{"id":16771,"date":"2012-06-25T21:28:15","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T01:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=16771"},"modified":"2012-06-25T21:28:15","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T01:28:15","slug":"the-church-and-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/the-church-and-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"The Church and politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m firmly convinced that when Jesus said \u201cRender to Caesar the things that are Caesar&#8217;s, and to God the things that are God&#8217;s\u201d he was, among other things, formulating a recipe for how the church and state should relate to each other: they should stay out each other\u2019s business. That is not to say that those in government cannot be guided by Christian principles or that churchgoers should not hold political opinions; it is to say that as <em>institutions,<\/em> although ultimately they report to the same boss, they should conduct their affairs separately.<\/p>\n<p>But when the church tosses out the transcendent to replace it with the temporal, it ceases to be a religion and all it has left with which to busy itself is politics: such is the condition of the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada.<\/p>\n<p>Unhappily for the church, even an establishment as spiritually obtuse as the Canadian government <a href=\"http:\/\/fullcomment.nationalpost.com\/2012\/06\/24\/michael-den-tandt-the-state-has-no-place-in-the-pews-of-the-nation\/\">has noticed<\/a> that mainline denominations are more interested in utopia now than heaven later; why should they not pay taxes like everyone else? At least, then, they would be completely unencumbered by otherworldly pietistic pretentions and could <a href=\"http:\/\/fullcomment.nationalpost.com\/2012\/06\/22\/marni-soupcoff-united-church-should-keep-the-faith-dump-the-charitable-status\/\" target=\"_blank\">fulminate<\/a> on the misdeeds of Israel to their heart\u2019s content, unfettered by any vestigial impulse to being non-partisan.<\/p>\n<p>Some bishops have caught wind of this and are recoiling in horror: remember, bishops delight in redistributing other people\u2019s money, not the church\u2019s money. Bishop Dennis Drainville <a href=\"http:\/\/thebishopsviews.wordpress.com\/2012\/06\/24\/harperites-seek-to-silence-the-churches-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">thinks<\/a> making the church pay tax is an \u201cattack on the churches\u201d by \u201cHarperites\u201d; you would think he would <em>welcome<\/em> a conservative government\u2019s foray into wealth equity.<\/p>\n<p>So what is the solution? If the church wants to play politics, let it pay taxes; it could raise plenty of money by selling all its\u00a0 properties lying idle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m firmly convinced that when Jesus said \u201cRender to Caesar the things that are Caesar&#8217;s, and to God the things that are God&#8217;s\u201d he was, among other things, formulating a recipe for how the church and state should relate to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/the-church-and-politics\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":12,"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[492,2227],"class_list":["post-16771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-and-state-2","tag-bishop-dennis-drainville","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}