Trinity Church in the City of Boston
The Rev. Morgan S. Allen
July 5, 2026
Fourth of July & 250th Weekend, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
In you, O Lord, have we taken refuge; for the sake of your name, lead us and guide us.1[i] Amen.
As the United States marks our semiquincentennial this weekend, today we consider the relationship of the Church and the state, as it has been and as it might be. Preaching to the occasion, then, we will walk alongside this morning’s Gospel, rather than within it. A few notes about that appointed text from Matthew:
Note that the authoring community stitches together at least three sayings of Jesus – almost certainly not spoken in either this setting or in the quick succession of our scriptural canon. Instead, the authoring community chooses this arrangement in service of their narrative purposes.
The first of these sayings makes clear that the even the earliest disciples were difficult to satisfy – challenging enough to exasperate Jesus – and that when a prophecy frustrated them, they criticized the prophet.2[ii] The second saying declares that one’s status neither expresses God’s favor nor credentials one for faith – indeed, anyone can receive this Good News that Jesus shares.3[iii] And the final saying reassures that we need not labor alone for the reign of God: the Savior of the world shares our loads and makes every burden light.4[iv]
With those notes at our side …
Being raised a Roman Catholic in the Deep South of the 1980s and ’90s meant living in the pinch of the Bible Belt. Most of my classmates attended Southern Baptist or “non-denominational” churches in the charismatic, evangelical style. For many of them, my Catholicism and later Reception into the Episcopal Church did little to assuage concerns for the wellbeing of my eternal soul [Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? they would ask on the regular], a missionary focus about which they felt considerably more energy than I.
With those peers I always felt the pressure of a hard sell, our schoolyards a used-car lot, except instead of a late-model Ford, they were trying to get me into the worldview of a low-mileage Christian nation, one sold with electric windows, lock-ins, and long-haired youth pastors who played electric guitar – the latter offending my heavy-metal allegiances as much as my Christian conscience. Despite the moral quality and direction of my salvation-minded classmates’ lives remaining as uncertain as the rest of ours,5[v] their evangelism marched further and more boldly into the public square. By the time I graduated college, a church had purchased our local mall, a once teeming retailscape in the southwest corner of town.6[vi] They added a steeple to the entrance where the movie theaters used to be; built a nursery where the arcade in Aladdin’s Castle had been; and convened a bible study in the former home of Spencer’s Gifts.7[vii]
Stanley Hauerwas – the Texas native who remains this country’s most important living theologian – points to those years as a pivot for Christianity’s place in U.S. politics. In his 1986 article, “A Christian Critique Of Christian America,”8[viii] Hauerwas recounts mainline denominationalism’s enervation by Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel.9[ix] At the turn of the twentieth century, Rauschenbusch had declared, “It is not enough to christianize individuals, we must christianize societies … nations, for they too have a life of their own which may be made better or worse.’”10[x] Rauschenbusch considered democracies “saved;” and those ordered by any different means, he viewed as “unsaved.”11[xi] He declared: “Where religion and intellect combine, the foundation is laid for political democracy.”12[xii]
In time, this promise of the American project as a new Christendom led socially progressive Christians to labor for more righteous governance, a movement especially visible during the Civil Rights struggle.13[xiii] In the 1960s and the century previous, these “mainstream” Christians (as Hauerwas described them 40 years ago) criticized their more conservative, pietistic brethren for not taking a more active political stand – that is, until the late 1970s, when Jerry Falwell took them up on their commission and launched the Moral Majority.14[xiv] Yet, as Falwell “played the flute,” the mainstreamers “did not dance,”15[xv] for his faith-based politics opposed their own. Hauerwas notes [and it’s a zinger], Falwell became “convinced, just like Martin Luther King Jr, that Christians … must seek through constitutionally guaranteed means to influence our political representatives” and to christianize the law. 16[xvi]
While Hauerwas proposes the Christian Right brought their churches into the public square, from my formative, young-adult seasons to these last 30-plus years of work in parish ministry, I have experienced the opposite: the Christian Right brought their politics into the Church. Shellacking partisanship with a Christian veneer and declaring their positions Gospel, they worshipped power, Christianity little more than a proof-texted sales strategy, a vernacular of images and ideas they hollowed for their purposes. Remembering well my condemnation not only as a political opponent but as a heathen, the tactics of the Moral Majority, then the Christian Coalition, and their successors finely tuned my radar for this convenient bait-and-switch.
Caught on their prideful backfoot when political opponents began saying the quietly Christian part out loud, the progressive Church appealed to “slogans of the past, that ‘religion and politics do not mix,’ or that ‘one should not try to force one’s religious views on anyone through public policy’” – the very defenses the Baptists had once delivered to guard themselves against mainliners’ finger-wagging.17[xvii] During this same season, the nation’s fond melting-pot narrative yielded to the positive re-estimation of a multi-religious society, and secular progressives became suspicious of their Christian compatriots. Likewise, as the academy revisited other idealized histories – the original colonies’ culpability in the Triangular Trade and enslavement economy, among others – the complications of including the progressive Church in their dinner parties became more difficult to overlook.
