Ep 526 ｜ When Christians Don’t Care, Society Suffers ｜ Guest： Andrew T. Walker
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Summary
Andrew Walker is a Christian ethics professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is also a contributing editor at World Magazine and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. In this episode, he talks about how Christians should engage with the culture and the political realm, and how to balance not trusting too much in politics.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Hope everyone is having a great day, a great week so far.
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Today I am talking to Andrew Walker. He is a Christian ethics professor. He also worked
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at World Magazine where I also write. He is an associate dean at the School of Theology at the
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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as well. And he has so much wisdom when it comes to Christian
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ethics and how Christians should be engaging with the culture and with the political realm. And so
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he's going to tell us today, how do we balance not trusting too much in politics and putting our
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hope too much in politics while also realizing it's an important world for us to engage in and
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for us to understand. So without further ado, here is my friend, Andrew T. Walker.
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Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. For those who may not know, can you tell us who you are and
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what you do? Sure. My name is Andrew Walker, and I'm a professor of Christian ethics at the Southern
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Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and then also serve as managing editor of the new
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project of World Opinions, who is led by Dr. Albert Muller, who's the president of my institution.
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And then I also serve as a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center based in Washington, D.C.
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as well. But I currently call Louisville, Kentucky home, and I'm very privileged to do what I get to do
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for my calling, which is to write and teach pastors and to train up individuals and the moral witness
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of the Christian faith. And how have you become a public voice on the things that you talk about?
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You're a professor, so that obviously puts you in front of an audience, but now you have a pretty large
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audience. So how did you come into this world of political and cultural public commentary?
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That's a good question. I would say it's almost a result of there just being very few people willing
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to step into the arena. You know, Ali, I know you know this, when you hear the statistics about
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millennials and kind of the bad state of their biblical theological literacy and their willingness to step
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into the arena, what that ends up doing is creating a smaller number of people who are willing to
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potentially burn down their reputation and their credibility to say what needs to be said.
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And so really, I don't know. It's really the fact that I'm overly that gifted. It could be the fact
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that I'm perhaps bravely or naively prepared to enter into the arena and to say things that I think need to
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be said. And that's not just because I want to be correct and right, but because as Christians,
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we believe that what is right is ultimately for our good. And so what we are talking about in the
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public square, it's not mere sectarian truths. This is not about us being vindicated. Ultimately,
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Christ is the one who vindicates. But if we love our neighbor, one of the very practical ways we're going
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to love our neighbor is to say what is true for our neighbor and what is true about our society as
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well. And I have a few questions within your answer or from your answer that I want to ask. But first,
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I want to back up a little bit. How would you summarize Christian ethics? What is it that you
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teach as a professor? Sure. That's a good question. I would say Christian ethics is a branch of moral
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theology, and it's effectively—sometimes I like to call it applied Christology, because what we're trying
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to do is live a life patterned after Jesus Christ and the revelation of Jesus Christ. So obviously that
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means that's going to impact our day-to-day conduct and interactions with the world. So we want to model and
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pattern our life after the person of Christ. But then also we understand that Christian ethics is bigger than
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just pure imitation. And I'm not trying to downplay the significance of imitation. But when we look at passages
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of Scripture, like in John chapter 1 and Colossians chapter 1, what we understand is that Christ is at the
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center of the universe. In fact, in the Greek, he is referred to as the Logos, which means he is the divine cosmic
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ordering principle of the universe. So that means that implicates every single thing about how we see
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the world. So Christian ethics is really an issue of Christian worldview. So how am I called to relate
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to my world, to my role as a citizen, to my role as a husband and a father, in light of the revelation
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of Christ that we get from Scripture? And for those who say, you know, Christians really don't need to
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be messing around with these culture wars. We don't need to be so caught up in politics. I think
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evangelicals in particular are sometimes accused of idolizing politics, of getting too caught up in
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these political and culture wars. How do we as Christians balance that? We obviously don't want to put
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our trust in politicians or our hope in politicians or even in any kind of political future while
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realizing, as you said, we do have an obligation to our neighbor. And one of the ways, one of the ways
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we can love our neighbor is not only speaking truth, but also by participating in the political
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process that we are free to participate in in the United States. We say on this podcast almost every
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episode, politics matter because policy matters because people matter. Politics affects policy,
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policy affects people. So that is one of the ways that we care about people. But, you know,
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we do as conservative Christians, we do diverge from progressive Christians who think that activism
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is a form of sanctification, who actually believe that they're going to be able to accomplish some
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kind of heavenly utopia here on earth through their political activism. So I guess what I'm asking is,
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what is the Christian biblical way to look at how we interact with these political,
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cultural issues without idolatry, but also we don't want to be apathetic either?
