Responding To Sproul — the younger — On The Mosque Issue

R. C. Sproul, the younger, has written a piece on the building of the Mosques at ground Zero. I do not share his reasoning. First I offer Jr.’s article and then I offer my response.

With Liberty and Justice for All

“It’s never easy to think clearly and dispassionately on issues that we are passionate about. September 11, 2001 is indeed a day that will live in infamy. Nearly a decade later the wounds remain raw, and understandably so. A wise man, however, is one who submits to the Word of God even when his emotions or desires lead in another direction. Let’s take, then, a careful look at our question.

First, what do we mean by “right?” One simple way to answer the question is, “No. It is never right for any group promoting a false religion to build houses of worship anywhere.” Islam is false, a pack of lies, and was so before September 11. Mosques are not centers of worship for the true and living God. They should not exist. It’s not right for Muslims to build mosques anywhere.

But that’s not really the issue here. Many of those opposed to this particular mosque in this particular spot are quite content with mosques being built in other places. They have no interest in forbidding all false houses of worship from being built. The actual question of the day seems to be something more like this- should the state forbid Muslims from building a mosque on this particular site? Suddenly the issue isn’t so easy. I appreciate the pain such a building might cause. I understand the uproar. But I have to ask, which is the greater evil? A mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero, or a state determining which religions can built what buildings on what pieces of land?

In terms of the use of force by the state, they have no business keeping any landowner from putting any building on his or her property. If the Muslims own this piece of land, and wish to build a mosque there, it is not just wrong but wicked for anyone to use the power of the state to stop them. It is in fact a violation ofthe 8th commandment. It is a form of theft to limit by force of law how someone might use his or her own property. It is also a violation of the fourth amendment to the Constitution.

I believe that Allah is not God, and that Mohammed was a liar. I believe Muslims are dead in their trespasses and sins, and cannot even see the kingdom of heaven. I believe their religion is demonic from top to bottom. And I believe every Muslim bears the image of God. As a Christian that must mean that Muslims are due justice from the state. Their property rights should be protected by the state, and affirmed by all right thinking people.

The greatest thing we can do to slow the building of mosques in this spot, and everywhere is by proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ who is Lord over all. Let them build their mosques, and we will build disciples. Let them build their mosques and we will serve Him as He builds His church. Let us love our enemies and love liberty, and justice, for all.”

I think the overall difference between R. C. Sproul and I on this issue is the role of the State. He obviously thinks that it is more wicked for a State to decide which religious institutions are built than it is for a pagan institution to be built. I, on the other hand, would contend that the State, under the authority of Christ, is duty bound not to let pagan houses of idolatry to flourish where they rule. Freedom is not defined by the State allowing all forms of idolatry to flourish and justice is not defined by the State allowing religions of injustice to gain a foothold where they hold their charge under sovereign God.

Now, R. C., using a Libertarian argument, suggests that if the Muslims own the land then they can do with it what they please and we ought not to expect the State to impinge upon their freedom to do with the land what they please.

However, I do not think R. C.’s premise is correct. It is often the case that the State should not allow people who own land to do immoral things with that land. For example, should a god-fearing State have the right / duty to keep an Abortionist who owns the land from building an abortuary? The answer is clearly yes. Ownership of land does not give the right to perpetuate murder on that private property.

So, the State certainly does have that duty/right to deny owners of land from doing God forbidden things on that land. All because a person owns a piece of land that does not give them the right to do wicked things with that land. A righteous state, in keeping with its responsibilities to the first table would not allow pagans to build houses of worship on the land the pagan owns simply because they own that land.

Now, some will howl that the State doesn’t prevent Muslims from building in other places so why should the State stop them from building here.

That is a fair question.

The fault however is not in the State not allowing Muslims to build their pagan shrine at ground zero. The fault is in the State allowing other pagan shrines to be built elsewhere. All because they get it wrong elsewhere in forbidding idolatry that does not make it wrong for them to get it right here in forbidding idolatry.

In my humble estimation the argument offered here is an example of Libertarianism run amok.

