10/24/2025
Many cite “separation of church and state” as a reason to reject laws informed by Christian moral principles. But it never meant that religiously informed moral reasoning should be excluded from the public square. It meant that the state should not establish or control the church.
My deeper concern, however, is that people often use the phrase “separation of church and state” to argue that secularism is the only legitimate basis for legislation. The problem is that secularism offers no coherent vision of what human flourishing actually is. Without an objective understanding of what humans are for, it cannot provide stable guidance for how to promote genuine human good. In practice, this means that moral decisions are made according to shifting cultural preferences rather than enduring truths.
The reality is that there are countless ways to damage human flourishing and far fewer consistent ways to nurture it. Any system without clear moral direction will, over time, drift toward harm. Secularism’s supposed “moral neutrality” doesn’t prevent evil, it unintentionally enables it.
Christianity, by contrast, provides a coherent and time-tested moral framework grounded in the intrinsic worth of every person as made in the image of God. Its vision of flourishing (rooted in properly ordered love, justice, mercy, and truth) has historically produced some of the deepest moral and cultural goods in human history. Secularism, lacking that foundation, has too often eroded the very virtues it inherited from Christianity.
That’s why Christians must be able to articulate and defend Christian principles in the public arena. We must participate in government. We have, after all, a framework that not only defines true human flourishing but shows us how to achieve it.
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