Rev. Dr. Gregory Seltz is the Executive Director of the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C. He discusses with host Matt Popovits the latest happenings in our nation’s politics and the potential impact on religious liberties.
Transcript
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To engaging truth. I'm your host, Matt Popovits. And with me on the program today is Dr. Gregory Seltz. He's the executive director for the Lutheran center for religious Liberty in Washington, DC. He's he's been on our program before. It's always great to have him. He gives us great insight, Dr. Seltz welcome to engaging truth.
Yeah, man, it's great to be here with you and, uh, great to be with your listeners again.
So, Dr. Seltz, you are in Washington, DC, you are advocating on behalf of, of people, of faith in particular, in issues of religious Liberty. Uh you're there you're right in the thick of it. What's the, what's the tone? What's the temperature what's going on in DC these days?
Well, like we said before the election, um, and we talked about this pretty much, um, for the last year we said, vote, vote the platforms, not the people, because there were certain platform issues that were troubling to us as a church. Uh, and I don't care what your politics are at this point. I'm just wanting to protect the church's public voice and the public square and, and, and make sure that, uh, we don't weaponize, uh, conscience differences by a legislation and that's what's happening now. And so honestly, post-election, it's a little more ominous for the church because the democratic platform for good, or for real has targeted certain fundamental things that the church, uh, stands for, like religious Liberty sanctity of life, and they've targeted these things. And that means the church is kind of in the crosshairs, uh, legislatively too. And so, you know, I'm just telling people, you know, we, we talked about what, what, what it happen if we didn't protect those first amendment rights. Now we're kind of living on the other side of, well, what could happen if those rights can't protect us? And that's where we are right now.
So religious Liberty itself is kind of a broad term. Um, right. What does that mean for us potentially practically for, for people of faith, uh, on a day to day level, what are some of the, the, the things we actually do that, that might get, um, uh, more difficult for us to do should certain reg legislation be passed or proposed and passed?
Well, first of all, you know, and, and again, to answer those kind of questions, you've gotta ask, well, how do Christians, how do especially Lutheran Christians see these things, or what I call two kingdom Christians, we differentiate how God works in the world. God works in the world through his moral law and that moral laws on the consciousness of every people. And so, you know, when it comes to things like religion in the public square or faith in the public square, we differentiate those discussions. Um, all laws are moral. So there's this sense where I'm, you know, people have this idea that Christians shouldn't have a voice in the public square, cuz religion, shouldn't be there. We're saying our faith shouldn't be legislated by the, by the government. Absolutely. But the moral teachings of the Bible, which are on the conscience of every person is foundational to all good policy.
So, so it's not really a matter of if legislation will assert a certain morality, but, but which morality is gonna be asserted because we all legislation is inherent moral. It's just a question of which worldviews winning the day.
at happened in our culture in:That is a really destructive kind of methodology for a society. And those are kind of the people that are weaponizing politics, uh, against, especially the Christian worldview, but the moral worldview, any, any worldview that has says a no to our sexual Libert, any worldview that says that there's uniqueness in the male, female relationship, anything that says no to Liberty is not under attack, uh, legislatively and that's, what's different legislatively. Uh, whereas back in the sixties, it was living that live. You know, you got your way of thinking. I got my way of thinking. Let's get along.
So you mentioned, um, sexuality, uh, gender, um, are, are there other issues of, of, of conscience for, for a Christian that are, that are being weaponized or perhaps are soon to be weaponized in the current political
Climate? Well, again, um, the, the fundamental ones, you know, we kind, we think of the sanctity of life, uh, and, and that has always been the issue since, especially roll V Wade, but people need to understand why we're fighting for that. We're fighting for that because we believe all human beings have inherent dignity. And so therefore sanctity of life is that I'm not gonna suddenly think of your life as something that is not worth protecting. We're fighting that thing. And, and then that's been going on for a while, but it's the, the sexual orientation, gender identity and, and marriage stuff is the new thing. And the reason why it's the new thing is because it's radically transforming the dialogue. And so obviously we we've, we're all broken centers. We all struggle with these kinds of issues and we don't think we're any better than anybody else.
