Last Sunday I shared the story of Samuel Sewall, who was a Puritan judge who participated in the Salem witch trials in the late 1600s. He helped convict 20 women and men who went on to be executed. Yet Judge Sewall later came to recognize the horrific sin he had committed by doing this: the forces of evil, he came to see, had not been working through the people being accused of being witches, but rather through the unholy union of mob violence and state violence that led to them being scapegoated, much as Jesus himself had been.

Samuel Sewall repented for this, publicly and sincerely. From that day forward, he wore a coarse hair-shirt to always remind him of the itch of conscience, which he had ignored. In the process he became remarkably sensitized the way that God works through the conscience. This led him to publish in 1700 the first abolitionist tract in colonial North America, arguing for the rights of enslaved Africans; he then argued that Native Americans are just as much God’s children as Europeans and should not be treated any worse than Europeans would want to be treated. He later argued for the natural “right of women”, and for a certain kind of equality between men and women in God’s eyes.

Now, by our standards, he wasn’t totally enlightened about these issues. But he was a courageous and trailblazing voice. Among his descendants were prominent abolitionists and suffragists.

As members of the United Church of Christ, we at this church can claim Sewall as one of our ancestors in the faith. In time, most of the descendants of the Puritans became New England Congregationalists. In time, most of the Congregationalists became one of the four historic streams of American Protestantism that joined to form the United Church of Christ.

Samuel Sewall is emblematic of the kind of evolution, the moral evolution – personal and, at our best, collective – that is possible when people allow the Living God to act on us through history, to hold us accountable to the ways that the forces of sin can possess us, and to help us grow, through Grace, to honor the dignity and sanctity of all people.

The dimension of that evolution I want to spend some time with today has to do with the relationship between church and state. Because, you see, this stream of our ancestors of our faith, the New England Congregationalists and before them the Puritans, were the official established church of the governing powers in colonial New England. They left old England because the official established church there persecuted them. But when they were in charge here in the colonies they started committing the same things themselves. The witch trials were not only the unholy alliance of mob violence and state violence, but also of religious violence.

In colonial New England, with the Congregationalists in charge, it was illegal to be a Baptist, or a Quaker, to pick two schools of believers that the state church found particularly irksome. When a Baptist or a Quaker showed up and started preaching, the state authorities would run them out of town, or execute them.

Whenever I’ve shared this in talking about the history of the United Church of Christ, folks are often surprised that, for a denomination that has a reputation for being so open-minded, we have such violently intolerant ancestors. My reply is: Well, we’re descended from the people who either did those terrible things, like Samuel Sewall, or witnessed those terrible things, and said, “No more. We have to stop this. We have to prevent this from happening again.” We’re descended from the folks who learned their lesson about how power can corrupt religion. We’re descended from the folks who repented of this and received Grace and were forever changed.

Among these faith ancestors of ours are people who worked really hard to advocate for the separation of church and state, during the lead up to the Revolutionary War, and the development of the U.S. Constitution, and the decades after.

This movement was called “disestablishmentarianism.” “Disestablishmentarianism” is the belief that we should dis-establish, remove the establishment of an official state religion. An established church or religion is one that has special support from the state and influence over the state. Most of the European kingdoms had established churches, and many of the colonies in America followed suit. Dis-establishmentarianism was a movement both in the American colonies and in England.

Many of you may have been taught as kids, as I was, that the longest word in the English language is “antidisestablishmentarianism.” It clocks in at 28 letters long, longer than the alphabet. Now you know what it means: It was the ideology of the people who opposed the disestablishmentarians. The antidisestablishmentarians wanted to keep an official state religion. That suited them just fine, thank you very much – I’m sure they personally benefitted from it. I can only imagine they were also very proud of the very long name for their movement.

For the record, I’m on the side of the plain old disestablishmentarians. It’s not wise for a nation to have an official established church. There have been too many heresy trials in history, too many religious persecutions and inquisitions and pogroms and regimes of repression, too many religious wars, and on and on – there have been too many abuses of religious power for us to not learn our lesson. Yes, these things can happen whether or not they’re sanctioned by the state – we live in a fallen world and religious institutions themselves clearly are susceptible to sin, as are state institutions. But history has shown just how much more terrible it gets when religious violence is married with state violence.  

