Some readers may recall the periodic clashes I have had with some of Russell Moore’s public stances on how we should be best resisting the ongoing sexual revolution. At issue has been my concern that Moore was too prepared to cede ground in the realm of same sex mirage, in order to continue to fight for pro-life and religious liberty issues. My concern was that these issues are all of a piece, and you cannot really have any of them without the others. The reader will also kindly recall that I promised to apologize handsomely if Moore would simply issue a statement that addressed the concern. What he has done is not quite at the death-to-the-great-satan-Obergefell! levels I had in mind, but it certainly is sufficient for me to retract the concern, and to apologize for misreading him.
Here is a recent ERLC statement on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and the first signature is that of Russell Moore. Of interest to me is the end of the first paragraph, emphasis added.
“Among the most relevant to the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction are the protection of the unborn, the strengthening of religious liberty, and a dedication to human flourishing — which we believe can only be accomplished by a biblical definition of marriage and family.”
Before proceeding, let me get one editorial niggle out of the way. The phrase “human flourishing” is a bit too buzzwordy for me, and so I would prefer to see it gone forever. But with that said, this is great. The great travesties of our day—human abortion, tyrannical contempt for the church, and sexual perversion enshrined in our marriage laws—are all addressed.
At the same time, I think it is important for a conversation to continue here. As we continue to do the hard theological work that is involved in standing up for human life, religious liberty, and sexual norms, the key phrase in that paragraph is biblical definition of. Not only so, but we have to come to see the need to apply it to everything in that list, not just marriage and family, and indeed we need to come to grips with the fact that we must apply it to absolutely everything in the world.
We need a biblical definition of marriage and family because there are unbiblical religions and worldviews that want either no sexual legal arrangements at all, or they want to make room for same sex unions, or polygamous unions, or incestuous unions. We need a biblical definition of life—the unborn child is made in the image of God—because the regnant worldview of materialism sees the unborn child as a ganglion of meat, bones, and protoplasm. It sees you the same way, incidentally. You can’t take “mindless product of evolution” and “image of the living God” and split the difference. Whatever you come up with, it won’t be worth protecting.
So our reasoning should go like this. You don’t get have four wives bYou can’t take “mindless product of evolution” and “image of the living God” and split the difference. ecause Jesus rose from the dead. You don’t get to marry someone of your own sex because when Christ took His bride He established the only final pattern for marriage. You don’t get to dismember little children because we are a nation of Christians, not a nation of Molech worshipers. Because—rest upon it—a nation that worships no one in particular will always break in Molech’s direction.
And the same thing is true of religious liberty. Religious liberty is itself a religious value. Not all religions value the religious liberty of infidels (infidels as defined by the defining religion). The Christian faith does value the religious liberty of infidels. Now, if we think religious liberty important—as I do—then we need to establish a worldview that can sustain that commitment to religious liberty.
Put another way, religious neutrality is not friendly to religious liberty. If you want religious liberty, you have to abandon religious neutrality. Secularism cannot sustain religious liberty. Neutrality is ravenous and will devour liberty. If we want religious liberty, we should turn to those who invented religious liberty, which is to say, the Christians.
We make a category mistake when we say that the state must be religiously neutral in order for the state to not take sides. We are victims of a false analogy. It is true that we don’t want the refs in a basketball game to be active partisans for one team or another. But it is also true that we do not want the refs in the basketball game to be sociopaths. As a sociopath, he wouldn’t favor one team over another, but neither would he favor one bribe over another, a claim of justice over injustice, or the best team over a gambling ring representing the Mafia.
The guardians of religious liberty must have a standard, and that standard must come from somewhere. It must be grounded upon something, and an abstract yearning for neutrality is not “a thing.” It has to have more behind it than simple assertions from people who are wishing upon a star.
And so, three cheers for the ERLC. All we need to do now is get those words biblical definition of earlier in the sentence.
Amen!
Great article! Fairly significant typo in paragraph six though, before I share on Facebook I thought you might like to edit it.
Not sure about this Doug, but it appears that over about the last month or so, uncharacteristic typos seem to pop up with
many important postings with common regularity.
Is there a way someone could be pejoratively tweaking several of your posts? Maybe just my suspicious side getting in some overtime hours?
The typos come from cut and paste often
Excellent article!
