Franky Schaeffer & Russell Moore on Religious Liberty

on October 4, 2014

This past Summer chronically angry Franky Schaeffer, the “atheist who believes in God” who’s made a career of denouncing his late theologian father Francis Schaeffer, issued an “open letter” to Evangelicals imploring them to abandon their defense of religious liberty.

Opposing the Obamacare HHS contraceptive/abortifacient mandate and defending religious groups’ ability to uphold theological and moral standards were really just “a bad set of choices they were duped into making in order to serve a purely political agenda masquerading as a ‘religious liberty’ issue,” Schaeffer claimed. “They’ve been had,” having been “manipulated” and “duped by neoconservative Roman Catholics and a few others, into a war where they’re just cannon fodder in a larger political battle.”

Evangelicals “have now become willing co belligerents of the far-right GOP leadership seeking to discredit Obama,” Schaeffer explained. “That is all this ‘religious liberty’ shtick has really been about.” For Schaeffer, and others, preventing the state from dictating moral and theological standards to religious institutions is only “shtick” over which clueless Evangelicals are politically exploited.

Schaeffer’s cynical claim was in my mind this evening as I listened to Southern Baptist public policy advocate Russell Moore, speaking to the Christian Legal Society here in Boston, observe that “most of our opponents [on religious liberty]…don’t really believe that people are motivated by religious conviction.” Instead they “assume there must be some motivation of economic benefit or political power.”

Moore noted the “Gospel informs us that there are limits to every earthly power including the power of the state.” And a government that claims to be “final arbiter of conscience is TOO big and can do ANYTHING.” There needs to be a generation that “fears God more than political and economic marginalization,” Moore implored,” not “wringing our hands with fear and worry.” After all, Jesus Christ remains alive “no matter what the U.S. Supreme Court does.”

Saint Paul wrote that God armed the civil state with the sword of justice, Moore recalled, and in the American republic it is the sovereign people who wield this sword. “Will we be persecutors?” he wondered. Will the American people “consign future generations to persecution” or will robust religious liberty survive?

The Apostle appealed to King Agrippa and the Roman authorities not ultimately out of concern for his own rights but for the well being and liberty of future generations, Moore concluded. So too should we defend what is precious that others today and through future decades can live without fear of a state that inhibits free thought. “The one thing worse than being hauled off to jail is a Church not willing to go to jail,” Moore warned.

“Statecraft” is often more important to many because it seems more “real than the invisible authorities,” Moore earlier noted. Likely irritable skeptics like Franky Schaeffer will continue to obsess over secular statecraft and minimize the more permanent invisible authorities. But religious liberty and freedom of conscience for all is sacred both on earth and in heaven.

  1. Comment by FW Ken on October 5, 2014 at 2:23 am

    I’ve said from the beginning that if they could do it to Catholics over contraception, they could do it to anyone over anything. Left-wing types should note that just because they approve of this government incursion doesn’t mean they will approve of every government incursion.

  2. Comment by John S. on October 6, 2014 at 1:28 pm

    Sometimes its easier to talk to a person of different faith than it is to talk to many “Christians”. A person who cannot believe cannot understand those who do.

  3. Comment by Claus von Stauffenberg on October 10, 2014 at 7:38 pm

    TO: John S.

    Stating that it is “easier to talk to a person of different faith” is a presupposition that person “cannot believe” as a Christian can. This is a bit confusing, but this makes sense: “A person who cannot believe cannot understand those who do.”

  4. Comment by Red Mann on October 17, 2014 at 9:22 pm

    So true.

  5. Comment by Claus von Stauffenberg on October 6, 2014 at 9:58 pm

    REGARDING religious groups’ ability to uphold theological and moral standards, Schaeffer states: “…they were duped into making in order to serve a purely political agenda masquerading as a ‘religious liberty’ issue,” Schaeffer claimed. “They’ve been had,” having been “manipulated” and “duped by neoconservative Roman Catholics and a few others, into a war where they’re just cannon fodder in a larger political battle.” [sic]

    ~~~~~~ WHO IS REALLY BEING DUPED ??

    Those who are truly being duped, are the liberal, socialist, Marxists who are promoting the moral turpitude in our nation; for the “larger political battle” is the quest for total government control over everyone’s life. If a humanistic government can usurp the Constitution by interfering in the lives of Christian biblical beliefs by supplanting them with the edits of their religion – Humanism, they will have taken us captive to Marxism.

  6. Comment by trytoseeitmyway on October 6, 2014 at 11:12 pm

    This is really very apt, thank you. All too frequently, the objections to faith reduce themselves to a political objection that anything can trump leftist political ideology.

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