Often
in the public square, religious people are told to keep quiet and get out of
politics because … well, just because.
Some argue that the so-called religious right are attempting to
legislate what they “see as immoral behavior so as to … keep[] them right
with what [they] think God wants.”
Here are a few quotes from those who are outspoken in their positions with respect to conservative social policies, which dispel this rumor of wanting certain social policy positions simply because “God told them.”
Here are a few quotes from those who are outspoken in their positions with respect to conservative social policies, which dispel this rumor of wanting certain social policy positions simply because “God told them.”
****************
“Now, it should be said that many people who believe that homosexual behavior is morally wrong and that the “gay rights” movement is in general a destructive movement also believed that laws prohibiting acts of sodomy between consenting adults in the private places were unwise and should have been repealed by the various legislatures.”
“The late June Supreme Court decision nullifying a Texas anti-sodomy law both terrorized and energized this group of pro-family Bush supporters, but no one should conclude that the line in the sand lies between those who would tolerate homosexual behavior and those who would outlaw it. Not a single one of the score of people who gathered has ever made a big point of arguing that the few remaining laws prohibiting homosexual acts should be expanded to all states—any more than they argue for public laws prohibiting adultery between heterosexuals. Not every behavior God says is sinful is necessarily something the state should make it its business to sanction. I believe the Fourth Commandment calls for observing the Lord's Day, and that the Tenth Commandment forbids coveting; but I don't want either the state or federal government to enforce those laws.”
“… People ask me if I believe that homosexuality ought to be made illegal. My personal opinion is no. I don't think that homosexuality ought to be made illegal, though I think it is immoral--in the same vein that I don't think that heterosexual premarital sex ought to be made illegal, though I think that is immoral, or adultery ought to be made illegal, though I think that is immoral. I don't think that all immoral things ought to be made illegal because you would have a society that becomes impossible to manage.
I think the things that ought to be made illegal are the things of the highest social concern for the stability of the common good of society and to insure the basic inalienable rights, like liberty, life, and property…”
“Appeals
to religious authority have their place. That place is plainly not, however, in
philosophical debates, including philosophical debates about public policy.
Do such appeals have a legitimate place in political advocacy? I think they do, but at the same time, I have some sympathy with Professor John Rawls’s proposition that such appeals are legitimate only where they are offered to buttress and motivate people to act on positions that are defensible without such appeals. Like Rawls, I believe that public policy should be based on "public reasons." And while I believe that Rawls’s own particular conception of what qualifies as a "public reason" is unreasonably narrow—its narrowness in effect stacking the deck in favor of legal abortion, "same-sex marriage," and other positions held by liberals in contemporary debates over morally charged issues of public policy—the idea that public policy ought to be based on public reasons strikes me as, well, reasonable.
…
But we also believe not only that there are reasons (apart from revelation) for these policy positions, but also that these reasons are (or, at least, are among) God’s reasons for willing what He wills. Indeed, it is our view that often the identification of these reasons by philosophical inquiry and analysis, supplemented sometimes by knowledge derived from the natural and/or social sciences, is critical to an accurate understanding of the content of revelation in, say, the Bible or Jewish or Christian tradition.”
“These
principles are available for rational affirmation by people of good will and
sound judgment, even apart from their revelation by God in the Scriptures
and in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
…… Christians and other believers need not—and typically do not—suggest that abortion, for example, is wrong (or that we know it to be wrong) because God whispered it into our ear, or the ear of a pope or another religious leader, or even into the ear of a sacred writer.”
“When
Christians did become involved in politics in the early nation, they generally
sought to do so on the basis of principles of civic morality that were held in
common by both reason and revelation.
…
Public policy ought to be based on public principles, and modern Christians can make this clear by appealing to the same "laws of nature and nature’s God" that their forebears invoked in the public arena more than a century ago. By articulating anew the moral common ground shared by all human beings, contemporary Christians can silence the claim that legislating morality is the same as legislating theology and assure their place as equal participants in the public debate.”
…
Public policy ought to be based on public principles, and modern Christians can make this clear by appealing to the same "laws of nature and nature’s God" that their forebears invoked in the public arena more than a century ago. By articulating anew the moral common ground shared by all human beings, contemporary Christians can silence the claim that legislating morality is the same as legislating theology and assure their place as equal participants in the public debate.”
“First
of all I think that at the national level we should not have legislation
against vice or sinful activity, merely as such. This is essentially what
is meant by the First Amendment -- our national government will not dictate the
specifics of moral standards to us.” (Now I certainly understand Keyes’
position that at the local level these types of legislation are appropriate.)