Typo: You don’t get have four wives
One for the anthology: Neutrality is ravenous and will devour liberty.
The editor in me doesn’t so much mind “human flourishing” — short, relatively easy to grasp. The editor in me *does* mind that one of their three core social principles for human flourishing is . . . “dedication to human flourishing.”
Reverend Wilson, I very much appreciate your willingness to engage with influential voices, for better or worse, in the evangelical world. I appreciate you working to hold Pastor soggy britches’ feet to the fire. I also very much appreciate that you do it with grace. Given my distaste for the evangelical white flag wavers, I would likely not have been as gracious. I do think, however, there is a tension in your position here. When you say, “Religious liberty is itself a religious value,” you seem to be saying that we need to rest upon theonomic moral principles, which is… Read more »
This is exactly my thought. I see so many well intentioned Christians who don’t want to or struggle with legislating their morality because they believe that some sort of greater Christian value of religious freedom is violated when they do so. It can all sound so “catch 22”.
The way I normally assess this type of thing is to ask what road are we on and what direction are we going. Too many evangelicals are trying get the to kingdom of God on the progressive pathway. They are on a treadmill going way too fast for them, and they are only losing ground. Reverend Wilson here seems to emphasize that he wants to be on the Scriptural highway, but I am not sure where his destination is. I trust he has good intentions, but is providing the infidel religious liberty really something over which the bible-believer should worry?… Read more »
Kilgore, the theocratic basis for religious liberty? Hope to get to it soon.
I look forward to that.
Thank you, Reverend. I appreciate your writing very much.
It is rather bizarre to say “Christian faith does value the religious liberty of infidels.” Maybe if history began in 1789.
The biblical Christian very much values the life and dignity of the unbeliever, let’s be clear. We would not be trying to baptize them, otherwise. From a secular standpoint, political and cultural opponents, like infants in the womb or traditional values, are disposable. The logical connection between rearranged pond scum and human value and dignity is nonexistent. The logical connection between made in the image of God and human worth is airtight. There is a long recorded history of Christians living, to varying degrees, amicably with unbelievers. But secularism has a long record of hundreds of millions of bodies as… Read more »
Can you point to a time and place in history where you believe the authorities got this tension more or less right?
The U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence get the principle (and origin) of natural liberties (applied across religions) more or less right, while still recognizing a standard of legal and criminal behavior that also applies across all religions.
By “the U.S. Constitution” do you mean anything actually in the original Constitution as ratified?
I mean the overall correctness regarding the purpose for government, to protect natural liberties, regardless of religion, and to uphold standards of criminal justice, regardless of religion. That’s what jillybean asked about.
Of course there is plenty of room to critique those fallible founding documents. Though they were explicit on the origin of natural liberties, they should have been much more explicit on the Kingship of Jesus Christ, and the biblical basis for the standard of criminal justice and its limitations on the sphere of civil government.
I don’t see what the Constitution did to “protect natural liberties… and to uphold standards of criminal justice,” especially not relative to where the country was at prior to ratification.
Paul, in Acts 17! ; – )
Here is a winding answer. More often than not, this balance is kept in check through cultural pressures rather than governmental. Hence, we have had a relatively stable balance here in the US for quite sometime. England and much of European culture held a pretty good balance for this during the heights of Christian Europe. It was the authorities who kept causing these problems in Europe. Regarding the authorities I would point to, let me note that there is always going to be a gap between ideas and practice. I think the Puritans nailed the ideas perfectly. They emphasized education… Read more »
It has to be mentioned that the Puritans disastrously failed at passing the faith on to the next generation, as witnessed by the vile products of the Second Great Awakening.
Durden is correct to say that the Puritans “emphasized education and passing the faith on to the next generation”. I think that was a true emphasis of theirs.
What they fell short of was to pass on a love for the standard they taught, which is a very different thing, and which requires God’s grace.
Agreed. Well said.
What confuses me is that they knew the standard so well.
I think Steve Wilkins’ comments on the Halfway Covenant explain a lot; by making emotional experience the standard for fellowship they encouraged apostasy and heresy.
That point also goes a long way to explaining the bewildering witch trials. They have definitely been used and misconstrued to beat the puritans over the head, but it was deeply wrong and that emotionalism played a big role.
