In preparation for the special "Great Romans Debate" Sunday School presentation, read these words from Karl Barth about the difference between Christianity (the Church) and Christendom (the State).
If anything Christian be unrelated to the Gospel, it is a human by-product, a dangerous religious survival, a regrettable misunderstanding . . . marks of Christianity would be possession and self-sufficiency rather than deprivation and hope. If this be persisted in, there emerges, instead of the community of Christ, Christendom, an ineffective peace-pact or compromise with that existence which, moving with its own momentum, lies on this side resurrection. Christianity would then have lost all relation to the power of God.
If [people] must have their religious needs satisfied, if they must surround themselves with comfortable illusions about their knowledge of God and particularly about their union with God, well, the world penetrates far deeper into such matters than does a Christianity which misunderstands itself, and of such a "gospel" we have good cause to be ashamed. Paul, however, is speaking of the power of the UNKNOWN God, of --things which eye saw not and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man. Of such a Gospel he has n cause to be ashamed.
Just as genuine coins are open to suspicion so long as false coins are in circulation, so the perception which proceeds outwards from God cannot have free course until the arrogance of religion be done away.
