In my opinion, given our corporate eschatological view concerning the role that America will play in events immediately preceding the Second Coming, or more specifically, given the consensus Seventh-day Adventist "take" on Revelation 13 as delineated in The Great Controversy; and given that, in such instance, the relationship between church and state in the United States will be pivotal in any event; we should as individuals by and large hold to a civil libertarian view, at least ideologically, if not politically. Wikipedia defines civil liberties as "rights and freedoms that protect an individual from the state. Civil liberties set limits on government so that its members cannot abuse their power and interfere unduly with the rights of private citizens.  Common civil liberties include the rights of...freedom of religion, and freedom of speech, and additionally the right to due process, to a trial, to own property, and to privacy." A civil libertarian is defined as "one who is actively concerned with the protection of the fundamental rights guaranteed to the individual by law," according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Controversially however to many, civil liberties also include such things as reproductive rights/abortion, same-sex civil unions/marriage and the so-called
victimless crimes, to name a few.

In the American political system, the political party that most emphatically espouses the principles of civil libertarianism is the Libertarian Party. Pragmatically speaking, however, we recognize that the Libertarian Party is effectively nothing more than the most recognizable "third party" in what is essentially a two-party system and, as such, simply does not win American political elections. It is also clear that their political views therefore rarely become recognized as popularly mandated public policy. In fact, other than when the courts happen to recognize the civil libertarian view to be the constitutionally correct one, as manifested in, or as the result of a ruling in a particular court case, the libertarian perspective is rarely debated, or seriously considered.

So where does that leave us from a realpolitik perspective? In other words, what is our best political option, given that the two political parties are largely ideological entities, with the Republicans representing conservatives and the Democrats representing liberals, and the Libertarian Party representing principled losers? Clearly and quite appropriately, the civil liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment concerning freedom of religion are the very rights with which Adventists most closely associate their interests. Neither Republicans nor Democrats, conservatives nor liberals, openly state or advocate civil libertarian values as a rule, in large measure because of the controversial stands that civil libertarians often take in defense of the rights of the politically unpopular, be they individuals or issues.

On the other hand however, it is evident that there is an increasingly significant segment of the American body politic that seems to have a problem, shall we say, with the promotion, if not the concept of civil liberties from a public policy perspective. In a behavioral context, as any adult with parental, guardianship, or pedagogical responsibilities will attest, there is a natural tension between freedom and order; and this segment of the populace tends to "pull" in the direction of order; some harder–or more fervently–than others. Permissiveness or license is perceived by these Americans as detrimental to the best interests of society, whereas tradition and order are perceived as contributory to what has made, and continues to make, America great. To a varying extent, many of these citizens are often motivated by convictions of a faith-based, values-oriented, religious nature and feel a moral responsibility to influence society–and hence public policy–with their beliefs, or at least with their values.

The political application of this philosophy or way of thinking in a pluralistic society that is governed as a constitutional republic, and that acknowledges a constitutional separation of the respective roles and spheres of authority of religion and government, i.e., church and state, is somewhat problematic, to put it mildly. In truth, there has long been a legitimate question as to how should those who want to exert a moral influence on American society, informed by their faith-based values, best go about doing so in a manner consistent with the Constitutional protections of the First Amendment.

The tension here then is in terms of the competing concepts or philosophies of American religious liberty; that is, between separation and accommodation. Separationists, operating on the assumptions that religious liberty is more legitimately fostered by religion having practically nothing to do with the government and vice versa, and that the liberty of the religious and the non-religious alike are both less threatened by such demarcation, emphasize the importance of Thomas Jefferson's proverbial "wall of separation" between the church and the state.  Accommodationists conversely conceptualize religious liberty in terms of the state neither interfering with the church's efforts to exert influence in public affairs (either symbolically or concretely), nor prohibiting the church from benefiting from public or governmental largess in the carrying out of religious functions and missions.

There are now, and historically have been, American politicians, civil magistrates, religious and thought leaders who view the concepts of civil liberties and the separation of church and state with disdain, if not contempt; and as all but subversive. The reality is we believe that Revelation 13:11,12 describes U.S. civil authority as both willfully and purposefully (either) misapplying or ignoring the principles of civil liberties in general and of religious freedom in particular (as set forth in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution), by mandating the accommodation of religious institutionalism. This will only be possible if those who would seek any such accommodation have their way–politically. Politics will have to effectively yield or produce, state coercion.

So, politically speaking, Adventists and anyone else seriously concerned with the principles of constitutionally protected religious liberty should, at the very least, be cognizant–if not extremely wary–of those who have a political agenda of church and state "accommodation." I know that I am.