Dear Editor,
Thanks for the interesting March, 2006 issue. I'd like to respond to two articles. Episcopal bishop Edward S. Little II ("Living with Tares" p69) chooses to stay with his errant denomination, citing as an example Athanasius of Alexandria, who also stayed despite his church's 4th-century drift toward Arianism. But for Athanasius, his church (the Roman Catholic Church) was the only game in town. Where was he going to go? In contrast, Rev. Little has many more conservative and faithful options from which to choose. Why stay and lend support to leaders willingly defying God? A key lesson of the Enlightenment was that individual choice must be protected as a way to minimize the damage of human error and evil. Rev. Little should exercise his choice for his own good, as a witness to others and as a warning message to Episcopal leadership.
Pastor Robert Jeffries ("Grace as a License for Sin" p76) believes we Christians have now swung too far away from legalism and toward license, having "unwittingly taken grace out of the hands of the legalists and delivered it into the hands of the libertarians." I hope he means 'libertinism' and is merely making the common but unfortunate error of conflating these two terms. Libertarianism is a friend (indeed a result) of, not a danger to, Christianity. It is very simply the political philosophy which favors maximum freedom for citizens, consistent with "no harm" done to others. It is upon this idea of government that America was founded, but has been eroding for some time in the face of ever-expanding government. Christians must remember, as America's founders did, that it is only in an atmosphere of freedom and choice that morality has meaning and individuals and communities can most effectively respond to God's will for their lives. In fact, any version of evangelical Christianity that rejects a basically libertarian political approach can be classified as statism and reverts to the tragic error of using physical force in place of voluntary persuasion and love to bring nonbelievers into submission. As always, this approach is illiberal, unjust, immoral and definitely unChristian.
In short, Christians should be non-libertine libertarians!
Steve Sawyer