Sermon Illustrations
Why Christians Needn't Keep Moral Views to Themselves
Writing in U.S. News & World Report, John Leo had this to say in defense of voting based upon religious values:
I am struggling to understand the "don't impose your values" argument. According to this popular belief, it is wrong, and perhaps dangerous, to vote your moral convictions unless everybody else already shares them. Of course if everybody already shared them, no imposition would be necessary. Nobody ever explains exactly what constitutes an offense in voting one's values, but the complaints appear to be aimed almost solely at conservative Christians, who are viewed as divisive when they try to "force their religious opinions on us." But as UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh writes, "That's what most lawmaking is—trying to turn one's opinions on moral or pragmatic subjects into law."
Those who think Christians should keep their moral views to themselves, it seems to me, are logically bound to deplore many praiseworthy causes, including the abolition movement, which was mostly the work of the evangelical churches courageously applying Christian ideas of equality to the entrenched institution of slavery. The slave owners, by the way, frequently used "don't impose your values" arguments, contending that whether they owned blacks or not was a personal and private decision and therefore nobody else's business.