Well, joining us now on booktv is dr. Norman horn. He is one of the coauthors of this book, faith seeking freedom, libertarian christian answers to tough questions. And hes also a founder of the liberty and christian institute, which is what the Libertarian Christian Institute mission is ultimately to try to convince other christians of libertarian ideas. And so we do this by making the christian case for a free society and equipping our people to help defend them. And so we do that by creating all sorts of different types of media, things like our book here in order to try and spread the word. Is there a natural antagonism between libertarianism, christianity . Yeah, well, to some extent we have seen that in the last 30 to 40 years of American History in particular. And what we what we experience these days. But i dont think its because theres a fundamental incompatibility. Its more bit more like that. The loudest voices in the room arent always the christians. And so its important to realize, in fact and wherever you go amongst libertarian people, about 50 of them are christian. And so often the problems that they have are not that theyre afraid of trying to make that connection. They just dont really know how all the time. So what we do is we try to apply sound theological principles and sound economic principles in basically trying to teach people that there is this concordant effect between libertarian theory and the way we think about politics and ethics fm a Christian Point of view. And to quote from your book, to give allegiance to jesus christ is to strip roe of its power and author. Yeah. When in the early in the early days of christianity, one of the mantras of early christians was jesus is lord. And the corollary to that is caesar is not. And so thats why we talk about stripping rome of its power and authority. It is, instead of giving this allegiance, the roman emperor, who claim to be god himself, or at least the son of a god, we give our allegiance only to jesus, the one true son of god. Are you as a libertarian, fearful that americans have given too much authority to our government. Well, i wouldnt say im exactly fearful of it. I know that is the case. And in fact, i think thats kind of part of the problem that we encounter as well. Libertarians itself that many in many respects are fellow patriots among us. Look to d. C. , they look to their state governments. They look at all of their the people in power as to for direction and for and for solving their problems. But this is not the way of the christian. In the end, we realize that in order to solve problems, we should not rely on the initiation of force to do it. We use persuasion. We use our own devices to do this. We solve our own problems. We dont need to endow a large government with grandiose powers that require the use of force to execute them so that we start from that. From that point of view, at the very beginning, norman horn and as a libertarian, how do you reconcile while jesus saying render unto caesar what is caesars . Well, we talk about that in the book a little bit. One of the things we have to realize about the render to caesar passage is even what is on that coin that that is presented to jesus when he when he asked for, hey, will you give me give me one of these denarius . And what is the whos who is sign is on it and whose inscription. Well, that actually is is caesar himself. And on that coin, if you were part of, you know, part of that day, you would know that on that coin itself, it would say this is caesar, son of god. Ironically enough, thats kind of like bringing a graven image into temple where that event occurred. And so when we say when jesus says render to caesar, what is caesars . And god, what is gods . Hes kind of calling out the pharisees during that during that time for doing something that is fundamentally against what what jesus all about, which is to give honor and glory to god. So in a sense, what is caesars . Basically nothing. What is gods everything . And so in a sense, you know, the the typical interpreted portion that well rendered to caesar means you just need to pay your taxes is a bit short sighted when we think about it. Theres something more going on there. We try to bring that forward in the book and we do that also in many of our publications elsewhere as well and in faith seeking freedom, you spend some time with jesus in the desert. Why . Well, because, in fact, what would youre referring to are the temptations of jesus. And i think that thats really an important its a crucially important point in jesuss life that we that we draw a lot of inspiration from. But the big part of that is when is when the devil whos tempting him is brings him up to the high place and shows him the kingdoms of the earth and says, if only you will bow down and worship me, then i will give them all to you. Now, whats significant about that is not that that jesus says, oh, well, you know, this dont belong to you anyway. I control this. This is all mine. This is all my stuff. Anyway, in fact, what jesus does is he grants him that that is exactly what he could do, that that satan could in fact give him the of the earth if he submitted to the satan at that point. So, in effect, whats really important to realize is that what jesus is what jesus is saying is that the powers that be, they belong to satan. So this is where we draw a lot of inspiration as libertarians from. If we understand that the institutionalization of force is fundamentally against god and it is from the beginning to the end and we even see this in the past, in the in the way in which jesus interacts satan himself on, the in the desert. Thats something that we should take great heed of. And i dont think that a lot of christians kind of close attention to that text in that way. So its something that i think we kind of do uniquely. Its i shouldnt even say uniquely. Its not like this is a new theology its not like this is something that we invented this this goes back eons and christian history. Its just weve forgotten about it. So in a sense, is any earthly ruler illegitimate on some level . Yes. We believe that basically whenever somebody tries to institutionalize force and claim upon the claim upon a territory, a monopoly of force, that that is illegitimate, that the only way that we are that we are permitted scripturally to interact with each other is not on the basis of the use of force, but on the basis of persuasion and peaceful interaction. So those who dont do that, thats illegitimate. So the nonaggression pact, the nape that you talk about. Yeah. Yeah. So. Exactly. So we kind of analogize this that its kind of the other half of the coin of the golden rule where jesus says, you know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The other half of that could be called the nonaggression principle. Dont do to others