And so when we meet with people that do disagree with us on these things, we have a, a real heart for them, as we hope they have a heart for us. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a core group of people who saying we're gonna weaponize, uh, our view and say, your view is now hate speech and illegal mm-hmm
Yeah. And so our, and again, I always tell people I'm not in DC to politicize our church and we don't need more politics, honestly. Um, our view is that good politics can't save us, but bad politics can destroy us. So we're just trying for good politics, but we don't think it's gonna solve the big problems. We're not the ones that are legislating people out of the public square, but we've gotta fight for our, our right to be in there. Or basically our voice will be lost to the culture in which we live. That would be, I think that'd be tragic.
hifted from, you know, in, in:nd I saw this already back in:Uh, and I already saw the writing on the wall that there, this agenda was coming down and it was gonna sweep away, all kinds of protections and things like that. And so all I'm saying to people is, look, we've gotta be willing to get, we want our first amendment freedoms and protections, but then we have a first amendment responsibility to actually try to bless our culture with God's moral ordering of the world. And so we're not fighting for these things just to protect ourselves. We do have to get in there and say, here's why I think it's, it's better for all of us. And so, you know, we're, you can already see if we don't defend, God's more ordering of the worldview. This world will start to categorize it as hate speech, and it'll, it'll send it out. Uh, it'll put it out on the curb to be picked up by the garbage man, uh, societally. And you saw that with the oral Roberts thing. I think you also saw that. I think there's some Christian kids now that are suing their, their university, uh, because of their restrictive views of, of marriage and restrictive views. I just saw this the other day, you know, that these were kids at a particular university suing their Christian university because they don't think it's inclusive enough. And you're like, okay, this is where this is going.
Yeah. You make an interesting point that we, we believe as, as Christians, that that's our, uh, our view of the, of the world with, with a, with a biblically derived scripturally derived moral center is, is not just a way it's not just good for us, um, right. And protecting it. It's not just about protecting us, but it's really about believing what's, what's good for our neighbor. It's, it's a, it's a way of loving our neighbor, cuz we believe that what we believe is that if we, if we follow God's ordering of the universe, that it just human flourishing in general, right?
Yeah. It's not gonna save us because, uh, there's another problem. That's bigger than just, you know, but it's gonna, it will bless us. And so I'll give you an example. I mean, right now at issue in our culture is this notion that you have God given inalienable rights, unalienable rights. Well, if there, so if Darwin actually plants God, and there is no God, and it starts all secularity, I'm telling you, you have no unalienable rights either
And, and so there's this notion that the Christian worldview, I even say this, Matt, I say this notion of differentiation of church and state. I say, that's a Christian worldview. He goes, what are you talking about? I say, well, every other worldview subjugates the church to the state or subjugates the ch state to the church. But this notion of church and state as both legitimate authorities, which is an American ideal is a Christian worldview. And so if people say separation to church and state, I go, well, I didn't know you were a Christian
So what does an engaged citizen of faith, um, need to be, uh, aware of and, uh, uh, looking at right now in, in, in terms of what's happening in Washington, what, what do we need to keep our eyes on?
Well, like I said, there's a, I call it secular puritanism. I think there is a secular puritanism in our culture. I do think there is a religion that's trying to supplant Christianity and culture. It just happens to be secular and it has to be puritanical. And, um, they don't believe in forgiveness. They believe in, you know, it's kinda like in the old days, when you think of the witch trials, we just, we just get rid of evil. Of course, that evil eventually gets rid of us too, but I think that's, what's going on and I hate to say it, but it's actually codifying itself into public policy. And so one of the great geniuses of the founding fathers is they said, we do believe that free Christian. Uh, well, we were mostly Christian at that time, but free, religiously motivated self-directed citizens was the key to, to Liberty and binding the government was key to that.
Um, that's being overturned legislatively. And so I, I think Christians, if they want to get involved, that's the first and foremost, just push back and say to go government, you don't belong in some of these places. You usually mess it up. I don't think the government should be defining, uh, what a healthy marriage is. I, I think that was crazy that they got that involved in that discussion. Um, uh, in fact, let me tell you the Lutheran view of, of gay marriage, just to let you know, is, is not whether we want the government to, uh, codify our view of marriage or the, or the homosexual view of marriage is what's the role of government in marriage. And so governments don't grant rights. They only take rights away. So why would the government take the rights away of a man and a woman and make them sign a contract called marriage?
