Welcome to Family Policy Matters, a weekly podcast and radio show produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, I'm John Rustin, president of NC Family, and each week on Family Policy Matters, we welcome experts and policy leaders to discuss topics that impact faith and family here in North Carolina. Our prayer is that this program will help encourage and equip you to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. Thank you for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. I'm Mitch Prosser, Vice President of North Carolina Family Policy Council, joined by our Director of Research and Education, Adama Manfro.
Welcome to the second episode of The Truths We Hold. In honor of America's 250th birthday and North Carolina family's 35th anniversary this year, we're taking a deeper look at the foundational values that have shaped our country and continue to shape the work we do here at North Carolina Family. And today we're focusing on government. It's one of the core values and principles that shape the work we do here at North Carolina Family. And so let's take a deeper look at government today, specifically the government that we have and have the opportunity to enjoy as Americans.
And then we'll take a deeper look at how Christians can respond to that government.
So, Adamo, what kind of government did our framers give us?
Well, there are lots of different answers to that question, depending on who you ask. You have the it's a republic if you can keep it quote that could be argued its accuracy. A lot of people will say we live in a democracy with democratic principles. Other people will say we live in a democratic republic. I think more accurately, we would say a constitutional republic.
Unlike a lot of countries, we have a founding document to which we can then go reference all decisions thereafter based on. And if we need to change anything at that level, it takes a higher level of change to make a difference. That's right. I've heard, well, a republic is only a form of a democracy. And to that, I reply exactly what you just said.
The difference in that is that even if a republic is a form of a democracy, we have that governing document. And by the way, it's the longest lasting governing document on the planet to date. Of course, there have been amendments to it and it's been called into question over and over again, but it stood the test of time. It's important for us to understand and make that distinction between a democracy and a republic in that demo meaning people and crassy meaning the majority. it means the mob rules in essence.
And so if a majority of people want something to happen, then they can effectuate that over the minority. And our framers understood this. They understood the problems that could occur with that. And so they set up a republic, but more specifically, a constitutional republic.
So with that in mind and understanding what kind of government we have, What is the Christian's response then to that government? And how should Christians interface with that government, whether that's politics or just the way that we are influenced and choose to influence government? Yeah, I think you bring up the question of politics. I tend to talk about big P politics and little P politics. When I say big P politics, I mean what we tend to think of when we say, oh, politics is gross.
No, you'd be a good politician, meaning you're dishonest, apparently. And that's elections, campaign, electioneering, those kinds of things. whereas little p politics and classical politics is effectively how you govern and lead and manage and live virtuously a group of people rather than just yourself. And in that way, as Christians, we certainly can't abandon that, right? We want to live rightly both in the church and in governance.
And we know that God ordained three institutions, the family, the church, and the state, and we can't abandon any of those. That's right. Obviously, we're the family policy council, so family is sort of our bedrock concern, but then that plays into, well, then how does the government be the larger entity and lead the state, lead the people, lead those families in such a way that those families can flourish and thrive here in North Carolina and the country. Absolutely. And so as we talk about what those institutions are and how God set them up, and by the way I firmly believe that as you said the family is up here and then church and then government After that good families make great churches and great churches inform good government And I think that's a very important thing when it comes to us responding, the Christian responding and interfacing with government.
As you said, in that political structure, there's a lot of questions that surround the Christian's response to government. One of those, and I believe so many Christians in the church today, have bought into this notion of a wall of separation between church and state. Let's walk through that for just a minute. Jefferson's words in the early 1800s, they write to him, the Danbury Baptists, who were in the minority there in Connecticut. And their concern is a move toward a federalized or state religion.
And so they express a concern to him. He writes back to them and says several things, but he encourages them by supporting the notion and using the words that have, I would argue, been grossly wrestled out of context, that there is, in fact, a wall of separation between church and state. What was Jefferson getting at when he wrote those words to the Danbury Baptist? Yeah, I think we've almost inverted them. Yeah.
So these days, it seems like particularly in sort of the popular media and the sort of the air we breathe, I think we even tend to believe that the separation is keeping the church out of the state. Like, keep your morals, keep your principles, keep your religion out of the government. Yes. And in fact, it was the opposite, right? The First Amendment is protecting your right to practice your faith and live your faith.
That's right. Not keep your faith out of the government. And so the idea was the government should not be coming in and imposing your religion or restricting your religion or limiting your religion or your practice thereof or exercise thereof or expression thereof. The wall that was separating them was not the building in which the church is. If anything, it was the building in which the government is.