I’m not familiar with Steve Wilkin’s comments. Interesting. I did not realize the Halfway Covenant emphasized emotional experience. What little I know about it I thought the Halfway Covenant was a compromise contrived after and because the Puritan church was already waning.
It was one of the Auburn Avenue conference talks, title was”The Legacy of the Halfway Covenant” IIRC. Gist as I remember it: The Puritans required an emotional conversion experience to be full members, but children of full members were baptised and admitted to communion. Enough of the children in that group grew up to resent it and went off and became Unitarians. Here is the story from the Unitarian side: while the first generation of settlers were yet living, in the mid 17th century, many congregations adopted the controversial “Half-Way covenant.” The Half-Way covenant granted the privilege of membership to… Read more »
This was where the pageantry and high idealism of traditional Catholic education was so powerful. The smallest child felt himself to be part of an unseen throng of warriors upholding goodness, truth, and beauty. At its best, it made virtue a kind of poetry.
I’ll concede that Puritans made mistakes and their ability to keep their progeny in line was far from perfect, but there is much nuance here. The puritans made many mistakes, but there was probably never a more Godly people. Like the old Marine drill instructor, “Do not think yourselves better than anyone else, but there are none better.”
Nope.
Acts 17
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
I’m afraid I don’t see the relevance.
Paul demonstrated due respect for the greek’s legitimate search for God, as expressed in their provincial religions. Paul did not disallow that expression and search, but worked to properly direct it to The One True God.
Godliness is always competing against something!
Paul was in no position there to disallow anything. Once Christians attained power in Rome they quickly started cracking down on the infidels. And then of course the Old Testament gives no consideration to any ideas of respect for the pagans.
I won’t say that Christianity was especially bad or worse than other religions in this respect, but before the modern age they didn’t give a crap about religious liberty for non-Christians.
Oh come now Matty, Paul himself came a long way, from murdering Christians to being one! So, he new he could, and did put himself in a position to disallow other religions.????
Again, it was more the case with Paul, that some of the Greeks tried to disallow him!
What infidels did alleged Roman Christians “crack down” on?
The Albigensians come to mind.
I still haven’t quite forgiven the Dominicans for that. Give me my lovely Franciscans!
“Albigensians”?
Are they a cult who want to make Al Franken king? ????
That would be the Frankensteins!
The Albigensians were Manichean dualists who believed that the human body is evil, starving yourself to death is good, and having concubines is preferable to getting married. The pope sent St. Dominic and a bunch of armies out to set them straight. Which they did, a little too enthusiastically for my liking.
Are you basing this on textbook/MSM accounts of the Crusades (which are more complex than “Christians went around slaughtering people”) and a few other isolated events? If you look at the entire history of Christianity vs. Islam, there’s a huge difference in how they treat non-believers.
“The great travesties of our day—human abortion, tyrannical contempt for the church, and sexual perversion enshrined in our marriage laws” I realize I’m a total wet blanket here, but how come child sexual abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault are not even on our radar? How come we care so much about abortion but not the number of baby daddies running about in the world? Shoot, I just read some of the crap coming from people like Dalrock, BGR, and think, wow, so that’s the church? No wonder people hold it in such tyrannical contempt! I want to burn the… Read more »
It’s not that the evils you mention are less evil, only that they aren’t enshrined in law as a protected class.
Exactly. Also, the number of baby daddies running about in the world (though I thought we were talking about America) is a consequence of a perverted attitude toward sex and marriage, and one that baby mamas share with baby daddies.
“…is a consequence of a perverted attitude toward sex and marriage, and one that baby mamas share with baby daddies.”
You mean like Wilson’s post about how men should marry young, and the 500 or so negative comments from mostly Christian men about how they shouldn’t have to “marry the sluts?”
Yes, like that. That and the fact that objects of their crude reference apparently don’t see any reason for a vow to either precede or follow the act either, not even when the perfectly predicable consequences of the act occur.
True, but what lead those particular evils to been shrined in law? Is it possible that the church’s unwillingness to address child sexual abuse,domestic violence, caused people to leave the church?
Is it possible that the reason why people hold the church in tyrannical contempt is due to the church’s own hypocrisy? How many pastors while condemning homosexuality have been caught toe tapping in the men’s rooms themselves? How many, while vehemently condemning abortion, have gone out and caused unwanted pregnancies?
