The following statement was the introduction to a recent article in my news feed. “Christian nationalist movement — an extreme ideology that holds America should be ruled by Christian law — has become bolder as it makes a play for power. A new group is even emerging to introduce Christian nationalist legislation in statehouses around the country.[1]”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I hear a lot of fear and misunderstanding in this statement. The author might as well have come out and said, be afraid of these Christians who are merging their religious law with state power and want to control everything.
First of all, there is no such thing as “Christian law,” and just because the author’s perception may be focused on power doesn’t mean anyone interested in influencing legislation is power-hungry.
Jesus gave his followers ethical commands to guide their way of life. But the Rabbi of Tarsus who converted to Jesus’ way, the Apostle Paul, modified his view of the legal code by claiming that God gave us the new law of his Spirit. That is not a hyper-religious controlling legal structure, it’s a guiding person who shapes our decisions and motivations. Law only works from the outward in. The Spirit works from the inward out to our behaviors. The Spirit’s influence within Christians is in alignment with the moral character of the God we learn from within the ten commandments to the Hebrew nation.
Self-government
There’s also a more obvious point missing here. Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Atheists all have the legal right in the United States of America to allow their personal religious values to influence the laws and legal process that governs our land. That is what self-government is. As Christians living in the United States, we do actively seek laws that protect human life, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and religion, etc.
As Chris Buck stated last week, Christians aren’t seeking to force Americans to get baptized. Or to take communion, or to force people to hold prayer services that violate their conscience. I don’t want our judicial system to be run by pastors. And I have no interest, on a systemic level, in appointing priests to become the principals of all schools just because they are priests. These are bad ideas.
But should followers of Jesus desire a government and legal system that conforms to the morality laid out in the Ten Commandments? ABSOLUTELY! The alternative is to allow American laws to be reshaped by the honor killings instigated under Islam’s Shariah Law, child labor as expanded under unfettered Capitalism, polygamous marriage as pursued by radical interest groups today, or the abuse of our children by radical gender ideologies that lower the age of consent. These laws are destructive to individuals and to the collective society, and we have every right to oppose them with our own value system.
The implicit assumption of the secularists is that all religions are coercive and abusive and that they have nothing good to offer. The secularists discount the implicit goodness of Judaism’s ten commandments and the chaos of injustice these laws prevent.
Limitations on government
Is it good to have safeguards and restraints and skepticism about how far we go with our politics?—I think so! Two weeks ago, I opened our conversation by saying that Christians should be involved in society, culture, and law. But this week, I’m expounding on that statement. The role of government should be limited! Christians, as well as everyone else, should resist the urge to solve all our problems through overregulation and legal structures. The magic of the American system, at least in the past, has been the limitations on government’s authority and jurisdiction. (Though that seems to be slipping into an I’m-king-for-a-day-so-I-can-do-whatever-I-want mentality.)
In a liberal Western democracy, such as ours, one that grew out of the Enlightenment period, societies are composed of free individuals who possess all authority to govern themselves without the harassment of mobs, monarchs, neighbors, or overregulation infringing on their way of life. Free individuals then concede only their most basic of human rights to the collective entity—the state—in order to better secure what they may not be able to secure on their own power (the protection of their own life or their property, for example). Therefore, the collective government should retrain itself to defend only the most basic rights the people never forfeited but merely delegated—life, liberty, freedom of thought, religion, and speech. The people never let go of those rights, and the government exists mostly to defend those most basic of rights.
It should be the role of robust private communities, families, free markets, and religious groups to solve most other problems within our society. My personal belief is that we’ve gotten off track by expecting our politicians to provide all the answers. (Perhaps the politician’s role was only to bring the right community members into the room so that the community could work together towards a general consensus with a diversity of public perspectives on a strategic initiative. But that seems to be wishful thinking from a bygone era.) The law should really only serve as the most basic parameter that infringes on the least amount of rights while securing the most universal ones.
The imperative for Christian influence
Let us get back to this implicit accusation that religions are only bad and secularism is only good. The twentieth century—the relentless secularism of Marxism on the left and the pagan dictatorship of the Nazis on the right— has shown us that without religious interference, humans are still quite capable of running through every stop sign and dominating each other with every terrible evil. Perhaps a little restraint on behalf of a few morally minded people would be a good thing for a nation sliding into such extremes.
Christians should speak truthfully and correctively into law and politics. We should do so to all systems, people, parties, and power. We should not be prejudicial or partisan in our approach. That doesn’t mean individuals can’t partner with specific legislation, non-profit organizations, interest groups, politicians, or even parties to achieve their strategic vision for the world. We do that with a degree of humility and restraint. We don’t look to the government to solve every problem. No one is perfect, and everyone is "correctable." Christians aren’t looking to control or dominate people with our religious celebrations. But we do believe our society benefits from the basic structure of our moral and ethical values.
It’s hard listening to the voice of restraint. It’s hard listening to our own conscience. And it’s hard being that voice that can then be villainized by other people. Yet Christians should continue to be that uncomfortable voice that calls a nation to moral clarity. The alternatives only lead to bondage and oppression for our nation.
[1] Matthew Chapman, Christian nationalists have awoken a fierce Christian resistance movement: report; April 22 Published on RawStory.com
Tags: power, religion, correction, speech, domination, rights, oppression, morality, restraint, destructive, secularism, laws, self-government, freedom of speech, protections, moral clarity, christian nationalism
