美国政府严重侵犯宪法的政教分离原则 （中英文版）

Lyndon Johnson’s act is another example of a serious violation of the rights of the Christian Church. According to this act, the US government can cancel the Christian Church’s tax exemption privilege to limit the church’s right to interfere in politics. As we have discussed before, the traditional two-headed snake-like separation of church and state in Christianity is the most stable and robust social structure. The state and the church supervise and support each other to make the society develop healthily, orderly, and speedily. In this structure, the state and the church have their own exclusive fields. Due to the restriction of the Bible and doctrines, the Christian Church rarely set foot in the military, police, prisons, and economy, these vital secular fields. Still, except these, other essential social functions such as charity, education, hospital, etc., are managed and handled by the church. We also know that for building the city of God, the Puritan church in Massachusetts also intervened in many secular affairs according to the two-headed snake-like separation of politics and religion. It was the mediation of the church among various political forces that maintained the stable order of the society. Otherwise, it would be impossible to build God’s city on the hill successfully, and it would not be possible to found the United States later. The church’s intervention in politics is not to participate in secular affairs but to play the role of the sword of the spirit, restrict the power of the secular government, and supervise the behavior of the secular government. Countless historical experiences have proved that only in this way can the secular government be guaranteed not to fall into the tyranny of dictatorship, oligarchy, and majority. At the very least, church interference in politics also protects the exclusive affairs of the church from the violation of the secular government. The reason is actually very simple. Suppose the church does not interfere in politics, how to determine the boundary between the church and the secular government, and how to prevent the rights of the church from being infringed by the secular government. In human history, religion has always been the most critical matter in life, and it has always entangled with secular government. It isn’t easy to separate them completely. Whether Christian society or other societies, the secular government has always made special preferential policies for religious affairs. Even in the Oriental secular society, the emperor often granted temples land for monks’ living and development expenses; all the lands were naturally tax-free. Christian countries naturally have such a tradition. The Bible clearly stipulates tithe tax, collected in Catholic countries before. After the Protestant reform, the tithe tax was gradually abolished. The American Protestant society that began in Massachusetts did not collect additional religious taxes. Instead, each church and parish raised their own living and development expenses; they had not burdened the secular government anything. This can be regarded as the least demanded church in history. In any case, the secular government would not levy any taxes from the church, but the Lyndon Johnson bill did. It can be seen how the Lyndon Johnson bill despised the most important matter in human life, how it regarded religion as nothing, how it violated the rights of the church, and how it trampled on the first amendment of the Constitution. However, this bill was passed in Congress, and the whole Christian Church had no means to hit back against such violations; they didn’t know how to protect themselves. It can be seen that the church in the United States had degenerated to an unbelievable level without any blood and iron; they were really like a flock of sheep. They could at least initiate legal proceedings till the Supreme Court. Even if they failed, they could also organize some demonstrations and protests as Martin Luther King did. No, nothing had done.

The church in the United States had done nothing; they gave up their right to restrict and supervise the secular government and lived a little life in an abundance of caution. Obviously, even if the separation of religion and politics is entirely complete, the church should consult with the state to define this separation line. The boundary can not be defined by the state alone, and the state can not own the final say, while the church has no say. The church can not interfere in politics and can not consult the separate line in the linden Johnson act of politics, which is extraordinarily unreasonable and brutal. As a result, the sword of God’s spirit completely disappeared, and the American government encroached upon the church at will. In addition to the right to marriage, the American government also took away many other social functions wantonly that initially belonged to the church, such as education, charity, hospital, etc.