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Goodness. Well, so I have a whole class I teach on political theology, which is dedicated to that
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simple question. There is so much there. Let me just kind of maybe scratch at the surface.
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One of the things I would say is we need to ask ourselves, what is the nature of politics?
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What does it mean to live in a political community? So that's a theological question.
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So government has been given in this particular age, as you said, not to bring about political
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utopia. When you look at Romans chapter 13, 1 Peter 2, and in fact, I would actually go all the
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way back to Genesis chapter 9 with the Noahic Covenant. What we see fundamentally as the purpose of
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government is to exercise preservative justice. So that means government is a positive good.
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It's not something to run away from. That government is one of the instruments where fallen individuals
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are cooperating with in order to allow competing interests and often conflicted interests to figure
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out ways to peaceably live together in a fractious, fragmented moment like our own. So if we go back
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to Genesis chapter 3, because we ideally would love to have stayed in Genesis 1 and 2, but we didn't
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stay there. So Genesis 3 enters in, which means sin, decay, fallenness. We then get to Genesis chapter 9,
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which is what most scholars would look to as kind of the very beginnings of what we would understand as
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kind of the reciprocal or retributive understandings of justice. We see that God is concerned with
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maintaining the contours of this creation, and He's interested in maintaining the contours of this
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creation. One, I would say because He loves this creation. Two, He maintains the contours or the stage
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or platform of this creation, because ultimately it was going to be that platform that would ultimately
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bring Christ onto the scene when we get to the New Testament. And so one of the ways we manage
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living in a fallen age is to provide governing authorities to help us work out these differences.
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You know, when we think about the nature of statecraft, Scripture doesn't really give us
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any one particular formula for what a government ought to look like. So hypothetically, monarchy,
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parliamentary systems, democratic and republican-style systems, those are all legitimate.
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What all governments are called to do is to pursue justice. And as a Christian, we would look at passages
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like Romans chapter 2, 14, and 15, which is kind of a classical passage on the teaching of the natural
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law that states that God has placed effectively eternity and a longing for justice inside the
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human heart. And one of the ways that we commiserate and work together in society is to pass just laws
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and then install people into power. We understand our good individuals and trustworthy who can then
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create and carry out these laws on our behalf. But I want to dwell on something that you just said
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that I thought was really important. And that's not to invest too much into politics, but at the same
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time, not then minimizing politics either. It is to understand kind of this paradoxical reality that in a
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fallen age, government is absolutely necessary. And so government is therefore obligated to recognize
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what is true about the universe, while at the same time, recognizing that there are limitations to what
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the government is actually able to bring about. I'm a Baptist, and so we have a strong tradition of
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religious liberty. And so I don't want the government meddling in kind of intricate matters of
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theology. That doesn't mean that we keep religion and politics separate. That's actually impossible.
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But it means we keep these spheres of church and state kind of jurisdictionally separate in order to
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make sure that their callings and their jurisdictions and their competencies are all properly borne out
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respective to their callings. But if we love our neighbor, one of the most very practical ways we're
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going to love our neighbor is to codify laws that seek to do good to our neighbors. And one of the
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real ironies of this particular moment that we're living in is we have a lot of Christians who are
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saying, government is bad. Don't place your trust in government. Well, at the same time, these Christians
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are the same Christians who are saying, pursue social justice. Do good to your neighbor. And I want to say to
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that, yes and amen. But the problem, though, is if you're going to actually hope to bring about
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justice and truth, that is necessarily a call to the government, not away from the government.