Well, it's because that's the only union that can have a citizen. If it goes to sleep tonight, they can go to sleep tonight and have a citizen tomorrow and the government doesn't wanna raise your kids. That's the only reason government should be involved in marriage. If they can't leave their nefarious hands out of that, then they should get out of the whole business. Well, the last thing I want them doing is defining what a good marriage is for everybody. Because if you knew some of these DC people, you wouldn't want them doing anything like that. So you, you see the difference there, there's a lot of activists on the other side of the, at that equation who go, Hey, we like your, we like that Lutheran view of what's the government's role, even if we disagree with your view of marriage. And I think we can fight for those kind of things politically. Uh, and you'd be surprised at who might come on our side. In the meantime,
There's been a lot of conversation in the last few weeks, uh, about something called the equality act, right? For, for those who maybe aren't familiar with the equality act, um, what it was proposing, um, whether or not it's, uh, the likelihood of whether or not it's gonna pass mm-hmm
Could you, could you fill us in a bit? Well, see, and the hard part about DC is the euphemisms. Um, the equality act presumes something, and then it se it solves something. And I think it actually creates a whole new discrimination. It really is an intolerance of traditional Christianity act. And it's elevating the notion of sexual orientation and gender identity, uh, uh, which was it's, it's kind of redefining the word sex in the equality act. I mean, in the, um, um, in the civil rights legislation in 64. So technically what it said in the civil rights legislation was you cannot discrim versus a man versus a woman. You cannot discriminate by sex. Well, they're changing that word to mean sexual orientation and gender identity, which is a very fluid thing. Um, once the B fundamental biology that binds us all is kind of abrogated. Now we're in this, what do you mean all this stuff?
And then anybody who says, well, there's only two sexes, or there's only one, uh, there's marriages between a man and a woman for life. They, by definition now are violating this, this new equality act and this new fairness act. And so it's gonna actually take away a, uh, first amendment protections for churches, schools, healthcare organizations. It's gonna actually redefine us in terms of our public accommodation and culture. And it's gonna open up the church to litigation. Uh, when the church is basically saying we've had this teaching, which is physiologically, uh, defensible, sociologically, defensible, logically defensible we've had, and theologically defensible. Now suddenly it's ruled as hate speech, or it's ruled as speech that can be, uh, we can Sue against that. So this equality act is, is elevating this sexual orientation, gender identity to a fundamentally protected class. And my struggle with that is it's, it's a malleable thing.
So you could be, you could define yourself one way, one day. You could define yourself another way, another way. And somehow the church has to acquiesce to these, these, uh, these moving definitions. And you, you and I both know this, that when you're a, a pastor, you used to say to people, living together is just not right. You know, it's gonna destroy your ability to be healthy in marriage and intimacy and all these things. And it's gonna separate you from your healthy relationship to God. Well, suddenly that kind of speech is gonna be redefined as hate speech because it actually makes people uncomfortable with their, their, their lifestyle. Well, the Bible speaks the truth to all of us in our life styles. And we're I just saying, let us be free to actually do that, speak that truth in love and in humility and in graciousness and mercy, the equality act will actually take away the protections to do that. Sadly, what do you think the, the likelihood of equality
Act as it, as it stands now? Uh, is it getting
Passed? If, if it was 51 49 in the Senate, it would already be logged. Hmm. See, we tried to tell people this before the election, we said the election was about platforms, not people. And this was fundamental to the platform of the democratic party. It was actually targeting the church. And, and we, we talked about the Virginia values act. That's actually functioning now in the state of Virginia, cuz they've taken over the whole legislature and the, and the governorship. And so they put into the law and here's, here's an example of what that could mean. Little boy comes to school, you have a dress code. He puts on a dress, he comes to school and you say, oh, sorry, honey, you gotta go home and put on your shorts. Cuz boys don't wear dresses to, to school. Well, you'll have a lawyer that afternoon. Who's gonna bring charges against the school for violating the Virginia values act.
And it's a hundred thousand dollars per incident to those who bring the, the litigation and unlimited per incident. And all we're saying is, well, wait a minute. We, we differentiate boys and girls because that's a good thing. It's a good thing to protect our girls. It's a great thing to, to co equality, but differentiation, all that will be gone. And if it starts and all these discussions of, of who's in charge of raising the kids, all that will be gone. You know? So it's, it's literally jumping in and putting the state in charge of everything, including the raising of our kids, the teaching of our kids and all of these things. And to see that a hundred thousand per incident and unlimited damages, it wouldn't take too many, um, lawsuits and, and our schools would be out of business. And that's so that's the Virginia valley act is happening right now. And we're actually fighting that in court, uh, with Alliance defending freedom. And we're trying to push back on that and show that it's unconstitutional, but they've enacted that law and there's already litigation coming down the pipe. Well, the equality act will make that a federal law.
