I left this comment on Mark Tooley’s article in Juicy Ecumenism. I was poking around the website because it is a publication of the Institute of Religion and Democracy, and I was curious about how they held these two, in my view contradictory, things together. Here I explain why they can’t ultimately coexists harmoniously. The gist of Tooley’s approach seems to be that it would be wrong (both in light of the constitution and Christian teaching) to impose Christianity on the nation using the power of the government, and so he is critical of Christian nationalism. On the other hand, though, most Christians do think that their morals ought to influence society. Tooley suggests that this is appropriate, “Christian individuals and institutions ‘work through democratic means to shape the will of the majority,’ while observing the rights and respecting the consciences of others, which itself is a profoundly Christian concept.” (this quote is from a related post) This is a kinder, gentler approach. However, it is still total in its aims. And (here’s the biggest problem) to the extent that society becomes increasingly Christian by non-coercive means, it will inevitably become coercive as well. The end result is, I think, about the same as far as non-adherents are concerned. If 70% of the population is Christian, no Buddhist or atheist will get elected to office. How is that, in practice, any different than having a law in place that requires creedal adherence in order to get into office? The kinder, gentler, goal is still at bottom totalitarian because Christians have a totalitarian view of truth. God is always right, and they know what he says. Nothing trumps that! Here’s an example right out of the headlines: Christians don’t think abortion is morally acceptable, based on their religious principles. And so now, due to the preponderance of Christians in certain states of the union, non-believers in those states are quite literally forced to comply with Christian morals, even if they don’t believe in God: they can’t have an abortion. Talk of minority rights is just talk when the majority is convinced that their moral scruples are divinely inspired. Where is “respecting the consciences of others” in the abortion laws of Alabama, for example? Where is this “profoundly Christian concept” now? Crickets. How quickly this goes sideways! The other thing that abortion law illustrates is that Christians are bound to think that their moral principles, when encoded into law, are nothing more than completely obvious common sense, transcending, in their mind, their religious motivations. In fact, they are nothing of the sort. They are merely religious principles imposed on the general population. The problem here is not one Christian strategy or another, but the entire idea that anyone has access to the mind of a God, and that his purported thoughts ought serve as guides for communal living. (The above is an edited version of the comment I left at Juicy Ecumenism.)