Liberty for All

T. Walker Andrew

Description

Christians are often thought of as defending only their own religious interests in the public square. They are viewed as worrying exclusively about the erosion of their freedom to assemble and to follow their convictions, while not seeming as concerned about publicly defending the rights of Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and atheists to do the same.Andrew T. Walker, an emerging Southern Baptist public theologian, argues for a robust Christian ethic of religious liberty that helps the church defend religious freedom for everyone in a pluralistic society. Whether explicitly religious or not, says Walker, every person is striving to make sense of his or her life. The Christian foundations of religious freedom provide a framework for how Christians can navigate deep religious difference in a secular age. As we practice religious liberty for our neighbors, we can find civility and commonality amid disagreement, further the church's engagement in the public square, and become the strongest defenders of religious liberty for all. Foreword by noted Princeton scholar Robert P. George.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 04 mai 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493431151
• Langue: English

Extrait

Cover
Endorsements
“Walker’s splendid book rescues the idea of religious liberty from the culture wars and locates its true home in a place that will take many readers by surprise: the theology of Christianity itself. Elegant and eye-opening, Liberty for All is essential reading for Americans seeking to understand the deepest cultural currents of our time—including those of different creeds, and those with no creed at all.”
— Mary Eberstadt , author of Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics and How the West Really Lost God
“Religious liberty is not, first and foremost, a constitutional right. The great contribution of Walker’s excellent book is to remind us that religious liberty is a doctrine grounded in the Bible—in eschatology, anthropology, and missiology. That means religious liberty’s defense by Christians is an act of biblical obedience, and its observance by governments is a fundamental act of justice. I do not know of a better explanation and defense of the doctrine of religious liberty. Walker’s book deserves a wide hearing and a long life.”
— Paul D. Miller , professor, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
“There may be pragmatic reasons to embrace religious liberty, but Christians need to be satisfied that this is a theologically sound idea. Liberty for All is thus a timely and important work. Walker invites readers to reflect on religious liberty in light of some of the most important Christian doctrines and makes a bold case that honoring religious liberty is not merely consistent with Christian conviction but also its necessary corollary. Christians of all sorts should read this book and digest Walker’s case.”
— David VanDrunen , professor, Westminster Seminary California; author of Politics after Christendom
“Religious liberty has become surprisingly controversial of late. Walker’s excellent book offers Christians a strong, incisive set of theological and scriptural arguments in favor of a robust religious liberty. We would do well to heed his arguments and, even better, put them into practice.”
— Bryan T. McGraw , associate professor, Wheaton College
“Walker shows that the strongest case for religious freedom—including a freedom from confessional political orders—is the Christian case. In Walker’s account, the public square is richly garbed in the free discourse of all faiths, not stripped bare for the sake of a desiccated secularism, and the kingdom of God is advanced in a civic friendship of Christians with fellow citizens. Religious liberty, he shows us, is the essential predicate of our reasoning together about ultimate things in our penultimate time together here.”
— Matthew J. Franck , associate director, James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions; lecturer, Princeton University
“In this welcome and timely resource, Walker has brilliantly articulated a thoroughgoing treatment of religious liberty for our secular and pluralistic context. Seeking to retrieve a tradition for the common good while offering his own understanding of Baptist distinctives related to this important subject, Walker makes a convincing case for religious liberty for everyone. One of the most important books on this subject in recent years, Liberty for All is a must-read, and I heartily recommend it.”
— David S. Dockery , president, International Alliance for Christian Education; distinguished professor, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
“Walker has successfully demonstrated that religious liberty, vindicated by history as good public policy, is also demonstrated by Scripture to be good Christian theology. Liberty for All aids a new generation in recognizing that religious liberty enthrones Christ as King, respects people as his subjects, and promotes the Christian gospel. This book will quickly find a place on the shelves in seminary libraries. May God also bring it to church libraries and home libraries.”
— Bart Barber , senior pastor, First Baptist Church, Farmersville, Texas
