Here’s Why Church and State Must Remain Separate: A Q&A with Hunter Baker  

In this featured Q&A, contributing editor Micah Watson interviews North Greenville University provost and author Hunter Baker about his recent book, Postliberal Protestants: Baptists Between Obergefell and Christian Nationalism. The two discuss postliberalism, Christian nationalism, and the role of the Baptist Church in forming Christian imagination, among other things. 

Micah Watson: You’re a Southern Baptist and it seems like you’re writing for a Southern Baptist audience. What’s the main thesis of your book, and what are you hoping your coreligionists take from it?  

Hunter Baker: I was approached to do this project after a Baptist publisher in South Carolina read some pieces I’d done on Christian nationalism and asked me to write a book in time for the next Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The reason is that they (and I) have seen increasing interest in the idea of Christian nationalism among younger men in our churches. The idea of seeking greater institutional unity between church and state is at odds with some of the fundamental ideas at the core of the Baptist Church. We disagree with secularism (and a kind of cleansing of Christianity in the public square), but historically, we have seen great wisdom in maintaining a classic institutional separation of church and state. One of my tasks as a writer over the years has been to underline that distinction. 

MW: Even with that particular audience in mind, you have always reached beyond the confines of the SBC, as you’re doing with this interview for Public Discourse, which has a diverse ecumenical readership. What would you say to people outside the Southern Baptist orbit about why they should be interested in what you’re up to with this book? 

HB: I think that the American approach to church and state is one the Baptists have played a major part in forming. We’ve been so successful in that advocacy that the better parts of the law and jurisprudence resonate with Baptist views. If you look at someone like John Courtney Murray (who really won the battle to change the Catholic view of the matter), you’ll see someone who moved in the direction the Baptists had already established in the U.S.   

The result has been highly salutary. When you maintain institutional separation, you end up with a church whose doctrine and appointments are not shaped by the state. Without that separation, even the atheistic or socialist states want to use that power or co-opt the church. But in the U.S., the churches are more vital and influential than in most places on the planet. Meanwhile, the places that really held on to a kind of church-state unity or Christian nationalism often have enervated churches with little impact. The Church of England seems to me to be an outstanding example. Big public, ceremonial role and zero impact on what’s actually happening in the broader culture. Look at how weak the pro-life movement is there. 

MW: What drew you to write this book for this particular season? I can’t help but think that our current moment makes the message of your book much more salient.  

HB: The timing has really been dictated by the surprising success of Stephen Wolfe’s book The Case for Christian Nationalism. I remember taking that book on a trip to Washington, DC and feeling like I was carrying contraband. I can’t imagine what folks thought when they saw me reading it! That book has really had a substantial impact. I can recall showing my Christian Political Thought students a clip of Douglas Wilson interviewing Wolfe. By the end, the guys in my class (smart, great writers) were cheering. They loved this idea. The women in the class were less enthused.   

I think the reaction could be explained by the moment in which the book was published. Christians seemed to be losing on every front: the spread of gay marriage; trans “women” competing in women’s sports and using women’s bathrooms; an increasing valorization of abortion complete with what I would call “abortion testimonies” about how having an abortion had improved women’s lives, etc. These young men, I think, began to think of evangelical publications like The Gospel Coalition and Christianity Today as a kind of Washington Generals who lose to the Harlem Globetrotters night after night. If you think you’re just going to keep losing, you start thinking about more radical responses.   

MW: You and I were both educated in traditions that highlighted, and celebrated, the Baptist distinction and achievement in championing religious liberty. Historically that account strikes me as indisputable. But today the value of that achievement is itself contested in a way we have not seen in generations. Why should Baptists in particular, and Christians generally, defend religious liberty? Is it intrinsically grounded in our faith? Or is it an instrumental feature of liberalism that gives us a seat at the table? 

