Religious Liberty in a Pluralistic Age: A Conversation with Andrew T. Walker

Albert Mohler:

This is Thinking in Public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about frontline theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them. I’m Albert Mohler, your host, and President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Andrew Walker is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Apologetics at Southern Seminary. Dr. Walker, who earned his PhD from the institution serves as Associate Dean in the School of Theology and as Executive Director of the Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement. In addition to his teaching at Southern Seminary, Professor Walker is a research fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC.

Prior to coming to Southern Seminary, Professor Walker was Senior Fellow in Christian Ethics at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. His most recent book, Liberty for All: Defending Everyone’s Religious Freedom in a Pluralistic Age, surveys the theological and ethical foundations of religious freedom. And that is the topic of our conversation today. Andrew Walker, welcome to Thinking in Public.

Andrew Walker:

Dr. Mohler, thank you so much. It’s a great honor to be with you today.

Albert Mohler:

Over the course of, say, modern history in Europe and in the United States, religious liberty has sometimes been a matter of life and death, but in more recent decades, I think Americans have had the luxury of believing that religious liberty is something of a legal, constitutional, academic issue. You’ve written this book because you believe it to be far more than that. Tell us why.

Andrew Walker:

Yeah. No, that’s a great first question to kick this off. One of my concerns about how evangelicals think about religious liberty is that we have been informed more by broad concerns related to the Constitution and to issues of jurisprudence, and we’ve almost jettisoned a theological foundation for religious liberty. And so, what I set out to do in this book is to write a book to Christians—I’m not seeking to persuade non-Christians, necessarily. What I’m trying to say to Christians is religious liberty is not a by-product of history, necessarily; it’s not a contingency of history given to us by John Locke. There’s something intrinsic to the theological DNA of Christian theology itself that posits a doctrine of religious liberty. And in the book, I lay out the broad categories of eschatology, anthropology, and missiology, and then trace out kind of a broader argument from those three pillars and foundations.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah, I’ll start out by saying, I think your book is singular and just incredibly incisive on these issues. As you know, I’ve been about the task of trying to build a theological understanding of all of these issues, and religious liberty in particular.

It’s interesting. You used the phrase, “jettisoned,” as if evangelicals have jettisoned that theological case. I think that the problem may be deeper than that. I think that evangelicals, and for that matter, you might say just biblically-minded Christians, hadn’t really had to think these issues through theologically because the issues did appear to be something on the periphery for most evangelicals in the United States.

Andrew Walker:

Yeah. I think that’s definitely the case, especially if we’re looking backwards for the last 50, or 60, or 70 years. We haven’t necessarily had to do a lot of the theological argumentation around this. We’ve more or less inherited the tradition by virtue of the First Amendment and the broader American experiment.

But, when you go back to America’s foundations, when you go back even before America, you have broad theological arguments being made for religious liberty. And that’s honestly one of the virtues of what the Baptist tradition brings to this conversation. Individuals like Roger Williams and John Leland, Isaac Backus. We have the theological arguments. What we need to do in this particular age is retrieve them, because as I write in the book, if we don’t retrieve our arguments, they get lost on the next generation. And we’ve approached a place in the culture where religious liberty can no longer be tacitly assumed as a public good.

So, we have to not only explain to the outside world why religious liberty is worth preserving, we actually have to do some of the work ourselves, convincing ourselves why we ought to fight for this on our own behalf. And so that’s part of the reason that [crosstalk 00:04:29] the book.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah. I still push back a bit because I’m not sure it is retrieval. I think, in a lot of ways, it’s construction because I think there’s been a reflex, and I don’t know that I’ve said it out loud this way before, but there’s been a reflex among American evangelicals to think that the argument for religious liberties in positive law is somehow saying, “Well, we have a right to religious liberty because the US Constitution says we have it, and because the courts have said we have it, and because all smart people know we have it.” But in reality, religious liberty is based upon a theological argument that, by the way, exists whether the government respects religious liberty or not. It’s more fundamental. It’s pre-political, which these days is difficult for many people to understand because they think that everything begins and ends in politics.

Andrew Walker:

Well, and that gets back to a part of the conversation you and I have had previously, is one of the foundations that we come to the issue of religious liberty around, is this notion of conversion. We’re Baptists, so we have an explicit doctrine of conversion that means it’s not something you receive as an infant. It’s something that is conscientiously assented to, that you then are ordering your life in response to, because of the work of the Spirit in you.

But that gets to the bigger principle of what the very nature of the conscience and the nature of faith itself is, evangelicals and Baptists would say, “For faith to be operative, it has to be received voluntarily and acted upon authentically.” And that gets us to, really, the crux of where Baptist soteriology and Baptist ecclesiology intersect with our understanding of religious liberty.

