Whose Scripture Gets to Write the Law?

The recent midterm elections changed the political landscape nationally and across Georgia, even as our local politics remained largely unchanged. If voters repudiated anything, I hope political style was part of it. The public disrespect and disparagement of recent years have exhausted my patience, and my ears would welcome a permanent reprieve.

The religious angle was intriguing as well. Several Democrats leaned heavily into their personal faith and religious affiliations, adopting a register more often associated with conservative Republicans. Whether that helped determine the results is harder to say. But it raises a worthwhile question: What place should personal faith have in public office?

My dad was a Baptist minister, so I started logging considerable hours on church pews right out of the gate. I picked up a theology degree in college, and I’ve often wondered if the dean who conferred it on me was ever held accountable. I’ve taught courses in both graduate and undergraduate evangelical schools, contributed to Christian journals, and guided many Sunday morning discussions. I’m fluent in “Evangelical.”

The evangelical faith I was taught insists that genuine transformation comes from the inside out. A law can compel compliance. It cannot manufacture conviction. Take it from a preacher’s kid: “because God said so” did not always produce the inward change my father had in mind.

The beauty of a pluralistic republic is that it protects everyone’s right to seek a sanctified life without giving anyone the authority to mandate one. The election of the country’s first Muslim senator makes the question especially vivid: When citizens of different faiths—and no faith—share a government, whose scripture gets to write the law?

Even choosing the Bible would hardly settle the matter. Catholics and Protestants—and Protestants among themselves—read the same texts differently. Believers disagree not merely about what Scripture says but also about which passages should govern which circumstances. This is nothing new. St. Paul and St. Peter couldn’t even get on the same page.

If you are a lawmaker, by all means let your faith inform your principles. But defend your legislation with reasons your constituents can evaluate without first accepting your theology. “God said so” may settle a question within your congregation. It cannot settle it for everyone else. “Do to others what you would have them do to you” offers a better starting point: it asks us to consider our neighbor’s interests alongside our own.

Consider the Ten Commandments. Prohibitions against murder and theft can be defended without asking anyone to accept their religious source. A command to worship a particular God is different. A believer may regard it as sacred; a government serving believers and nonbelievers alike cannot make religious assent a condition of good citizenship.

The irony of religious coercion is that it can betray a profound lack of faith. When a movement asks the state to compel the religious observance it cannot inspire, isn’t it conceding that its message is too weak to win hearts on its own merits? It trades the power of grace for the blunt instrument of county codes and state statutes.

Last week, Georgians voted for new leadership at the state and national levels. If that restores some comity and decorum, I say “Amen.” When politicians treat faith as a personal moral guide rather than a political wedge, I’ll come to prayer meeting. And when that faith inspires clear, rational policy that benefits a non-believing neighbor just as much as a pew-mate, I’ll drink to that—evangelical-approved grape juice, of course.