CITIZEN CHRISTIANS:

THEIR RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES*

By Richard D. Land

Christians are citizens of two realms-the earthly and the spiritual-and they have rights and responsibilities in both spheres. As citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20), Christians are commanded to be obedient to the Lord Jesus (Ex. 20:1-5). The Apostle Paul instructs us that as Christians we have the responsibility to be good citizens. Christians are to support the civil government unless the authorities require a believer to support or to do evil in direct contradiction to their ultimate allegiance to their Heavenly Father. Christians are also commanded by Jesus to be the “salt” of the earth and the “light” of the world (Matt. 5:13-16).

This involves Citizen Christians in active engagement with the world, preserving as “salt” and illuminating as “light.” Thus, the responsibilities of Citizen Christians include not just obedience to the state, but involvement in society.

Our Baptist Faith and Message confession of faith affirms this call to involvement with the world when it states that “every Christian is under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in his own life and in human society.” The confession also says Christians not only “should oppose, In the spirit of Christ, every form of greed, selfishness and vice,” but “should seek to bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth and brotherly love.”

This statement clarifies our responsibilities as Christians, and our rights as citizens. When we bring our religious and moral convictions into the public marketplace of ideas and involve ourselves in the political arena, we are standing solidly within the best of our traditions as Ameri­cans and as Baptists. Far too often in recent decades we have allowed ourselves to be driven from the arena of debate by false understandings and misleading applications of church-state separation and religious liberty.

President Kennedy once said, “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” One such “persistent” myth that has afflicted us as a nation is the belief that you cannot, or at least should not, legislate morality. Nothing could be more false. As a practical matter, all governments legislate morality. If we had no laws against murder, the death rate would explode. If we had no laws against theft, property losses would soar. Government must legislate morality in order to fulfill its God-ordained purpose. God requires that we, as Citizen Christians, hold government responsible to its purpose of punishing evil and protecting its citizens. A total separation of morality and politics is as debilitating of moral values and public virtue as a complete dominance of a church by the state

The First Amendment is in the Constitution in large measure because our Baptist forbearers insisted upon it as a prerequisite for their support of the Constitution’s ratification. The First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” All the restrictions are on the government, not individual Baptists or other Americans of religious faith. The government must not establish a religion, and must not interfere with its free exercise. To say the First Amendment’s guarantees of religious freedom and separation of church and state were intended to restrict the political participation of people of faith or to disqualify their religious convictions and beliefs from consideration in the public arena of ideas is to twist and to distort the First Amendment’s intent and meaning beyond all recognition.

This is amply demonstrated both by the words and deeds of our forefathers. When they declared their firm belief in their convictions that all human beings are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” such as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” They declared their appeal “to the Supreme Judge of the World.  Samuel Adams said, “We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient... let His kingdom come.”

In 1798 president Adams said, “We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions unbridled by morality and religion Our Constitution was made for a moral and a religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

Religious conviction has profoundly influenced our nation throughout its history. There would have been no and anti-slavery movement, no child labor reform movement, no civil rights movement without the leadership and support of people of faith. Our Baptist ancestors were active in all of these movements. They believed their moral convictions left them no choice but to be involved. They found no contradiction between such action and their commitment to church-state separation.

*This has been edited slightly for brevity.