Imposing Left Morality: Erwin Lutzer Answers John Spong

In today's Chicago Tribune, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, senior pastor of the Moody Church, responds to an essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong ("Political pulpit - The Bible as weapon in the culture war") that appeared in last week's Sunday paper. Spong, singing the well-worn chorus of "separation of church and state," took issue with conservative Christians who, according to him, are seeking to impose their naive, unscholarly (read contrary to the Jesus Seminar) interpretations of Scripture on the general populace. Lutzer notes:

What Spong fails to point out is that the liberal left also seeks to impose its agenda on the rest of us. The three examples he gives--same-sex marriage, abortion and the Terri Schiavo case--all point to a conflict of opinions, and no matter which side one takes, somebody is imposing his morality on someone else.

Concerning the privatization of religion he writes:

When I visited the People's Republic of China in 1984, our tour guide justified the government's policy on religion by arguing for a separation of church and state. She said that religion was free to operate in all of those areas that were not controlled by the state. When we probed more deeply, she said that religion was a private matter and that the people of China were free to be as religious as they wanted to be "within their own minds."

and asks:

....if religion is deemed to be private, who is to say that the day might come when it is completely restricted to houses of worship, eventually to our homes, or even limited to our own minds?"

Read the rest here (free registration required)