Madison was a radical on this question, and he does not always exhibit his usual moderation when dealing with it. For example, he openly suggested that Patrick Henry’s proposal for a general religious assessment in Virginia was of the same spirit as the Inquisition (he said “it differs from it only in degree”). For my part, I am glad that the assessment was defeated, and glad that the Presbyterians, after flirting with it, ultimately opposed it–he who pays the piper calls the tune, and churches should be funded independently of the state. At the same time, I am not convinced that it is possible or desirable for civil government to take no cognizance of religion. We should remember that Madison’s attitude toward religion was largely baptistic–not in the pejorative sense with which we Reformed sometimes imbue the term, but in a strictly historical one. Madison was profoundly shaped by witnessing as a young man the persecution of the baptists in his own backyard in Orange County, Va. Madison’s cousin was the first Episcopal bishop of Virginia, and he was educated by Witherspoon at Presbyterian Princeton; yet at least in the matter of how church and state should relate, his writings show that his own ideal was to be found among the Baptists and Quakers and Mennonites.

With regard to Augustine, I think he may have been more sophisticated than we think today. After all, he was in large part the pioneer of the later distinction between the invisible and visible church. Moreover, the church was divided in his day–when he returned from Italy, the Donatists, not the Catholics, were the majority in North Africa, and although he doesn’t say it directly, his mother’s family background was probably part Donatist. This is not to say Augustine’s ideas were perfect, but it should counterbalance our inclination to see the modern day church’s situation as far different from that of the patristic period.

What I said above wasn’t meant to upbraid Madison. Surely it is possible to disagree with and challenge one of his views without belittling him. Maybe the problem is that I am uncomfortable with placing as much stress on invisible unity over against visible unity as we sometimes do today. Anyway, I hope this clarifies what I was getting at.

That visible unity is broken. The invisible unity is not. America with a deeply Protestant heritage. That heritage has upsides and down. The down may be the multiplicity of sects.

Don’t blame Madison. He was a statesman not a churchman. It is silly for the church to create its own problems and to be mad at the civil government for having to deal prudently with them.

But, providentially, this problem has served as a kind of benefit. The multiplicity of sects has allowed unique little groups like the RPCNA and the OPC to worship our God according to His own command without interference by guys with funny hats or guys carrying a sword.

“In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.” (Federalist No. 51)

I think highly of Madison, but have trouble reconciling his vision on this point with Christ’s high priestly prayer.

My model is Western, two swords, two kingdom, and more American than previous Covenanter models. It aspires to be Andrew Melville meets John Randolph of Roanoke. It likely has few adherents in our out of the RP church but I am doing my best.

To your point. W2K is an abstraction, and worse- a revolutionary abstraction- IF it demands that we damn the good things that Christendom has given us. Ignoring Christ’s Kingship over the nations is what seems creepy to me.

Could you also be saying that “W2K is great but when it seems to not be a champion of a particular socio-political dogma we must hold it suspect”? Liberals recoil because it seems uninspired doctrine to get illiterate and starving boys and girls better educated, fat and happy; Conservatives wince when it becomes clear that it is useless in making sure every fetus comes to term.

In conversations I have with those who high stakes driven into the western tradition generally and American experiment specifically, and who seem to apply said principles differently (i.e. ideological Liberals and Conservatives), it always seems that W2K is rendered a dangerous doctrine. I can’t help but conclude that this is only so because it is interpretated as a weak partner in proping up the fading traditions of men, whatever they may be. Nobody–at least not I–wants to take your ideology away from you, but, in point of fact, let you have it, just with a bit more sanity. I mean, aren’t prayers to the Most High in thanks for certain idealogues, I don’t know, just a bit creepy?