Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 407 ｜ Why Religious Liberty Isn't Enough ｜ Guest： Ryan Anderson

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today I'm talking to Ryan Anderson. He is an expert in all things

00:00:15.300 family, social, cultural issues, and how it affects our political sphere. We are going to

00:00:22.040 talk about how Christians can face the current political, cultural, social challenges that we

00:00:29.240 are facing. He argues in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that fighting for religious

00:00:35.620 liberty, while so important, isn't quite enough. We've got to be fighting for the issues that we

00:00:39.660 care about. For example, the sanctity of life and the protection of girls in what are supposed to be

00:00:45.300 gender-exclusive spaces. We have to be arguing for these things in the private sphere as well. 1.00

00:00:51.540 Having conversations and changing hearts and minds is going to be just as important,

00:00:57.960 if not more important than winning religious liberty cases at the Supreme Court or even

00:01:04.960 protecting religious liberty in our legislative bodies. I'm really excited for you to listen to

00:01:11.600 his insight. There was so much more I could have talked to him about, but we were on a short time

00:01:15.880 limit. Hopefully I'll be able to get him back. He's going to give a lot of encouragement as well.

00:01:20.340 I think that you'll end this conversation feeling very optimistic. I will have a little outro at the

00:01:26.820 end of the episode as well. Without further ado, here is Ryan Anderson.

00:01:35.740 Mr. Anderson, thank you so much for joining us. If you could tell everyone who may not be familiar,

00:01:41.060 though I think a lot of people who listen are, who you are and what you do.

00:01:45.500 Sure. So as of last week, I just became the new president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center

00:01:50.980 in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, for nine years, I had been a senior research fellow at the Heritage

00:01:56.140 Foundation, focusing on life, marriage, religious liberty, gender identity, political philosophy

00:02:01.500 writ large. And more or less, I'm carrying that portfolio with me over to EBPC. So I'm going to be

00:02:07.720 doing the same work just at a different organization and then with more leadership responsibilities.

00:02:12.740 And tell me what you've seen. I'm interested. Over the past few years, however many years that

00:02:18.580 you have been dedicated to this work, I'm sure you've been dedicated for a lot longer time than

00:02:22.600 you actually been in the fight professionally. What have you seen change most or what has surprised

00:02:28.820 you most about the cultural and sexual and political changes that America has undergone in

00:02:35.620 the past few years? Sure. I mean, well, lots to say there. I guess I would start with saying was this

00:02:43.160 beliefs that every one of our grandparents would have taken as utterly non-controversial, right? Beliefs like

00:02:50.140 water is wet, sky is blue, all of a sudden have been redefined as a form of bigotry, as a form of

00:02:57.000 discrimination, a form of intolerance. And I think this has taken a lot of American Christians by surprise,

00:03:03.140 because they weren't prepared for this. They didn't see it coming and they don't quite know

00:03:08.780 how to respond to it. These are good people, their hearts in the right place. And all of a sudden

00:03:14.740 they're being accused by their kids or their grandchildren or by their neighbors or by New

00:03:18.660 York Times op-ed columnists, whomever, as being part of a basket of deplorables, the bitter clingers.

00:03:25.700 So I think that's part of it. Another thing that I would mention is just the inability or the

00:03:31.660 unwillingness of our elected leaders to really defend these viewpoints on the merits. Just the

00:03:41.460 inarticulateness of so many elected Republicans, for example, to be able to explain why they believe

00:03:47.960 what they believe about marriage or why Jack Phillips, the baker, didn't do anything wrong

00:03:53.440 to begin with. Before we even get to a religious liberty battle, how about we defend him on the

00:03:58.800 merits of why what he believes about marriage is true? I mean, those are the sorts of changes that

00:04:05.080 I think for many people, they didn't see it coming. Some of this I saw because I was an undergrad at

00:04:11.060 Princeton. And so this hit the Ivy League well before it hit mainstream American culture. But

00:04:16.380 it is shocking how quickly after Anthony Kennedy and Barack Obama evolved on marriage,