“Christian public witness—and human flourishing in general—is inseparable from a full-orbed understanding of religious liberty. In this important book, Walker rightly underscores how high the stakes truly are. As he points out, religious liberty hinges on some of the deepest questions of ethics and worship. Liberty for All will be essential reading for any thoughtful Christian eager to faithfully navigate a pluralistic and increasingly secular public square.”
— Matthew J. Hall , provost, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2021 by Andrew T. Walker
Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.brazospress.com
Ebook edition created 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-3115-1
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016
Some material in chapter 5 is from Andrew T. Walker and Casey Hough, “Toward a Baptist Natural Law Conception of the Common Good,” Southwestern Journal of Theology 63, no. 1 (Fall 2020): 153–74. Used by permission. Portions of chapter 6 are included in Andrew Walker, “The Gospel and the Natural Law,” First Things , December 8, 2020, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/12/the-gospel-and -the-natural-law, and “Holding the Ropes: How Religious Liberty Helps Advance the Gospel,” First Things , February 20, 2014, https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/first thoughts/2014/02/holding-the-ropes. Used by permission. Some material in the conclusion is from Andrew Walker, “Freedom of Religion and the Christian Ethics of the Nation-State,” Providence: A Journal of Christianity & American Foreign Policy , January 11, 2019, https://providencemag.com/2019/01/freedom-of-religion-and-the -christian-ethics-of-the-nation-state/. Used by permission.
The author is represented by the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates, Inc.
Dedication
To my wife, Christian
Epigraph
“A ND I WILL WALK AT L I B E R T Y : F O R I S E E K T H Y PRECEPTS .”
P SALM 119:45 KJV
Contents
Cover i
Endorsements ii
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Dedication v
Epigraph vi
Foreword by Robert P. George ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: You Get to Decide What to Worship, Not Whether to Worship 1
1. Religious Liberty as a Christian Social Ethic 9
Part 1: Eschatology 21
2. The Reign of Jesus Christ and Religious Liberty 23
3. Religious Liberty and Christian Secularism 49
Part 2: Anthropology 79
4. The Imago Dei and Religious Liberty 81
5. That They Should Seek God 111
Part 3: Missiology 143
6. Religious Liberty as Christian Mission 145
7. Moral Ecology and Christian Mission 175
Conclusion: Retrieving a Tradition for the Common Good 213
Epilogue: Liberal Democracy and Religious Liberty 219
Appendix: How Religious Liberty Made Me a Baptist 227
Notes 235
Back Cover 259
Foreword
Robert P. George
ONE OF THE TOWERING FIGURES of contemporary philosophy, Alasdair MacIntyre, has observed that all of us approach moral questions, including questions of justice and political morality, from a perspective—a perspective shaped and, indeed, constituted by a set of background beliefs and understandings. There is no neutral (“Archimedean”) point from which someone can begin inquiry and reflection on such questions. On the contrary, what makes inquiry, reflection, deliberation, analysis, and judgment possible are resources provided by what Professor MacIntyre calls traditions. Some traditions are religious; some are secular; some do not fall neatly into either category. But there is no inquiry, reflection, deliberation, and the like apart from traditions that provide us with ideas, concepts, modes, methods and techniques of inquiry and analysis, analytical tools, and other indispensable resources.
What primarily motivated MacIntyre to make his point about the role and importance of traditions was the claim made by leading figures in modern liberal moral and political philosophy to be operating from a position of neutrality on controversial questions of what makes for, or detracts from, a valuable and morally worthy way of life, and to propose such putative neutrality as the standard for law-making in modern pluralistic democratic societies. The dominant forms of liberal political theory of our time have presented themselves as theories of rights (including rights to basic liberties), rights that can, and indeed can only, be identified by “bracketing” questions of what is (and is not) good—what makes for (or detracts from) a worthy life. MacIntyre and other critics of these forms of liberalism—I myself among them—have denied that this “bracketing” is desirable or even possible.
We critics have argued that leading secular liberal theories of justice, such as the one famously proposed by the late John Rawls, quietly smuggle in ideas about human goods, and the overall human good, in violation of their own strictures, in identifying what the proponents of these theories believe to be genuine rights and defending their conceptions of the specific shape and content of these rights. If we are correct, then, as MacIntyre observes, liberalism of the sort we are here talking about, far from being a neutral or “tradition-independent” standpoint, is a tradition like other traditions, and should be regarded as such. It should neither be excluded from the competition for the allegiance of citizens nor privileged in that competi