HB: In my view you have these competing traditions of what I think John Witte, Jr., called “the regenerate church” and “the comprehensive church.” The regenerate church is a church of believers, while the comprehensive church is one that essentially incorporates everyone in a broader political community. Like many Christians, Baptists see the regenerate church as the model of the early church and not only as a product of persecution. They believe that the regenerate church model ensures that confessions of faith are sincere and that worship, praise, prayer, good works, fellowship, and more will be rightly motivated rather than merely performative. On the other hand, they see the comprehensive church as one much more likely to suffer from the presence of far too many who are passive or who don’t want to be involved at all. In addition, they fear that the comprehensive church will constantly be viewed as a target of political influence hoping to bolster the legitimacy of the state and its programs via the endorsement and preaching of the church.   

Christian nationalists see the situation differently. They concede that the comprehensive model will bring in many passive participants, but they believe that this is a feature rather than a bug. They would welcome the kind of cultural Christianity Russell Moore has deplored because they think cultural Christianity probably brings some good influences and habits. As an example, perhaps the family is stronger with cultural Christianity. Maybe there are fewer abortions. You can see the idea.   

My response is that we’ve run the experiment just as we have with Soviet Communism. In social science, we can’t run that many real experiments with actual people, but we can certainly observe what has happened and draw conclusions. I would argue that the places that unified church and state the most are now the most secular places on the planet. 

MW: One of your themes is the recent growth of interest in and attraction to postliberalism among young people in our churches. First, can you give us your working definition of postliberalism, and second, can you give us a sense of what liberalism itself has been missing such that so many people are looking elsewhere for an approach to politics and culture? 

HB: I take liberalism to be the dominant political philosophy of the West for most of the twentieth century and part of the twenty-first. What I mean is a combination of limited government, the rule of law rather than personal rule, democratic accountability, some significant degree of freedom, and a collection of rights such as freedom to speak, to assemble, to report, to write, to organize, and to petition, … and yes, religious freedom, too. Depending on your political leaning, you will accept this broad combination with more or less emphasis on liberty or equality.   

I think liberalism is a victim of its own success. It has created record numbers of rich people and has provided a great deal of leisure and many entertainments. The conditions are there for envy, boredom, and a tremendous desire to find something worthwhile in life. Both the left and the right feel frustrated by the way liberalism hamstrings political ambition. As an example, I often say that the American Constitution is like an engine filled with sand rather than oil, by design. Whether you are a Trump or an Obama, that can be massively frustrating. But if you are a thinker highly aware of the problem of sin, those limitations can look more like a feature than a bug. Unfortunately, that way of thinking is going out of style.   

When I refer to postliberalism, I am talking about greater interest in abandoning that approach or being willing to substantially modify it. On the right, I’ve seen Protestants interested in Christian nationalism or nationalism. On the left, I’ve seen greater disdain for some of the classic constitutional rights. As an example, I’ve seen freedom of speech pilloried as a relic of white privilege and religious freedom dismissed as a pretext for discrimination. Pluralism and debate are out. Getting your own way, all the way and all the time, is in.  

MW: We’re both solidly into middle age. We’re not kids any more, and we’re not raising young kids. What’s our role in the lives of the young people on our campuses and in our churches, and of the parents who are raising them, when it comes to teaching and modeling Christian citizenship in an increasingly polarized and pluralistic society?  

HB: I have spent my teaching career trying to be fair to the people and ideas I cover. The older I get, the better I think I am at doing that. As an example, I no longer struggle to hold back my disdain when I teach Karl Marx. In fact, I’ve even learned that while he is wrong about socialism, he is actually right about some of his critique of capitalism. I try to serve as a role model for learning and contemplating rather than pre-judging and dismissing. That is a major point.   