Most people are not aware that it is Muslim belief that when they build a Mosque that Land upon which the Mosque is built is theirs for perpetuity. Thus the building of a Mosque is an act of Dominion by Muslims. The West is committing civilization-cide by allowing Muslims or Jews to build Mosques or Temples. And R. C. suggests that disciples of Christ shouldn’t oppose this?

There is no liberty pursued in embracing any Muslim action. There is no justice in supporting the building of this Mosque. Indeed, quite to the contrary all support for the building of this Mosque is support for slavery and injustice as that is what Islam brings everywhere it spreads.

By all means … make disciples and part of what it means to be a disciple of Christ is to stand against the advance of both Islam and the pagan State.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

21 thoughts on “Responding To Sproul — the younger — On The Mosque Issue”

  1. Ah yes, the crown rights of the liberterian over his private property. Of course, when the liberterian property owner is really leasing the property from God, how could Sproul think it evil for God to employ his deacon of justice charged with protecting & upholding God’s liturgy to enforce his law against public idolators? This one wreaks of a weak moment in the midst of a bad day. Liberterianism will do that to you.

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  2. I wonder if RC Jr. would answer differently if a mosque was being built down the street from him. Or if Satan worshipers were building a temple on that NYC site. Or one next to his home. Clearly, the defense of liberal abstractions about the inviolable nature of property rights can be quite silly.

    To illustrate, would he have condemned the Old Testament kings who tore down the “high places”? That was surely a property rights issue, but the Bible praises the actions of those kings for tearing down the temples of false religions!

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  3. I can see both sides of this argument (rare for me, I know). I originally read R.C.’s piece as an indictment against the knee-jerk reaction I’m seeing around me by people who want “The gummint,” to stop THIS mosque from being built, but don’t care about any others being built anywhere else.

    The “sacredization,” – to make up a really cool word – of the site of the 9-11 attacks is wrong, whether it’s turning it into a “secular” memorial or an Islamic one.

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  4. Frankly I don’t think God hating muslims ought to be allowed to hold residence in this country let alone own land.

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  5. Bret, you got it dead right. JM also. When in the commonwealth of Israel foreigners are given all protection under the law and must abide by that law. Though the US is far from christendom, if we were properly ministering Christs kingdom our law as reflected in Christs law would not permit worship sites of false religion. Property rights yes, but only as defined by the only one given all power and authority to define. Gray

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  6. Sadly you are both right. The proposal for a Mosque is a loose/loose situation. Extending freedom of religion to Muslims is to endanger your own way of life and perhaps life itself. It is a classic Saul Alinsky-ism: using the enemy’s high standards against them when you have none of your own.

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  7. What I see in all this is competing idolaters and God-haters vying for supremacy. On the one hand, we have mammon worshippers decrying the destruction of their temple (the World Trade Center), and then railing on competing idolaters (Islam) who are building a temple to their false god close to the site which their followers destroyed. In the meantime, the worst idolaters of all (the messianic State) pit each group against the other to distract them from going after them in their continuing construction of the all-encompassing empire of secular humanism.
    May our LORD enable us to overcome all of them by His blood, and the word of our testimony, loving not our lives even unto the death, that He may be pleased to reap His elect from among them.

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  8. Anyone care to guess which non-libertarian said this?

    “There is no moral case for zoning laws, no economic case, and surely no biblical case.

    Let anyone build anything he wants, wherever he can afford to build it, unless that which is built is inherently immoral. Geography does not determine morality.

    The threat to society is not a topless bar. The threat is the tax-funded school next to it. If it’s topless bars vs. public schools, let’s legalize the bars and shut down the schools.

    Either all mosques should be made illegal tomorrow or none. Let’s not pussy-foot around here. The rule of law is at stake here. Without the rule of law, we move into tyranny.

    No more government guns in the bellies of land owners. That is liberty.”

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  9. Alex,

    I can’t wait to hear the answer.

    Although I must say that I love this line …

    “The threat to society is not a topless bar. The threat is the tax-funded school next to it. If it’s topless bars vs. public schools, let’s legalize the bars and shut down the schools.”

