When and How Christians Should Speak Up

    Here's a puzzler, at least for some people. If Christian inmates in prisons are allowed to have a Bible and devotional aids, such as a cross or candles, should inmates believing in Satanism be allowed to have books advocating satanic rituals and real child sacrifice?

    No way, we say! But the issue isn't that simple. If not Satanism, what about Native American religions that have their own customs, or Jews who want yarmulkes and kosher food? What are the preferred religions?

    Stephen L. Carter, a Christian and professor of law at Yale University, doesn't answer all these questions, but he has written a book that is very helpful in thinking about them. The basic thesis of “The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion” is that American society is wrongly excluding Christians and others from speaking out on public policy issues on the basis of their faith.

    Carter notes that while polls consistently show that large percentages of Americans pray, read the Bible, and go to church, public expressions of their faith are frowned upon, especially if it involves giving a religious basis for a taking a particular position on public policy. In other words, you can say abortion is wrong because scientifically a fetus is a living human being and all human life should be protected, but you cannot say that abortion is wrong because God doesn't like it.

    All this is nonsense, says Carter; Christians have as much right as anyone to speak up in public and give their own reasons – not society's preferred reasoning – for their positions. He also shows that the nature of civil dialogue has changed in America. During the civil rights campaigns, the news media had no problem with the role of churches and individual Christians acting out their faith in opposing segregation. But now when Christians speak up on moral issues, they are said to be “imposing their beliefs” on everyone else.

    Perhaps the central point in this valuable book is Carter's assertion that the government must respect the autonomy of religious institutions. Religions are not a branch of government, nor are they subservient to the government. They are independent sources of moral authority that govern the lives of those who believe in them. He writes, “A religion is, at its heart, a way of denying the authority of the rest of the world ....” Amen!