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I want to go a little deeper into the distinction that you just made between
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intermingling or allowing religion to influence law and the intermingling of church and state. So
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we're against, you know, the we're for the separation of church and state. But it is impossible,
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as you said, to separate religion and politics or religion and law. I think that's a very important
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point. Can you explain more about what you mean? Sure. One of the real, I would say, fictions that
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our age kind of trades in is this idea that you can separate a person's ultimate values and their
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worldview from from from how they're how they vote and how they're going to want to see those values
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lived out. And so this is really kind of we're living in the after after effects of a scholar
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named John Rawls. And John Rawls said, because we're living in this diverse society, we have to figure out
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kind of a common moral discourse that allows us to communicate with one another without automatically
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deferring to religion. And so what he said effectively was to keep religion out of it.
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You have to operate on secular terms only. Well, the problem, though, is in his attempt to
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argue for secular neutrality, you know, this alley, what that really does is smuggle in
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secular neutrality or secularism as the real actual morality and system that's behind the debate.
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And it's not neutral. And it's not neutral at all. Absolutely. And so what secularism has done
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wrong is to sever the sacred from the public. Now, notice, I didn't say sacred and the political,
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because there is one sense in which government is a secular enterprise. And a part of that means
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recovering a healthy understanding of secular secular and a traditional historic Christian
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understanding doesn't mean anti-religion. Rather, secular refers to only those temporal institutions
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that are not designed to be present into the eschatological age, which we would say government
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is one of those functions. So government is a secular institution, but that doesn't mean that it's
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it's cut off or immune from influence from individuals who have been formed and cultivated
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and habituated by the traditions that have formed them. So there's an interesting paradox here,
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especially as as a Baptist evangelical Christian here is I want religion intricately involved
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in the public space. I have friends who are legislators who are evangelical Christians.
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I want more of that in public office. What I would not want these individuals then doing is to say,
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well, well, then government is only there for Christians and government is only interpretable
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or intelligible exclusively on Christian grounds. And so therefore, if you're not a Christian,
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you're a second class citizen. That's not what I'm saying at all when we talk about secularism.
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Rather, it's it's helping us to to capture what I think is the real brilliance of our founding is
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our founders understood that this apparatus of government is really just a tool and a vehicle.
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And the tool and vehicle is only as useful as the people who are using the tool are virtuous. And one of
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the ways that we get virtue from an American founding understanding is from the vehicle of religion.
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And so in a time where we're trying to say keep religion and politics separate from each other,
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I think that's completely disjunctive from what we see is actually the founding vision for our country.
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I mean, Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s, what does he say makes America unique from all other
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countries that he's been in? He says it's effectively because America is a nation with the soul of a
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church. And so rather than taking our cues and our understanding of of all things from the
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government in the sense that the government does not hand down, it doesn't determine what is true.
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Government recognizes what is true. And therefore, it's it's incumbent upon us to put people into office
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who have that limited understanding of the government's purpose.
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And that debate gets more and more complicated as we move into or I wouldn't say we move into
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we are firmly in kind of this post truth postmodern world where we are asking, what is truth?
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You said that the function of the government is to pursue just laws. One of the ways that we
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love our neighbor is to speak truth and also to pursue policy that we know is good for them.
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But what it comes down to is what is good? What is just what is true? You and I believe that there
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is a God who created all of those things that he has graciously shown us both through general and
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special revelation, what truth is, what justice is, what goodness is, and what we can pursue.
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How do we debate these things? And maybe we don't. Maybe that's kind of what you were just saying.
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How do we debate these things from a non strictly Christian theological perspective in the public
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square for someone who wants to be persuaded that, you know, abortion is wrong. Like we can list all
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of the scientific facts about, you know, fetal development. We can try to come from a humanistic
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moral perspective. But at the end of the day, you and I believe that abortion is wrong because that
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human being is made in the image of God and God made that human being, that human being has a soul
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and value. So at the end of the day, even as we might be able to persuade people from a secular
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perspective, the motivation behind our persuasion is that, you know, that child is made in the Imago Dei.