00:04:23.060 everyone else was expected to evolve. Yes, you touched on something that I've thought a lot

00:04:28.460 about. And I actually pressed a lawmaker, a Republican lawmaker on this recently, and I didn't

00:04:34.520 get a satisfactory answer. Why Republicans are so hesitant to stand up for conservative social values

00:04:42.660 like the traditional definition of the family or the traditional scientific definition of sex and

00:04:49.000 gender, like you said, on the merits. But leftist lawmakers, Democratic lawmakers are not afraid to 0.82

00:04:56.620 do that at all. That's always where they start on the morality and the rightness and the absolute truth

00:05:02.440 that they believe their position represents. And Republicans, you know, they'll just talk about,

00:05:08.700 oh, well, legally or constitutionally. But like you said, they won't actually talk about the meat of

00:05:14.060 the argument. Why do you think that is? Oh, my gosh, that is such a great question. And there are

00:05:18.980 so many reasons why. And for any given politician, it could be, you know, any one of the reasons. I'll

00:05:25.220 just lift off list off a whole bunch. Sometimes it's a staffer problem. They're staffed by, you know,

00:05:31.980 recent college graduates, recent people coming out of the academy. And while they might be fiscally

00:05:37.540 conservative, they might be, you know, foreign policy hawks, whatever, their own staffers don't

00:05:44.260 share their commitments on social issues. Sometimes it's a donor problem, that their biggest financial

00:05:49.600 supporters care more about cutting taxes and deregulation and free trade and things like that.

00:05:55.780 And their own financial supporters aren't socially conservative. Sometimes it's a hypocrisy problem,

00:06:02.300 right, that they're living a double life. And so it makes them a little bit hesitant to speak out. 0.77

00:06:07.540 When moral issues, social issues, sometimes it's just an inarticulate problem. They don't know how

00:06:14.480 to do it. They want to do it. But all of the training that they've received in their kind of

00:06:19.680 political career was, you know, how to speak like a pro-life libertarian, right? So many of the

00:06:25.300 training programs that we have, it's kind of a pro-life libertarianism rather than a true

00:06:31.440 conservatism, which I think, you know, we have to own some of that, that, you know, we need to create our

00:06:36.280 own training programs, our own kind of high school seminars, college seminars, and then even kind of

00:06:43.060 Capitol Hill programs for staffers and members of Congress. I could probably give you more and more

00:06:51.120 answers as to, you know, why this may be. But I think those are some of the biggest ones.

00:06:55.240 Yeah. It seems like it's, you know, a lot of it has to do sometimes with fear, with feeling like,

00:07:04.560 okay, if the GOP are really solid on these social issues that we feel like, okay, they're kind of a

00:07:10.440 given now. The culture has already accepted the new definition of marriage in the family.

00:07:14.140 We've already accepted that gender and sex are separate. We've already accepted that at least 1.00

00:07:19.160 sometimes women should be able to choose to abort their child. So we're not even going to go there. 0.69

00:07:25.240 We'll kind of go with these issues over here in the hopes that we'll be this kind of big tent party

00:07:31.260 that can then accept the younger generation and attract some people who are socially liberal,

00:07:35.980 but economically conservative. It's a fear probably of being called a bigot, but it's also maybe a hope,

00:07:42.640 I would say a misplaced hope in getting social moderates and younger people and economically 0.56

00:07:48.540 conservative people over to our side. I just don't see Democrats doing that. And they seem to be,

00:07:55.220 they seem to be gaining a lot of influence.

00:07:58.760 They don't do that at all. And what's amazing is, I don't know, you had to have seen this. There

00:08:03.940 was a scatter plot that was published analyzing the 2016 election. You're nodding your head,

00:08:08.880 you know exactly what I'm talking about. And all of the red dots were solidly north of the equator

00:08:15.180 of the chart, which meant they were in the socially conservative half of the chart.

00:08:18.700 And then they were equally distributed on the left to right axis, which was the economic axis.