Facing intense pressure on multiple fronts, mainline denominations did not take two steps back, consider their complicity in the rise of the Christian Right as a political force, and bring fresh theological rigor to the opportunities of a pluralistic world [sigh]. No, the Christian mainstream followed the model of the Moral Majority, and instead of taking Christianity into the public square, progressivism brought its own politics into the Church.
Mainline denominational leadership increasingly chose celebrity before consequence, investing more resources into building a brand attractive to the partisan culture whose approval we pursued, than into building our congregations in the character of Jesus. We established our own saved-unsaved binaries to test ideological fitness. Cozying to politicians whose power and persona we coveted, we prioritized the cheapest forms of visibility before developing any meaningful vision of what thriving parishes might offer the world. Not so different at all from Shreveport’s shopping-mall church, we questioned the value of our sanctuaries and sought to tack steeples atop our local Democratic offices and NGOs.
The consequences of this doubling-down have been devastating inside and outside the Church. Inside, parishes chose purity rather than grace, othering heterodox pewmates, often viciously. Denominations hemorrhaged membership and splintered into ever less significant factions. As a result, most of our congregations became monochromatically either deep red or deep blue, assemblies that could no longer nurture understanding of difference, but only enforce conformity.
Outside, our blessing of partisan tactics did nothing to cool polarization. Rather than bringing a distinctive, peacemaking ethos, we accepted the rules of engagement as our hyper-partisan culture set them. And with the distance between a salvific order and a salvific leader proving no broader than a breath [if it exists at all], we joined those we intended to oppose in bending the arc of the moral universe toward theocracy, rather than justice.
Hauerwas roots these troubles in “Constantinianism,” a shift in the logic of moral argument after Caesar has been welcomed as a member of the Church.18[xviii] See, once ol’ Constantine declared Christianity the imperial religion, Christians begin redirecting their focus from their common life in the Church, to others’ behavior in the empire. The trouble with this shift is not that Caesar should be excluded from the Christian altar, but that Christianity began to hedge expectations of how a disciple of Jesus should behave. Whether as a leader or as a subject, the ease of the state came to precede the demands of the Gospel.19[xix]
Perhaps because of my experience – not an especially peculiar one, but one of a certain era and geography – I agree with Hauerwas that “something has already gone wrong when Christians think they can ask, ‘What is the best form of society or government.’”20[xx] Even if I agree with their aspirations, my bait-and-switch radar pings for the “questions imply [Christians] should or do have social and political [entitlement to] determine [society’s order]” according to their will.21[xxi]
For us in the Church to break hold of our Constantinianism, we Christians must first and finally divorce ourselves from Rauschenbusch and distinguish American democracy from the Christian mission.22[xxii] While those undertakings have a history of mutual influence [at times to beneficial effect, at others, to gross injustice], their trajectories have never been the same.
Our American democracy acts for its perpetuation [its elected leaders for the preservation of their power], while Christianity endeavors time’s fulfilment, when our reconciliation to God and with one another will make obsolete all mortal institutions. Our American democracy seeks to coopt Christianity for its own purposes, while Christianity seeks the redemption of our common life by remaining differentiated. Even the grandest vision of the American democracy works toward a penultimate, temporal horizon, while God’s grandest dreams always point us toward eternity.
These distinctions can allow us American Christians to order more righteously our common life. As we declare in our baptismal promises, we can “continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers,”23[xxiii] first to join with God and one another in loving Communion, and not in representative government. As the citizenry of God’s realm, we can “seek and serve Christ in all persons and love our neighbor as ourselves,”24[xxiv] first to fulfill our Covenant promises, and not our national ideals. As members of Christ’s Body, we can “strive for justice and peace among all people,”25[xxv] first to inaugurate Beloved Community, and not any partisan outcome. Even when our actions appear identical, their roots in our faith matter.
As an American during this Fourth-of-July weekend, I [of course] value our pursuit of a more perfect union, both in the last 250 years and in the centuries we hope still remain before us. I recognize the remarkable privilege I inherit to wonder these cosmic questions so freely, and grateful for that gift, I do not suggest that committing one’s life as a faithful Christian makes one a disloyal American – not any more than being a loyal American necessarily makes one a faithful Christian.26[xxvi] Christianity has existed and endured “through many dangers, toils, and snares,”27[xxvii] and I mean to make clear that our form of government remains incidental to God’s hopes, and is not their fulfillment.
As Hauerwas encourages, what if we resisted the Constantinian urge to direct others to behave as Christians and instead sought to order our own life by Jesus?28[xxviii] That is, what if we accepted that our shared salvation began with us, and we at Trinity dared confess our complicity in this national moment, asking God and neighbor to forgive our having shamed and excluded? What if we committed ourselves to renew our ethical and theological imaginations, and we brought the ministry, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus to bear upon the challenges of our day, rather than the reverse? What if we accepted that the worldly consequences of such a shift would demand a faith in outcomes we could not immediately see or hold, and could include belittlement, rejection, or even suffering?29[xxix] What if we rolled back the incursion of partisan tactics and presumptions into our congregations and common life, and we sought to be “gentle and humble in heart,”30[xxx] loving our immediate neighbor more and better as our first devotion? By God’s Grace, a community so ordered might be made worthy of Christ’s name.
People of God – “all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens”31[xxxi] – do not underestimate the transformative power of the parish church, inside and far beyond our walls! In cellular assemblies like this one, our joy and wonder,32[xxxii] our prayer and praise, comprise both our faith and our work – ministries that make a difference for our souls and for the wellbeing of the world. Our life together has never been a merely passive, pietist witness; every Beloved Community participates in the inauguration of God’s reign in all times and all places. Believe: we advance the world’s renewal as we love well, loving on, until the perimeter of our movement becomes the most distant horizon, and all people share in the Good News by gracious invitation and welcome, the generous means by which we were once received into the same.
Praying Peace and Courage,
Amen.
[i] From Psalm 31.
[ii] Matthew 11:16-19. “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon;’ the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’”
[iii] Matthew 11:25-27. “At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’”
[iv] Matthew 11:28-30. “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
[v] I am choosing generous words here and resisting judgements.
[vi] Tempted as I am to overexplain, the metaphor writes itself.
[vii] More or less. I have wondered what they did with the atrium area formed by the main entrance to JC Penney’s, flanked by Morrow’s Nut House on the right, and Claire’s Boutique on the left (if my memory serves). Turning left from that entrance, Chess King and then Spencer’s on the left, Hasting’s on the right.
[viii] Hauerwas, Stanley. “A Christian Critique Of Christian America.” The Hauerwas Reader, edited by John Berkman and Michael Cartwright, Duke University Press, 2001.
[ix] Though I focus on Rauschenbusch to keep the sermon within its already overlong confines, there remains plenty more to mine: “Dawson quotes Lyman Abbott, successor to Henry Ward Beecher, in the liberal Christian paper Outlook to the effect that ‘Democracy is not merely a political theory, it is not merely a social opinion; it is a profound religious faith. To him who holds it, this one fundamental faith in the Fatherhood of God and in the universal brotherhood of man is the essence of democracy.’”
[x] Hauerwas, 465.
[xi] Ibid. “On that basis, Rauschenbusch thought it quite possible to speak of saved and unsaved organizations, ‘The one is under the law of Christ, the other under the law of mammon.’”
[xii] Ibid. With my uh-oh bells ringing like mad: “What is the general tendency toward democracy and the gradual abolition of hereditary privileges but history’s assent to the revolutionary dogmas of Christ?”
[xiii] Hauerwas, 462.
[xiv] Hauerwas, 473. “… what I have attempted to do is to show that the reason Falwell is such a challenge to the Christian mainstream in America is not because he is so different from them, but because he has basically accepted their agenda.”
[xv] Matthew 11:17.
[xvi] Hauerwas, 463. “Jerry Falwell represents the triumph of mainstream Christianity in America, as he is convinced, just like Martin Luther King Jr., that Christians cannot abandon the political realm in their desire for justice.”
[xvii] Hauerwas, 462-463. “Pietists, in defense of their position, sometimes responded by appealing not to their theological convictions but instead to what they considered the normative commitments of the American society – namely, that our constitution has erected a ‘wall of separation between church and state.’”
[xviii] Hauerwas, 474-475.
[xix] “Just war” theory stands out as an example. I find nothing in the life of Jesus that could possibly support war. The idea of a “just” war is one justified by the wellbeing of the state, not the sacrificial witness of Christ. If I support some military action, I should realize I do so based on my beliefs (or needs, fears, hopes, etc.) as a citizen, and not as a Christian.
[xx] Hauerwas, 474.
[xxi] Ibid. “That this assumption has long been with us does nothing to confirm its truth.”
[xxii] I make appeal here to ideas I preached on the Sunday following January 6, 2021.
[xxiii] From “Holy Baptism” in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, pp. 304-305.
[xxiv] Ibid.
[xxv] Ibid.
[xxvi] The biggest yikes idea of them all, but a Social Gospel’r standard.
[xxvii] “Amazing grace!” The Hymnal 1982, The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1985, 671.
[xxviii] Hauerwas, 475-479. “I believe that Christians should not will that secular society be more unjust than it already has a tendency to be. Therefore, we have a stake in fostering those forms of human association that ensure that the virtues can be sustained. Virtues make it possible to sustain a society committed to working out differences short of violence. What I fear, however, is that in the absence of those associations we will seek to solve the moral anomie of the American people through state action or by a coercive reclaiming of Christian America.”
[xxix] I believe the necessity of making ourselves vulnerable to these two possibilities – committing faith in an outcome we cannot readily describe (much less grasp) and suffering some social discomfort, even if not open persecution – are the most difficult sell. I tucked them in the middle of this paragraph, but they are the most important steps we can take.
[xxx] Matthew 11:29.
[xxxi] Matthew 11:28.
[xxxii] One last appeal to our baptismal rite (p. 308), from perhaps my favorite line of prayer: “Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.”