Spiritual independence is the notion that the church must resist all attempts, no matter where they originate, to prevent it from faithfully carrying out its divinely ordained ministry. “When it is faithful in this duty” of preserving its independence, “the benefits of union [of church and state] can be appreciated and, if and when necessary,” the union of church and state “will be abandoned . . . in the interests of truth” (Age of Revolution, p. 22). That is to say, as long as the church’s independence is preserved, there are times when circumstances will dictate that a union of church and state is to be rejected, even if it is legitimate in principle.

Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801–1876) was a Dutch Reformed Protestant historian and politician who founded the political party Abraham Kuyper would eventually join and serve in as Prime Minister.

Against Political Atheism

Numerous themes show up repeatedly in Prinsterer’s writings. Two central ones were the danger of the revolutionary ideology unleashed by the French Revolution and the relationship between church and state. These two themes were integrally connected in Prinsterer’s mind: he saw the radical separation of church and state in France as a great peril to the survival of the church in that nation (or any that followed its example).

Prinsterer summed up his basic position on the relationship between church and state in his published lectures entitled Unbelief and Revolution (p. 32, n. 22) like this:

Church and State should not be separated but kept distinct, united in joint consultations from a position of mutual independence . . . . If the Christian church loses it priority, freedom of conscience is without defenses against the intolerance of unbelief. Unbelief becomes the civic religion of a secular state.

Later in this same work he refers to the default position of France as one of state-sanctioned “political atheism” (Unbelief and Revolution, p. 33). France, despite the claims of some at the time, was not a neutral ground on which all religions could compete, but itself had an official religion, albeit an atheistic one. All state institutions (including primary education) were forced to deny the truths of Christianity. In France, “no positive religion whatsoever,” he continued, “shall be tolerated in opposition to the requirements of revolutionary sociability”(Unbelief and Revolution, p. 103). This is not at all dissimilar to what we see in Western nations today regarding moral issues like abortion and sexuality. Religion may be tolerated as long as it remains a purely inward and private affair, but if at any point it threatens the (sexual) revolutionary sociability an attempt will be made to suppress it ruthlessly.

Prinsterer believed firmly that church and state were divine institutions with distinct spheres of authority. The church does not have the right to usurp the power of the state, nor the state the power of the church. Distinction does not entail radical separation, however.

On the Necessity of Political Prudence

Although maintaining such a distinction, Prinsterer’s articulation of the ideal relationship between church and state is not wholly compatible with the contemporary political theory of liberalism. In another work, entitled Christian Political Action in an Age of Revolution, he develops an additional insight of relevance to ongoing discussions in Christian “post-liberal” circles about the relations of church and state.

In this book Prinsterer says emphatically, in response to a critique: “I am an ardent opponent of the separation of church and state, though not as ardent as Mr. Trottet imagines.” What Prinsterer takes issue with in his opponent’s criticism is, as he says, that Trottet advocates “an absolute separation,” of church and state “as a universal truth . . . thus raising it to the rank of an article of faith” (Age of Revolution, p. 21). In his critic’s understanding any formal relationship between church and state is ruled illegitimate as a matter of absolute and inflexible moral principle.

This is similar to the position of many today, even among Protestants who come from a tradition that for centuries vigorously supported a specific kind of formal connection of church and state. It is one thing to say that it is unwise to seek such a relationship today; it is quite another thing to say that that position is categorically wrong. The Reformers and their heirs and not infallible, but one does need to grapple with their actual arguments on church and state instead of superficially dismissing them.

Here is where I think Prinsterer is most interesting and potentially helpful. He argues that there are times when the very “interests of religious freedom” (here understood as the freedom of true Christians to worship freely) necessitate restricting “the exercise of [some] political rights . . .  to members of the State Church” (Age of Revolution, pp. 21-22). As examples of such times he lists the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572) and the Catholic League (1576), both of which set out to murder Protestants and eliminate Protestantism in France, as well as the violent attacks on Protestants during the Thirty-Years War and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), which had granted Protestants toleration in France since 1598.

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