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So maybe my question is, should we try to separate the arguments about what is good and right and true
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from the Bible when we're in the public square? Or should we just say, look,
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there's a God who created all of this. There's a God who defines all of this. There's a God who
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originates justice and goodness. And we cannot even really have a full conversation about those things
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Gosh, I love that question. And that's, again, central to the class I teach in political theology.
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One of the things I would say here is Christians would say we believe in a common morality,
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but there is no such thing as a neutral morality. So by virtue of the fact that we have been created
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with reason, God instills some baseline moral foundation inside the heart of every human being.
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So there can be common morality, but there is no moral neutrality in the sense that we would say
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that truth is coming from all different directions. No, that's not what I'm saying. Truth ultimately is
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grounded in the triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, who then manifests himself and reveals himself
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in Scripture. But then as you helpfully and rightly noted, and I should say as a side note,
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Alibeth, in your writing, I've appreciated that you're talking about general revelation
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as much as you are. And this is the idea that God has communicated to us in two ways,
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both through the Bible, but then also through creation. And so individuals, when they're out
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in creation, by looking at design patterns, the law of consequence, they understand that there is
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something ultimately behind the foundations of this universe. And in a classical sense,
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we would call that being God. So special revelation and general revelation are two tools that we have at
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our disposal. But when you're thinking about kind of the practical ways of how would you actually argue
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for what Christians believe on kind of hot button cultural issues, one of the things I always say
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is it's not an either or. In many ways, how we argue is likened to what is the best golf club to use
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relative to the swing. And so really, that's a prudential issue that we have to wrestle with
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on fact-specific and context-specific circumstances that we find ourselves in.
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I often use the example of, what would I do if I were a legislator on the floor of Congress?
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And there was a bill that came up that was a pro-life bill. I would argue that bill in several
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different horizons. I would argue on the basis that, listen, political societies need babies.
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Babies are good things for societies because we need voters, we need taxpayers. And so killing a
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population of individuals is wrong as a sociological and political matter. I would then argue probably
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on the grounds of natural law and a conscience issue that life is a basic good. And so therefore,
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we should never pursue any policy or law that would terminate innocent life. That's unlawful.
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It's unethical. It's at the very opposite end of what you would consider to be a just system of
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government. And then third, I would simply end my imagined floor speech by simply saying,
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you know, my fellow legislators, I come here to you today, someone who cares passionately about these
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issues, both as an American, as a human, but fundamentally as someone who is creating the image
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of God, because I believe every single human being is creating the image of God. And I learned that
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ultimately from Scripture. But what I understand is that the God who has created us in His image
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has instilled within all people a longing for justice. And so what I would say is,
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pass pro-life legislation, because this honors both creation, it honors humanity,
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but fundamentally it honors God and His Word as well.
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God's glory and our good are always going to be inextricably intertwined. And so while it's not
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always a simple argument, sometimes it takes some explaining and obviously some persuading.
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It is an, or maybe I should say, it's not always an easy argument, but it is a simple argument. It is
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always pretty forthright. Now this gets a little bit more complicated when we're talking about the
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issue of sexuality, of identity, of people's relationships. One question that I think a lot
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of Christians have is how much influence should Christianity have over the law, which we've already
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been discussing. But when it comes to homosexuality, when it comes to gay marriage, which is kind of just
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a foregone conversation at this point. And even when it comes to some of the things that you have
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been talking about, cohabitation, even no-fault divorce, some of these things that we really don't
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discuss on the policy level anymore. Should Christians even be thinking about this from a
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policy perspective? Is it worth having a debate anymore about the legality of gay marriage?
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Or should Christians really just try to persuade people personally when it comes to the importance
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of biblical sexuality? Where's the line that we draw today?
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So I think regardless of how you think about this in either a relational or policy bucket,
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first and foremost, Christians are called to be truthful and to bear witness to the truth.
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And so I think that means in whatever domain or bucket you find yourself in, you are obligated
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to speak truthfully. And you should never allow your speech to be blurred or suppressed or drafted
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into things that you believe are immoral and wrong. Now, when we think about gender and sexuality issues,
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I agree with you. It would be seemingly difficult right now to overturn Obergefell because the
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direction our culture is going is not with Christians on this issue. But you know what?