00:08:25.360 And the quadrant that was empty was the socially progressive, fiscally conservative quadrant,

00:08:32.940 right? The one that all of the DC talking heads and consultant class and like the Cato Institute,

00:08:37.740 right? That's what they focus on is a non-existent quadrant of potential voters.

00:08:42.480 While we ignore the bread and butter of where our voters actually are, right? They're socially

00:08:47.560 conservative, culturally conservative, but they want an economic agenda that supports families

00:08:53.640 and workers and small communities, right? They don't want their jobs outsourced. They don't care 1.00

00:08:58.760 as much about what the Chamber of Commerce cares about. And so I think that's part of it. And then I

00:09:05.080 think the fear thing is very real. And I think the fear thing is connected to the not knowing how to do it.

00:09:13.140 People are afraid of having a Mike Pence moment. Remember when Mike Pence went on this week with

00:09:18.320 George Stephanopoulos, he was asked five different times about Indiana RFRA. He couldn't answer the

00:09:23.380 question and everyone thought his political career was over. Many politicians fear that they are one

00:09:30.300 kind of foot in the mouth moment away from their political career being over. And the foot in the

00:09:35.660 mouth moment will only come on social issues. They won't have a foot in the mouth moment on economic 0.86

00:09:41.660 issues. Right. I don't think that's right. I think Mitt Romney's comment about makers and takers and

00:09:46.780 the 47%, you know, alienated him. It didn't alienate him with kind of the Hollywood elite or,

00:09:54.460 you know, the New York Times crowd, but it alienated him with his own base. Right. And that's something we

00:09:59.740 can learn from Trump. Trump didn't talk down to his base. Trump said that he was going to protect them.

00:10:04.980 He was going to craft policies that would support them. I don't think he always delivered on that,

00:10:12.240 but at least he spoke to the concerns of, you know, what he referred to as the forgotten Americans.

00:10:19.180 And I think that needs to be the future of the movement.

00:10:22.180 Yeah, definitely. Speaking of Mitt Romney and where most conservative Americans lie, like you said,

00:10:28.320 might be economically moderate, but are socially conservative or are either economically conservative

00:10:36.060 and socially conservative. Mitt Romney, he proposed a measure, proposed a bill that would,

00:10:43.780 I'm not sure even all the details on it. You probably know more than I do. I've just seen headlines

00:10:48.500 proposed. I think it's like $3,000 to families with children to try to incentivize making families

00:10:57.680 and families staying together. I'm wondering what you think about, maybe not that bill in particular,

00:11:02.740 but just something like that to try to economically and legislatively support family togetherness.

00:11:09.640 Yeah, this is, this is to my mind, the debate on the right worth watching. And I haven't looked into

00:11:16.780 the plan all that closely either. So I won't speak to the merits. What I'll suggest for our,

00:11:21.500 our viewers right now is look at Ross Douthit's column in yesterday's newspaper. And what Ross does

00:11:29.180 is, look, there's, there's a debate about how to do the policy wonkery. There's a debate about,

00:11:34.000 you know, Mike Lee and Marco Rubio have one plan to expand the child tax credit.

00:11:39.540 And then Mitt Romney has a different way of doing it. And, you know, the wonky policy people

00:11:45.080 can figure out what the best way of doing it is. What's worth noting is that you now have Mike Lee,

00:11:50.600 Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, all proposing ways of providing financial assistance to families raising

00:11:57.620 kids. And this is something that the Republican party has been divided over in the past. And now you

00:12:03.840 have three kind of leaders of the party saying we can do more. We can debate the best way of doing

00:12:11.060 more. But working families have financial burdens, and we can help alleviate some of those burdens

00:12:17.680 with a child tax credit, either expanding the current one or, you know, tweaking the program

00:12:22.020 entirely the way that Romney does it. This is the sort of creative policy making, to my mind,

00:12:28.080 that's going to be attractive to those young families. The budget is tight. And is there

00:12:34.600 something with the tax code that can help them? And I wish that there was more focus on those

