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<\/a><\/p>\nWe have been blogging about debates among conservative Christians and political conservatives over the best way forward in these perilous times.\u00a0 What raised these issues for many people was the debate that broke out between the two conservative pundits\u00a0 Sohrab Ahmari and David French.<\/a><\/p>\n Others joined in, advancing the discussion.\u00a0 The Acton Institute offers a useful reading list of the major contributions on both sides,<\/a> with summaries of each article.<\/p>\n Federalist<\/em> contributor, think-tanker, and LCMS missionary Lyman Stone reflects on the debate<\/a>, concluding that neither<\/em> French nor<\/em> Ahmari are offering any practical solutions for the plight of Christians in our increasingly secularist society.\u00a0 French champions religious liberty, but this does nothing for parents whose children are being indoctrinated by an anti-religious school system and entertainment industry.\u00a0 Ahmari would like Christians to exercise power in the society so as to shut down such things as drag queen story hours at public libraries.\u00a0 But how can Christians rule or influence a society that declines to be ruled or influenced?<\/p>\n Stone tries a different tack.\u00a0 What could<\/em> the government do to help support religious institutions within the bounds set by the Constitution?\u00a0 After all, as much research has shown, religion plays a positive role in a healthy society, promoting strong families, moral behavior, greater happiness, a stronger sense of community, and other qualities that contribute to mental health and social well-being.\u00a0 So while the government may not establish a religion, there are, he argues, policies that could be implemented that would help keep religion and traditional moral values in the culture.<\/p>\n His more modest program suggests four specific policies that Christians could work for, that are clearly legal and present no constitutional obstacles, and that would attract the support of non-Christians.\u00a0 Read what he has to say about them.<\/a>\u00a0 I will briefly summarize each one, and then offer my own reflections on them:<\/p>\n (1)\u00a0 Bring Back the Blue Laws.<\/strong>\u00a0 \u201cBanning alcohol sales, or even non-essential retail sales generally, on Sundays,\u201d he says, \u201chas been academically shown<\/a>\u00a0to reduce alcoholism, reduce drunk driving deaths, increase voter participation, and increase church attendance.\u201d\u00a0 Plus, labor organizations and progressives would support such laws because they give service workers time off work.<\/p>\n (2)\u00a0 Remove Marriage Penalties.\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cCurrent federal tax laws and welfare rules punish working-class people for getting married. When two people of modest incomes get married, they can\u00a0easily<\/em>\u00a0lose\u00a0up to half of their total income<\/em>\u00a0because eligibility rules for welfare literally punish marriage.\u201d\u00a0 Furthermore, Stone says, \u201cAcademic research<\/a>\u00a0gives decent\u00a0reasons to believe<\/a>\u00a0that getting married makes people more religious! Worried about the decline in religion?\u00a0Stop taking away working-class peoples\u2019 benefits when they marry each other!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n (3)\u00a0 Support Parents.<\/strong>\u00a0 Birthrates are falling, and this will have many social and economic consequences.\u00a0 Also, says Stone, \u201cIt\u2019s widely known that religious people have more kids: but what is less widely known is that\u00a0having\u00a0kids causes people<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0become<\/a>\u00a0more religious<\/a>\u00a0and more socially conservative<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 What to do to encourage having more children?\u00a0 \u201cProvide a parenting wage! When people have babies,\u00a0give them money<\/em>. We should [do] everything we can to increase fertility rates for all Americans, because when even secular Americans have kids, they become less radically progressive.<\/p>\n (4) Encourage Immigration.<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0I assume he means \u201clegal immigration.\u201d\u00a0 Stone points out that \u201cImmigrants come from a variety of religious backgrounds: but the vast majority are more socially conservative than the median American.\u201d\u00a0 Legal immigrants typically have strong \u201cfamily values,\u201d including adherence to traditional sexual morality, and the global explosion of Christianity means that immigrants can revitalize churches and make Christianity more present in the society.