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I don't believe in the kind of progressive utopia of the right side of history and the wrong side of
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history. We might have an issue right now where a particular policy is in place for a certain period of
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time. And then later in a few decades, a couple hundred years, we might understand that these
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policies have sowed destruction for our culture. And I'm not just talking about same-sex marriage.
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I'm talking about no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce has been catastrophic on our culture.
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And then you think about just the general rise of cohabitation and just the decline of marriage
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right now in our general culture. I talk about this in my classes because it's hard to be aware
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of this if you're not studying it. But Brad Wilcox, who's a friend of mine and a sociologist at
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the University of Virginia, I think he would make the argument, based on his data, that marriage and
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family life is in about the worst state it has ever been in in American history. And what he measures
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that by is the fact that individuals are either not marrying, they're marrying at later ages,
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they're having fewer children or not having children at all. And so what we have right now is
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just the decline overall of kind of why you would enter family life in the first place. And in many
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ways, this is a, it's the inversion of the creation order. And it's an inversion of the
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cultural mandate that we see from Genesis chapter one. But, you know, when I worked at the Heritage
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Foundation, one of the reasons I worked on the marriage issue with my friend Ryan Anderson was
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because we understood that, excuse me, societies need healthy marriages because society is nothing
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else but the total aggregate number of families living in that given place, that given locality.
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So if you have a political community where 50% of the marriages are ending in divorce,
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you're going to have human suffering as a result. One of the statistics that we know is true
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is that the greatest indicator of childhood poverty in our country right now is whether or not that
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child is raised in a household with a married mother and father. So we're all about social justice in
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this age, right? That's the anthem and the banner that everyone is flying. Well, here's the thing. If you
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really want to pursue social justice, which means people having proper relationships to themselves,
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their family and their social order and to God, that means telling the truth about what family is
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and who created family, which is God. And so if you're asking me to come back full circle,
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how we began this interview, why do I want to tell the truth about marriage? Because ultimately,
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I love my neighbor and I cannot sit back and allow society to redefine institutions that are absolutely
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necessary to its stability and its foundation and see those institutions impaled and then be
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indifferent about them. If I see individuals being denied the love and care and environment that comes
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with experiencing the differentiated love of a mother and father. And so this is a huge cultural
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conversation because you can't sever that issue from the fact that we're now living in an age where
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toxic masculinity is a thing. So the downplaying of gender distinctions in our society is going to wreak
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havoc on our society because at the end of the day, it blurs those categories that God has placed in
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I had a guest on my show a few weeks ago. Her name is Katie Faust and she has an organization
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called Them Before Us. And she's raising a lot of awareness about this issue, about how
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not just no-fault divorce, but also much of the surrogacy industry, the redefinition of marriage and
00:28:40.120
family and gender has disproportionately hurt children. And as you said, people who say that they care for
00:28:46.440
social justice and care for the marginalized and the oppressed very often don't realize that these
00:28:51.720
issues that have been pushed forward with really without much thought or study or discretion
00:28:56.920
whatsoever are going to affect children. So there's that practical part there that you mentioned that
00:29:03.560
kids who often grow up without a dad, they're more likely to be depressed. They have higher rates of
00:29:08.600
teen pregnancy, teen delinquency, dropping out of high school, poverty. And so there are a lot of
00:29:14.840
practical, tangible issues there that are at stake when we are encouraging divorce or incentivizing,
00:29:21.240
in some cases, single parenthood and all of that. But also there is the theological. She said a couple
00:29:27.400
things that I had never really thought about when it comes to the importance of kids having really a
00:29:34.120
right to a mom and a dad is that you are forcing these kids to disobey the first commandment with a
00:29:41.720
promise that we are to honor our father and mother. The Bible charges us to care for the fatherless.
