As you think about voting and the current election...

One of the controversies in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's time was "the Jewish question."  In his biography of Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas summarizes a controversial address Bonheffer made on this subject. Here are some excerpts from that address, dealing withe the relationship of church and state:

" 'The church must continually ask the state whether its [the state's] action can be justified as the legitimate action of the state, i.e., as action which leads to law and order, and not to lawlessness and disorder.'  In other words, it is the church's role to help the state be the state [emphasis in the original].  If the state is not creating an atmosphere of law and order, as Scripture says it must, then it is the job of the church to draw the state's attention to this failing.  And if on the other hand, the state is creating an atmosphere of "excessive law and order," it is the church's job to draw the state's attention to that too.

"If the state is creating 'excessive law and order,' then the 'state develops its power to such an extent that it deprives Christian preaching and Christian faith... of their rights.'  Bonhoeffer calls this a 'grotesque situation.'  'The church,' he said, 'must reject this encroachment of the order of the state precisely because of tis better knowledge of the state and of the limitations of its action.  The state which endangers the Christian proclamation negates itself."

Of course, it is well to point out that Bonhoeffer was executed by the state, eventually.  And that state fell ("negated itself") to the Allies three days later.