Tag: religious liberty

Book Plunge: The Bible and the Ballot: Chapter 5

What about religious liberty? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This chapter was surprising. In all fairness, the Bible doesn’t say much about religious liberty. In the Old Testament, Israelites were expected to be loyal to YHWH as part of the covenant people and within a nation, that was the way it lived. You didn’t want to be a part of the covenant people? Clear out of dodge. Don’t go trying to be a pagan in Israel.

Do you want to come to Israel? Sure, but you are not allowed to set up Bob’s House of Idols while you’re there. You enter the land of Israel and you play by the rules of Israel.

When we get to the New Testament, we are never given a system of governance on how people are to be led. Christians are expected to be loyal to King Jesus. It is not until we get to the Fathers struggling in a pagan culture that we first see arguments for religious liberty. Robert Wilken says this started with Tertullian.

In fairness to Longman, Wilken’s book came out just months before Longman’s so it’s likely he didn’t have time to get it for that perspective. Book writing can be a lengthy process. Had there been a few years difference between the books, there would be an issue, but I urge Longman to read Wilkens’s book.

Longman does rightly go to the first amendment and says that it is most likely this did not mean no religious voices in the public square. It just meant there wouldn’t be a national religion mandated by the government. That is correct, but at the time the founders still held to blasphemy laws. Government funds were used to support missionary endeavors.

Longman then brings up conflicts the church has with the LGBTQ community in the area of law. Indeed, this is part of the problem that many of us saw when the State decided that somehow, the founders thought that two men could declare themselves married. When you try to redefine marriage, you have to defend that redefinition by going after anyone who disagrees with it.

However, there is one paragraph I will quote in full here since I was so dumbfounded by it.

We should begin by remembering that Christianity was birthed in a culture that had virtually no religious liberty (at least toward the new Christian religion). Religious liberty, in short, is not a biblical principle. p. 70

I’m sorry. What?

I even asked some professors here if I was misreading that to make sure. Nope. They thought it said the same thing.

So let’s see if we can rephrase this:

We should begin by remembering that Christianity was birthed in a culture that had virtually no faithful monogamy. Faithful monogamy, in short, is not a biblical principle.

We should begin by remembering that Christianity was birthed in a culture that had virtually no value for female children. Value for female children, in short, is not a biblical principle.

Does any of this make sense?

Now Longman does believe we should value our liberty, but we should not demand it. I am not sure what he means by this. Should a preacher being told to marry a same-sex attracted couple or else not stand up? It’s unclear.

Longman does refer to C.S. Lewis talking about the criminalization of homosexual behavior and Lewis asking what business of the State is that. To this, I suggest we keep in mind that when it comes to behavior, the state can do one of three things. It can permit, promote, or prohibit. This should also not be dependent on if a religious tradition says so or not.

For instance, is there any secularist who would like to have the laws against murder repealed because the Ten Commandments also have a law against murder? Doubtful. If murder is wrong, it is wrong regardless of what any religion says about it.

So looking at same-sex behavior as Lewis was concerned about, he did not want it prohibited, probably in the sense of breaking into peoples’ bedrooms. In this case, it is permitted. Going out in public and doing it would be a different matter just as much as if a heterosexual couple did that. Our society has now gone the route of promote, such as the Biden White House having pride flags on it. I suspect Lewis would say the same thing. “What business of that is the State’s?”

So in the end, I think Longman’s chapter has the big flaw in saying that religious liberty is not a biblical principle because the Roman Empire didn’t practice it. Even if the conclusion was correct, he has given a horrible reason for thinking it. We should not expect the Bible to give us a model on how to run a multicultural government. That is not its place.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Liberty and the Things of God

What do I think of Robert Louis Wilken’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The subtitle of this book is the Christian Origins of Religious Freedom. At the start, Christianity was not treated well by the Romans. Tertullian was the first to actively speak about the freedom of religion in his apology for the Christians. (For those who don’t know, an apology is a defense in the ancient world. He is not saying the Christians had done anything wrong.)

As Tertullian says in chapter 24 of the work:

Let one man worship God, another Jupiter; let one lift suppliant hands to the heavens, another to the altar of Fides; let one — if you choose to take this view of it — count in prayer the clouds, and another the ceiling panels; let one consecrate his own life to his God, and another that of a goat. For see that you do not give a further ground for the charge of irreligion, by taking away religious liberty, and forbidding free choice of deity, so that I may no longer worship according to my inclination, but am compelled to worship against it. Not even a human being would care to have unwilling homage rendered him; and so the very Egyptians have been permitted the legal use of their ridiculous superstition, liberty to make gods of birds and beasts, nay, to condemn to death any one who kills a god of their sort. Every province even, and every city, has its god.

And thus, we have the first argument for freedom of religion, fifteen centuries before the Constitution.

Wilken also has an interesting section on conscience. The ancients would not find it sensical to say with Jiminy Cricket, “Let your conscience be your guide.” We read it individually in a passage like Romans 2. The ancients would have read it collectively. It was the idea that your actions had moral significance and could be judged by others. It comes from two words, scientia and con, meaning knowledge with.

By the time we get to the Reformation, this has changed in that conscience is more of an internal guide. (Now also, we often say it can be the voice of God, which is a much bigger problem.) So can one say that Luther was wrong when he invoked conscience in making his defense? If you do, you have to be aware that several Catholics at the time also invoked conscience for their own freedom to worship as they saw fit. Luther, like the Catholics of his time, was to some extent a product of his time.

From the Reformation on then, we have countless battles and controversies going on. The church used to be a solidifying factor of stability, but what happens when the church itself has divisions in its ranks? This is where the majority of the book looks. The main idea is often that there are two swords, the sword of the spiritual kingdom and the sword of the physical world and the kings have no jurisdiction on the former.

This is also why it’s such a big deal when the King of England breaks away and starts the church of England. All of a sudden, you have a king who is in charge of both spiritual and physical matters. What is to be done then?

When you read through the book, you also see that in all of this, both sides did awful things to each other. You will grimace at some of the ways that Catholics treated Protestants. It will be just as hard to read of the ways that Protestants treated Catholics. The freedom of religion that those of us in America today have is something we dare not take for granted.

While Wilken goes through many thinkers of the time in looking at the topic of freedom of religion, I have one major criticism of the book. I would have at least liked to have seen one chapter dedicated to the American experiment. How did our Founding Fathers take all of these and make freedom of religion so important in our country? What has been the result? Are we in danger of losing that freedom? (By the way, the answer to that last question is yes.)

If you like history and political ideas, this is a worthwhile book to read. Many times, people in our times look at where we are and think that it’s obvious that all should have this position today. It rarely is. Books like Wilken’s remind us that there were a lot of hard questions to ask along the way.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)