00:12:39.860 kinds of debates. Those are the kinds of the debates and the policy conversations that I think

00:12:46.880 people in good faith, Christians in good faith can disagree on. We can disagree on maybe the different

00:12:53.400 details of it, but we all agree in the preservation, perpetuation, protection of the family, and

00:13:00.520 debating the question of where the government comes in, where the tax code comes in on all of that, I

00:13:05.780 think is a very good debate and discussion to have, like you said. What isn't a good debate, in my

00:13:11.000 opinion, what we talked about at the very beginning is these fundamental questions that we thought that

00:13:17.820 we would never have to ask, for example, when does life begin? Do all humans have value or do some

00:13:25.560 humans not have value based on their size and location and development? What is a man? What is

00:13:30.660 a woman? You've talked a lot about that latter question of this transgender movement and transgender

00:13:36.960 moment that we're in. And obviously, there are a lot of people who are worried about this right now,

00:13:42.060 especially in regards to the expansion of Title IX to, you know, allow boys to enter girl spaces

00:13:49.260 and sports teams. Tell me just kind of your encouragement or your advice to Christians in

00:13:56.020 particular who are worried and don't even know how to engage in that debate because it almost seems

00:14:01.040 so ludicrous to us and it's so hard to believe that we have gotten to this stage of dystopia so quickly.

00:14:06.660 Sure. I mean, a lot to say there as well. These are great questions. I mean, one starting point is

00:14:13.360 that we shouldn't repeat what to my mind was we we over said things during the Obama years in which we

00:14:19.440 talked a lot about religious liberty. And there were religious liberty challenges, right? When the

00:14:24.480 Obama administration is going after the owners of Hobby Lobby, you know, the evangelical green family, 0.98

00:14:29.640 when they're going after the little sisters of the poor, you know, something's gone wrong with

00:14:33.620 religious liberty. And we have to engage there. But we shouldn't think that religious liberty is

00:14:38.280 the only thing that we care about, right? Religious liberty is important, but other things are important

00:14:42.880 as well. And so that's why we also got to be engaged. Nikki Haley had a great op-ed today about

00:14:47.780 women's sports, right? We have to be engaged. That's not a religious liberty issue. I don't care if the 1.00

00:14:52.320 athlete is religious or not religious. It's unfair if she's losing a track competition to a high school

00:14:59.140 boy who identifies as a girl. The same thing is true when it comes to homeless shelters. There's 0.85

00:15:04.480 a Christian shelter that was sued for not allowing a middle-aged man to spend the night in a woman's

00:15:10.920 battered women's shelter because he identified as a woman. Well, that partly it's a religious liberty 0.73

00:15:16.800 issue because it was a faith-based homeless shelter, but it wouldn't have mattered to my mind whether or

00:15:21.820 not it was religious. Secular homeless shelters should be able to keep men out of women's safe spaces. 0.87

00:15:27.760 And if the battered woman who's going to a shelter, she doesn't need to be religious to not want to 0.98

00:15:33.340 have to have a male in her safe space. These are human issues, human nature issues, which also 1.00

00:15:41.220 suggests that Christians in our culture right now need to be defending not just faith, but also

00:15:48.380 reason itself, right? We have to be defending not just revelation and kind of how Jesus redeems us,

00:15:55.600 but even like the very aspects of our creation, the natural law. These are truths that are true,

00:16:01.440 not just for fellow believers, but for everyone who's made in the image and likeness of God.

00:16:07.040 And that's everyone, right? God creates all of us in his image and likeness, male and female. He creates

00:16:12.920 all of us. And so, I mean, I think it's going to be a particular challenge for Christians in the

00:16:18.300 Biden administration to one, be defending religious liberty. So our ministries, our schools,

00:16:23.980 our houses of worship, our businesses can all be flourishing, but at the same time,

00:16:29.140 not give up on being an engaged citizen who's concerned with the common good of the political

00:16:34.680 community as a whole, not just our particular spot in the political community. And so we have

00:16:40.560 to be able to do both of those things simultaneously.

