The Biblical Separation of Church and State: A Response to Joel Webbon and Christian Nationalism

This bonus episode was orginally an LCI Green Room livestream with Greg Baus from the Reformed Libertarian podcast to talk about how all authority comes from God, but divine, church, and civil authority aren’t the same thing—and how Christian nationalism tends to blur those lines. We reacted to a Right Response Ministry video (Joel Webbon and others) that said critics misunderstand Christian nationalism and argued the state isn’t religiously neutral. They used the Ten Commandments, Psalm 2 (“kiss the Son”), and Romans 13 to claim rulers should enforce not just laws about harm between neighbors, but also laws against idolatry and false worship. Greg and I pushed back hard, saying they were collapsing divine judgment into civil punishment and never gave a real principle for separating sin from crime, which leads to an unbounded “Christian nanny state.” We also critiqued their handling of Two Kingdoms theology, “general equity,” and what Romans 13 means by “evil.” After that, we listened to a chapel talk by Pastor Matt Cotta, who warned that when Christianity gets used for a political project it turns into a counterfeit faith, and that nationalism becomes an idolatrous rival. He drew a line between nations as people-groups and modern nation-states, argued nation-states enforce unity through coercion, and said the church is Christ’s kingdom—pilgrims and exiles—so worship itself witnesses against giving ultimate loyalty to any earthly nation.