---
title: 'James Stacy on Church-State Relations'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2025-10-20
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2025-james-stacy-on-church-state-relations
---

# James Stacy on Church-State Relations

“Church and State are so closely correlated that whatever affects the one also affects the other; whatever builds up one likewise goes to establish the other. Though entirely separate in their organization and spheres of action, their interests nevertheless mingle and blend into one. The Church being in the bosom of the State and controlling the same subjects, they must necessarily exert a reflex influence upon each other, especially the former upon the latter. The condition of the Church depends to a great extent upon the condition of the State, but especially is the prosperity of the State conditioned upon the prosperity of the Church. The strength of any nation depends, indeed, upon the full development of its physical and intellectual resources; but these are utterly worthless without morality and courage on the part of her people. These constitute the strength and stability, the bone and muscle of the whole. Let any people be destitute of moral principle, and their doom is sealed. And for this morality it is dependent upon the Church, the very mission of which is to reform the life and mould the character of the citizen. Its very object is not only to save the man hereafter, but to make him a better citizen and a better subject of the State while here. Nothing so assists the State in the administration of her laws as the co-operative help of the Church. Let the latter be successful in her mission, and the former will have less to do in the way of reformatory measures for the correction of her citizens and the suppression of lawlessness and crime. Who is it that fills her penitentiaries and jails, her reformatory schools and prisons, but those who have never been brought under the weekly teachings and Sabbath instructions of the Church?” —[**James Stacy**](/authors/james-stacy), *Day of Rest: Its Obligations and Advantages* (1885), pp. 259-260