Should We Fight for Religious Liberty?

00:00:05.000 | This week we welcome to the Ask Pastor John podcast, Dr. Russell Moore, a good friend of ours,

00:00:10.000 | who serves as the 8th president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

00:00:16.000 | There are so many questions related to the church and culture in our inbox,

00:00:19.000 | and Dr. Moore will help us out this week on the podcast, filling in for John Piper.

00:00:24.000 | And I want to begin the week by asking you, Dr. Moore, about that very thing we call religious liberty.

00:00:29.000 | In 1 Timothy 2, we see that religious liberty is a very good thing for the church.

00:00:33.000 | Obviously, it's a good thing.

00:00:35.000 | But you believe religious liberty is at root not merely a political freedom, but a divine right to be defended.

00:00:41.000 | According to the Christian worldview, what are some transcendent principles behind religious liberty?

00:00:47.000 | Yeah, Tony, one of the problems that I think many Christians have is that we don't know who the villain is

00:00:54.000 | when we start thinking about issues of religious liberty.

00:00:57.000 | I think there are a lot of Christians today who would say, "Let's just shrug off religious liberty concerns,"

00:01:04.000 | because they assume that they're in the place of Jesus and the government's in the place of Pilate,

00:01:10.000 | and so let's just do what Jesus did and not speak in our own defense

00:01:14.000 | and let the government impose whatever sorts of restrictions it wants to impose.

00:01:20.000 | Now, on the one hand, there's a good impulse behind that,

00:01:24.000 | and that impulse is that the gospel goes forward,

00:01:28.000 | regardless of what any government or any king or any dictator attempts to do.

00:01:33.000 | There's no stopping the advance of the church because Jesus promised this at Caesarea Philippi,

00:01:39.000 | and Jesus keeps his promise that he's going to build his church.

00:01:42.000 | There's also a good impulse in the sense that the writer of Hebrews says

00:01:46.000 | we ought to be ready to be joyful even in the plundering of our property.

00:01:52.000 | And so there are good impulses there, but I think that that is wrongheaded,

00:01:56.000 | and here's why it's wrongheaded.

00:01:58.000 | The Bible says that God holds Caesar, holds governments accountable

00:02:03.000 | for the wielding of the sword in Romans chapter 13.

00:02:07.000 | And so when we live in a democratic republic, the people ultimately are Caesar,

00:02:13.000 | that the people ultimately have accountability.

00:02:16.000 | And so the question is not simply are we going to be persecuted,

00:02:21.000 | although that's an important question, it's also are we going to be persecutors?

00:02:26.000 | Because if the government in our context is restricting people's religious freedom,

00:02:31.000 | we are restricting people's religious freedom.

00:02:34.000 | And there are a number of theological and biblical principles that come into play.

00:02:39.000 | The first is a matter of lordship.

00:02:41.000 | The Bible says that God has given the sword to Caesar to be used in a very specific context

00:02:49.000 | to punish evildoers and to encourage the good.

00:02:54.000 | But the Bible makes very clear also that there are limits upon that power.

00:03:00.000 | That's why in Revelation 13 we see a government that is a beast state,

00:03:05.000 | a government that has overstepped its bounds.

00:03:08.000 | So there's a matter of lordship here.

00:03:10.000 | Is the government over the conscience in order to direct worship

00:03:15.000 | and to direct the practice that comes out of that worship?

00:03:18.000 | That's what Peter and John were encountering when they said,

00:03:23.000 | "We are going to render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar,

00:03:27.000 | but we're not going to render our consciences up when it comes to being forced,

00:03:31.000 | for instance, not to proclaim the name of Jesus."

00:03:35.000 | This is also a matter of gospel because what happens is the gospel cannot be enforced by the government.

00:03:44.000 | You can't at the point of a sword have people become Christians

00:03:49.000 | because it's not the way the Spirit works.

00:03:51.000 | Nor can you restrict the advance of the gospel by the power of the government.

00:03:57.000 | How does the gospel go forward?

00:03:59.000 | It goes forward, the Apostle Paul says, by openly appealing,

00:04:04.000 | not by peddling the Word of God, but by openly appealing to the conscience.

00:04:09.000 | So the government doesn't have the right to coerce

00:04:13.000 | and the government doesn't have the right to restrict the worship that comes from the heart.

00:04:19.000 | It's also a matter of the kingdom, our understanding of the kingdom of God.

00:04:24.000 | The Scripture tells us that Jesus has been given head over all things,

00:04:30.000 | over His body, which is the church, Ephesians 1.

00:04:33.000 | And that church is to advance, the Scripture says, according to spiritual means.

00:04:39.000 | So there's a lot of confusion that happens these days about, for instance,

00:04:43.000 | the phrase "separation of church and state"

00:04:46.000 | because people have used separation of church and state to mean a separation

00:04:50.000 | of any religious motivation or conviction from the public square.

00:04:56.000 | That's not what the separation of church and state means.

00:04:59.000 | It ultimately is something very biblical, which is to say the state has a responsibility

00:05:04.000 | held accountable before God to that responsibility,

00:05:07.000 | but the church also has a responsibility and a mission,

00:05:11.000 | and that mission is to be advanced with spiritual means.

00:05:16.000 | And what that means, though, is that we have responsibilities as churches

00:05:22.000 | and we have responsibilities as citizens.

00:05:26.000 | The Apostle Paul appealed for his freedom.

00:05:29.000 | He appealed to his Roman citizenship for his liberty

00:05:33.000 | because the Apostle Paul knew this isn't simply about his rights.

00:05:37.000 | He's willing in all sorts of other places to surrender his rights.

00:05:42.000 | He is appealing for those things because he does not believe that the courts

00:05:48.000 | are over his conscience when it comes to worship,

00:05:53.000 | and because he believes that this has implications for the advance of the gospel

00:05:57.000 | for other people.

00:05:59.000 | So I think what we need to be advocating for is the sort of pluralism in the public square

00:06:05.000 | that doesn't cause there to be less conversation, that causes there to be more conversation

00:06:11.000 | so that we are appealing to Muslims and to Hindus and to secularists

00:06:18.000 | about why we believe that the gospel is true,

00:06:21.000 | why we believe that Jesus has been raised from the dead.

00:06:23.000 | We don't expect the government to do that for us,

00:06:26.000 | and we don't expect a government that's big enough to restrict us from doing that.

00:06:30.000 | And at the same time, we listen to those voices on the outside,

00:06:34.000 | and our ultimate hope is not that they would be silenced by the state.

00:06:39.000 | We don't want that.

00:06:40.000 | We want instead to persuade people through the power of the sword of the Spirit,

00:06:45.000 | which is the Word of God, that comes only to free consciences.

00:06:51.000 | We want liberty and Jesus for all.

00:06:54.000 | Thank you, Dr. Moore. I appreciate your thoughts on religious liberty.

00:06:57.000 | And Dr. Moore serves as the 8th president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

00:07:02.000 | of the Southern Baptist Convention,

00:07:03.000 | and he will be joining us all week to address this and other questions related to the church and culture.

00:07:08.000 | He is an author, blogger, podcast, and you'll see him appear from time to time on televised news programs,

00:07:13.000 | and you can keep up with him or try to keep up with him at russellmoore.com or on Twitter @DrMoore.

00:07:20.000 | Speaking of Twitter, when our Twitter feed lights up with news of an evangelical leader

00:07:24.000 | who has chosen to come out and endorse same-sex marriage, what are we to do?

00:07:29.000 | I'll ask Dr. Moore tomorrow.

00:07:30.000 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

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Should We Fight for Religious Liberty?

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