How to Bonk Heads With Yourself

Introduction

This next chapter of Disarming Leviathan continues to complain that Christian nationalists are all about picking up the sword in order to attain ungodly power and advance their nefarious agenda. It seems almost unnecessary to type out the bwa ha ha ha.

Here would be a sampler—”endorsing violence” (p. 64) “entitled to exert force over” (p. 65). “reaching for the sword” (p. 67). “its own power” (p. 67). “take up the sword” (p. 67). “put down their swords” (p. 67) . . .

But all these complaints about the sword are not able to disguise the fundamental tension, the basic contradiction, in Campbell’s worldview. The complaints about us and our swords cannot keep him from bonking heads with himself.

Perhaps you would like me to highlight the problem? As it turns out, I would be happy to. It is actually a distinct pleasure.

I am going to do this by means of selecting two quotations from this chapter, and setting them before you, side by side. After you have stared at them goggle-eyed for a bit, like a prawn who just walked into his surprise birthday party, I will then seek to exhibit some of the implications for you.

Two Quotes, and Yes, They Are Quite at Loggerheads

Okay. Got that? Set it down in a secure place in your head. Make sure it is a level surface. Note particularly that powerful word cannot. “The state cannot . . .” CANNOT. But then consider this lament from. just a few pages earlier:

Now as he rolls out this litany of civic abuses, he is acting as though all these things were preventable, and that it was a really bad thing that somebody responsible did not step up to prevent them. But why? Why on earth would anyone make the attempt?

I have been paying attention here, and Campbell has taught me well. I have learned the rules of his game, and by gum, I am going to play this particular game all the way through the fourth quarter.

When he says that my proposed policy is “misogynistic,” I will shrug in that carefree way of mine and say that “you do know that the state cannot follow Jesus, do you not?” When he objects to all the oppression that he thinks I am eager to introduce any minute now, I smile ruefully and say, “Surely you are not expecting the state to live out the Sermon on the Mount, are you?” And when he expresses outrage over all the xenophobia he sees in our ranks, I shake my head more in sorrow than in anger and say, “But avoiding xenophobia would be a fruit of the Spirit. We don’t do that here. We can’t do that here. This is the state, man.”

The state cannot . . .

The Flexibility is Impressive

Now that the dilemma is before us, I would like to take this opportunity to explain what the heck is going on here. I mean, somebody needs to.

When we are talking about any tenet of Christian faith and practice that would be considered “conservative,” Campbell hastens to remind us of the radical limitations of the state. Sorry, the state is absolutely helpless when it comes to, say, restricting pornography. Attempting to do something about it would be “legislating morality,” which apparently cannot be done. Not only so, but any attempt to introduce reforms that conservatives would applaud is likely to unleash a torrent of hellish consequences that really should have been anticipated. Remember, children, that the state cannot legislate morality.

But then, if the subject drifts over to evils that the left considers to be evils, the kind of evils that indict this hellhole called America, his spiritual laryngitis suddenly disappears. He objects to “evil cultural beliefs” like Manifest Destiny (p. 65). He doesn’t like the slaughter of a multitude of Native Americans (p. 65). He raises his voice against “stolen land” and “forced displacement” (p. 65). And don’t get him started on the Mexican-American war (p. 65). He challenges America’s use of waterboarding (p. 70). He takes a dim view of “violence, torture, and assassination” (p. 70).

So when it comes to eradicating anything like, say, white supremacy, he expects Lady Columbia to rise up in her long, white gown, torch aloft, in order to lead us on our way back to an ethic of universal sharing. In short, as we look over the checklist of his complaints down through American history, we can see that he ardently wishes that somebody had been legislating morality back then.

His idea of morality, of course. We won’t call it legislating morality because somebody might catch on.

The Separation of Morality and State

In these discussions, everybody repeats a certain phrase so often that it won’t be long before no one knows what it means. I refer, of course, to the famous phrase “separation of church and state.”

But wait a minute. I am supposed to be the scary theocrat, and I believe in the separation of church and state. In the South Carolina of the Founding, in order to hold public office, you had to be a Protestant Christian. The Protestant faith was deemed by the government of that state to be the official religion of the state, but without giving any privileges to any particular denomination. They instituted what is called a soft establishment of religion. At the same time, while you had to be a Christian to hold public office, you were prohibited from doing so if you were a minister of the gospel. And why? Separation of church and state.

So of course, separation of church and state is a good idea. Separation of church and state is actually an idea that grew up out of a Christian worldview. I agree with it.

But how on earth did this get transmuted into a conviction that we need a separation of morality and state? Who in their right mind wants an amoral government?

Well, nobody wants that, but at the same time everybody wants to avoid the awkward questions that ensue when you openly admit the connection between morality and state. The awkward questions would run along the lines of “which morality?” Why this system of morals and not that one? Christian morality and Islamic morality and secularist morality are all very different. If we want the state to be “moral,” then we will immediately have address the question of which system of morality we are talking about.

Because no organized society can even function without organizing moral principles, and because we don’t want to answer all the awkward questions, what we do as a makeshift is banish morality and religion and traditional values out the front door, and then, later in the evening when nobody is looking, we smuggle our own system of values in through the back door, and we don’t call it morality or anything like that. Rather, we blithely start acting as though these are just things that “everybody knows.” Common sense, man.

Not Whether, But Which

Once again, in order even to be a society, there must be an organizing principle, and there must be laws enforcing that organizing principle. Those laws will reflect and be consistent with a system of morality. It is not whether, but which. It is not whether you legislate morality, but rather which morality you legislate.

Few statements are as vapid as “you can’t legislate morality.” As a matter of unvarnished fact, it is actually impossible to legislate anything else. And all the people who howl with rage whenever “Christian nationalists” propose that we do x, y, or z—yelling that we can’t legislate morality—are actually claiming that we must not legislate that morality. We must not legislate anything that God wants us to legislate. No, on the contrary, as they maintain quite earnestly, our laws must reflect the will of their god.

We know this because they are full to the brim with complaints about how America has repeatedly insulted their notions of morality. Not only are they full to the brim with bitterness over our moral failures, they are overflowing and standing in the slop.

But if you cannot legislate morality at all, then do you know what all of us should stop caring about? White supremacy. Systemic racism. Land acknowledgements. Income disparities. Misogyny in the workplace. How much the women in the WNBA are paid. All that business. Caleb Campbell, you have persuaded us. We don’t care about any of that stuff anymore.

How Long Will You Halt Between Two Opinions?

But suppose they grant the point, and agree that they want their morality to be backed by the law because they really do prefer that the will of Baal be reflected in our laws, over against the will of Jehovah. What then? What if the mask of neutrality comes off?

Well, then, at least the issue is honestly joined. Finally. As I have been saying, it really is Christ or chaos. Turn to Christ in repentance and follow Him, and if Baal is god, follow him. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Josh. 24:15), and we will oppose all those who want to serve the gods of chaos, the gods of anarcho-tyranny, the gods of all leprous diseases, the gods of statist impudence. As for me and my house, no.