I have also put about a decade of my life into an organization called Braver Angels. Our goal from the outset was not to seek compromise, but rather, to help people with totally opposite views to learn how to respect each other and to disagree. We used a marriage therapist to moderate sessions with equal numbers of “reds” and “blues.” It’s a great model. We also have pioneered a form of debate aimed at fully exploring ideas and stating them fairly instead of scoring rhetorical points. One of my students (a debater) attended one of these debates and said it was the best she’d ever seen. That’s because she cares about ideas instead of power. We can’t cover the American populace, but hopefully, we can plant some seeds and maybe restore interest in civic virtue. 

MW: You employ a fascinating metaphor regarding the linkage between Christianity and liberal democracy. Whereas some think liberalism is detachable from a Christian undergirding, you are very dubious that this is the case. One contemporary scholar sees liberal democracy as a phone app that can be attached to different operating systems, but you instead describe an iceberg image that suggests liberal democracy is the tip and the real body of the iceberg lies underneath. Can you say more about that? Can liberal democracy be exported like a technology? Or must it be tethered to a particular anthropology? 

HB: The scholar in question spent time working in the Middle East in the early part of this century. When he told me his phone app analogy, my immediate response was “How’s that working out in Afghanistan?” That’s a flip response, but I think there’s a there, there. I also look at China. We thought trade would be the key to making it a liberal country. No, it turns out we’ve merely made China rich and powerful, but not liberal. Now it is our greatest adversary and a dangerous one. Though I criticize the phone app idea, I confess I used to believe it. I thought these ideas were so clearly right and attractive that they would immediately prevail. Not so.   

I really believe that the thing that is at the foundation of liberalism is the first thing we are told about human beings in Genesis, which is that they are made in the image of God. (The second thing is that he made them man and woman.) But if human beings are made in the image of God, then they have a special dignity and value. Now, obviously, the Bible doesn’t promote democracy and we don’t really see it so much there. However, I think you can start with that premise and work out so much of what we value. 

If you believe certain things about how human beings should be respected and honored, then you can escape a straightforward power calculus or at least moderate it in significant ways.  

MW: Early in the book, you describe the 1960s as the key historical season when our politics and culture really shifted. You suggest several explanations, chief among them the advent of the birth control pill. What a tantalizing opportunity this might be for you to expand on that hypothesis and get the attention of Baptists, Evangelicals, Catholics, and a host of others. Care to tell us more? 

HB: We like to think about cultural changes as mostly proceeding from great intellectual movements, but sometimes technology and conditions on the ground make a bigger difference. It seems to me that the birth control pill severed the necessary relationship between sex and reproduction. Once you accomplish that change, then you can begin changing the view of what marriage is. Before the pill, marriage almost necessarily meant children. After the pill, that relationship is “maybe not” about having kids at all. Maybe it’s more about pleasure and companionship. Once you begin thinking that way, gay marriage, polyamory, and other irregular familial arrangements seem plausible in a way they didn’t in the past.   

It’s no accident that the birth control pill sets us up for easing restrictions on divorce and for the legalization of abortion as well. The technology alters the playing field, and other related things start to change. The final result, I think, has been a society much less protective of children’s need for the stability of growing up with a married mom and dad who can model the complementary capacities of the two sexes. Now, we seem to expect that children will adapt to whatever we throw at them because the interests of autonomous adults are paramount. The blowback when Mark Regnerus produced research questioning whether same-sex parenting arrangements were equally good for children is a prime example.    

MW: Final question: among faithful Christians we have this Goldilocks battle between those who engage the culture in a more robust way (or “combative,” according to critics) and those who aim to be more winsome (or “milquetoast,” say critics). What are your thoughts as to how we can engage in the public square with vigor for our convictions and for the common good, without falling too far toward one extreme or the other? 

HB: I continue to believe that our best path forward is to respect one another and to avoid the constant temptation to engage in emotional and political manipulation from the left and right. It is really hard. We arrive at a set of beliefs as we grow, and it can be painful to reconsider them or to see them being challenged. If we don’t privilege reading, listening, and thinking, though, I think we set ourselves up to constantly be conditioned in the way C. S. Lewis warned against in The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength. 

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