{"id":398,"date":"2017-03-01T20:44:56","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T20:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/messenger\/?p=398"},"modified":"2018-09-19T20:47:26","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T20:47:26","slug":"on-god-and-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/from-the-publisher\/on-god-and-country\/","title":{"rendered":"On God and country"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>I once heard someone declare, \u201cI\u2019m Christian first, American second, and Brethren third.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That severing of \u201cChristian\u201d and \u201cBrethren\u201d would have been shocking to those who founded the Brethren movement more than 300 years ago. They suffered significantly for pursuing their peculiarly Brethren understanding of Christianity.<\/p>\n<p>At that time, religion was decided by the ruler of the region; disagreeing with the local religion was a state offense. In the area of Germany where the Brethren movement took root, the official religion was the Reformed Church. Pietists and Anabaptists choosing to gather in small groups were hauled into court and punished. Martin Lucas, for example, was expelled in 1709, as was his wife. Their house was sold, and their children were handed over to guardians.<\/p>\n<p>What were the crimes of these sober Christians? In an interrogation in Heidelberg, Martin Lucas and John Diehl explained that the Pietists \u201clove foremost God and their neighbor as themselves, even their enemies, and are obliged to feed them, and give them to eat and to drink.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Boni, another conscientious objector to the state, wrote this to the mayor of Basel in 1706: \u201cIf disobeying the orders of men means opposing God\u2019s ordinances, then the apostles also disobeyed.\u201d (Two years later he was one of the eight baptized in Schwarzenau in an act of civil disobedience that marked the beginning of the Church of the Brethren.) But here is a fascinating story from Mannheim. When one government official seized the Pietists and sentenced them to hard labor \u201cwithout trial or hearing,\u201d the punishment failed because of the great sympathy that the Reformed subjects showed to the Pietists. \u201cThey have defended the Pietists\u2019 teachings, and said that nothing could be found deserving punishment in such pious Christians.\u201d In fact, the Reformed folks gathered at the prison and spent the day listening to their preaching. Thus, a government that was trying to maintain power by promoting enmity was thwarted by Christian goodwill. You can read all about it in chapter 1 of Donald F. Durnbaugh\u2019s European Origins of the Brethren.<\/p>\n<p>The early Brethren would never have called themselves political. They simply remained steadfast to their understanding of God\u2019s Word. Likewise, the Reformed subjects who protected the so-called heretics were probably not trying to be political either, but \u201cunashamedly proclaimed and made this their own cause.\u201d By sheer numbers they kept the civil leaders from carrying out an unjust decree.<\/p>\n<p>The intertwining of government and religion produces an unholy alliance, whatever the century, and those who pledge their loyalty to God must be vigilant about competing claims. If we have forgotten how to discern the difference, we can revisit our Brethren history and Acts 5:29.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What would the early Brethren think of today\u2019s intertwining of government and religion?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[49,38],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-publisher","tag-from-the-publisher","tag-wendy-mcfadden"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}