WASHINGTON — Conservative Christians should recover the proper use of the term “separation of church and state” in defending religious liberty against government interference, Russell D. Moore said at an evangelical conference in the country’s capital Sept. 10.
Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), said one of the reasons religious liberty for all people is important is because of its value in limiting government authority.
When Americans have the kind of freedom that enables them “to argue with one another, that signals not only to the government Caesar is not God, it also signals” the same message to citizens, he said.
That is why conservatives “need to reclaim … a term that we long ago tossed overboard — the ‘separation of church and state,’” Moore said. That term “does not mean secularization,” he added. “It means that the state is limited and does not have lordship over the conscience.”
Conservative evangelicals have largely abandoned the use of “separation of church and state” in recent decades as strict separationists championed it in advocating for a public square largely bereft of religious presence and influence.
To defend religious freedom evangelicals need to advocate “as loudly for those issues that are irrelevant to our own as we are for those that are relevant,” Moore said.
“There is no reason why a conservative evangelical ought ever to ignore a situation where a city council is zoning a mosque out of existence,” he said. “Objecting to this does not mean that one is agreeing with Islam. It means that one does not believe in giving the power to the mayor and the city council to hand down theological edicts and also recognizing that those who have that power to drive people out of town on the basis of what they believe will in the fullness of time drive us all out.”
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