<\/p>\n \u201cMore generally,\u201d Stone writes, \u201cconservatives need to stop espousing ridiculous and unfounded \u2018replacement\u2019 theories of immigration, and start wielding the levers of immigration policy to recruit moral reinforcements. Ethiopians, Nigerians, Indians, and Indonesians are not your political opponents: they are the people who will be tithing to your church if it is to have any future at all.\u201d<\/p>\n First of all, I don\u2019t think the opponents of Christianity care about the research that shows the benefits of religion.\u00a0 They will still classify religion as \u201coppressive.\u201d\u00a0 They will even classify the benefits of religion\u2013such as happier marriages\u2013as being \u201coppressive.\u201d\u00a0 So, to the extent that the secularist elites are in charge, they will oppose even modest policies that might help the cause of religion.\u00a0 And if the secularist elites are to be defeated, that takes us back to the political debate between Ahmari and French.<\/p>\n As for re-instituting blue laws, in our pluralistic context, closing businesses on Sundays cannot fly.\u00a0 Why Sundays?\u00a0 Why not Saturdays for Jews?\u00a0 Why not Fridays for Muslims?\u00a0 Yes, labor unions like a day off.\u00a0 But if employees work 40 hours per week, they get days off anyway, working five days and getting two off.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter which two days those are.\u00a0 But requiring a business to only operate for six days would mean a loss<\/em> of jobs, as not as many employees would be needed to work the available shifts.<\/p>\n More to the point, a number of nations in Europe, as well as Australia (which I have come to know best), have become highly secularist, but they cling to the remaining cultural trappings of Christianity.\u00a0 That includes Sunday closing laws!\u00a0\u00a0This is much to the annoyance of American tourists and expatriates who need to buy something on a Sunday, but closing businesses on Sunday seems to have done little to reverse the patterns of secularization.<\/p>\n The same is true for paying couples to have children.\u00a0 Australia does this.\u00a0 But, again, it hasn\u2019t seemed to have done much for the cause of religion.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure of the impact on the birth rate.\u00a0 There may well be other social benefits.\u00a0 When we were in Australia visiting zoos and parks and other sights, the places were full of mothers pushing baby carriages and herding toddlers.\u00a0 More so, it seemed to me, than would be usual in America.\u00a0 I was told that there are so many social benefits for parents, including single mothers, that moms don\u2019t have<\/em> to work, and so can spend their time raising their children.\u00a0 As opposed to the U.S., which requires low-income mothers to work before receiving welfare benefits, so that their children are raised by grandparents, schools, gangs, or the children just have to raise themselves.\u00a0 This brings us to Mr. Stone\u2019s policy of eliminating marriage penalties, which certainly should be done.<\/p>\n As for what he says about immigrants, he may have a point.\u00a0 Certainly, in Europe we are seeing some of these effects.\u00a0 Muslims oppose homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and, unlike Christians, they generally get a pass from the left.\u00a0 Also, in Europe, many churches that had been all but abandoned are now filled with Christian immigrants and with former Muslims who have converted to Christianity.\u00a0 And these Christians are conservative theologically, countering the theological liberalism that prevails in the state churches.<\/p>\n What do you think?\u00a0 How else could the state support religion in a constitutionally appropriate way?\u00a0 Or would it be better for the church to not look to the government at all for either help or support, but rather to look to God alone to build and defend His church?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Photo:\u00a0 \u201cChurch and State\u201d by\u00a0Raul Henrique [CC BY 3.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0)] via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We have been blogging about debates among conservative Christians and political conservatives over the best way forward in these perilous times.\u00a0 What raised these issues for many people was the debate that broke out between the two conservative pundits\u00a0 Sohrab Ahmari and David French. Others joined in, advancing the discussion.\u00a0 The Acton Institute offers a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":44373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,16,19,26,36,42],"tags":[8727,477,8718,3753,1071,8730],"class_list":["post-44199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church","category-culture","category-family","category-government","category-law","category-politics","category-social-science","tag-blue-laws","tag-church-and-state","tag-french-ahmari-controversy","tag-global-christianity","tag-immigration","tag-pro-family-laws"],"yoast_head":"\n