Albert Mohler:

Right. You know, Andrew, it can be argued that one of the events in Western history that was most disastrous to a cultural and objective understanding of truth was the Spanish Inquisition that started in 1492. And the argument comes down to this: If you require people to say what they do not believe, you can’t trust what anyone actually means or says anymore. So, in other words, if you require people to say, “I believe this, because otherwise I’m going to be tortured and executed,” then you actually don’t know what they believe at all. And so, as that logic is driven through the society, truth simply evaporates as anything other than a political claim. And so, we have the more left-wing, postmodern enemies of truth in the late 20th and 21st centuries, but another enemy of truth is to require people to say what they don’t actually believe, and thus, you actually can’t trust anything anyone says.

Andrew Walker:

Well, and I would say, not only that, but the very notion of coerced faith is almost a contradiction in terms. But then, moreover, if you’re going to tell someone, “You have to believe this,” it really reveals that you don’t have the confidence for what you believe to stand on its own two feet, that you’re actually having to coerce or bring that belief by the threat of coercion or punishment.

But then, I would say, also, it is really ineffectual over time because that type of belief, it’s going to invite hypocrisy, false belief, and then, over time, you know, it’s going to invite a degree of nominalism, and a religion cannot persist with varying degrees and successions of nominalism. And so again, that’s why religious liberty as a Baptist in this conversation, it has to be a matter of proclaiming it, the Gospel, a matter of receiving the Gospel authentically, and then ultimately living out the implications of the Gospel in one’s life. And that’s something that doesn’t get passed on through biological DNA. It gets passed on through the church, the proclamation of the Gospel.

Now, we obviously know the family plays an important role in discipleship, but we’re Baptists. We’re not Presbyterians on this issue. We’re not Catholics on this issue. And so, a part of … To be candid with you, it is actually religious liberty that made me the fervent Baptist that I am. I was a graduate of Southern Seminary, and was a proud Baptist, but it was religious liberty that made me adamantly Baptist, because when I began to understand what I thought a true, coherent concept of religious liberty really is, it leads you to Baptist soteriology and Baptist ecclesiology. So, it’s interesting most people come to religious liberty because they’re a Baptist. I became the Baptist I am today because of religious liberty.

Albert Mohler:

Interesting logic there. There’s also the matter of competence in adjudicating matters of the soul. And one of the breakthroughs in Western history on this came from Queen Elizabeth I of England who, having followed Mary, and attempted reassertion of Catholicism in the English regime, she simply said, “I do not try to make windows into men’s souls.” In other words, she had reached the point where having had Edward VI, and then Mary, and going from a Protestant enforcement to a Catholic enforcement and now … Elizabeth, she understood, “Look, you had people who simply said what they had to say in order to survive in the one regime, you had people who said the opposite in order to survive in the second regime. I’m not going to make people say that.”

Now, there were limits to the Elizabethan Settlement. In other words, there wasn’t room for something contrary to the crown, but it was interesting that at least she recognized that in that short span of horrifying history that included the attempted Counter-Reformation in England, the lesson learned was, “You can’t trust what people say if you tell them what they have to say to live.” And of course, the Soviet Union found that out in its own way. Every totalitarian regime finds that out. But as you’re thinking about making the theological case for religious liberty, you don’t begin where I thought you would begin. And so, tell us where you began and why you begin there.

Andrew Walker:

Yeah. So, out of the gate, I talk about religious liberty in the category of eschatology. And what I mean by that is, effectively, where is history ultimately going? Who is in charge of history? And as a Christian, I believe Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords, which means He has ultimate sovereignty, ultimate authority.

So, using that as kind of our primary foundation, we then have to ask the question, well then, what type of lesser authorities are there that God has given to this particular earth to govern us in a penultimate age? And obviously, government is one of those jurisdictions that has been rightly ordered and decreed according to God’s will. But that raises the question, what does the government have the mandate and jurisdiction and competence over? And I don’t think that we would say it’s well-suited to be an authority on religious matters, that the conscience is ultimately ordered to Christ. And so, when we talk about Christ being the King, we’re simply going back to Hebrews 9, that everyone is going to die, they’re going to face judgment, and it’s not going to be a government bureaucrat that is going to be determining whether or not they’re going to Heaven or to Hell. That’s an issue that belongs solely and exclusively to Christ. It’s His domain to judge.

If that’s the case, if the conscience belongs to Christ, it does not belong to the government. Now, this doesn’t mean that the government is to be hostile to religion. It doesn’t mean that legislators should be irreligious. It simply means, at the institutional level of church and state, these are kept separate because the state lacks the mandate competency in jurisdiction to adjudicate theological matters.

If you don’t think that that’s true, and I know you believe that that’s true, I would just simply ask listeners, “Do you really want a non-Christian in office making theological proclamations?” That’s a recipe for theological disaster.

And again, so this is not to say that the state has nothing to do with religion. I’m not a strict separationist as some would call themselves. I’m an accommodationist when it comes to understanding of the relationship between church and state. But preeminently, it means that the state has not been set up to adjudicate those matters. It’s not a theological referee. The aim of the state is to be addressing issues pertaining to the common good that allows for a modicum of civil tranquility to exist within a penultimate age.

But I would say following Augustine, and I know you’re a thoroughgoing Augustinian yourself. You go to book 19 chapter 17, Augustine makes a profound argument that where there is civil tranquility … What does Augustine say the church is to do? The church is to make use of rightly ordered laws, and to use those for the sake of the Kingdom. And so, I don’t think that the United States government is directly playing a part in the drama of God’s redemption, but I think it does when it is operating in a limited jurisdiction, when it’s allowing the church to be the church in proclaiming its message. It’s playing an indirect role in allowing the church to proclaim the Gospel. And I think that’s actually commensurate with what Augustine is talking about in the City of God. I’m not trying to say here that America is God’s chosen nation, necessarily, but I am making the argument that the First Amendment gets it pretty right, I would say, biblically speaking. And I think it allows for us to have the opportunity to use just laws to advance the Kingdom.

Albert Mohler:

As you look at a biblical theology, though, of religious liberty, you do have to make the case that there is a disjuncture between the Old Testament and the New Testament, or you might say between Israel and the church. And I think it’s important for Christians to have that spelled out as well.

Andrew Walker:

Right. No, that’s one of the first objections I get, is, “Well, what do you do with Israel?” because there was not religious liberty in Israel. I would say I take a pretty traditional reformed understanding of Israel in this context, that Israel is unique in its relationship to God, and so, it has a different calling. Its rules and laws look a little different than the rest of the surrounding nations.

But, when we broaden out from Israel itself and we go back to something like the Noahic Covenant, which I spend quite a bit of time relying upon, we go back to this question of, “What is required of humans to participate in society?” For humans to participate meaningfully in society, they have to be participants in culture, they have to be partaking in family life, they have to be partaking in issues of cultivating culture. There has to be a justice system for there to be meaningful civil society.

I don’t think that individuals have to have a proper theological confession for them to live thriving, functioning lives. Now, I say that with a caveat that where a society begins to strip bare even the most basic lineaments of creation order, which, sadly, is Western civilization today, we are pushing the limits of what it means to be a functioning civil society. But insofar, I would say categorically, where nations are seeing families form, where justice systems develop, where there’s culture being created, you have the basic lineaments for a healthy, stable culture. And that is, again, that’s speaking universally about culture, not in particular what Israel was called to advance and its relationship with God.

Albert Mohler:

But speaking universally, just in terms of biblical theology, God made covenant through Abraham with Israel as a nation.

Andrew Walker:

Absolutely, yep.

Albert Mohler:

He established Israel as a nation. And thus, the covenant included the laws of Israel, the laws that that gave details into every dimension of life in Israel’s society. In the covenant of redemption, the covenant that is accomplished in Christ, it produces not a nation, but instead a church. Now, we’re referred to as a holy nation, but it’s not a nation in a geopolitical sense at all. And as a matter of fact, by the time you come to the end of the New Testament, Peter will refer to Christians, rather normatively, as, “Aliens dispersed amongst the nations”.

And so, given that, the New Testament does not give us an absolute blueprint for how we are to understand how government is to be established, how laws are to be established. There is creation order. There is common grace. There is that which honors the image of God and human dignity and that which dishonors it. But there’s a political society that is revealed in the Old Testament for Israel. There is not a political society that is revealed in the New Testament as normative for the world. Rather, it’s a polis that is normative for the church.

Andrew Walker:

Yeah. I completely agree with that. And you mentioned … You go to 1 Peter 2, or just more broadly, 1 Peter. Peter calls his listeners, “elect exiles”. And that language, I think, is striking because it’s reminding us that our calling as elect exiles means effectively two things.

It means that we are sojourners and pilgrims here announcing the Kingdom of God, proclaiming the Gospel. But then, I go back to language like we see in Jeremiah 29, where, when you have another set of elect exiles being driven into exile, what are they called to do? They’re called to seek the welfare of the city. They’re called to effectively get married, create homes, have a culture. And to me, that’s a reminder of what we are to do as Christians today. We are … Again to channel this Augustinian theme here, we have two identities, so to speak. We have our primary identity in Christ, but we are also called to live amongst the city of man while being the City of God the same time.

Albert Mohler:

But we understand that the secular city, so to speak, the city of man, has a real jurisdiction, but it’s limited, and it also has a real power, but it’s limited. But, part of what we need to recognize is that a lot of the church’s rightful, political expectations will be made realized only in the Kingdom of Christ in its fullness. And you hold to an inaugurated eschatology—you know, the “already and not yet that,” that fits the biblical pattern. And a part of the, “not yet,” is we don’t get the political order we yearn for in any fullness in this life, and we have to really forswear that, we have to forsake believing that we can, under any political circumstances, bring in the perfect regime. It is forbidden to us in a fallen world.

Andrew Walker:

And this issue of inaugurated eschatology, it actually ends up becoming one of the central focuses of the book, simply because we have to ask the question: If we’re living in between the Ascension of Christ and the Second Coming of Christ, that’s a huge question of religious liberty because it forces us to ask the question, “Okay. Well, what do we do with people who don’t believe like us and think like us? Do we banish them? Do we make them second-class citizens? Do we punish them for not thinking like us?” Or do we take a more thorough examination of what the state has been decreed to have jurisdiction over and understand that the state is really there to pursue a penultimate temporal justice.

And insofar as citizens of whatever religious expression are living in accordance with a temporal, approximate understanding of justice, they have equal rights and equal say in the creation order and in the public domain. And so, to me, the issue of inaugurated eschatology, as I was writing the book, it really leaped out at me as being one of the preeminent foundations for establishing a doctrine of religious liberty, because I think it simultaneously allows us to forswear utopia, and I think it also allows us to forswear dystopia as well. That we’re living in …

Albert Mohler:

But there are some hard questions here. There’s some really hard questions, and I want to get to them. But, before we get to the hard questions, some of which you address in your book, and some of which you do not, which means you have to write a second volume. But the other two issues you really raise have to do with the Imago Dei, the image of God. So, a biblical anthropology. And this means that we are talking about the fact that the Creator endows us with rights. The government’s responsibility is to respect them and to protect them. But the government is not the author of those rights—God is—and they are uniquely given to human beings and to all human beings, by virtue of the fact we’re made in God’s image.

The second issue you raise is missiology, which in your order is this the second and third, the two we really haven’t discussed thoroughly. And that’s the church’s mission in that time between the Ascension and the Second Coming of Christ, which is evangelism. It’s more than that, but it’s witness and evangelism. And those are really the three pillars on which you establish your argument.

Andrew Walker:

They are. And when we think about something like anthropology, I think this is one of the other areas where we have a lot to say to what is a unique understanding of religious liberty. We understand that when God makes us in His image, we are possessed with certain faculties that are endowed with capacities that allow us to …

Albert Mohler:

Spell those out. Spell those out a little. What capacities? The ability to do math?

Andrew Walker:

Yeah. So, what I talk about in the book is, we’re possessed with a degree of moral agency, we’re possessed with the notion of reason and rationality, the notion of desiring to have freedom. And so, all of those are understood to be …

Albert Mohler:

Moral conscience.

Andrew Walker:

And moral conscience. And they’re all understood to be intelligible realities in the Christian worldview. And as I was writing this book … And I know you’re aware of this. You will read secular, non-believing historians make the case that it’s not until Christianity comes on the world stage and its understanding of the Imago Dei, where you have a developing doctrine of human rights. And that’s because, for the first time on the world stage, the human individual is understood not merely to be a part of a collectivist cog. It’s not something that can be … A person is not someone that can just merely be dispensed with, but there’s something intrinsically dignified, that the human person possesses, what I want to call, “An ontological nobility”. That ontological nobility is demonstrated and realized through the operations of conscience, the operations of cognition, the whole notion that we, as moral agents, want to self-constitute ourselves.

And I know that phrase, “self-constitution,” sounds kind of jargony and academic, but what it really means is we want to live lives of freedom, and authenticity, and sincerity. And that’s true of Christians and non-Christians alike, because we’ve all been endowed with those particular capacities. And so religious liberty says, “Well, you are free by virtue of having those capacities and those faculties to live out the truth as best as you grasp it. And insofar as your grasp of those particular goods is not a true danger to the common good, public safety, public health, the default of liberty means you get to operate on those capacities up until they become a serious threat to the common good.” And this gives us …

Albert Mohler:

Yeah. That’s the hard part though.

Andrew Walker:

Right, right. There’s no easy …

Albert Mohler:

What you just said is undoubtedly correct, but it runs right into a wall.

Andrew Walker:

Absolutely.

Albert Mohler:

So, that’s the question I wanted to ask you at several points in reading your book, and now I get to ask you in public. And that is, what about the religious claims that are outside of the civilizational project? So, in other words, I’m going to make an argument that I don’t think you’re going to like, but I’m going to make it anyway, and that is that Western civilization, shaped by Christianity, has given to the world a unique understanding of human rights and human dignity and of religious liberty as one of those rights bestowed by the Creator. But that also means that there are some religious beliefs, and claims, and practices that would subvert the very order …

Andrew Walker:

Absolutely.

Albert Mohler:

… that would allow for religious liberty.

Andrew Walker:

No, I can …

Albert Mohler:

So, what do you do with those?

Andrew Walker:

I completely agree with that. This is the paradox …

Albert Mohler:

Yeah. But I ask, “What do you do with those?”

Andrew Walker:

Yeah, no …

Albert Mohler:

I’m making you Chief Justice of the World. So, just tell us what you’re going to do with that problem.

Andrew Walker:

Right. So, I think the first answer I would say is, where there are worldviews that pose demonstrable threats to public safety and public health, my default instinct is to say, that’s the reason we have deliberative bodies ordained by government to figure out what those thresholds are that are going to be crossed, that then says the government has due authority to restrict someone’s religious liberty. So that’s kind of the top level answer.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah. So, let me give you a concrete example.

Andrew Walker:

Okay.

Albert Mohler:

So in France, very troubled history with religion, especially since the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. You know, with the government sometimes that’s openly hostile to Christianity, especially during the most extreme age of the revolution. Since then, every French government has been committed to Laïcité, to this idea of a completely secular government. And that means that the government makes no theological arguments. So let’s just be clear about that. The government of France is adamantly clear in Laïcité, it makes no theological arguments. Well, good luck with that.

Along comes radical Islam …

Andrew Walker:

Right.

Albert Mohler:

… and a vast influx of Muslims into France, including many who have been radicalized and some who probably came radicalized. And their understanding of Islam, if in control, would not be Laïcité, but the establishment of an Islamic order. And so, what in the world does France do with this? Now, I have my own theory, which is one thing why the English-speaking worlds in a different position than France, but I want to hear what you would offer.

Andrew Walker:

Right. And you may disagree with me on this. I would say, first off, wherever there is demonstrable threat being done in the name of religion, obviously the government has the ability to restrict that type of freedom. So, I think we agree at the baseline of that.

What I would say is …

Albert Mohler:

That, forgive me, that’s not the issue yet. I’m not talking about … I mean, clearly, someone has the right to arrest someone who is behind or involved in a terrorist act. That’s not what I’m asking. I’m saying that in France, the reality is, that at least in some jurisdictions, you would have enough of a Muslim influence that the law could be, by that deliberative political process, transformed into something akin to Islamic law. But that is the refutation of the very idea of France, and the very idea of the kind of rights language that France is committed to.

Andrew Walker:

Right. And I think … I mean, my honest answer to that is, I would say you’re absolutely right, and that that gets to the very nature of the conflict around religious liberty, that I don’t know if we’re going to be able to resolve well in this society. Without getting into all of the questions of, how do you define Islam and Sharia law? All of those types of questions. It’s a serious question we have to ask.

Now, there is an interesting line, I quoted it in the book. John Leland makes an argument. He says, “It’s not the job of the …” In this particular instance where religion is causing a harm to the public good, Leland makes the argument that, “Okay, if that’s the case, it’s still not the job of the government to declare whether or not that religion is living or a true or false expression of that particular religion. Rather, we are to take what is happening demonstrably in the public square and restrict the activity, not the belief.”

Now, I say all of that understanding massive tension that I don’t have solved. And I think these types of tensions that you’re noting are tensions at the very heart of Western order right now, that are demonstrating that those bare essentials that I talked about at creation order, they’re getting a little bit too frayed. The quilt is becoming a little bit too much apart.

And so, again, I’m pretty Augustinian myself. I’m hopeful in the long-term. I’m pretty pessimistic in the short-term, because we are having civilizational crisis right now. We have it … You mentioned an Islamic context in France. We’re having this increasingly in kind of the leftward direction here in American context, also in broader Western Europe for that matter, as well. And one of the arguments I make in the book is, where you have worldviews that seek to bring a form of utopia into the present age, those worldviews are going to be hostile to religious liberty.

Now, let me follow up here with something. Islamic theology has its understanding of utopia, but they don’t have an understanding of inaugurated eschatology, which means you go to Islam …

Albert Mohler:

Oh, yes they do.

Andrew Walker:

Okay.

Albert Mohler:

Inaugurated right now, fully.

Andrew Walker:

Well, okay. Yes. Fair enough.

Albert Mohler:

You understand what I mean?

Andrew Walker:

Yeah, no fair enough. So, that’s what I’m getting at. You have Islamic countries that are hostile to religious liberty because they believe that they can bring about their kingdom in the present age—immanentizing the eschaton, Eric Voegelin.

On the left, you also have a form of immanentizing the eschaton, where you have worldly ideologies, progressive ideologies, that have an account of social justice that believes you can bring about and enact the perfect society in the present age. Okay. Well, if you are defining the paradise and the perfected society on material terms, and you’ve shorn the issue of transcendence from the purview, you have to ask the question, “Well, what do you do with the individuals who disagree with you in society?” And you have an understanding of the true, and the good, and the beautiful, based on a transcendent horizon, and they are a threat to your material understanding of utopia. And that’s what we have right now in Western society, which is why we have a progressivism that is increasingly hostile to religious liberty.

How do we get ourselves out of that mess? I think the first question we have to say is, apart from our understanding of the Gospel, transforming hearts and minds, and transformed hearts and minds working to transform the culture, we don’t have ultimate hope in the long run. Our hope is ultimately in Christ, but I think this is incumbent upon us to preach the Gospel, to evangelize, hopefully seeing Christians live out the implications of the Gospel in all aspects of their life, in all domains of the culture.

And I would say secondly, and very practically, it means you have to pay attention to who we are electing to office. It means we can no longer take for granted that when a candidate says they care about religious liberty, that they have a robust understanding of religious liberty. Even the most secular, progressive individual will pay lip service to some form of religious liberty. The question we have to ask to those candidates who are vying for our votes is, “What do you mean by religious liberty?” And let’s make it even more on the face of it: “Do you think Christians, and what we believe, are a danger and a threat to the public good?” Because if you do, you’re not going to get our vote.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah. But they’re never going to answer that question honestly, and they’re not even using religious liberty when they can avoid it. You know? The mainstream media putting in scare quotes now, as if to say, “We’re not even sure this is a real thing, but …

Andrew Walker:

Sure.

Albert Mohler:

… there’s some bad people who are trying to argue that it is.”

Andrew, let me make an argument here, and this is where I’m taking my own argument, and that is in this direction. I think I am bound by an honest review of history to say that the kind of constitutional recognition, the kind of constitutional order, that respects human dignity and religious liberty in this sense has emerged only in its strong form in the English-speaking world, shaped not only by Christianity in general, but by Protestantism in particular. And I’m not saying Catholics have not added a whole lot to this because, especially in the 20th century, they have. But, it’s required some major changes in Catholic theology in order to get to this in the mid-point of the 20th century. But, let’s just say Christianity, in this sense, as a cultural inheritance, as a grand theological system … I’m just not persuaded that religious liberty can survive outside of a world shaped by that Christian understanding of human dignity.

And so, I’m looking at two virulent threats to this order, one of them being Islam in its radical, classical form. And when I say, “radical, classical,” I mean it’s built into the DNA of Islam to bring the eschaton now, by force if necessary. But politics will work in that system as well, as a way of bringing that on. And the other is the aggressive secularism that we now see in the West. I don’t think religious liberty, or for that matter human dignity, can survive either of those two. And yet, this is one of the great quandaries of modernity. So, if you sign on to this kind of liberty, does it destroy itself by turning to a constitutional process that can be used by those who just want to undo it?

Andrew Walker:

Yeah. And that’s the $64,000 question that a lot of religious conservatives are having right now about whether liberal democracy didn’t sow the seeds of its own destruction. What I do towards the end of the book is defend an account of liberal democracy. But I defend an account of liberal democracy as it’s normed and shaped by Christianity.

My understanding of liberal democracy is, it’s always context and tradition dependent. And so, I quote extensively in towards the end of the book, Roger Scruton and even some of Edmund Burke on these grounds, saying that “Liberal democracy is effectively only as strong as the moral tradition underneath it.”

So, I mean, I don’t know what else to say other than I agree with you that where we are jettisoning all aspects of our Christian moral capital, I don’t think religious liberty is sustainable. What I think that is a call to, then, is what I’ve said all along is it’s for us to get serious about understanding the role of Christianity in the culture. Not to dilute, not to pursue nominalism or kind of Christian culture for Christian culture’s sake, but for us to understand that cultures and civilizations are delicate ecosystems, and Christians have a rich tradition of shaping the context of how we are currently living right now, and the civilizational inheritance that we received.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah.

Andrew Walker:

And if we don’t appreciate that, and if we don’t work to both retrieve that and teach that for another generation, no, I don’t have optimism about the longevity and perpetuity of the American experiment.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah. So, that raises another question. You’ve written your book, and again, I commend it. I think it’s a brilliant work. I think it’s really important. I don’t think there’s anything like it in our world today. I want to encourage people to read it. I also want to encourage you to write volume two when you have the energy, and make that a project. But the Christian church does not require the US Constitution.

Andrew Walker:

Correct.

Albert Mohler:

The church as the people of Christ, as the body of Christ, has an assignment. And our theology has to stay the same, including, by the way, we are inveterate Baptists, conversion, even if religious liberty is denied. How does that work?

Andrew Walker:

Well, I think we have to simply ask the question … Or, first off, acknowledge the truth that God’s mission is going to go forward in accordance with God’s sovereignty and His will. So, that’s the top-level thing we would say. I would say, then, we have to ask a question: Do we want to make the conditions for the spread of the Gospel more hostile or less hostile? And so, I think that is where we want to call ourselves to the task of public engagement.

Right now, I’ll often hear Christians kind of … They’ll kind of feign this piety about the notion of rights. So, they’ll say, “Well, we Christians shouldn’t care about rights. Christ surrendered His rights, so we should surrender our rights.” And I understand what they’re saying when they use that type of language. The problem with it though, is in a context like ours, all of our rights are reciprocally ordered and bound up with each other. And so, if I am going to lay down my rights, that means I’m also laying down the rights of all of those who disagree with me as well.

Albert Mohler:

You’re exactly right. You’re exactly right.

Andrew Walker:

And to kind of riff off the language of Benjamin Franklin, “We either hang together or we hang separately.”

Albert Mohler:

Right.

Andrew Walker:

And so, I don’t have the luxury to say, “I’m going to lay my rights down for others,” …

Albert Mohler:

Right.

Andrew Walker:

… because that’s not how this system works. We have to have an understanding of public theology tied to the actual context that we’re in, not one that we hope that we’re in.

And this is where, again, I’m not trying to make the First Amendment the most biblical constitutional mechanism, but I think it’s a pretty brilliant design that has served us pretty well. It’s also showing its limits right now in terms of the opposition to it, but we have to hold out several … Or, we have to hold out that paradox of God is going to advance His mission. His mission is not opposed to the assertion of our rights. The Apostle Paul in the Book of Acts appeals to the magistrate for the grounds of his ability to keep making proclamations of the Gospel. If the Apostle Paul did that, I see nothing incompatible with Christians doing that in our context.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah. You’re not only an author, but you’re also a very skillful teacher. And I think people listening to this conversation understand why people want to sit in your classroom and follow the trajectory of the discussion that you lead, as well as your lectures.

A part of what is always going on in the minds of those who deal with these issues is a conversation with people, some living, some dead, some far, some near. Who’s running around in your head in this conversation?

Andrew Walker:

Oh, gosh. That’s a good question. So who has shaped my understanding of religious liberty preeminently? You know, this is going to be … I’m going to cite Matthew 22 right here, when Christ talks about, “Rendering to Caesar what is Caesar, and what is God, to God.” You can read historians who will make the argument that that is, on the world stage, effectively the first time where there is a bifurcation between eternal authority and temporal authority. That was magisterial. Stephen work, The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom, he really opened my eyes to the significance of Matthew chapter 22.

Another individual who has really shaped my thinking on this has been David VanDrunen. He’s a Presbyterian theologian at Westminster Seminary in California.

And then, I would also say, who’s a friend of yours, Robert George. He’s a very large, intellectual mentor who approaches this question from a more natural law conversation, which I think kind of parallels and overlays with some of the arguments that I would want to make as a Christian.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah. And it is because nature’s not a brute fact. Nature’s the product of the Creator.

Andrew Walker:

Right.

Albert Mohler:

Nature and nature’s God …

Andrew Walker:

Right.

Albert Mohler:

… even as our founders recognized.

As you look into these issues, be a prophet for a moment. What’s the next turn in the road on America’s sometimes troubled, but always interesting, road of religious liberty?

Andrew Walker:

I think the next big conflict pertaining to religious liberty is, broadly speaking, going to be issues of parental rights. And I think parental rights are going to then spill into issues related to educational freedom. And so, where you have Christian parents who are holding to convictions running contrary to both government and to professional licensing organizations, it’s going to put us on our heels.

And I think that, especially, is going to have some massively negative fallout in the role of education, which, if you’re asking me, if I was going to channel a lot of intellectual energy, I would be channeling it towards the defense of homeschooling, the defense of classical Christian education. Because, how I’m approaching this is, if we’re going to have a retrieved, reinvigorated, culture of religious liberty, it’s going to have to happen alongside a reinvigorated Christian church. And so, my wife and I are big proponents and supporters of classical Christian education. And to me, that’s a part of what I’m doing to help kind of push back on the secular overreach with religious liberty.

But just more broadly speaking, when the state steps in and starts defining what the contours of the family are, not only in terms of whether how a child identifies and the state taking that child out of the home, more broadly, you can trace this back to Obergefell. When marriage is no longer defined along strictly biological lines, a conjugal definition, we have handed the state tremendous power. It’s a power play. And I just don’t see the state stopping that power play anytime soon.

Albert Mohler:

No. I think, especially since there are so many who are adamantly determined that the state would use that course of power to those ends. That’s their goal. And they will stay at it 24/7. And they are so dominant in the intellectual elites, in the academy, in the law schools, producing lawyers, that it’s not an even playing field. I mean, the intellectual powers are stacked against us here.

You mentioned something I think is really important because I think when some people listen to this kind of conversation, they look at your kind of book, they say, “Well, this is still kind of academic.” Yeah, well … But it comes right down to this—in all 50 states, to one degree or another, a child can be removed from the custody of parents upon adequate medical explanation. So, you could have Jehovah’s Witnesses with a child who needs a blood transfusion. You know, there’s some recourse through the courts because of what is claimed to be the imminent danger of harm to the child.

Well, you can see the transgender ideologues using the very same argument, and so Americans who thought, “Well, that makes perfect sense when it comes to a blood transfusion and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It would immediately say the life of the child.” That same logic … And by the way, I think all of us would say that is one of those situations in which the state can rightly intervene. But when we’re talking about the transgender ideology, you see, they immediately take the same argument and say, “Well, okay, it’s this.” And it won’t stop there. That’s why there’s the plus sign at the end. And that means, I think there will be no one to hearing this conversation, no Christian hearing this conversation, who will not be engaged in urgent, frontline developments and arguments on religious liberty for the rest of our lives, so far as we see it. We are now in the context of a very secular society, which by definition has to be hostile, because … Let’s just go to Elijah, “Choose ye this day. If Baal be God, then worship him. If the Lord be God, then worship Him.” We’re in a situation which is not merely academic, and it’s certainly not merely theoretical.

Andrew Walker:

Yes. I agree with that. And you’ll agree with this: Everything’s metaphysical, everything. I’ve heard you say on numerous occasion, “There is no order without truth, and no truth without order.” And I think those are two axioms to live your life by. And so, the challenging thing in this particular conversation is as much as you want to make it simple, and as much as you want to make it accessible to every single person, matters get pretty thick and pretty deep, pretty quickly. The very best thing that I can do is to try to write books as accessibly as possible, to get out speaking and to get out teaching these issues.

One of the things that has been bringing me the most joy is … I just don’t think most Baptists understand the historic connection of religious liberty to our denomination. And so, one of the things I’m saying in all of my classes, it doesn’t matter what class it is, it’s for us to become the new champions of religious liberty, and for us to kind of catch that vision for pastors, and then pastors begin communicating those truths to their congregants.

And so, we are engaged in a slow, plodding work, but I’m reminded of a great quote. And I’m going to kind of paraphrase this quote. It’s from GK Chesterton. He said, “The one great, true delight in life is to fight a losing battle and not lose it.” I love that …

Albert Mohler:

Yeah.

Andrew Walker:

… because it reminds us that, in our time, things are going to look bad. There’s going to be opportunity for despair to run rampant, but despair is contrary to the Christian imagination because we have hope. We have hope in a resurrected Christ …

Albert Mohler:

That’s right.

Andrew Walker:

… and the resurrected Christ transcends all cultures. And all that is required for us is to be faithful and obedient in the context that He’s placed us, because to come full circle on this, the victory is His, the witness is ours, and His mission is going to go forward how He appoints for it to go forward.

Albert Mohler:

Well, I think those are good words on which to end this conversation. Andrew Walker, thank you for joining me for Thinking in Public.

Andrew Walker:

Thank you.

Albert Mohler:

Many thanks to my guest, Andrew Walker, for thinking with me today. If you enjoyed today’s episode of Thinking in Public, you will find more than 150 of these conversations at albertmohler.com under the tab, Thinking in Public. For more information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, go to boycecollege.com. Thank you for joining me for Thinking in Public. And until next time, keep thinking. I’m Albert Mohler.