00:16:43.100 I think where a lot of Christians get caught up or maybe they're engaging on this subject with a

00:16:50.440 friend and their friend says, well, separation of church and state, which they take to mean,

00:16:54.460 obviously, we know on this show erroneously that your Christian worldview is not allowed

00:17:00.260 to influence what you think about politics. It's not allowed to influence policies. And like I said,

00:17:06.340 we know that that's an erroneous argument on this show, but a lot of people feel stumped when they

00:17:11.580 hear that, that, oh, you just got, the only reason you're against abortion is religious. The only

00:17:15.960 reason that you're against, you know, transgenderism is because you're religious. Well, that has no place

00:17:22.800 in the public sphere. You cannot influence law based on what you think about the Bible.

00:17:29.280 What would be your response to something like that?

00:17:33.280 Sure. I mean, two things to say in response to that. First is that if the only good argument

00:17:38.460 against homicide is a religious argument, then so much the worse for secularism, right? So if the

00:17:45.080 secularist who is harassing you, uh, saying, you know, you can't impose your religious morality on

00:17:49.900 me, separation of church and state. Well, if they're using that as an argument, you know,

00:17:53.880 against something like abortion, then what they're really saying is that there are no good secular

00:17:58.220 arguments against homicide in general, right? Because it's the same argument that explains why it's

00:18:03.380 wrong to kill the baby in the womb. That explains why it's wrong to kill you or me right now. And if 0.99

00:18:09.580 it's wrong to kill you and me right now, it was wrong to kill us 20 or 30 some years ago when we 0.99

00:18:14.900 were in our mother's womb. And so it's just, you know, all the worse for secularism, if that's the

00:18:20.520 case. The second thought is that, um, thankfully that's not the case, right? That when God created us,

00:18:27.060 he also created our intellects, uh, God created nature and he created the natural law. So there's

00:18:33.000 a law written on the heart, uh, that we can know because we're made in the image and likeness of

00:18:38.420 God, which means that we're created as rational creatures and we can participate in God's own

00:18:44.320 rationality. I mean, this is part of, um, the Christian claim of creation is that we actually

00:18:50.720 share in God's providential care for all of creation. And that this is what allows us to be

00:18:56.640 able to engage in reasoned discussion with non-believers. God hasn't left us kind of

00:19:03.340 abandoned where it's just a war of all against all and might makes right. And no, that's not the

00:19:09.540 situation here, which is why on something like the transgender issue, um, I've been able to form

00:19:15.040 all sorts of alliances, uh, with women who don't share my, uh, conservative or Christian beliefs,

00:19:21.800 but who take biology seriously. They take science seriously or women's rights do the same thing. 1.00

00:19:28.960 Yes, absolutely. I was just saying, or, or they take women's rights seriously. There's been a lot 1.00

00:19:33.100 of feminists who wouldn't agree with me on many things who I feel like I am in alliance with, 0.99

00:19:39.600 like you said, on this issue of whether or not boys should be able to access girls spaces. I do think 0.63

00:19:46.300 it gets harder and harder, um, to have these kinds of rational discussions, the further we get into

00:19:53.200 this kind of postmodern post-truth world, because you're absolutely right. People who don't believe

00:19:57.980 like you and I do that everyone's made in the image of God, and therefore they have value who are not

00:20:02.620 trying to, uh, conform their lives to the truth of God's word would still say, most people would still

00:20:09.620 say, yeah, murder is bad. Theft is bad without really knowing why they believe that. But I think

00:20:16.520 the further we get out of, um, get out of any kind of idea of absolute truth, the harder it is to have

00:20:22.680 those rational discussions, which is why it seems like so much of our discussions and so much of

00:20:28.200 the debate, whether it's about abortion, whether it's about transgenderism, so quickly devolve

00:20:32.560 into emotionalism that, for example, I said something on Instagram about the difference

00:20:40.280 between male and female and how, you know, there's a reason why women have to defend ourselves in a 1.00

00:20:46.740 different way when we are, if we're attacked by a male or whatever. And someone messaged me and told

00:20:51.660 me that the only reason I see men and women that way is actually because of, uh, internalized misogyny.

