Stephen Strehle

Stephen Strehle, Th.D., D.Theol., is a Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Christopher Newport University and Director of its minor in Judeo-Christian Studies. His courses include the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, Visions of Christianity, Church and State, Religions of the West, and Modern Philosophy. He is currently a member of St Mark Lutheran Church in Yorktown, Virginia and an author of a number of books and articles on the Reformation and church/state issues. He also the author and sponsor of the New Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

In his works and research, he displays a particular interest in providing a criticism of sacred and secular ideas in our contemporary world, based upon a detailed examination of their origin in history. Early in his career he was a Reformation scholar trying to connect theological doctrines from the Middle Ages with the development of Protestantism. His first two books represent this emphasis. While studying Reformed theology, he noticed an intimate relationship between the ideas of the Calvinists and modern political ideals. He discovered that the Reformed developed the basic spiritual matrix out of which concepts like democracy and federal government came to fruition in western civilization, long before any son of the Enlightenment was born. This result surprised him and brought a new chapter of research that challenge the western notion of a strict separation between the church and the state. His books include the following:

• Peter Lang—Forces of Secularity in the Modern World (New York, 2020), vol. 2.

The book completes the first volume of the study. It adds the following forces of secularity: American universities, the entertainment industry, technology, Protestantism and New Testament Christianity, biblical criticism, and the philosophical community, with a special emphasis upon Ockham, Hume, Kant, and postmodernists.

• Peter Lang—Forces of Secularity in the Modern World (New York, 2018), vol. 1

Washington College’s Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture sponsored and supported the publication and distribution of the book. The first volume discusses some of the forces of secularity in the modern world, including capitalism, Darwinism, enlightened historiography, the development of a mechanistic universe, the problem of innocent suffering, Deism, the separation of church and state, and secular etatism.

• Routledge—The Dark Side of Church/State Separation: The French Revolution, Nazi Germany, and International Communism (New Brunswick and London, 2014)

The book analyzes the Enlightenment’s attack upon the Judeo-Christian tradition and its impact upon subsequent regimes in France, Germany, and Russia. The Third Republic, the Nazis, and the Communists all developed a doctrine of church/state separation to marginalize the church and substitute a new ideology in the life of its people.

• Routledge—The Egalitarian Spirit of Christianity: The Sacred Roots of American and British Government (New Brunswick and London, 2009)

The book explores the religious influence upon some of the most sacred political ideals in western civilization, including equality and democracy, liberty and natural rights, liberal progress and capitalism, and mixed government and federalism or social contract theory.

• Huntington House Publishers—The Separation of Church and State: Has America Lost Its Moral Compass? (Lafayette, 2001)

This book was written for a popular audience and afforded me the opportunity to appear on fifty radio talk-shows around the country to advertise my work and discuss the relationship between church and state. Some of the appearances were local, and others had a nationwide audience with as many as 200 affiliates.

• E. J. Brill—The Catholic Roots of the Protestant Gospel: Encounter between the Middle Ages and the Reformation (Leiden, New York, and Köln, 1995)

The book relates the theology of the Middle Ages to the development of the Reformation’s concept of salvation. It was published in Heiko Oberman’s prestigious monograph series and was hailed for its ecumenical spirit and insight into Protestant and Catholic doctrine.

• Peter Lang—Calvinism, Federalism, and Scholasticism: A Study of the Reformed Doctrine of Covenant (Bern, Frankfurt am Main, New York, and Paris, 1988)

The book represents the most comprehensive treatment of the Reformed doctrine of covenant ever published. The main purpose of th work was found in its attempt to construct a bridge between the Middle Ages and the Reformation, showing the relationship between the voluntarism of scholastic theologians and the Calvinists’ doctrine of covenant in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.