2.20 YOU CAN’T LEGISLATE RELIGION, BUT WE CANNOT AVOID LEGISLATING MORALITY

Interview with Frank Turek

I am honored to have the dynamtic Dr. Frank Turek on the show today! We disucss his wonderful book, Legislating Morality. As a dynamic speaker and award-winning author or coauthor of four other books: Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to make their Case, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, Correct, Not Politically Correct, Frank served as the President of CrossExamined.org and he presents powerful and entertaining evidence for Christianity at churches, high schools and at secular college campuses that often begin hostile to his message. He has also debated several prominent atheists including Christopher Hitchens and David Silverman, president of American Atheists.

Frank hosts an hour-long TV program each week called I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist that is broadcast Wednesday nights on DirecTV Channel 378 (NRBTV). His radio program called CrossExamined with Frank Turek airs on 186 stations every Saturday morning at 10 a.m. eastern and is available continuously on the free CrossExamined App.

Frank wrote that “Religion has to do with our duty to God, but morality has to do with our duty to one another. No one wants to require by law when, where, how, or if you must worship. That would be legislating religion. But everyone in politics is trying to tell you how your ought to treat one another, and that’s legislating morality. ” In this interview we discuss this and much more! ….

Frank wrote “If we are called to legislate morality, then whose morality should we legislate? The answer our Founding Fathers gave was the “self-evident” morality given to us by our Creator—the same moral law that the apostle Paul wrote was “written on their hearts” of all people (Rom. 2:14–15). In other words, not my morality or your morality, but the morality—the one we inherited, not the one we invented.

Notice they did not have to establish a particular denomination or force religious practice in order to legislate a moral code. Our country justifies moral rights with theism, but does not require its citizens to acknowledge or practice theism. That is why charges that Christians are trying to impose a “theocracy” or violate the “separation of church and state” fail.

Such objections blur the distinction between religion and morality. Broadly defined, religion involves our duty to God while morality involves our duty to one another. Our lawmakers are not telling people that they need to be a member of a church—that would be legislating religion. But lawmakers cannot avoid telling people how they should treat one another —that is legislating morality, and that is what all laws do.

To illustrate the point, let us consider two prominent moral issues in our society: abortion and same-sex marriage. First, let me be clear that I do not want the state running the church or the church running the state. But even if one were to accept the court-invented claim that the Constitution requires a strict separation of church and state,⁷ opposition to abortion or same-sex marriage does not entail the establishment of a “theocracy.” Churches and the Bible also teach that murder, theft, and child abuse are wrong, but no one says laws prohibiting such acts establish a theocracy or are a violation of the separation of church and state. In fact, if the government could not pass laws consistent with biblical teachings, then all criminal laws would have to be overturned because they are all in some way consistent with at least one of the Ten Commandments. The truth is, Christians do not legislate the Bible as such, but we do legislate the moral law consistent with the Bible. We do not need to legislate religion, but we cannot avoid legislating morality.” See this link for more…but hear the interview below.