ABSTRACT
This essay explores how the faithful citizen holds in tension and distinction the separate realms of political citizenship and religious adherence. Taking James Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance as a starting point and tracing the idea of separation back to Martin Luther, the essay develops a framework of subjective responsibility to maintain distinctions between separate social spheres. The essay builds this idea from Luther’s political theology which laid out multiple, distinct modes of the social order and a robust responsibility on the part of the faithful citizen him or herself to hold together in distinction many different spheres, duties, and demands. Separation, on this Lutheran account, is primarily a task of faithful citizenship for which the individual is responsible, not foremost a structural feature of political and legal institutions which is imposed upon the individual citizen.
