Faith Works 5-29-2026
Jeff Gill
Pluralism versus hegemony in a semi-quincentennial year
___
You may well be tired of America 250 observances, but I most assuredly am not.
This is in part because your humble scribe is a history geek, first class. It’s just how I roll. If you find this 250th year of American independence to have far too much history content in it, consider it like soluble fiber in your diet. You almost certainly can use more, even if you think you don’t like it. Me, I consume history for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a second breakfast just for good measure (ask Merry and Pippin to explain).
Church history is catnip for me, but the pastor in me is quick to say: you don’t have to have a passion for history to have a deep and meaningful faith. Your religious beliefs are not dependent on knowing the whole history of how the wider community of faith has developed some of the words and practices we associate with the practice of a personal faith.
I think it might help develop deeper roots to that growing faith, but again, it’s not necessary. Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and Aquinas all have something to tell us, in agreement or opposition, about how faith writ large works itself out across time, but your faith in divine providence and future hopes doesn’t require you be able to write a short biography of all four.
Where this gets sticky is in good citizenship, especially in a pluralist democracy like these United States.
If you believe your faith in where we came from, and where we are going, is correct and worth basing your own life choices on today, you might well believe that we’d all be better off if everyone were instructed to believe in much the same way. If there are lots of people whose faith works very differently in our civil discourse, that might make our coming together to make decisions for the common good more difficult. Why not have a state church, an official faith, a standard of belief which all elected officials and responsible authorities must agree to? It’s not too odd at all to think so.
John Locke, though, saw in the 1600s that the idea of a state church and civil religion that had total authority over public life, a sort of hegemony around church and state, did not actually work out in practice the way you might hope. The persistence of what that era called “non-conformists,” or people not part of the established church, in asking admittance to the norms and forms of public life (going to college, holding civic offices, even being a commissioned officer in the military), gave rise to a great deal of turmoil and kept tensions high between, in Locke’s day, Protestant Anglicans and Catholics in particular, and in opposition to other Protestants in general.
So Locke looked to a core set of values in good government that did not presume a hegemony for any one religious tradition, but to something like the basic human rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as what binds a community together… and within that agreement, the freedom to assemble and worship as we choose. That’s pluralism as Locke envisioned it, living under the authority of a state church which was showing some strain even in the late 1600s.
A century later, Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton among others could try to work out pluralism in actual practice. It opens up the possibility of tensions, no doubt, but Locke’s experience can remind us today that the cure of uniformity might be worse than the supposed disease of plural points of view.
Me, I’d love for everyone to agree with me. But it wouldn’t actually work unless you had the chance to make that decision for yourself. Evangelism is up to church communities themselves to make the case for their beliefs, not the government.
And history does show us that’s the better way.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s got a bit more to say yet about America 250 as it relates to faith and church life. Tell him how you’re marking the occasion at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
Jeff Gill
Pluralism versus hegemony in a semi-quincentennial year
___
You may well be tired of America 250 observances, but I most assuredly am not.
This is in part because your humble scribe is a history geek, first class. It’s just how I roll. If you find this 250th year of American independence to have far too much history content in it, consider it like soluble fiber in your diet. You almost certainly can use more, even if you think you don’t like it. Me, I consume history for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a second breakfast just for good measure (ask Merry and Pippin to explain).
Church history is catnip for me, but the pastor in me is quick to say: you don’t have to have a passion for history to have a deep and meaningful faith. Your religious beliefs are not dependent on knowing the whole history of how the wider community of faith has developed some of the words and practices we associate with the practice of a personal faith.
I think it might help develop deeper roots to that growing faith, but again, it’s not necessary. Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and Aquinas all have something to tell us, in agreement or opposition, about how faith writ large works itself out across time, but your faith in divine providence and future hopes doesn’t require you be able to write a short biography of all four.
Where this gets sticky is in good citizenship, especially in a pluralist democracy like these United States.
If you believe your faith in where we came from, and where we are going, is correct and worth basing your own life choices on today, you might well believe that we’d all be better off if everyone were instructed to believe in much the same way. If there are lots of people whose faith works very differently in our civil discourse, that might make our coming together to make decisions for the common good more difficult. Why not have a state church, an official faith, a standard of belief which all elected officials and responsible authorities must agree to? It’s not too odd at all to think so.
John Locke, though, saw in the 1600s that the idea of a state church and civil religion that had total authority over public life, a sort of hegemony around church and state, did not actually work out in practice the way you might hope. The persistence of what that era called “non-conformists,” or people not part of the established church, in asking admittance to the norms and forms of public life (going to college, holding civic offices, even being a commissioned officer in the military), gave rise to a great deal of turmoil and kept tensions high between, in Locke’s day, Protestant Anglicans and Catholics in particular, and in opposition to other Protestants in general.
So Locke looked to a core set of values in good government that did not presume a hegemony for any one religious tradition, but to something like the basic human rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as what binds a community together… and within that agreement, the freedom to assemble and worship as we choose. That’s pluralism as Locke envisioned it, living under the authority of a state church which was showing some strain even in the late 1600s.
A century later, Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton among others could try to work out pluralism in actual practice. It opens up the possibility of tensions, no doubt, but Locke’s experience can remind us today that the cure of uniformity might be worse than the supposed disease of plural points of view.
Me, I’d love for everyone to agree with me. But it wouldn’t actually work unless you had the chance to make that decision for yourself. Evangelism is up to church communities themselves to make the case for their beliefs, not the government.
And history does show us that’s the better way.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s got a bit more to say yet about America 250 as it relates to faith and church life. Tell him how you’re marking the occasion at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
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