00:20:57.400 And so when you've just decided that everything is arbitrary, that there is no truth, there is no

00:21:03.320 moral lawgiver, what is biology? What is science? Those kinds of ludicrous retorts are really all

00:21:10.920 that you have. And so we do kind of also, I guess, have a responsibility to bring people back to the

00:21:16.980 very basic questions of like, what is true? Where did we all come from? And where are we going? It's

00:21:23.320 because we can't answer those questions that we can no longer tell each other what a man

00:21:27.320 or a woman is, don't you think? Yeah. So, so it strikes me that what we have to do here is both,

00:21:31.860 um, evangelize the culture, right? So evangelize the various culture war and politics debates that

00:21:37.580 we're engaged in, but then also just evangelize period, right? We have to be women converts. We 0.79

00:21:43.500 have to be spreading the faith. We have to be, um, convicting people of the truth of the gospel.

00:21:48.100 And there, I think, um, a key asset, um, in our toolbox will be living the faith joyfully,

00:21:54.820 particularly, uh, particularly in families, um, that is so much of America is turning more and

00:21:59.500 more individualistic, atomistic. Uh, we see the breakdown of families, uh, fragmentation of

00:22:04.700 families. I think happy, joyful Christian families will be one of the best, um, advertisements for

00:22:10.520 the church. People will say, what is it about that family down the street? They have all of the same,

00:22:15.240 um, struggles that we have all the same, you know, burdens that we have. And yet there's this

00:22:19.360 underlying serenity and joy. Um, and so this is where, you know, the, the encouragement for our

00:22:24.960 listeners is it strikes me that one of the most important vocations you can have, uh, is to be

00:22:30.020 a husband or a wife, a mother or a father, like more so than being a think tank president or being

00:22:36.360 a journalist or being a podcast host or a radio show host as important as all those professional

00:22:41.780 activities are like the most important thing I'm doing in my life is being the husband to Anna and

00:22:47.540 the father to Jack and Eddie. Right. And if I don't get those things right, none of the other

00:22:51.980 stuff matters. Yeah. And it strikes me getting back to basics will be really important because

00:22:57.320 we're going to be having a challenging, I think for the rest of my life, I don't see things getting

00:23:01.320 particularly, um, easier, uh, for people trying to live vibrant, Orthodox Christian lives.

00:23:06.920 Yes, absolutely. We have to have that hub. We have to have that place where we're deriving our

00:23:11.800 values and provision and care other than the state. I think a lot of times people try to separate

00:23:17.320 social conservatism, the family from economic conservatism. That's kind of what we were

00:23:22.280 talking about earlier, but they really go hand in hand. If you are depending on the family and the

00:23:27.020 church for much of what you need, not that there's no place for the government ever, um, then that

00:23:33.060 kind of, that replaces what the state in a socialist society is trying to be, which is your caretaker,

00:23:39.960 which is your parent, your moral arbiter, your value system, your provider. Um, and so strengthening

00:23:45.880 the family and making sure that our church communities are strong too. A lot of people,

00:23:50.740 especially right now are really looking for intimate friendships, um, and are looking for

00:23:55.400 that connectivity that they're not finding in the world that they're being told is dangerous right

00:24:00.180 now. The church should be a place to provide that. Don't you think? Amen. I think that's exactly

00:24:05.900 right. That what, what, what, what I think what COVID has, um, exposed were underlying realities

00:24:10.980 that were already there and COVID just accelerated them. Uh, we have a loneliness crisis in the United

00:24:16.680 States. Uh, we have a, um, kind of discarded elderly crisis in the United States. We have a 0.98

00:24:24.700 meaningful relationship crisis and the church could be the hub, an intergenerational, uh, multi-ethnic 0.96

