Religious Liberty Has Its Roots In The Bible

Religious liberty is not just an abstract idea from the 18th century in the living breathing idea that we need to protect and thrive today is family policy with NC family Pres. John Rustin thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters were talking today with Andrew Walker about a new group on religious liberty produced by the ethics and religious liberty commission of the Southern Baptist bench.

The study is entitled religious liberty how the gospel shapes our first freedom.

Andrew serves as director of policy studies for the ethics and religious liberty commission or ER LC is one of the primary authors of this six-week study along with your LC Executive Vice President Philip court and ER LC Pres. Russell Andrew walking family policy matters. It's great to have you on the show is strictly with you.

Thank you very much. Why did the ethics and religious liberty commission decide to create a small group study on the topic of religious liberty. That's a great question. Religious liberty is something that is at the forefront of what's happening in the culture right now it seems to be an issue that Christians in the pews are confronting and realizing that this this is a crucial issue for our time, but they recognize that.

But there's a missing link in that conversation, and the missing link is the fact that there's not a lot of materials available to help educate and equip Christians to understand the biblical basis of religious liberty, so we wanted to do our very best sense religious liberty is in the title of our organization. We know we have some license to do a curriculum on this most cherished freedom that we enjoyed not only as Americans but we think is vital to what it means to have free consciences that respond to God freely and to live our Christian lives out publicly in the public square, so we wanted to just kind of start from the from the ground up and build kind of a framework for how Christians need to think about religious liberty as it relates to the culture as it relates to the Bible and in theological themes in the Bible and how it relates to mission and to the common good and and in the public square, so we just wanted this to be an opportunity to get Christians who are interested about religious liberty off the sidelines and give them the opportunity to devote six weeks to intentional study on religious liberty entered explain a little bit about the intersection from your perspective of religious liberty from a faith perspective versus religious liberty from a political perspective. So when we typically think about religious liberty, especially Americans and Western context. We predominantly think of religious liberty, and the categories of free exercise and the non-establishment clause of the Constitution and it being primarily a political idea and so we often overlook kind of the theological roots and then alternately a lot of progressives or non-Christians or secularists often think of religious liberty is something that's predominantly religious idea.

So there's religious and he often gets lost in translation between religiously believing individuals and non-religious individuals, but when we look at why religious liberty exists as a biblical idea and as a theological idea, we see lots and lots of themes emerge. One of those is that God is a God who wants to be worshiped freely and that means we cannot coerce belief I we cannot make someone believe the gospel, in fact what we see in the New Testament is Paul pleading with individuals to believe in Christ. And so if you're pleading with individuals that means you're trying to be persuasive and you're not trying to be coercive and so we understand Christians that God wants creatures who are worshiping him in freedom because we know that love is only something that's truly loving if it's done authentically and in freedom. Anything that squares with what we see in the Scriptures, I think we also see this understanding of religious liberty bear out and what we would talk about as the government having authority over certain matters, and the government not having authority over theological affairs or having authority over the church in a given state and we would want to say that only God has the authority to judge religious affairs and only God can judge consciences that are believing false things about God so I like to say to individuals what Christians believe in religious liberty because we believe that Jesus Christ is ultimately saying he's a real king and ultimately Jesus is going to execute judgment against consciences that are believing or that are not believing in him and so if Jesus is left to sort out the sheep from the goats.

That's not the job of the state and just one other example is this understanding as human beings being made in the image of God to be made in the image of God means, though, that there is something important about how we relate to God as his unique image bearers. Only humans are as image bearers in Scripture which means we possess certain components and and faculties about our existence that make us unique and one of those is the fact that we are able to reason and to think enter took to respond to what we think is true. So we want that we we we believe in religious liberty because we believe consciences have to be free to make those decisions about how to how to live their lives and how to relate to God and that we cannot coerce those beliefs, and other individuals and because the conscience of something that longs to each individual. It's the conscience that's going to be held accountable to God. You're listening to policy matters of resource to listen to our radio show online enter more resources that will be a place of persuasion in your community to our website see family.org.

Should Christians only be concerned about the religious liberties of other Christians, or should we actually care about the religious liberties of peoples of all faith and I guess even people that claim to have no faith, for that matter, so Christians should care about religious liberty for everyone and and that applies to non-Christians that applies to atheists and agnostics because the principles of religious liberty are the same principles that consist of what it means to live and a free society, and so there basic aspects of our existence that all of us have in common.

Whether were religious or not.

Everyone wants to live an authentic life, which means if you're in a have an authentic life means you have to be free to live authentically to yourself. It means that every single person has some type of authority that they're basing their life upon so if it's a Christian they're basing their authority upon God. If it's a nonbeliever for cable they might be basing their authority upon science or upon reason, if there is, for example, the issue of adoration or worship that every single person is made to worship and adore and these are categories that again everyone enjoys and partakes, and so even a person who would not claim to worship God still find themselves worshiping in some other capacity, so of course as Christians, we would disagree with how some people would understand worship and understand authority and understand what it means to live authentic lives, but we know that in a free society if we want liberty we have to give liberty to those individuals as well. Even when we disagree with them. And then secondly, one of the reasons Christians believe in religious liberty is because we believe the gospel is something that stands on its own 2 feet, that it doesn't need the government to back it up or prop it up or to support it is for the gospel. Something that needs help from the government.

It it simply does not. When we see the movement of the gospel in the earliest church and throughout New Testament history I'm in and then finally I would say Christians believe in religious liberty for all persons, because we believe all persons God wants all men to be saved and for all men to be saved. They have to have a free response to the gospel, which means that no government or no other person can be a mediator on behalf of another person.

And so the religious liberty is ultimately a gospel issue because being free to respond to the gospel is how we become Christians and understand what truth really is and and what we need to repent from and to trust in Christ. Well that's really key. And yet it raises a question about the relationship between religious liberty in the great commission.

So what is the relationship between religious liberty and the great commission through which Jesus calls his followers to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that he has commanded us. So if we want the gospel to go forward and and I should add that here we know the gospel is going to go forward no matter what Jesus promises to build his church. So even in contexts where there aren't weather isn't religious liberty. The gospel still good to go forward on be very clear about that but we also know that it is a good thing when there are less hindrances and less obstacles to the gospel going forward. And so I would say that Christians want a culture of religious liberty because we want the freedom to live the truth in our lives.

We also want the freedom to speak that truth to other individuals. We don't want to face harassment or punishment from the government for sharing our faith with individuals in a given society in it in any given society. I would also say that one of the reasons we want religious liberty is that we share the gospel through our words but we also demonstrate our love for the gospel in our love for other people by sharing generously and mercifully with them, and so we want to be an context that allows the church to do with the church is called to do which is to love God and love neighbor and that's why it's no surprise that in his in a in a culture like America where there's a strong culture, religious liberty, you also have a strong culture of of civic participation and volunteerism on the part of religious organizations because religious organizations provide hundreds of millions of dollars of of goods for free to society because were animated by this truth that the inside of us and we simply want to live that truth out.

If you would walk us through some of the logistics of the six week study that you have been so much a part of creating a what counter format time commitment and materials are used yet, so it consists of a book curriculum that navigates individuals through various subjects related religious liberty about the culture and religious liberty.

The Bible and religious liberty, mission and religious liberty religious liberty in the common good religious liberty in the public square and then a final specific session about responding to common objections about religious liberty so if you participate in this curriculum.

There is a written component where you will be guided through kind of some articles about how to think the religious liberty. And to think through biblically, but then also there's a group component where you get together with the group and watch a 20 to 30 minute video where we interview some of the nation's foremost experts on religious liberty to help us understand what religious liberty is and then to the neck discuss that in the context of a small group. We tried to make it something that is interesting and not boring because we know that religious liberty is on those issues. It's very, very abstract.

At times we want to make it adventurous for the reader in the lead and and those watching it to really get a sense that religious liberty is not just an abstract idea from the 18th century. It's a living breathing idea that we need to protect and see thrive today great what Andrew what do you hope the participants will take away from this study and for those listeners who are interested. Where can they go to avail themselves of these resources. I believe that you all have partnered with wifely Christian resources, but provide us your thoughts about what you hope participants will take away am in work and they get the materials will my first hope is that Christians will understand that religious liberty is not just an idea that the American Constitution. I came up with in 1789 that religious liberty is something that historians, whether Christian or non-Christian would all say originates with the very earliest founding of Christianity and so II really hope that individuals would come away with a sure foundation that religious liberty is something rooted in the Bible is something that matters to the advance of the gospel. A minute matters to what it means for us to live as free beings in a society where we try to be faithful to Christ is called us to be as the church.

As far as where it is available as you mention this is a kite cobranded effort with lifeways. So I think the likely stores would have the crew come available as well as likely.com. If you do search religious liberty how the gospel shapes our first freedom while Andrew Walker, unfortunately, were out of town for this week, but I want to thank you so much for joining us on family policy matters and for your very important work as ethics and religious liberty commission of the Southern Baptist convention. Thank you so much was listening to family policy matters production of NZ family to listen to our radio show online, and for more valuable resources and information about issues important to families in North Carolina to our website and see family.org and follow us on Twitter and Facebook