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The problem is that, if you take the route of the government as the guarantor of Christian religion, then that requires government to adjudicate in matters of religion, to solve theological disputes and to hold heresy trials. Will the government arrest heretics, license preachers, regulate seminaries and impose Sabbath observance? Martin Luther, at least in his early years, knew that ‘heresy is a spiritual matter which you cannot hack to pieces with iron, consume with fire, or drown in water’.33 Or, as the British philosopher John Locke put it, ‘What power can be given to the magistrate for the suppression of an idolatrous Church, which may not in time and place be made use of to the ruin of an orthodox one?’34 In a diverse and pluralistic society, governments would be wise neither to privilege one religion, nor to punish people over their religion. Religion is at its most free when government does not interfere with religion or try to adjudicate in matters of religion. Thus, a certain degree of secularity – by which we mean preventing theocracy, enabling the free exercise of religion, and permitting liberty of conscience in religion – is far better than Christian nationalism.
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N.T. Wright (Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies)