Losing to the Secular State
The Kevin Roberts Show
National Conservatism Conference 2024
Miami, Florida
July 9, 2024
Albert Mohler:
I think we’ve reached the point in the United States where I think a lot of Christians and other people of deep religious conviction are looking around and saying what has happened. We’re in a situation right now where there’s open hostility and the threat of that hostility coming directly from the state, from our own government.
Kevin Roberts:
Welcome back to the Kevin Roberts Show here on location in the free state of Florida at the National Conservatism Conference. Many great Americans here. One of them is my new friend, Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Al, thanks for joining me.
Albert Mohler:
Kevin. Great to be with you. Thank you.
Kevin Roberts:
This is the start of a joke, a Baptist and a Catholic sitting down at a conservative conference. For the record, we’re both drinking water
Albert Mohler:
For the record, it’s more important for me than for you I think.
Kevin Roberts:
Yes, that’s right. No, I could tell already. We’re going to have a good conversation. As I was mentioning to you here as we were prepping, we’re just going to have a conversation, and that’s really what the audience likes because the people who tune into this are interested about the future of America. They’re interested about conservatism and a lot of them, very interested in faith, both of course, the faith they practice, whatever that may be, but also faith and its importance to America. And that’s where I want to start with you, and that is what’s your motivation for being here? I think you’re closing out this conference tomorrow night.
Albert Mohler:
I’m giving the keynote tomorrow night, and I’m going to be speaking on the dangerous impossibility, the dangerous illusion of the secular state. I think we’ve reached the point in the United States where I think a lot of Christians and other people of deep religious conviction are looking around and saying, what has happened? Because we’re in a situation right now where there’s open hostility and the threat of that hostility coming directly from the state, from our own government. And so I’m going to talk about the intellectual and historical roots of this illusion of the secular state. And frankly, there is just an awful lot of people who think themselves, some think themselves conservative, some think themselves, Christian, who somehow actually believe that there could be a secular state.
Kevin Roberts:
No, that’s right. I’m curious because you and I have similar backgrounds. You lead a wonderful institution, not just for Southern Baptists, but for all Americans. I led a much smaller institution of faith, but my sense based on my experience there in Wyoming at that little institution was that American institutional life, as some of our academic colleagues would call it, is really under assault by this secular state.
Albert Mohler:
Absolutely. And we were warned about the long march through the institutions, but I think most Christians, especially in the United States, did not realize that that meant the long march through our institutions. But that’s exactly what you see, the enormous pressure, I mean, it’s the Biden administration using Title IX executive orders. It’s pressure. And frankly, it doesn’t have to be all that much external pressure on accrediting agencies because higher educational elites are really pretty much in control of that. But yeah, the pressures are absolutely enormous and quite frankly, a lot of institutional Christianity surrendered decades ago.
Kevin Roberts:
And that’s something that you and I agree a hundred percent on. I’m curious both at the macro level, what we were just talking about, institutional level, but also what we might call the micro level that is from the standpoint of students who are entering your seminary, what are they saying about the culture, about the challenges they have just to be in that seminary?
Albert Mohler:
I think that one of the most surprising things, and it’s only counterintuitive to people who’ve never thought about it for long, but if it is counterintuitive, I’m just going to tell you it’s true and it shouldn’t be counterintuitive. And that is that the happiest people on the planet are young Christians who are just eager to follow Christ and to be obedient, to get married, to have children, to form families, to pastor churches, to preach the word. They’re just an enormously happy crew. And there are thousands of them. We have over 6,600 students, and yet they definitely know that they are not representing the norm of their generation. And by the time they’re showing up on our campus now, say at age 18 for the college age, 22, 23 for the seminary, they’ve already had to fight against the headwinds of this culture.
Kevin Roberts:
So they’ve self-selected into an institution that they know well, God bless you. And there’s also just sitting here, and it’s no surprise, although we’ve just met in person, that you’re very cheerful because that is evidence of the point you just made. And that leads me to this next comment, which is about our society at large. Dr. Mohler, one of the things that concerns me the most is the sense of loneliness, which leads to despair. A lot of that research tends to focus on Americans age 20 to 40, but of course it’s the entire population. What’s your sense of how we address that? I think we’ve talked about the origins.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah. We are living in a society that increasingly tells people to go home or put in your earphones and to become a universe of one. And Christianity is really telling us the opposite. There are times when we need solitude and we pray as Jesus said in the closet, but the reality is we are meant for communion and we are meant for community. And I think a part of what we have to do is recognize, by the way, as a churchman, I just have to say that the church is the most natural place other than the family for that to take place. It’s also true of an institution. You’re president of a college, I doing that now and have for 30 years, I tell students when they come into the college, you’re actually going to make the closest friends you’re going to have for life. Right now, you don’t know that you thought your high school friends were close. You’ll be lucky if you remember their name in 10 years, but the college friendships are something deeper because at a strategic time of life, you’re really growing into life together.
Kevin Roberts:
So one question I want to ask, which is to go from culture downstream to politics, but really policy. As the head of a college and seminary, but also as just a very thoughtful American. What would you identify for our audience as the big obstacles to an institution like yours? Flourishing in terms of policy?
Albert Mohler:
Yeah. Well, if we’re talking about, let’s say government policy, I mean, it’s right up front the open hostility on the non-discrimination grounds. We are now, and this is unconscionable in the United States, we’re having to fight for the right to hire and to admit students by our own convictional criteria. Now, pretty much until now, the state and accrediting agencies have kind of encroached near that borderland, and then they kind of went back a little bit. But we now have open calls and for instance, the legislation that Senator Schumer says is soon to come before the Senate passed in the house with 47 Republican votes, to the shame of all 47 Republicans on codifying the Obergefell decision and legalizing same-sex marriage, that legislation explicitly denies any ability for religious institutions to appeal on the basis of the religious Freedom Restoration act. Now, you don’t close that door unless you intend to kneel it shut.
Kevin Roberts:
That is exactly right.
Albert Mohler:
It’s an announcement they’re coming for us.
Kevin Roberts:
Well, and the lane that I now occupy as president of the Heritage Foundation, that right now is the number one issue we’re fighting in Congress.
Albert Mohler:
Absolutely.
Kevin Roberts:
And keep in mind, we’re a secular institution. Of course, we’re animated by our Christianity. Right?
Albert Mohler:
Right.
Kevin Roberts:
Which kind of harkens back to the comment you made earlier, but we’re cautiously optimistic. We can keep that thing from being considered, and this is what I’ve said. Tell me what you think about it. I remember telling this to friends of the college I was leading who were not of faith, but who appreciated that we weren’t taking federal student loans and grants. This is what I’ve been saying about that bill,
Albert Mohler:
Which we do not either.
Kevin Roberts:
I knew that and I wanted you to have the opportunity to mention that. No, please, that’s fine. The point is that if that kind of bill succeeds, you can be an American, not of faith, and think that this isn’t your dog and the fight, but in fact, every right is under assault if that happens.
Albert Mohler:
Well, absolutely the same kind of logic that says this institution has to be accredited, and by the way, we are accredited by every appropriate entity and we’re operating out of a position of incredible academic strength, but that doesn’t matter in a world that measures everything by ideology and by submission to the idols of the age. The other thing is, is that they can control the same logic, can control the professions, who can and cannot become a physician or a pharmacist, and just look at the denial of conscience rights to pharmacists right now and issues of so-called emergency contraception and plan B and all the rest. This administration has announced right upfront that it intends to use every executive mechanism at its reach from Title IX to EEOC issues and all the rest to try to push that. And so number one, even if you don’t have, you’re not a student in a Christian college or a religious college, or if you don’t have a child who is, well, eventually you’re going to have grandchildren who are, this is about undermining yourself. This is why I don’t get about conservatives. Conservatives are supposed to be, by definition, the people who have the long view. I just want to say wake up and remember, the long view might be Tuesday.
Kevin Roberts:
The way the society is going right?
Albert Mohler:
Right, but we’ve got to have the long view here. We’re trying to make certain that the institution I lead is handed over to generations to come.
Kevin Roberts:
One of our kind of informal mottos at Heritage on that point is that the work that we do, whether it’s the straight policy work for which we were founded, or increasingly the work we’re doing in civil society, formal and informal affiliations with institutions like yours, that we’re doing that for two generations from ours. That is for our grandparents. And I think when we have that long view, we stay home as conservatives.
Albert Mohler:
And by the way, you’re on really strong biblical ground there for your children and your children’s children that their days in the land may be long.
Kevin Roberts:
Amen. I’m going to ask you one more question. I’d sit here and talk several hours with you. I look forward to doing that sometime, but there’s a conference going on. You’re a busy guy. The last question is one that I try to ask every guest out, and that is, in spite of all the challenges we’ve talked about, why did you wake up optimistic today?
Albert Mohler:
Well, I hate to puncture the question, but I did not wake up optimistic today. I’m a Christian, so I woke up joyful. I love it. Okay, so you understand the way I’m playing with your question? Hundred percent. I say, look, if you’re a Christian and you find your rooting in the sovereignty of God and the Lordship of Christ and the authority of God’s word, then you’ve got to wake up joyful. But optimism and pessimism are both representations of unbelief. If you’re a Christian, you believe in God. You can’t be optimistic, you can’t be pessimistic. You just trust. And that trust is joyful because we’re not trusting in the force. We’re trusting in the one true and living God.
Kevin Roberts:
Well said. Well, my new friend, Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, thanks for joining me.
Albert Mohler:
It’s been good to be with you, Kevin. As we say in my part of the country, we gotta talk.
Kevin Roberts:
We will. Thanks for joining this episode of the Kevin Robert Show. We will be back again soon. With yet another important American making a difference, take care.