What are some, what are some hopeful things that you're seeing right now in DC
And politics? I think people of all swipes and including liberals and, uh, conservatives and everybody in between saying, wait a minute, this is not the culture. This is not how politics cannot save us. We're seeing that there's moderate Democrats, by the way, there's 20 million pro-life Democrats too. They're just not on their platform. We're trying to help that along too. So there are people saying, wait a minute, we, we, we thought it was just about making sure everybody was nice to each other and fair to each other. And then they're finding out, no, it's putting certain worldviews out of business, keeping 'em outta the public square. So people are waking up to it. Unfortunately we gave that methodol. We gave it power because they own the, the con they own the, uh, Congress, they own, uh, senates 50 50, but they have the, the, the vote and George Biden and Joe Biden has already said, he'll sign it in the laws.
So even some Democrats are saying, hold on, hold on. We didn't vote for that. Cuz we didn't know that was really what it was. So there's hope in that. And I guess the hopeful thing for me is I think people really do want to be good neighbors to each other. I, I I've served in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas. I've served in tough places. I've served in places that are diverse and multicultural. I've never lived in any community that didn't want to try to be good neighbors to each other there. And so I think some people are starting to say, what is what's Washington doing here? They, this is not their role in our life. And I think some of that's starting to, to take root in the political, uh, realm too, but politicians like to be in charge and they don't really sometimes even care about the way we want these things to go. And I think that's a real issue in our culture today.
Yeah. And, and this is perhaps a, a bit cynical of a view, but politicians that seem have a vested interest in keeping us angry at one another and keeping us ized because it, it ultimately keeps us deeply entrenched in their respective camps and thus granting them, uh, that much more kind of power and authority over our lives. You know, if we think life and death politics is a matter of ultimate security and ultimate life and death. And that the guy who was on the other side politically through me is, is, uh, is, is as demonized as the politicians say, they say, say they are then that I'm granting my politicians, my political leaders, uh, authority over life and death. Right?
Well, and you know, one of I learned this the hard way Matt, I learned it in urban ministry because my goal was to always empower my neighborhood. And so it was help rebuild the family, help get good education in the neighborhood and hope that they came to faith in Jesus and saw why we did it. You know? But even if that didn't happen, I wanna empower the neighborhood. And then you find out that the alderman doesn't want the same thing you do. Yeah. Cause if they're empowered, then the alderman is not needed. And that's when he started this, see what politics was like, then suddenly your preschool didn't get certified the way it was supposed to. And there's a few more things you had to go through. That's where I learned this. And so I would say this right now, politically, you've got two parties.
You've got the democratic party that really does believe that government can solve your problems. Then you got the Republicans who say, no, we believe in you. But when the time comes to act on that, they don't always do it. You know? So you've got two parties who still really, aren't willing to say that the citizens can take care of themselves in most of these issues and that's troubling, but the church should be about empowering the people it serves. And so if politics gets in the way of that, then we gotta push back on that and, and do what's best for our constituents and hope and pray that they see that we want them to come to know Jesus. That's the main reason why we do all the stuff that we do. So that's what I've learned about politics. That's why I said, good politics cannot save us, but bad politics can destroy us. So don't look to politics to solve the big issues of life.
So it's always a fascinating conversation when we chat with you. Where can people go to, to find out more about the work that you do and the Lutheran center for religious
Liberty? Well, if you go to our website, L C RL, freedom.org, uh, we've got all kinds of resources. In fact, I just put up one of our Liberty alerts. We have a, a weekly, uh, podcast that goes up. We have a devotion that comes on Monday and an op-ed that comes up on Friday every week. All kinds of resources are mom and pop papers about these issues. I love that 500 words or less talking about these kind of issues that you can really digest, but LCR L freedom.org. Uh, just check us out cuz it's all free. It's all there for you.
Dr. Gregory, thank you for being on the program. Thank you for, uh, the wisdom and the insight you bring to all the things that are going on in Washington and uh, all the things related to religious Liberty. Thanks for being a guest on a pleasure. Truth.
Pleasure. Thanks, Matt. Great to be with
You. Great to have you and, and thank you to our listener. Thanks for tuning in. Uh, we hope that you'll join us right here. Same place, same time next week.
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