By Davis Carlton

Seriously, you had to ask?

This is the argument being advanced by a Jewish synagogue in Florida in claiming religious based exemptions from a state law restricting abortion access. The legal journal Verdict reports, “The Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor, a Jewish synagogue in Florida, has sued the state saying that Florida’s new restrictive abortion laws violate their religious faith. As a matter of faith, they reject the notion that life begins at conception and further believe that the pregnant person’s health and life matter.” The article continues, “To be sure, the Satanic Temple has filed similar cases in particularly restrictive states over the last decade, but mainstream religions have been sitting on the sidelines as restrictions in a number of states have become increasingly inconsistent with their faiths.”

Recently in an MSNBC interview, The Nation correspondent Elie Mystal framed the overturning of Roe v. Wade with any limitation of abortion that will result as the imposition of Christian morality on the nation’s many non-Christians. “If you go back to the Dobbs decision, people need to understand that the premise that life begins at conception is an overtly religious belief. It is a Christian fundamentalist belief that is not shared by many people of the Jewish faith. It is not shared by many people of the Islamic faith. Or the Hindu, Buddhist, or other faiths that make up our country.”

The recent Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade has proven to be very useful in demonstrating the shortcomings of the political outlook that most Christians take for granted. Christians have been taught to simply accept classical liberal attitudes about the freedom of religion as though it is a tenet of Christianity itself. A good example of this is the liberal evangelical pop commentator Russell Moore. Moore argues that there ought to be no government restraint on the free practice of any religion whatsoever.

Moore seems content to insure that Southern Baptist churches can be built in areas with prevailing liberal attitudes, but what about public policies that force Southern Baptists or other conservative Christians to violate their conscience? Is religious liberty simply a matter of gathering for prayer and worship on a particular day of the week? Such flimsy definitions make little sense to a religion like Islam which holds that all nations in the world must become explicitly Muslim in their political and social orders. Simply building mosques where Islamic prayers are recited doesn’t satisfy what a true Muslim would consider freedom to practice his religion to its fullest extent. It doesn’t satisfy true Christians, either. The freedom to practice a religion can only be realized in a society in which public policies are explicitly determined by that religion.

The question of what constitutes murder cannot be answered without religious and theological presuppositions coming into play. Murder is the unjust taking of human life and the severity of murder derives from the fact that humans are created in the image and likeness of God. There is simply no way to establish that abortion is murder without appealing to these Christian beliefs. If the doctrine of absolute religious freedom advocated by Moore and others is to be applied to the question of abortion, then allowing abortion on the grounds of religious freedom is the inevitable result. The doctrine of secularism stipulates that any religious belief should be received by society as equally valid, so there is no reason that society should not recognize the “right” of abortion claimed by Satanic Jewish synagogues like the one mentioned above.

Of course, secularism itself is a worldview with its own set of fundamental religious presuppositions. Why should we be forced to have secularist principles foisted upon us as a society? Why do “Christians” like Russell Moore consider principles like “religious freedom” to be something that all people can be forced to accept, but not policies that are based in actual Christian morality? All of this is to point out the obvious: that far too many Christians are more secularist than Christian in their worldview whether they realize it or not.

This issue will serve as a good litmus test in the future about the true priorities of Christian leaders. Are Christians more committed to imposing the pseudo-Christian morality of “muh religious freedumb” or actual Christian morality? Will Christians realize that all government legislation must be rooted in some form of religiously based morality and secularism is no less religious than any other mainline religion? Sadly, I think that many will follow the false teachings of popular “Christian” leaders like Russell Moore who essentially agrees with Satanists when it comes to issues like categorical opposition to white racial interests and any expression of specifically Christian beliefs in the public square. This is a moment that will reveal what god professed Christians truly serve. Many will genuflect before the altar of absolute religious freedom, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!