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  10. Something I wrote elsewhere:

    Christian theology has a basic respect for government authority, which stems from the larger respect for God’s authority over government itself. Although a Christian is not bound to obey laws that thwart God’s l…aw, he is bound to obey the State in matters where he might disagree but do not lead him into sin. If Christians, in the name of Christ, bombed an abortion clinic next to where a church had already been established, and the church then wanted to built a new sanctuary or monument that caused the majority of citizens offense, it would be Biblically sound to counsel the church leadership to consider building on a new site if the government offered it as a token of wanting to respect both the citizens and the religious worshipers. Christianity respects God-ordained authority.

    When private citizens or groups flaunt their freedoms against the State it is not an expression of religious liberty, nor is it an expression of how great our nation is to provide citizens such freedoms. Rather, it shows a culture that despises authority and uses the law to serve self-interest rather than promote the good of all. It may be within the ostensible rights of any individual or group to disdain the will of their fellow men to exert their freedoms of private property, but it certainly proves no fidelity to other, equally valuable ideals and responsibilities, such as the one to treat one’s neighbor as you would wish to be treated. The issue is clearly more complex than a simple desire to worship freely where one has the right to do so.

    —

    Also, it would be foolish to think that these Muslim’s have any less of a long-term memory than most Near-Eastern peoples. I would not be surprised if the Muslims in that church aren’t looking at their effort as a fitting response to the destruction of their mosques during the Crusades.

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  13. Darryl,

    It is interesting that you and Sproul, the younger, are agreed on this point of desired pluralism.

    Our established religion should be (and was actually thought to have been) Christianity. That would include ana-baptist expressions of Christianity. The individual States would decide how to support or not support the established religion of Christianity in their respective states. Laboratory of Republicanism and all that.

    This post title is “A Christocratic Nation w/o An Established Church”

    “In my judgment, the OT teaches that Israel ought to have been (and Israel was) a Yahwistic nation w/ a disestablished church, that is, every jurisdiction as a matter of principle should have been under the law of Jehovah. Moreover, the NT teaches that the United States (and every nation) ought to be a Christian nation with a disestablished church and w/ every jurisdiction as a matter of principle under the law of Jehovah – Jesus. This biblical and normative – by law, but not yet present in actual fact – and jurisdictional assumption … is crucial to the remainder of my response.

    Space permits only one illustration to defend this assumption. There was jurisdictional and institutional separation of church and state in the OT, as is illustrated by priest (Levi through Aaron) and temple in contrast to king (Judah through David) and palace. The church even then was disestablished (not state-sponsored), as is illustrated by the tithe. The tithe was not a tax (not state coerced), but a contribution (voluntary, by church persuasion). Voluntarism (as in America), rather than establishmentarianism (as in tax-financed state-church of Germany for example), is the biblical pattern.

    2.) The biblical concept of jurisdiction (literally, ‘the speaking of the law’ by each sphere by its own sphere) is grounded in the sovereignty-responsibility perspective of biblical covenantalism. God determines what His law is for each created sphere. God initiates a covenant with all men, a bond or relationship initiated by (either common or redemptive) grace and circumcised by law. Man should respond personally and corporately as a dependent creature, not as if he were the autonomous Creator.

    Biblically, God’s covenants divide into two categories: the covenant of creation (e.g., Jer. 33:20, 25) and the covenants of redemption (e.g., Eph. 2:12, Heb. 13:20). The covenant of creation pertains to all men and all nonecclesiastical spheres as regulative law (moral and civil). The covenants of redemption in succession have pertained to believers and the ecclesiastical sphere (the church) as restorative law (ceremonial) – God’s retrieval system of sinners…. This vital distinction helps us not to secularize the church or sacralize the world.

    The Church is given the sword of the Spirit and of mercy (restoration) and the state is given the sword of steel and of justice (restitution); both are God’s ministers, respectively, of persuasion and coercion. All of the jurisdictions, whether of the self (e.g., controlling anger), the church (e.g., confessing anger), the state (punishing acts of anger), or the family, business, etc., are multiple authorities, separate yet interdependent, directly (not hierarchically) subordinate to God’s authority. A state-church, and a church-state, join together what God, for our protection and liberty , has put asunder.