00:29:47.960
Well, if we are redefining the family and saying that, you know, so-called marriage without a husband
00:29:54.600
or without a dad is just as good for kids, you are forcing those kids into fatherlessness. We are
00:30:01.480
forcing those kids into a form of oppression, something that God defines as oppression. And I think,
00:30:08.360
I mean, I didn't even think about that as someone who understands the theological and practical
00:30:13.080
importance of marriage. But unfortunately, I think I see a lot of Christian conservatives thinking
00:30:18.760
that the whole marriage and family issue is a losing issue that we really shouldn't talk about
00:30:25.640
anymore. Let's just talk about capitalism. Let's just talk about small government. Let's just talk
00:30:30.200
about anti-socialism, which of course I think all is important. But to me, it just seems like you're not
00:30:37.320
going to get those issues. You're not going to get the other conservative issues without
00:30:43.960
without remembering and upholding that incubator of liberty, that foundation of the values that we
00:30:51.800
hold dear. If someone doesn't realize that your rights are inherent, they don't come from the
00:30:57.960
government, that your primary caretaker are your parents, your primary authority and your primary
00:31:03.960
disciplers are your parents. Then they do go to the culture, to politicians, to outside influencers
00:31:13.880
to get those values. And then we lose all the rest of the stuff that conservatives want to uphold.
00:31:18.920
So I don't know. I do think a lot of conservative Christians are scared to talk about these issues
00:31:22.840
because they do seem divisive and people are tired of being called bigots.
00:31:26.440
I mean, listen, everything you just said, I couldn't agree more with. You think about
00:31:33.640
what are those first things, those permanent things, issues that we have to get right.
00:31:41.640
The family is one of them. I would put family as kind of the bedrock foundation upon which the rest of
00:31:48.520
society comes to be built on top of. When we are building a foundation on sand, which is what we're
00:31:56.440
now doing, the rest of society is going to be crippled as well. And I'll just end by stating something
00:32:04.040
here you mentioned about denying children access to a mother and a father. This is very unpopular to say,
00:32:12.200
but you all remember the video probably or the photo of Pete Buttigieg with his spouse in a hospital bed
00:32:22.840
with their newborn children. Well, it's celebrated on social media. It's getting all of the retweets
00:32:31.080
celebrating the goodness of life and family, which we want to celebrate life. Absolutely.
00:32:38.120
But you know what's really fascinating is they took that picture inside a hospital room,
00:32:44.440
sitting on a hospital bed where there was someone conspicuously absent, which was the mother.
00:32:51.960
And so while society is applauding and celebrating that image, I saw that and thought, okay, well,
00:32:59.240
what law and public policy has now coordinated to do is to deny those children loving access to a mother.
00:33:10.920
So we have cut out intentionally by design because of public policy, the opportunity for those children
00:33:19.000
to have a mom. That is not justice. That is a disrespect to the creation order that God has placed
00:33:29.800
in our world. And we should lament the fact that any child is not getting the love that they are
00:33:39.720
entitled to and have a right to from a mother and a father. Yep. Justice doesn't mean whatever people
00:33:45.480
want it to mean justice is synonymous with righteousness. And the one righteous one who
00:33:49.960
created justice tells us what that looks like. And one of the depictions of justice that we see is
00:33:55.880
at the very beginning of the Bible, the creation of the family, not just for his glory, but also for our
00:34:01.000
good. Thank you for defending that so well. I think you've gotten, you've given us a lot to chew on.
00:34:06.920
And, um, I think have been able to boil down very clearly, um, the Christian position on a lot of
00:34:15.480
controversial topics as you do so well consistently. Uh, can you tell everyone how they can find you,
00:34:20.120
how they can support you? Yeah, I would say, um, I'm mostly on Twitter. I'm, uh, simply Andrew T walk,
00:34:27.320
and, uh, I've got some books on Amazon. Um, you know, shockingly Amazon still sells them. Uh, we'll see how
00:34:33.800
much longer that happens. I have a second edition of my book on transgenderism coming out in February.
00:34:38.680
So we'll see if I follow suit like, uh, Ryan Anderson and get my book canceled. So we'll see
00:34:43.560
what happens. Let's hope not. Well, thank you so much, Andrew. I really appreciate you coming on.