One of the great lies of modern secularism is that removing Christianity from public life will produce a society in which everyone is free to live according to their own beliefs.
We’re told that religion is merely a private matter, that morality is subjective, and that the government ought to remain neutral on matters of morality.
“You can’t legislate morality,” they say.
But the problem here is that there is no such thing as morally neutral legislation.
Every law is an expression of morality. Every prohibition declares that some things ought not be done. Every punishment presupposes that some action deserves condemnation.
As such, the question has never been whether morality should be legislated. The question is whose morality will be legislated.
Writing in his book Law and Liberty, theologian R.J. Rushdoony exposed the contradiction at the heart of secular political thinking:
“Our increasingly humanistic laws, courts and legislators are giving us a new morality. They tell us, as they strike down laws resting upon biblical foundations, that morality cannot be legislated, but what they offer is not only legislated morality, but salvation by law.”
Rushdoony understood what many today have forgotten. Removing biblical morality from civil government doesn’t remove morality (or religion) from civil government. It merely replaces one moral authority with another.
When the state rejects Christian standards on marriage, family, sexuality, and justice, it’s not becoming morally neutral. It’s establishing an alternative moral order—a moral order that is not accountable to or limited by the Christian foundation upon which Western civilisation was built.
The secularist who condemns Christian legislation as an imposition of religious values is therefore guilty of the very thing he accuses Christians of doing.
He simply believes his own morality ought to prevail.
But Rushdoony’s argument goes further.
Humanistic government doesn’t merely legislate a different morality. It increasingly assumes a responsibility that belongs to God alone: the salvation of mankind.
Modern politics is built upon the promise that humanity can be perfected through legislation, education, regulation, and social engineering.
Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious than in once-Christian nations such as Australia.
When Australians face difficulties or challenges of almost any kind, their first instinct is often to turn to the government for a solution. When someone has a baby, the government owes them money. When someone doesn’t want to work, the government owes them money. When someone falls ill, the government owes them money.
Whatever the problem, the assumption is increasingly the same: the government is responsible for solving it.
And so, our government becomes increasingly preoccupied with eliminating inequality. Eliminating prejudice. Eliminating hatred. Eliminating social injustice, and on and on.
Having removed Christianity from public life, we have stripped society not only of its Saviour, but of its greatest agent of social reform: the Christian faith, which transforms bad men into better men.
With nothing equivalent to offer, and no means of effecting genuine change in the human heart, the government is left with the only instrument it can wield: the sword. Laws backed by the threat of force.
The assumption is that evil principally arises from defective social arrangements rather than the sinful heart of man. Correct society with law upon law, and humanity will supposedly be corrected along with it.
But the Bible assigns civil government a far more limited responsibility.
Romans 13:3-4 describes the magistrate as God’s servant, appointed to punish wrongdoing. Government can restrain evil, but it cannot regenerate the sinner. It can punish theft, but it cannot make a thief honest. It can prohibit murder, but it cannot remove hatred from the heart.
Indeed, one of the central lessons of the Old Testament is that while external laws can restrain evil, they cannot change the hearts of men. A society that lacks internal moral restraint will inevitably require ever-increasing external restraint. Where men will not govern themselves, they must increasingly be governed by others, through an expanding system of laws, regulations and police enforcement.
And herein lies the danger of humanistic government. Once the state assumes responsibility for perfecting mankind, there is scarcely any aspect of human existence that cannot be brought under its supervision.
In the name of liberating mankind from the commandments of God, secularism increasingly subjects mankind to the commandments of men.
The issue, then, is not whether morality will be legislated. It inevitably will be.
The issue is whether the law will acknowledge an authority higher than the state, or whether men devoid of any inner restraint will claim that authority for themselves.