00:24:33.280 hub, uh, for people to form meaningful relationships with each other and with God, right? The most meaningful

00:24:39.400 of all relationships. Um, and it strikes me to, to a certain extent that this is a condemnation

00:24:44.140 of the church, that it's not already fulfilling, um, that purpose. And so this should, you know,

00:24:48.800 encourage us to kind of like redouble our efforts, um, to make our local church community a place

00:24:54.780 that's welcoming, um, you know, to, to people at all ages of all racial and ethnic backgrounds,

00:25:01.200 and particularly people who feel like they're on the margin of society. They don't fit in, but they

00:25:06.240 don't have close friendships. They don't have close family relationships that their church community

00:25:10.780 could become, uh, those relationships. Absolutely. Can you tell everyone where they can follow and

00:25:17.180 support you? Sure. So, um, uh, the think tank's called the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Uh,

00:25:22.620 it's right in Washington, DC. The website's eppc, uh, uh, dot org. Uh, and then you can follow me on,

00:25:28.100 uh, Twitter. It's at Ryan T. And, uh, so Ryan T. Anderson, but just the A-N-D part of the last name.

00:25:34.720 Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. This was

00:25:38.100 very insightful and encouraging. I really appreciate it.

00:25:41.560 Thank you. Happy to be with you.

00:25:52.080 All right, guys, hope that you enjoyed that conversation. Like I said, at the beginning,

00:25:55.620 there was so much more I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to ask him, and we just didn't have

00:26:00.140 time, was how, how do we kind of live in this pluralistic society, um, and still advocate for

00:26:07.460 what we believe as Christians is good and right and true? Because we don't believe in establishing

00:26:12.700 a theocracy. Yes, there are some fear mongers on the left who think that all Christians who are also

00:26:18.660 engaged in culture and politics want to establish some kind of theocracy where we don't allow people

00:26:23.340 to live the lives that they want to live or believe what they want to believe. But that is

00:26:26.820 absolutely not true. It was the Protestant Reformation that laid the groundwork, uh, for

00:26:33.180 the inherent rights that are outlined in the Bill of Rights. And so we have a long history of believing

00:26:40.520 in and respecting, not perfectly, but ideally, um, other people's way of life and other people's

00:26:47.520 beliefs. And so it is always a discussion of how to, how to balance that. Because as I've argued

00:26:53.820 before, um, everyone has a worldview and everyone's view of policy, everyone's view of political,

00:27:00.080 social, cultural issues is affected by their worldview. And it should be. Everything is

00:27:05.480 downstream from theology. So what you think about the government, what you think about politics,

00:27:09.780 and what you think about culture and, uh, social issues are going to be downstream from what you

00:27:16.940 think about God, whether you believe in God or not, what we believe about where we come from,

00:27:22.500 why we're here, who made us, who says what right is, who says what wrong is, where truth, absolute

00:27:28.960 truth comes from is all going to affect what we think about these horizontal issues. So what we think

00:27:35.520 about interpersonal issues, what we think about policies that affect us and affect the people

00:27:40.460 around us. And so, you know, people who say that Christians shouldn't have their worldview affect

00:27:45.780 what they think about politics and culture. Um, well, why shouldn't, why shouldn't we, like, why

00:27:51.540 shouldn't Christians have our worldview affect what we think about those things? But people of other 0.97

00:27:56.340 faiths, including atheism, should have their worldview affect what they think about law, for example.

00:28:03.260 Secularism is a worldview with its own rules, with its own definitions. It's not a neutral worldview.

