In the short, seven-minute video rant below, Pro-life Andrew wonders why contemporary Adventists always fall back on fears of a theocracy to avoid doing anything about abortion, when historic Adventists such as Ellen White noted that Protestantism was the secret of America’s greatness, and urged Adventists to join with the WCTU in campaigning against alcohol and for prohibition.
Andrew notes that the Review & Herald, the church’s flagship publication, supported the physician’s crusade of the 19th Century, which successfully lobbied to outlaw abortion in all the states. (We discussed the physician’s crusade in part 2 of my interview with Andrew, beginning at about the 21 minute mark.)
Protestantism has been the secret of America's greatness, and the foundation of her freedom and prosperity, and separation of church and state is very much a Protestant principle of government.
In part 1 of my interview with Andrew, I discussed what I call the John Stevens/Kevin Paulson view of legislation and religious freedom. The problem with the Stevens/Paulson view is that it refuses to distinguish between morality and religion. Morality is how we treat our fellow man, and every government today and throughout history has been charged with enforcing morality; it is the main duty of government. By contrast, religion is your relationship with God, and how you worship God; that space is not for government to intrude upon.
What confuses the Stevens/Paulson faction is that all religious traditions also include a set of moral laws and principles; hence, they conclude that the only safe way to avoid a theocracy is to not enforce Christian morality.
But, as Andrew drives home repeatedly in the video above, someone's morality will of necessity be enforced by the government. That cannot possibly be avoided, because enforcing morality is the main function of government; to not enforce morality is to have anarchy and chaos.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting Christian moral principles to be enforced. Ellen White's strong crusade against alcohol is a good example, as is the early Adventists' opposition to slavery and support for abolition and, later, our opposition to abortion and support for the physician’s crusade against abortion.
If every law that is informed by Christian morality is illegitimate, laws against murder, theft, perjury, fraud, kidnapping, assault, among many others, will have to be thrown out, as would all laws designed to protect children and prevent cruelty to animals, because these, too, are principles of Christian morality.
Clearly, it will not work to oppose every law or policy that is informed by Christian morality or by the Christian worldview. That is not a workable principle.
By contrast, a good, very simple principle that is workable is that the first four commandments, which are about our relationship with God, may not be enforced by the state, but the last six commandments, which are about how we treat each other, can serve as guiding principles to human legislation.
The wrong view, the Stevens/Paulson view that is currently dominant in Adventist thinking, is quickly becoming more and more destructive and dangerous to our reputation and our mission as a church. This issue is reaching a boil as Marxist/atheist/neo-pagan values replace Christian/biblical values in the United States.
Our history on abortion over the last 50 years has been disgraceful enough, but if we cannot, because of a foolishly misguided philosophy of religious liberty, forcefully speak out against the sexual mutilation of minor children, we will rightly be marked out as an anti-Christian cult.
UPDATE: Here are links to Elizabeth Iskander’s extraordinarily well-written and superbly researched three-part article on how the last six commandments can form the basis of civil legislation, and how Christians should vote their values. This three-part article is perhaps the best thing ever written on this topic: