Why Churches Speak Out

Moral law is not just "religious" but is necessary for any kind of just society

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ST. LOUIS, July 4, 2000--"Beliefs about abortion"--or euthanasia, or homosexuality, or just about any other moral issue--"depend on your religion," many are saying today. "No one has the right to impose his or her own personal religion onto anyone else. Because of the separation of church and state, religious people have no right to try to legislate their morality."

It is true that exercising political power is not supposed to be the business of the church. We Lutherans, for example, have always stressed that the church's purpose is spiritual and have questioned church bodies that confuse a political agenda, whether from the left or from the right, with the proclamation of the Gospel. The very notion of the separation of church and state has been traced to the Lutheran doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, which clearly distinguishes the responsibilities God has given to the church from those He has given to the state.

And yet, a number of church bodies (including my own, The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod) are active in the pro-life movement, have been filing friend-of-the-court briefs on family- related issues, and speak out in their conventions and from their pulpits about the moral decay of our society.

Actually, the reason our church takes the stands that it does is because of our understanding of the separation of church and state.

Some 150 years ago, thousands of confessional Lutherans--that is, those who believed that the Reformation confessions of faith were still valid--emigrated from Germany to Australia, South America and especially to the United States. They were fleeing the state church, which, in many provinces, was forcing Lutherans to change their theologies to accommodate a more generic "Enlightenment" sort of Protestantism. Pastors who refused to go along with this imposed-from-above theology were often imprisoned.

In the 20th century, the weakness of the state church in Germany became even more evident. Having compromised away the transcendent truths of Scripture, and having become ever-more accommodating to the dominant culture, the state church was helpless to prevent itself from being co-opted and controlled by the Nazis. Confessional Lutherans, though, along with other Christians constituting the so-called "confessing" movement, opposed the Nazis and their idolatrous ideology, their flouting of all morality, their brutal euthanasia program, and their horrible persecution of the Jews. Many confessing Lutherans went underground, many were arrested, and many died in concentration camps.

So we know what can happen when the church sells out to the state, and when the state usurps the authority of God. But while the church and the state are two separate realms, God rules them both: the church, through the Gospel given in Word and Sacraments, creating faith in people's hearts; and the state through His moral law and His providential care. Even those who reject God are given their "daily bread" through the natural and social laws of His creation and the vocations of human beings--believers or not--whom He equips to serve their neighbors.

Thus the moral law is not just "religious"; it is necessary for any kind of just society. Unless the state is bound by a higher moral law, it becomes a tyranny.

Abortion is wrong not just because of some "religious" doctrine, but because the protection of human life--whether "wanted" or "unwanted"--is at the essence of any just society. Our constitution recognizes the right to life as prior to any other human rights. A democratic society will be judged not by how it defends the lives of the strong and powerful, but how it defends and protects those among us that are the most helpless and defenseless: the unborn, the sick or the elderly.

Both the church and the state must support strong families: the church, because it is in marriage that the miracle of new life is engendered; the state, because the family is the foundational unit of every culture.

Today in the popular mind, sex has been divorced from its biological, social and religious purpose: the engendering of new life. With this mindset, sex need not have anything to do with marriage. Pregnancy--which sex is designed to make happen--becomes an unwanted side-effect, with "the product of conception" becoming something to be disposed of through abortion.

For both the church and state, marriage is not just a matter of sex, or of romantic love, as such, but rather the coming together of a man and a woman as one unit to have children and to care for them.

It is impossible for either the church or state to "re-invent" the family--such as by sanctioning homosexual marriages. Although Vermont has given legal status to same-sex unions, the state has no real stake in sexual attachments that do not engender children. The Milwaukee Synod of another Lutheran denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, recently approved the blessing of same-sex partnerships--this despite the fact that, strictly speaking, it is impossible for a church to bless what God forbids.

Ironically, though, while morality is indeed for the secular realm, morality is not what God's spiritual kingdom is all about. The message inside the walls of the church is not morality at all, but rather forgiveness for those who have broken God's moral law, as we all have. The Gospel that the church conveys is the good news that God came down from heaven in Jesus Christ, who took upon Himself the sins of the whole world and assumed their punishment by dying on the Cross. When we are united with Him by faith, our moral failures, our sins, are forgiven, Christ's goodness is counted as our own, and in His resurrection from the dead, we too can have new life.

This good news is for those who have had abortions; it is for homosexuals; it is for everyone who, in large or small ways, has violated God's Law, which includes the whole human race. When people hear God's Word, when they hear the pastor's words of absolution, when they are cleansed by the waters of Baptism and fed by Christ's body and blood, they are given His forgiveness and granted the promise of everlasting life.

The church must proclaim God's moral law to the world, against all fashion, pressure and opposition. And, having proclaimed the moral law of God, the church reaches out boldly with the good news of Jesus Christ, inviting all into the church, which is a haven of peace and forgiveness.