00:28:09.120 It's got its own dogmas and its own directions and, um, its own, its, its, its own, uh, belief system

00:28:19.840 and value system that is contradictory to the Christian worldview. And so what I always advocate

00:28:25.180 for is that let the best idea win. Like Christians should be willing to debate, should be willing to

00:28:30.880 discuss. I know the other side so often is not willing to debate and discuss. Like I said, not advocating

00:28:37.680 for living in a theocracy. There is no New Testament precedent for that. And even the Old Testament

00:28:42.840 doesn't say that people outside of the faith of Christianity should be forced to follow the laws

00:28:49.840 of Christianity. So that's not what I'm advocating for. But I do believe that Christians, just like

00:28:55.180 everyone else of every other faith, is going to have, um, our worldview affect what we think about

00:29:01.160 things and let the best ideas win. Whether you want to believe this or not, the fact of the matter is,

00:29:07.300 is that America's ideals and ideas were founded upon a Judeo-Christian worldview. That's just the

00:29:15.320 truth. Even though many of the founders were simply deistic themselves, I wouldn't call Thomas

00:29:19.820 Jefferson, um, any kind of, you know, true Christian. Certainly his theology was quite wonky, but they come

00:29:29.180 from a Judeo-Christian ethic, a biblical understanding of human nature, how power works, the role of the

00:29:36.880 government. That is the basis of self-governance. And that is the basis of America. This idea that

00:29:43.020 all of us were created equal by God, endowed with certain unalienable rights that were not given to

00:29:49.320 us by the government, but are meant to be recognized by the government. All of those things imperfectly

00:29:53.540 implemented throughout history. Um, but when they have been, uh, when they have been implemented well,

00:29:59.360 we have manifested those founding values that again, were based on the Christian ethic and the

00:30:05.420 biblical worldview, we have manifested them very well. Um, and so saying that though, we still live

00:30:14.000 in a pluralistic society where, uh, this country that was based on Christian ideals, um, and, uh,

00:30:21.800 has allowed for the freedom of all different kinds of belief systems. We exist with people who don't

00:30:26.400 believe the same things we do. And so it is, it is always a debate and it's always a conversation of

00:30:31.600 how we balance that. Like, yes, of course, as Christians, we believe in the biblical definition

00:30:37.060 of marriage. We also believe that people who don't have that belief system or don't live in that way,

00:30:43.260 that they have rights, that they were made in the image of God, that they are protected by the

00:30:47.000 constitution just as much as we are. Um, but that, that debate and of that balance of religious

00:30:53.600 liberty and what is a right and what is a privilege and is marriage something to be sanctioned by the

00:31:00.200 government. That's a conversation that in my opinion, it just went by way too quickly. Like

00:31:05.920 we weren't even allowed to talk about what is the place of religious liberty or what is the place of

00:31:10.900 the government? What is, uh, what is the definer of all of these things? We just kind of ran straight

00:31:17.080 into it. So I just want to make clear that when I talk about Christians affecting and influencing 0.99

00:31:22.000 the culture and changing hearts and minds on certain subjects, I am not talking about forcing

00:31:26.660 everyone to live how I think people should live or to believe all the things that, um, I want them to

00:31:31.980 believe. I believe in a free country in which people of all different kinds of backgrounds and

00:31:36.720 lifestyles and faith should be able to live in tolerance and peace and peace, but we've got to be able

00:31:42.500 to agree on some big things. And that's what we're debating right now is, can we, can we agree on the

00:31:48.920 big things at all? Can we agree on what truth is, where morality comes from, what right and wrong is,

00:31:54.940 what rights are versus what privileges are? It seems like those things are what we disagree on.

00:32:00.860 And until we agree on the big foundational things, it's going to be very hard to debate

00:32:05.700 the other issues as well, which is why I think, like I said, having those debates and discussions,

00:32:11.380 um, is so important and why Christians should not shrink back from those conversations,

00:32:17.360 but be prepared to have them and to handle them well. And I think following, um, following Ryan

00:32:24.140 Anderson is a really great way to do that because, uh, he has a lot of information and a lot of insight

00:32:30.120 and a lot of education for all of us on these subjects. All right. I hope that added, you know,

00:32:34.620 just a little more of my analysis and perspective and some clarity on that conversation. All right.

00:32:40.460 We will be back here soon.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 21, 2021

Ep 407 ｜ Why Religious Liberty Isn't Enough ｜ Guest： Ryan Anderson

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