It’s just the fact of the matter that we live in a world where there is a plurality of ways to worship. Every attempt to try to change this and impose uniformity in religion has required terrible violence and repression, which is counter to the core message of every world religion – and it doesn’t even work, even in authoritarian theocratic states. Human religious expression is stubbornly diverse. I suspect this fact shows us something very important and very beautiful about the nature of God and the nature of human beings.

Our Congregationalist forebears developed a deep respect for the freedom of conscience and a deep appreciation for how important it is for us to marry our freedoms with responsibility. This contributes to a strong ethic that guards against seeking religious domination. One way I’ve heard expressed the importance of religious freedom is the difference between, “I can’t do that, it’s against my religion” vs. “You can’t do that, it’s against my religion.”

Everyone is much better off if we do not combine the power of religion with the power of the state. Furthermore, we as Christians are much better off. As followers of Jesus, we should be especially wary of the temptation to sanctify human power, especially when that power is won and wielded through violence.

Our Lord and Savior died because of the unholy alliance between religious power, mob violence, and state violence. When Jesus was out in the desert being tempted by the Slanderer, he refused the temptation to become the emperor of the world, for he was clear that is contrary to worship of God alone. Everything Jesus taught and showed about the nature of God and what that means for the ethics that should guide us, systematically undercuts the divisions between “us” and “them” we use to build walls around our tribal, ethnic, religious, or national identities. We saw that in our readings today. Jesus was also relentless in exposing the hypocrisy of religious authorities who care more about control and power than the Spirit of God revealed through the prophets.

Now, all that said, our religious beliefs and values can and should inform our opinions about how our common-wealth is used, especially in a democracy.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once wisely said that the church should not be the master nor the servant of the state, but it’s conscience. For me, as a follower of Jesus, according to my understanding, that means I advocate more for life-giving ways of using that commonwealth – like helping folks be fed, housed, healthy, safe, and educated – rather than in death-dealing ways – like reckless and unnecessary wars, and merciless and inhumane treatment of prisoners. Others may disagree. In a healthy democracy, rather than a theocracy, we can freely debate these things without fearing for our lives.

Alright …  

Every week when we’re planning worship, Lyndsey, our Director of Music Ministry, and I talk about the theme we’re exploring, and Lyndsey does a great job of finding hymns that support the message and the mood and the movement of Spirit that we hope to bring. So, a couple weeks ago I asked Lyndsey, “Hey, are there any hymns out there about disestablishmentarianism?” I was pretty much joking, but Lyndsey gave it a sincere effort, God bless her. She came back to me and said, “The answer is No.”

My friends, I took that as a sign. I had a sacred obligation to fulfill. So even though no one asked for it, here it is: A hymn about disestablishmentarianism.

Ladies and gentlemen and everyone beyond and between, I present to you the world premiere of the hymn, “Sing Out for Disestablishmentarianism!” It’s to the old hymn tune, Nettleman, most familiar from “Come O Fount of Every Blessing.” Now, try as I might, I did not find a way to rhyme “church and state” with “discombobulate.” But we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Sing Out for Disestablishmentarianism!

Lyrics: Nathaniel Mahlberg

Tune: NETTLETON

To be sung with a dash of cheek

I

Disestablish-ment-arian-

-ism: how great

It is for the common good 

To separate church and state.

Lead us not into temptation

To sanctify kings.

Through diversity of worship

We can let freedom ring.

II

Our forebears in their wisdom

Warned of idols of power.

When we glorify the mighty

The Spirit cannot flower.

Not the master nor the servant

Of the state the church should be,

But the guide and goad of conscience*

As we strive to live faithfully.

III

The devil tempted Jesus

With empires to rule.

Jesus spurned that mean old trickster

He was nobody’s fool.

Worship God the Creator

Of all beings great and small.

A Love that knows no borders

Interweaves us, one and all.

*paraphrase of a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Lead sheet with music and lyrics is forthcoming.

[Delivered Sunday, July 26, 2026, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge.]