There is an excellent article in the most recent issue of Christianity Today entitled “The Lure of Theocracy.” It is a great illustration of why some Christians seek a theocracy and more importantly, why they shouldn’t. A comparison is made between Islamic States and the West, the latter with it’s separation of Church and State.
Several years ago a Muslim man said to me, “I find no guidance in the Qur’an on how Muslims should live as a minority in a society and no guidance in the New Testament on how Christians should live as a majority.” He put his finger on a central difference between the two faiths. One, born at Pentecost, tends to thrive cross-culturally and even counterculturally, often coexisting with oppressive governments. The other, geographically anchored in Mecca, was founded simultaneously as a religion and a state.
Some forget that the wall of separation works both ways; the Civil Government works best when not dominated by the Church and the Church works best when not regulated by the Civil Government. “Theocratic culture also opens up the potential for moral coercion,” something we can all relate to, but think how much worse it could get!
A good, easy read and perhaps worth saving as an illustration the next time you run into someone who wants to legislate morality but is open to debate.
I like that he illustrates how much freedom people will trade for “safety” (even emotional safety), and comes down on the side of freedom. I hope the right people listen.
Great article! Phillip Yancey is an author I have a great deal of respect for.
j.
“A good, easy read and perhaps worth saving as an illustration the next time you run into someone who wants to legislate morality but is open to debate.”
Excuse me, but laws against murder and theft are legislating morality. I think we should only have laws against actions that are immoral AND violate individual rights.
Thanks for the heads up to this article. I find the comparisons between Islam and Christianity quite useful as points for discussion.
The real issue comes down to how comfortable one is with authoritarianism. The usual gang of thieves from the fundamentalist/evangelical wing of American Christianity are truly authoritarian theocrats. Their insistence in the “infallability” of scripture and their deeply-felt desire to impose their morality on the rest of the world make their true authoritarianist motives quite clear.
My reading of the Gospels leads me to believe that Jesus was quite anti-authoritarian. I think that Jesus would truly be horrified by the words and actions of those who today claim to speak in his name.
Mark said:
Excuse me, but laws against murder and theft are legislating morality.
Morality and the law certainly intersect in many places, but those laws dealing strictly with moral issues are mostly either no longer enforced or have been challenged and removed. Murder and theft are violations of fundamental rights recognized by the Constitution. While these are shared with the Ten Commandments and most every other religious code, adultery is not generally illegal nor is there a law forcing one to keep the Sabbath. One could argue that those things are in the Constitution because they were introduced to man by God and later adopted as fundamental, but that’s really a separate issue.
After a quick bit of research, it seems that this phrase, “legislating morality,” is one of those hot button, right-left issues. I probably should have used something else to describe it as to not awaken anyone’s ire. Don’t let that keep you from a good article 😉
David Roberts
Well, Mark…your hit and run comments are seriously old.
Murder is a tortuous and irreversible assault on another human being.
And a source of unmeasurable emotional and mental pain for the victim’s survivors.
Theft has little resolution for the victims if resolution isn’t done in a timely way.
Also an immeasurable hurt on the victim.
Mark, if you were such a wise person in the ways of moral ethics, accounting, responsibility and social impact.
Evidently your declarations of faith and religious discipline has only taught you to judge others.
And you don’t know the difference between theory and perception, as opposed to reality and reason.
If this is the Mark I think you are.
A case in point about selectively legislating morality.
Our laws decided long ago that no person can or should be kept from seeing to their family obligations. Whether it’s for a significant single other sharing the household, or children claimed by the individual.
The moral value of meeting one’s obligation in that regard is recognized in our society as supportable and wholesome.
Now all of a sudden, from state to state, someone found a way to KEEP individuals from legally providing for said relationships.
Regardless of proof these relationships are stable, healthy and present no increased problems for children in that home.
Even the facts on obese parents, or parents with genetic disease and deformity doesn’t enable the government to legislate against couples with those issues.
So, Mark….what are you REALLY willing to legislate against on what actually impacts society NEGATIVELY?
Or what’s just a fantasy that will?
It should also be pointed out that the basis behind proscribing both murder and theft is not morality but rather property protection. Both murder and theft are the usurpation of ownership (murder quite literally usurping the ownership of one’s own life, or the usurpation of a person you “own” such as a relative, or in pre-emancipation days, slaves). So while it seems like the legislation of morality, it really isn’t.
Thanks Robis. Property. That’s what it comes down to on so many levels.
Who owns whose life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Evidently, a lot of straight folks think they own all of the above regarding gay folks lives and how it’s supposed to be lived.
Last I looked, gay folks are God’s property.
It’s the straight folks who made up the sign:
“This Property Condemned.”
Several state constitutions have made it quite clear from their inception that religion and morality are not one and the same anyway. Often they cite the source for creation of statutory law as religion, morality and knowledge – clearly separating concepts of “morality” from being some exclusive domain of any church. Moreover, no specific religion is defined, despite how the fundies attempt to claim everything in our system is derived from biblical “principles.”
Of course, I get plenty of dirty looks when I ask them for the passages which talk about setting up a republic with a President and two other branches of government. Those looks get even nastier when I ask how, when Christianity, for example, was running countries and annointing royalty in the name of God in Europe, did it take almost 1800 years to discover these Christian principles. Their attempt to assert that freedom of religion is nothing more than the freedom to practice Christian religion (apparently as defined by them, naturally) is an arrogant throwback to when white settlers kidnapped Indian children, removed them from their people, and forced them into Christian schools.
The evangelical nature of Christianity, in my opinion, is in direct conflict with a Constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion, particularly state constitutional provisions about the rights of each man to worship according to his own conscience. I actually had one winger try to tell me that it only pertained to being forced to build houses of worship – and while it is true that is listed in many state constitutions, consciences don’t construct buildings, bodies do.
I often see the greatest danger in the demand of imposition of particularly narrow interpretations of religious doctrine, particularly coming from activist non-denominationally-affiliated “Christian” groups who have no real connection to the religious practices of our Founders.