Keep the government in there and let you live your faith everywhere. The protection was more protecting the church than protecting the government. And I think we've inverted that these days. And we tend to wrongly, even among believers, tend to act as if we can't bring our faith to that square. And I think that's exactly the wrong approach.
Absolutely. I've said it this way for years. That wall of separation of church and state is meant to protect the church from the state and not the state from the church. We could look at quotations from Washington, Franklin, and even Jefferson later on in which Washington says something to the effect of the church or Christians should lend to the government their surest support, meaning they should interface. They should get involved with government.
That leads me to another question. How should the Christian or the church look at this interfacing between they themselves, whether the individual or the family or the church and the government? What should churches do or how should they look at this interfacing between the church and the state?
So I think we could break that into sort of two separate things.
So you could talk about the Christian as an individual who believes and professes Christ. And then you could look at the church as such organizationally. Like what would even this local congregation, its relation to sort of the local government versus the individual? And taking the individual first, I think, again, we have wrongly sort of kept our religion private, even those that sort of go into the political sphere. It's almost like a new revelation today that we're seeing more and more a few politicians willing to cite their faith on the conservative side of the aisle.
Ironically, for years, if you were willing to sort of cite your faith and then do something that really wasn't based on it, you could claim all your Christian principles as long as you then went and did something completely irrelevant to them. But it was much less common and is becoming more common, and I think in a good way, that more lawmakers are willing to say, as a Christian, I believe X, and let's try to implement that. And I think we need to be doing that precisely because we as believers know that God revealed much to us through his scripture, through his son, through the faith, through the church. And so we bring better principles that will lead to better lives to policy than someone who doesn't believe can. And to think that we should abandon that policy making to people who don't have those principles is to assume that the policy will be less good.
And that doesn't mean that they're necessarily evil or that they necessarily always going to pick the wrong thing but to not have the best principles that God the designer and creator of all things and who wants what is best for us that not bringing his principles to bear in that process will lead to better outcomes is unintelligible and confused in and of itself Absolutely.
So some Christians or churches, they look on that interfacing with the stain. You know, we just don't do that.
Some look at it with avoidance and say, that may be for you, but not for us. And then some of them look at it as redemptive, that they are called by God to enter into every sphere of influence with the light of the gospel. And that we can, through our organization at NC Family or through a church or even a Christian family or even an individual can represent Christ in every sphere of influence. And I don't find this anywhere in scripture where Jesus said, go into all the world except for the government and preach and teach the gospel.
So I think it's important for us to look at this interfacing between the church and the government or individual Christians and the government and say, it's redemptive. I'm going into it as I would my neighborhood with the gospel and seek to share the good news of Jesus with as many people as I can. Another thing you mentioned just a moment ago that I think is very interesting is the abandonment.
Some people have just backed away and they've said politics is a dirty business and we should just stay out of that. What do you say to those people? Yeah, I think that's, again, it's abandoning the space, which certainly we don't want to do, But I think getting at it from that angle, you also look at the difference between maybe dirty and messy. Yeah.
And I'm not saying this has to always be referenced this way, but I think it's a helpful distinction.
So when we tend to say it's dirty, we mean it's sort of the seedy underbelly. It's bad. It's sort of sinful. It's tarnished in and of itself. But I think it'd be better to say that it's messy.
Like it is work. It is hard. There are going to be decisions that have to be made that are not spelled out in scripture, like what the speed limit should be in that part of town. But I think, in fact, the fact that it's messy that you're going to have to wrestle with balancing competing principles and how you write the law and the tax code and speed limits and other policy and regulations, balancing principles, that's just life. I mean, we make all those decisions in our own families.
Like, are we going to spend a little more on sports? Are we going to spend a little more on clothes? Are we going to spend, you know, so we're always going to be in life dealing with the sort of complicated balances. But again, to abandon that and leave Christians out of that and let that messy work being done where the competing principles are not Christian virtue and pragmatic restraints, but it's just pragmatic. And whatever else is wrestling is to, again, effectively ensure that it's going to be worse.
Now, is it going to necessarily be entirely upside down? Not necessarily. But leaving out Christian principles as one of the things wrestling in that mess is to make things worse and not better. An overly simplistic statement is the statement that I've heard so many times. I've used it myself.
if you're not at the table, meaning if you're not around the table, then you will be on the table. What's for dinner? Another way I've heard it speaking to the difference between dirty and messy is if you like to eat sausage, then don't go to your local government building because that's where the sausage is made. You don't go to the sausage factory if you really enjoy it. It is a messy process.