9. Doug Bandow[viii]
“… the
Bible sets general boundaries for political debate. Scripture provides only
limited guidance … Although many of these principles have some application to
political relationships, the Bible gives
much more guidance on how we should treat people than when we should coerce
them, which is the defining characteristic of government.
…Another reason to doubt that today’s state is mandated to enforce moral/religious rules is that most ultimately deal with matters of the heart as much as conduct. Paul wrote: "A man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code" (Rom. 2:29). Meaningful enforcement of the moral law, then, requires God’s direct intervention. However good the civil authorities may be at detecting and punishing, for example, adultery, no official, without divine wisdom, can judge lustful looks, or anger at one’s brother, which Christ equated with murder.
The argument against civil enforcement of
essentially religious strictures is even more powerful for Christians because the church has taken over the spiritual role once
reserved for the geographic nation of Israel. While the objective of
maintaining spiritual purity is the same, the institutions (country versus
church) and the penalties (death versus excommunication) are different. For instance,
in his first letter to the Corinthian church, Paul instructed believers to
disassociate themselves from "anyone who calls himself a brother" but
is immoral. He did not apply the same rule to nonbelievers in the world, he
explained, since "God will judge those outside" (1 Cor. 5:9-13).”
10. David L.
Cummins[ix]
“It was necessary to point out as
well that Baptists have never been primarily politically oriented, for their
world view has differed so drastically from that of the Puritans
… Bible-believing Baptists today in America are not interested in the radical "dominion theology," for they realize that that system has been tried once in the early colonies of America, and it too ends up with religious suppression and a State-imposed church. Bible-believing Baptists thus participate in our Republic at the voting booth, not to impose their theological beliefs on others, but to preserve and maintain the principles of freedom that have been gained at great price.”
11. Charles Colson[x]
“… I would hesitate in public
life to label "pro-life" a distinctly Christian point-of-view because
I think there are natural arguments that
should be able to convince Jewish people, Muslims, those who profess no
religion that it's good for society to take care of its weakest members…
What Christians can do is to operate in public on the basis of
well-thought-out, well-conceived Christian values. And because well-conceived
Christian values are rooted in divine revelation, Christian believers, I think, can show why Christian values should work
out for the good of all humanity, all citizens, whether they are explicitly
Christian or not.”
12. John G. West,
Jr.[xi]
“When evangelicals turned to social reform in the early 1800s, they did
not seek to enact the Bible into law. Nor did they claim that the Bible was
the only repository of moral truth…
Call this general revelation of
morality what you will--common grace, common sense, light of nature, law of
nature, or something else--the underlying point is the same: Christians do not need to feel guilty about
offering secular arguments for their positions. It does not diminish the
Bible or its authority to appeal to the natural moral law, because that law
also comes from God.
…We also need to stake out the moral common ground with our fellow citizens. We let the secularists off the hook too easily if we allow them to claim that our policy positions are grounded only in our personal religious beliefs. We must drive home the point that the policies we advocate are based on public principles.”
13. Chuck Colson[xii]
“… changing the law is an empty
victory unless we also change the moral consensus.
To change the culture, therefore,
we must learn how to engage the political process more winsomely. It will
require a different mindset. We'll need to recognize that we're appealing to
hearts and minds, not twisting arms. In fact as well as in appearance, we are not seeking to impose, but rather to
propose.”
14. D. James
Kennedy[xiii]
“I would not agree with any push
to reinstitute the Old Testament civil and legal system as replacing our whole
government legislation. This is not what
we favor. But the Old Testament laws do
give us guidance as to the kinds of laws that civil government should form.”
****************
The basic premise of the goals of the so-called religious right in attempting to legislate morality simply because “God said it” has no basis in reality; either in the actions, the words, and the ideas behind those associated with the so-called religious right. One may want to continue to argue this point, but it is not only weak, but also suspect; weak, in the sense that those who are actually pushing to maintain these foundational/historical social policy positions, have not, are not, and will not, argue the way you have ascribed to them, and suspect, in the sense, that those specific issues, or concerns, brought up by those aligned with the so-called religious right are not even addressed.
The second article by Robert George above, “A Clash of Orthodoxies,” identifies the two main approaches used by those attempting to preserve the traditional moral fabric of our society.
The first approach is to point out that those espousing secular absolutism are attempting to advance their own sectarian doctrine, belief, and/or worldview, into the public square, at the expense of all other worldviews. They are simply attempting to force their personal worldview, their own personal moral view, onto the body politic, and as such, should have no special standing with respect to government coercion of its own worldview. George articulates this argument himself;
”Some concede that religious and even moral judgments
depend on faith that cannot be rationally grounded, but they argue that secularism
itself is based on a nonrational faith, that secularism must, in the end, also
rest on metaphysical and moral claims that cannot be proved. In that way,
they suggest, secularism is just like religion, and is not entitled to
any special standing that would qualify it as the nation’s public philosophy.
In fact, its standing would be less than that of the Judeo–Christian tradition,
since it is not the tradition upon which the country was founded. On this
account, secularism itself is a sectarian doctrine and, as such, is incapable
of fulfilling its own demands of being accessible to "public reason."
The second approach used by those insisting that our foundational structures be maintained is to argue that the traditional moral codes can be maintained in the light of reason, and that traditional social policy positions are rational. In fact, those espousing traditional social policy positions are constantly attempting to engage in “rational debate” with those promoting secular absolutism. Again, George elucidates this argument.
”A second response by people of faith to the myth promoted
by orthodox secularism is to affirm the demand for public reasons for public
policies and offer to do battle with secularism on the field of rational
debate. Those who take this view tend to agree that secularism is itself a
sectarian doctrine, but they claim that religious faith, and especially religiously
informed moral judgment, can be based upon and defended by appeal to publicly
accessible reasons. Indeed, they argue that sound religious faith and moral
theology will be informed, in part, by insight into the authentic and fully
public reasons provided by principles of natural law and natural justice.”
The evangelical, fundamental, Christian, so-called religious right, or however one likes to describe them, have insisted that social policies ought to be based upon social concerns. Therefore they are, and have been, engaged in social policy debates, not upon this silly charge, of forcing their morality on the masses but upon, what they believe is sound policy for the sake of society.
If one wishes to argue that
societal concerns are passé, and unencumbered personal rights trump the needs
of society, then they should argue that. If one wishes to argue that these
social policy positions being advocated by those one have identified as part of
the dastardly evangelical crowd are actually harmful to society then start
engaging. Of course it is much easier to demagogue social policy positions than
to actually engage in constructive dialogue.
Most of those identified with the
so-called religious right do seek to engage others in the various types of
social policy positions being advocated by the evangelical crowd. One will be hard pressed to find any
references “to God said it is sin, and we ought to outlaw it.”
[i] Concerned Women for America, “Morality: Is It the Business of Government?,” http://www.cwfa.org/articles/4276/CFI/cfreport/index.htm
(April 11, 2004)
[ii] World, “Line in
the sand,” http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/07-19-03/opening_1.asp
(July 11, 2003)
[iii] Stand to Reason, “How
to force your morality,” http://www.str.org/free/commentaries/social_issues/morality.htm
(May 2, 2003)
[iv] Orthodoxy Today, “God's
Reasons: The role of religious authority in debates on public policy,” http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/GeorgeGodsReasons.htm (October 31, 2008)
[v] Orthodoxy Today, “A
Clash of Orthodoxies,” http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/GeorgeClashOrthodoxies.htm
(April 11, 2004)
[vi] Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, “The Peril and Promise of Christians in
Politics,” http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/onprin/v4n4/west.html
(September 4, 2003)
[vii] Declaration Archive, “Imposing whose morals?” http://www.declaration.net/articles/keyes-imposing-morals.asp
(April 10, 2004)
[viii] Action Institute, “Biblical Foundations of Limited Government,” http://www.acton.org/pub/religion-liberty/volume-7-number-1/biblical-foundations-limited-government
[ix] Frontline, “Baptists
and Politics,” http://www.f-b-f.org/WebMan/Article.asp?ID=4172&Count=true
(April 16, 2004)
[x] Breakpoint, “Faith and Government,” http://www.breakpoint.org/Breakpoint/ChannelRoot/FeaturesGroup/ColsonsPage/Christian+America.htm
(April 16, 2004)
[xi] The Heritage
Foundation, God and Politics: Lessons
from America's Past,” http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/hl583nbsp-god-and-politics-lessons-from-americas-past
[xii] Christianity Today, “A More Excellent Way,” http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/february/19.144.html
(February 1, 2006)
[xiii] D. James Kennedy, The Gates of Hell Shall Not
Prevail, (Colorado Springs, CO: Alive Communications, Inc. 1996), p.144
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