I am as concerned as you are about hypocrisy in the church, especially the ranks of elders. But one thing we cannot do is give unbelievers or apostates a pass on their moral culpability. Being stung, even grievously so, by church people does not give the victims a pass on their duty to worship the one true God. It does great harm to blame the church in the abstract, or even particular sinners in the church, for someone defying God and refusing to glorify Him, especially when Paul said that “all the godlessness and wickedness of people” is pinned not… Read more »
“Being stung, even grievously so, by church people does not give the victims a pass on their duty to worship the one true God.”
I would completely agree with you there. The problem being, how many in the church are far more interested in riding puking bulls into the ground, rather than ever teaching the world about the love of Jesus Christ?
I don’t understand this reference.
Sorry. I was referencing Wilson’s post about not being sorry.
https://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/until-the-bull-pukes.html
This is a bait and switch. If one has not sinned, one need not repent. That is straightforward enough.
Jesus came to take the burdens of guilt from depraved sinners, not place the moral burden of someone else’s guilt upon someone else’s shoulders.
Somehow I had missed that article. It was fantastic. I think Wilson’s post there very accurately describes ME’s own agenda as the queen of the forced apology. Those who want to weaponize the forced apology tactic are not really interested in justice, they are interested in accusing and stirring up the abstract grievance. ME has falsely accused Wilson and been confronted about it. In the name of justice, she owes Wilson an apology herself. But it has to come from her heart. It can’t be forced. In the meantime, I agree with Wilson that the proper response when we are… Read more »
ME is not queen of the forced apology. ME is actually Queen of the mandate to love one another, mandate, as in it is not optional. So, a big part of the mandate to love, is empathy.
“ME has falsely accused Wilson and been confronted about it.”
I haven’t falsely accused anyone. I clearly disagree with Wilson’s expressed lack of empathy.
ME, do you think you interact lovingly with the people on this board? Would a stranger reading through your posts think they were characterized by a spirit of love and empathy for the people with whom you engage?
“ME, do you think you interact lovingly with the people on this board?” Yes, I believe I do, especially in the face of the incredible amount of disrespect I receive from you and other commenters. I cannot begin to tell you how tiresome I find your constant criticisms, your never ending finger wagging. Like right here for example. Like the busybody way you always show up in the midst of a discussion, misinterpret the entire conversation, and than go out of your way to show your contempt for whatever you think I’m saying. You show absolutely no interest in trying… Read more »
I’m an occasional rather than a frequent commenter, but I try to vaguely keep up with what’s going on in the discussions. That said, I find the idea of Jillybean disrespecting people to be hilarious. She’s one of the calmest, most thoughtful voices of reason and sanity here.
Thank you, that is kind!
you’re fat
ME, I think your dislike for me is intense, vicious, and beyond your ability to conceal. I don’t know what I did to excite this emotional reaction from you, but it is entirely out of proportion to anything I have said to you. There must be a reason why the slightest indication of disagreement awakens in you a desire to strike back with every weapon in your arsenal. But you are not being loving, and you should not delude yourself about this. You are being hateful, and I think you need to step away from the keyboard and ask yourself… Read more »
Jilly, you get along very well with people from all over the theological and political spectra. You’ve been quite gracious with ME. The problem certainly isn’t on your end.
There will always be hypocrisy and sin in the church. If we can’t witness to sinners outside the church until we have attained sinless perfection inside it, we can’t witness to sinners period. Ever. I think attacking other people’s hypocrisy is a pleasurable distraction from addressing our own. And while it may be the reason some people leave the church, I doubt that it is usually the major reason. I think of fellow Catholics who tell me they lost their faith when they realized that Sister Mary Humiliata was a world-class hypocrite. They neglect to mention that this coincided with… Read more »
“I think of fellow Catholics who tell me they lost their faith when they realized that Sister Mary Humiliata was a world-class hypocrite.”
And I know of fellow Catholics who left their faith because they were tired of being anally raped by their priest.
Yes, and for those people, I have the utmost compassion, and rage for those who violated them.
I suspect they are greater travesties for a couple of reasons. First, they are more foundational, or at least upstream. Second, they are areas the culture is advocating. Even the secularists oppose domestic violence and paedophilia currently.