what you dont want to you. Whats theological background . So i come from the stone campbell restoration tradition, specifically the churches of christ, which is. Well, its a its a smaller denomination, but but one that kind of formed in the United States of america. Its a congregationalist tradition. Doesnt have a strong like kind of presbytery or hierarchy. There. Very local control and basic theological principles, basic beliefs in the bible and what we you know, what you kind of typify as standard kind of american christianity on some level. But we do have some unique very, very interesting and unique components to us, for instance, that we have historically been antiwar. We dont have its not quite that way anymore. But historically, thats where we were. And even in the 19th century and theres some really interesting parts of our of our Church History that i even to rehabilitate on some level through work at lci our prophets and markets anathema to christians they shouldnt be. Some people think it is because they they take things like that when in the in the epistles of paul where he says that the love of money is root of all kinds of evil and they kind of take that in twisted in various ways. Thinking that well, if youre making a profit youre taking advantage of somebody else. But the reality is that thats kind of a misunderstanding of the nature of money and of economics. And so we understand really, you know, we we we understand that its important to engage in peaceful interaction and indirect trade is a really, really important component of that. And you cant do that without the use of currency. When is a state necessary if at all, in your view . In my view, its basically not necessary. Anything the government can do, we can do better on our own. Whether its the provision of law services or the provision of security or the provision of health care and food. Theres no fundamental problem with trying to solve these with market mechanisms. Now, put that in christian principles and christian principles that basically means we dont have to initiate force against it, against us in order to feel safe, in order to have legal services, in order to do this stuff, we dont need to to we do not need to sin in order to get a good result. Are there any policies norman horn in the federal system today that are based on christian, in your view . Well, on some level, i suppose you could say that. I mean, there are certainly there are certainly policies that, you know, that protect things like free speech, that protect our ability to protect ourselves. All these things like these things that are part of our kind of american tradition, theyre built into our dna. These are important and principles that point to good things. So its not as if that theres nothing whatsoever that any government has ever done or something to that effect, but rather that when its an institution that is kind of founded in this problematic manner, that there are going to be confounding problems on top of that. Is there a position, a libertarian position on abortion and is it in sync with a christian position on abortion . There is debate amongst libertarians about what it means to be prochoice or prolife. We come down that on that the nonaggression principle means that one ought to be prolife, even though we acknowledge that debate and we have a whole chapter in book on this written by one of primarily by one of my coauthors, kari baldwin, whos done tremendous work in this regard and is well published in the field in this respect. What about immigration . Well, we believe that theres a fundamental right of people to move. We think its important for people to be able to try to improve their lot through moving around and that this has a net benefit economically. And so morally, we dont think that we should be able to prevent them from doing so. So is it important to have some type of restriction at the border . Well, maybe in order to keep out like perhaps that the obvious criminals per se. But we really shouldnt trying to prevent people from doing what they to do and pursuing what their what their best interest is now. Norman horn theres a lot of oh, i guess the word be split between liberal christians, conservative Christians Christian nationalists. Yup. How do you address that . Oh, man. Well, in some level, we to you know, we might even say the fact that, you know, that liberal christians have some good things to say and conservative christians have some good things to say. We want to be neither one of those . We just want to be christians. So we want to look for those bedrock principles that we can all kind of agree on. And we understand as as flowing from scripture. And but the christian nationalist part of it actually is kind of an aberration. Its kind of a bit of a its got an unused war history to it, what is now called Christian Nationalism used to kind of honestly sort of look like what we would call dynamic reconstruction ism, which is a weird set of terms that a lot of probably dont know. But that goes back really into the seventies and eighties and nineties. And a lot of this stuff kind of has its genesis there. We dont really get into that so much in the book but we do have a cool session coming up here at freedom fest later on today on should christians, in your view, be politically active . Should they vote, etc. , on some level to be christian is to have a political activity. Because in to say jesus is lord, you are saying caesar is not. So i think that some level there is a base political activity that we have. However, i dont necessarily think that it is the moral obligation of every christian to just get out there and and so on. In fact, i dont think that thats necessarily even a good thing at times, but ultimately our allegiance is to christ. So when we find that whatever way that we can to promote Human Flourishing in this regard, we should try to pursue that. So long as it doesnt do so long as it doesnt require us to initiate force against others. Norman horn lets close with this quote from your book. Its relation to galatians. Libertarianism doesnt artificially bind christians morally where christ has left them free. Yeah, its what we like to say a lot. Libertarian christian institute. Is that we are seeking after the concordant values that we see as both consistently christian and consistently with the natural law flowing from that that too can determine that those principles that we find selfevident that all men are created equal and are pursuing and so on. Those things are, what we seek after and we seek to promote and there is nothing about christianity that that says thats wrong. Faith seeking freedom is the name of the book libertarian and christian answers to tough questions. Norman horn doug kerry baldwin. Clarke and the foreword by lawrence r
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