christian values.’
However, the reality is that Christianity created secularism. From its earliest days, Christianity introduced something radically different into the world—a separation between the Church and the State.
Ancient Religion Wasn’t Religion
In the world where Christianity began, there was no such thing as ‘religion’ as a social category. The whole idea of ancient religion is anachronistic. A person’s religion simply meant the kind of things they did for the gods. A person’s religion might be the rules of a particular cult to which they belonged. It could also be about the kinds of sacrifices they offered to their household gods.
Religion, as we know it, with a specific set of beliefs, did not exist in the ancient world. It was not a separate category of social and philosophical interaction. It was part of everyday life.
The world of the gods was inextricably linked to the everyday world of ordinary human life. If you needed to go to the shops, you made an offering. If you got married, you made sacrifices. When you voted, swore an oath, went to war, or made dinner, you would make a sacrifice to the gods. Even walking in and out of one’s home required making an offering to the household gods.
There was no difference between the realm and work of the gods and the realm and work of the state.
In plenty of societies and cultures, the head of state was also a priestly or divine figure.
For the Persians and Egyptians, the King was a divine figure. For the Greeks and the Romans, the head of state also had a priestly role. In the Roman Empire, the Emperor was considered either the son of a god or a god themselves. The gods were part of the nation’s political life. They offered sacrifices on behalf of the nation. They also directed the gods’ attention through rituals and ceremonies.
But then along comes Christianity.
The Rise of Christianity Created Secularism
The Bible and the teaching of the early Church made it clear. Christians had a responsibility towards the place where they lived. However, there was a limit to the State’s control over a Christian. A Christian had a higher authority: Christ.
When Christ was God and King, and Caesar wasn’t, that meant there was a limit to the authority any state power had over a Christian’s life. We see this early in Acts, when Peter says they must obey God rather than man. We see it in the early church, when the martyrs agreed to pay taxes but refused to sacrifice to the Emperor. There was a limit to their obedience because they could not accept the Emperor or the state as being divine.
For the early Christians, the state and the divine were not the same thing, and the Emperor did not have the authority to command belief or faith.
There has been a movement back and forth across the years between a form of Christianity tied to the state and one that sits apart from it.
The Constantinian Settlement
From AD 325 to about AD 900, the Church became increasingly enmeshed with the structures and power of the state. Christianity had started to create secularism, but returned to an integrated religious and political polity. Initially, through the Constantinian settlement, then as monarchs increasingly took responsibility for appointing bishops and abbots. The church collected taxes, raised armies, and administered territory. Senior clergy effectively became part of the nobility, and in many places, bishops held hereditary positions.
In the 10th and 11th centuries, the Church underwent a reformation. The appointment of bishops was reserved for the Pope. Priests had to be educated and appointed by bishops. All monks and priests had to be celibate. Laws were introduced to prevent individuals from holding two ecclesiastical offices simultaneously.
Introduction of the Secular
The word secular was introduced for the first time to draw a distinction between the church’s realm of authority and the state’s. A divide was created between the realm of the divine, which was ruled by the Church, and the realm of the world (secular), ruled by the state and noble power.
However, again the needle shifted. Bishops gained secular power. The Pope was the head of state for a sacred nation. The church became a state itself and/or was linked to the state, even while also trying to maintain a separate power and realm from the secular realms. The church wanted to claim there was a difference between the secular and the sacred, whilst also seeking secular as well as sacred power and status.
The attempts at reform across the years, whether by Huss, Wycliffe, or the Cathars, all sought one of two things. To strengthen the sacred-secular divide, or to destroy it. For some reformers, the Church had no special authority over the sacred. The sacred and secular shared the same space; it was simply a matter of different roles. For others, the divide between the sacred and the secular had to be strengthened by removing the secular from the realm of the sacred.
Continuing Reformations
Essentially, this has recurred within Christianity to the present day. Whether Luther’s reformation, which undid the sacred-secular divide, or the Puritans of the 17th century, which sought to broaden it. Whether the established churches of the 18th and 19th centuries, or the non-conformists that challenged established relationships between the individual and the state. The tension between sacred and secular persisted.
Into the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, the debate of the sacred-secular divide gained new teeth in the hands of emerging atheism and of an increasingly irreligious society. Secularism came to mean the decline of religion and the separation between religion and state, the sacred and the secular.
However, that very idea was, and remains, essentially Christian. Christianity created secularism through emphasising the distinction between the sacred and the secular. It has since continued to debate its meaning. Should Christians retreat from the world into a sacred community in contrast to the world, or should Christianity embed itself in the way the world works?
I think we have sometimes made this distinction mean more than it does.
Pledging Allegiance
When the early Church said that Christians had a negotiated allegiance to the state, and when the reformers emphasised the difference between the realm of faith and the realm of statecraft, they were not saying that Christianity had to exist outside of the world.
The sacred-secular divide is not a Platonic distinction between heaven and earth, between the spiritual and the material. Secularisation is about where we think the limits of authority lie.
Christianity belongs in the world. Christianity exists only in the world. Christians need to care about and be involved in the world. But, they should always be really cautious about any idea that they can take up secular power and still maintain their Christianity. Equally, the church needs to be very cautious about wading into the structures of power while maintaining its allegiance to Jesus.
Christianity Created Secularism
No power, organisation, state, or nation can compel or control faith and allegiance to Jesus. That is what the sacred-secular divide means. Not at the social or religious level, but at the level of statecraft and allegiance. We should welcome secularisation in this case. Christianity needs and creates a secular state. But then has a carefully negotiated allegiance to that state.
So, yes. Christianity created secularisation, and when it is faithful, it continues to create that divide. Christian nationalism, and Christian nations, are oxymorons. The sacred-secular divide is drawn between the realms of authority, not the realms of engagement and reality. Faith should influence every part of life, but should not have authority over the State anymore than the State should have authority over faith.
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