There is a lot of moving parts and moving pieces to this. And I think it's important for Christians as we enter into that sphere to understand that the way government operates today, even though it is a tool designed by God to govern and rule the people, it is still governed by, and God uses people to do that. You and I have talked a lot about how messy things get when people are involved. It would be nice if we lived in a world where everything was perfect, but we don't because there are people like me involved. One more thought as we start to wrap up today is this idea you can't legislate morality, right?
Yeah.
You hear that all the time in different forums. I've had casual debates with coworkers in various places about that. And every legislation is legislating morality. Like you're always going to be measuring what is good, what is better, what is bad. And you're going to ideally attempt to incentivize the good, disincentivize or punish the bad.
You're going to tax what you want less of and reward what you want more of. And all of These are moral questions. The fact that it's illegal to commit murder is a moral judgment that life is valuable and you shouldn't take it. It always was. Theft is a moral question.
Should you be allowed to keep your property or should it be whoever can take it can have it That is a moral question And we all agree that it is not whoever can take it can have it but it doesn stop being a moral question It is always a moral question and it should be guided by higher divine law natural law, and God's principles. And again, when we abandon that space, we start depending on a more democratic approach. And I mean that in the bad way, which is that it just becomes, well, if we agree that it's bad, then it's bad. We're not even attempting anymore to say it is objectively bad. Whereas Christians bring to the table, no, we know from God's word and God's son and God's teaching in our faith that this is objectively bad.
And therefore we can legislate it. And it's not just the mob rule. Right. But it's actually appealing to something higher. One of the things we've noticed in the last decade or so is the constant yield to consensus.
Well, consensus tells us this. And when principles are involved, the principles are true, whether consensus agrees or not. And that goes back to the notion of a democracy. And if the majority or even the plurality agrees that this is the way that we should go, as long as the consensus of whatever we're talking about says that that's where. And the answer is sometimes we must stand firmly, boldly, resolutely on the foundational principles of God's word and say, me and God are still in the majority so long as I'm on his side.
And I think that's important for Christians who sometimes in states where they really struggle to get Christian principles effectuated in the halls of government. I think of some of our friends across the country who really struggle with this. And we're blessed by God to live in a state where, for the most part, we see positive traction on these issues. But I think it's important for us to understand that we must stand on principle regardless of whether or not the majority of the plurality, the consensus goes with us or not. I also think it's worth noting one of John Adams' quotes, speaking to the Massachusetts militia in 1789 when speaking to this new constitution or the prospect of a new constitution says something along the lines of the constitution that we've given you is meant for a moral people and is entirely inadequate to the governance of any other.
What do you take from that quote? And how can we apply that to where we are today? Yeah, I think that's a great quote and very applicable to one of our struggles today, which is that that form of governance, the form of governance that we ideally live under, is designed to protect our freedoms, right? We appealed in the first episode to the Declaration of Independence, the rights that we inalienably have, and how the government's role is to protect those liberties.
Well, in that form of government where the individual citizen is pursuing the good, the government's job is to create the space so that we are free to pursue the good. And then the government doesn't have to rein us in because it's to let us go do good. But when we as the citizens become more and more the people pursuing the evil and incited by it and tempted by it and chasing after it, then now the government needs to rein that in. And so the government now struggles with protecting our freedom to do good and restricting our desire and pursuit of the evil. And we need the government to do that because we're fallen and we do that.
But the more that the citizenry stop pursuing the good in and of ourselves, the more we end up needing the government to rein us in. Absolutely. I would also argue, as we started this episode, that Christians, churches, men and women of courage, conviction and faith must rise to the occasion, step up to the plate and defend things just like life that we hold so sacred and dear, especially here at North Carolina Family, but so many of us across the state of North Carolina do. Thank you for that. That's a great word to end on.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of The Truths We Hold, where we take a deeper dive into the core values and principles that make our work here at NC Family possible. We hope that you've enjoyed this episode. God bless each and every one of you. Thank you for listening to Family Policy Matters. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review.
To learn more about NC Family and the work we do to promote and preserve faith and family in North Carolina, visit our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. And check us out on social media at NC Family Policy. Thanks, and may God bless you and your family.
