According to Christianity Today and Russel Moore it most certainly is not! Moore used to be the President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC and left there to become Christianity Today’s Editor in Chief last year. He also writes for left-wing publications like the Washington Post, The New York Times, Atlantic Magazine, and can be seen as a commentator on left wing cable outlets like MSNBC and CNN. So I wasn’t surprised he wasn’t a fan of a country banning homosexual activity via law. Many Christians, unfortunately, find such a thing positively abhorrent. It’s not easy to find commentary defending it, but I found one at LifeSite News, and there are others if you look. I don’t want to debate that here. Overall from a Christian perspective of course it’s a good thing, even if I might not agree with everything in the law. Christians, along with every other person in the Western world has been so indoctrinated in the pro-homosexuality agenda that even to question whether it should be legally allowed in society is beyond the pale. Positively un-Christian! And Uganda is now persona non grata among the “enlightened” nations of the world.
What I want to address here is God’s law and the secular myth of neutrality. I saw another piece about this at American Reformer with the title, “Why Russell Moore is Wrong About Uganda.” Knowing Moore has become a welcome guest in polite (leftist) society as the house “conservative Christian” drew me to that piece like a fly to light. The problem with the author’s disagreement with Moore is that it assumes as Moore does this secular myth:
Nowhere does the Ugandan Act argue against homosexuality from Scripture, let alone for theonomic or theocratic reasons. Moore has imposed this framework upon the issue because he determined beforehand it was wrong and had to find a pious and “biblical” reason for his Philippic. Instead, the Anti-Homosexuality Act argues from reason, nature, and tradition: it seeks to protect the Ugandan family from “internal and external threats”; it wants to preserve the “cherished culture” and the “legal, religious, and traditional family values” of the Ugandan people; and it wants to combat the “values of sexual promiscuity” being imposed upon them in order to protect “children and youth” who are “vulnerable to sexual abuse through homosexuality and related acts.” This is an imminently reasonable position compatible with Christian doctrine and ethics, but knowable apart from divine revelation. Any adult human who has not yet been indoctrinated into the Gay Cult should be able to understand these things.
The author, who goes by a pseudonym, argues for, or implies that basing a nation’s laws on Scripture is illegitimate. To him, something that is “theonomic or theocratic” is even more off limits than Scripture. What exactly do those two words mean? God’s law and God’s rule. Seems strange for a Christian to argue that Scripture and God’s law, His rule, is not a legitimate source for creating the legal code of a society. What is? According to the author, “Reason, nature, and tradition.” So, as Christians we’re supposed to set aside Scripture and God’s law and rule when we debate and legislate laws in society? Talk about fighting with one arm behind your back!
Most Christians in America today buy into the secular myth of neutrality, a metaphorically naked public square. The idea is that religion doesn’t have a legitimate, forbid an authoritative, role to play in public life, specifically government and law. Neutral comes from the Latin “neuter” meaning “neither one nor the other,” so it’s come to mean unbiased which it most certainly is not. In this illusory “neutral” place, secularism is the unbiased referee calling balls and strikes without that pesky Christianity getting involved and inevitably leading to theocracy and intolerance, and thus violence. Specifically verboten is citing Scripture as an authoritative source. If a Christian dares do such a thing, or God forbid, pun intended, a country like Uganda, cries of “theocracy,” Spanish Inquisitions, and Salem witch trials are soon to follow.
Christians must realize a religiously or morally neutral nation cannot exist, yet people like Russel Moore and the author at American Reformer believe it does. For the latter neutral sounding ideas like “Reason, nature, and tradition” are legitimate appeals in the public square or regarding the laws of a nation, but not Scripture or God’s law or rule. As he says, what is a legitimate appeal is whatever is “knowable apart from divine revelation.” Think about it. Here is a Christian telling us “divine revelation” is off limits when we’re arguing for what the laws of a nation should be. To me this is positively shocking. Yet most Christians who write and think about these things, including Evangelical “leaders” and most pastors, agree with him. The secular myth of neutrality has neutered them. Think about that as well. The word neutered comes from the same root as neutrality and can mean castrated. That’s what the church has done to itself in the modern age. The Christian church is a eunuch in Western culture! Powerless to make any real, substantive impact. No wonder everything is a disaster and a secular mess. When you take the salt and light out of a culture what do you get? Out of its government and its laws? We’re living in it.
Vishal Mangalwadi in his wonderful book, The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization states an obvious truth too many Christians miss:
Every civilization is tied together by a final source of authority that gives meaning and ultimate intellectual, moral, and social justification to its culture.
Secular neutrality isn’t neutral because it can only have man as the “final source of authority,” and if it is man then it is not God. It’s one or the other. Francis Schaeffer wrote a book in 1981 that should be required reading for all Christians in the 21st century, A Christian Manifesto. In the first chapter he says our worldview determines what this “final source of authority” is, and in the West there are only two options. As he says, “these two worldviews are two total concepts of reality standing in antithesis to each other.” These two “total concepts” are diametrically opposed to one another and they inevitably produce different results. This was obvious in 1981, but it is indisputable now. We are living with the deadly fruit of secularism, and Christians are contributing to it.
The secular, although he doesn’t use that word, is “the idea that the final reality is impersonal matter or energy shaped into its present form by impersonal chance.” Those who embrace this view tell us we can’t bring our “religion” to bear upon issues of public policy. The Bible as a source or authority is not allowed, and Russel Moore and many Christian leaders agree. It’s no wonder the church in America is powerless when it comes to influencing the culture—it has mostly accepted the secular culture’s assumptions. That’s not good. As Christians we look around and bemoan how bad things are, but at the same time refuse to shamelessly declare God’s Word as the ultimate source of authority for all things, including our government and it’s laws.
Thank God for Uganda and it’s leaders who are willing to stand fast in the face of the criticism of the secularist woke globalist mob. They refuse to be intimated because divine revelation in Scripture is their north star, their final source of authority for the flourishing of their nation. It is supremely ironic that Africa which was not too long ago completely pagan and God-less is leading the way to advance God’s kingdom in the face of opposition from what was once the Christian West.
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