    3.) I believe the Founders of America largely understood and accepted items 1 and 2 as a vital part of Christianity. They did not break, as Brown claims, with Christianity in 1787, officially or unofficially. They formally disestablished the church at the federal level. The Novus Ordo Seclorum was the New Order of the Ages, not because it was secular ‘utopianism,’ but because it was the first time a Christian nation had been founded with a disestablished church. This is not neutral but nonecclesiastical; it is not secular but nonsectarian.

    The Founders deliberately chose symbols of authority that were clearly nonecclesiastical. A cross is a marvelously redemptive and ecclesiastical. This symbol is very inappropriate, therefore, for the nonredemptive and nonecclesiastical civil sphere of coercion. But the fasces, with its rods of the scourger and its axe of the headsman, is universally understood under the covenant of creation as a symbol of corporal punishment. All other universal symbols were understood in Christian, and not anti-Christian, sense.

    4.) We undoubtedly agree that ’separation of church and state’ has in our day, unfortunately, come to mean separation of Christianity and state, or, worse, separation of God and state, or, even worse still, separation of morality and state. But, in my view, the separation should be ‘total’ in the institutional-jurisdictional sense…. Establishmentarianism is no more proper on the state level than it is on the federal.

    5.) In my judgment, a Christian America should have not government schools, since action, rather than thought, is the only lawful sphere of jurisdiction given by God to the state. Education belongs to the family sphere, and, therefore all schools should be privately owned…. The current system of mandatory funding for the state school system (euphemistically called the ‘public’ school system) makes it a state religion, even makes it a humanistic state church; such a system, therefore, violates both the First Amendment and the biblical principles mentioned above.”

    Joseph N. Kickasola

    God & Politics – pg. 152-154

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  14. Darryl,

    However, upon reconsideration, if I were to ban the anabaptists it would have the added advantage of getting the R2kT adherents in one fell swoop.

    I’m sure that to sheep, other sheep look very different but to me all sheep look the same.

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  15. Bret, I was just thinking that if this had been the 11th century, or the 15th, or just about any other century, this wouldn’t be an issue. There wouldn’t be any mosques allowed, unless the Moors or Turks had won that right by conquest. RC Jr. should take this into account.

    Should we also support the abstract doctrine of property rights when it means defending a religion that continues to persecute our brothers in Christ in the nations in which it dominates?

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  17. There was a time that I actually believed that the USA was a Christian nation since that was what I was told. But now that I am older and wiser, I see that it is just another kingdom of the world. Jesus did not come to set up any nation here in this world as a theocracy. His Kingdom is not of this world and we also are citizens of it if we belong to Him. We have to face the fact that we live in a secular goverment that does not believe in the God of the Bible by and large. Satan is still in control of the kingdoms of this world until the Lord returns to set up His Kingdom. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. Through mighty prayer and love of our neighbor, even of our enemies and those who disagree with us, we can win great victories. So let us take our eyes off this world and focus on our citizenship that we possess from heaven.

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  19. This is directed to Robert regarding his comment that Satan still rules the kingdoms of this world. My question to him is, did not Christ exhort His disciples to be of good cheer, for He has overcome the world (John 16:33)? Did He not also say that all power and authority has been given unto Him in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18)? What about John 12:31, which Christ said: “Now is the judgment of this world: now shalt the prince of this world be cast out.”

    Where in the above statements do we find any notion of Satan ruling the kingdoms of the world? If Christ has not overcome the world, the He is a liar and not to be believed.

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  20. R.C.,

    I prefer the conclusion that it is axiomatic that any time Calvin, Beza, and Knox agree on a subject matter the subject matter being considered among them must be true.

    But be of good cheer, perhaps, in 500 years Sproul — the younger, North, and Hart may be in the new Reformed pantheon.

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  21. Jim,

    Thanks for answering Robert. I was giving someone else time to do so, hopeful that some one might rise to the occasion.

    Robert, you’ve got to quite drinking that Dispensationalism hooch. That stuff is made with paint thinner and will kill you dead.

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