The Individualists in Church & State Quotes

“Mr Vinet arrives at the “mutual impenetrability of society and religion” (p. 233), and denounces as adulterous any union or contact between the church (the spiritual community that is God’s spouse) and the state (which has nothing spiritual about it whatsoever).”
― Frédéric de Rougemont, The Individualists in Church & State

“But if we believe the Essay, the state has to be reduced far below the relative height of earthly justice. “The state is the community of interests, the church is the community of conscience. The state recognises only necessity and utility.” What shall we say?”
― Frédéric de Rougemont, The Individualists in Church & State

“So we do not believe it is God’s will (p. 190) for religion to demand positive and formal securities for its freedom from the state, as a right. The reason why the state should not persecute anyone for his faith lies in the state’s inner nature and essence, which prohibits it from exercising any direct action in a sphere other than its own.”
― Frédéric de Rougemont, The Individualists in Church & State

“Mr Vinet recognises the right of every individual to the state’s protection in the unrestricted expression of his religious beliefs, but he cannot admit that the state may be called upon to take a special interest in one belief or church rather than another. As far as we are concerned, the state is the representative of the nation, and since the whole nation has been formed in the natural order of things under the influence of some particular religion, the state has to protect the nation’s religion in a unique way, so long as what it does confines it to its own sphere of activity.”
― Frédéric de Rougemont, The Individualists in Church & State

“while there is a distinction between church and state, there is no separation, let alone opposition. The kingdom of grace is God’s, but God is also the king of nature. The church is a divine institution, but the state is also established by God. Church and state rule—each in its own sphere—the same men, whom they cannot pull in opposite directions. The state establishes justice, but the Head of the church is the Just One who makes its members just (Romans 3: 25), and there are not two justices whose fundamental ideas are at odds.”
― Frédéric de Rougemont, The Individualists in Church & State

“To claim that Christianity ought to restrict itself to the narrow circle of the elect, and not influence the nations themselves, is to wish that this religion which has, by its divine nature, the most powerful effect on man, should have less effect than all other religions.”
― Frédéric de Rougemont, The Individualists in Church & State

“An individual without religion is a monster who proves nothing; a people without religion does not exist. Every people is formed and developed under the influence of a particular religion which determines—along with other causes—its mores and, through them, its laws and political institutions. Every nation has a religion.”
― Frédéric de Rougemont, The Individualists in Church & State

“What is an individualist? Is it someone who champions individual responsibility, individual duty, even individuality itself? By no means. Individuality is one thing, individualism another. An individualist is someone who turns the individual into the center of the social order, the legal order, the world order itself; who reasons from the individual to society, to the structures which comprise society; who cannot see in those structures any independent existence beyond the conglomerates of individuals of which they are composed. The individual is the source of, and the rationale for, the institutions and laws by which society is organised and maintained.”
― Frédéric de Rougemont, The Individualists in Church & State