“how come child sexual abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault are not even on our radar?” They are Memi, like other evils. Though as I keep repeating, a big problem with those “abuse” topics is that their narratives are grossly overstated by the “Sabrina Rubin Erdely” / rolling stone type feminists. Hence they have “cried wolf” so much that the seriousness of the topic has been cheapened and erroded by feminists who over “advocate” for “abuse” issues as a fashion statement, and not as an act of justice. True justice takes discipline that liberal feminists just do not have. You… Read more »
“human flourishing”
It’s right out of of Aristotle: eudaimonia. And it’s intended to be contrasted with the modern conception of the good as subjective happiness and absence of suffering. So, not a buzzword.
??????
To the average evangelical snowflake,
“the modern conception of the good as subjective happiness and absence of suffering” = flourishing.
I know it’s not worth any more (or less) than anyone else’s 2¢, but I just want to say I approve. The ERLC statement is encouraging as well.
I’m curious, why are James White, John MacArthur and R C Sprouls names not on the ERIC statement……..comments
Great post. One question: “we are a nation of Christians”? I don’t know what that means. I think our government should acknowledge the Lordship of Christ, but I don’t think that means they get to say that all of their citizens are Christians simply because, well, they aren’t. Am I missing something here?
Pastor Doug, I don’t understand why we should believe in religious liberty if it’s not taught in Scripture? Baal worshipers were not free to pursue worship of Baal in Israel, and I don’t know of a place in the NT where religious freedom is taught. Doesn’t the universal Lordship of Christ exclude the possibility of affirming freedom for expressions of idolatry? Please show me what I’m missing.
I’d second this question; Doug has said on several occasions that Christians invented religious liberty. One could perhaps put down all the historical times where we haven’t respected it (post-Reformation Protestant vs. Catholic power struggles in UK, Bloody Mary, the Inquisition, etc.) as aberrations which were not truly Christian, but I’d love to see a Scriptural case for why it’s wrong to crack down on heresy and idolatry. As Dave W notes, Baal worshippers were not welcome in Israel.
I suspect the argument would be that because Christianity is first a matter of the heart, Christians alone recognize that you can’t “make” someone believe. And this is broadly consistent with our history – Christianity famously spreads by preaching, not conquest. Not that, after Constantine, there wasn’t some conquest, too. But unlike Islam or Hinduism, we can recognize that conquest as a violation, not a commandment.
Farinata, I agree with the principle you suggest, and I suggest OT Israel also contained that principle, at least in theory. For example: It was permitted for foreigners to live in Israel, and they were not forced to join the believing community; in fact, they were restricted from religious participation unless they entered the covenant through circumcision, etc. So, they could live in Israel, respecting Israel’s Law, but not being forced to become religious Israelites. In other words, there was religious freedom for non-Israelites in that they were not required to worship a God they didn’t love, but there was… Read more »
I think I agree with your view, and find it consistent with what Doug has said so far – religious freedom only persists to the extent that Christians are a supermajority, with the cultural dominance and confidence that implies. Basically, religious dissenters aren’t illegal, but they better keep their heads down and not outrage the good Christian folk. I think that’s basically how religious liberty has worked in the past.
I think you are more or less right on with this. Respect, dignity, and protection are available, and there will be no coercion of the conscience. But there will be an expectation of assimilation, while working to suppress evil.
But if you already have four wives and you are converted and they will stay with you, you have to keep them because God hates divorce
***The reader will also kindly recall that I promised to apologize handsomely if Moore would simply issue a statement that addressed the concern. *** This seems like an odd criticism since Moore and the ERLC have been working to defend marriage since he took over. On the day of the Obergefell decision Moore said, “I am a conscientious dissenter from this ruling handed down by the Court today, believing, along with millions of others, that marriage is the sacred union of one man and one woman and that it is improper for the Court to redefine an institution it did… Read more »
Aren’t you the guy who’s eating crow for the next four years?
That link does not work, but I think you were referencing this article.
Honest history question: is it accurate to say Christians invented religious liberty? Wasn’t there quite a bit of religious tolerance in the Ottoman Empire, at least at some points? When were those points, and how did being a Christian at those points compare to being a Muslim in Christendom at the same time?
Pagan Rome comes to mind.