Legislation, Persuasion, or Both?

Today's Reading

Read Proverbs 31:8-9: "Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy."

Then read Romans 13:3-4: "For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer."

Reflection

Proverbs 31 issues a clear command: speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Few beings in the world are more voiceless than the unborn. The imperative to advocate, to defend, to open our mouths on their behalf is difficult to escape if we take the biblical text seriously. But how we open our mouths — through law, through persuasion, through cultural change, or through all three — is a question that has divided Christians for decades.

Romans 13 establishes that government has a God-given role in restraining evil and protecting the vulnerable. The sword is given to the state not as an instrument of tyranny but as a tool of justice. This is why we have laws against murder, child abuse, and exploitation. Law exists, in part, to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Tim Keller argued that law is not merely about maximizing freedom: "The function of law is not to provide the maximum amount of freedom but to set up the proper conditions for human flourishing." This challenges the libertarian instinct to keep law out of moral questions. Some moral questions — particularly those involving the powerless — demand legal engagement. We do not leave child abuse to private conscience. We legislate.

At the same time, law has profound limitations. Prohibition proved that you cannot legislate behavior change without cultural consensus. The most restrictive abortion laws in history have not eliminated abortion; they have driven it underground. And in a pluralistic democracy, imposing moral convictions through law without winning hearts and minds can generate backlash that ultimately harms the cause it was meant to serve.

Bonhoeffer understood both the necessity and the limits of political action. He was willing to join a conspiracy against Hitler — the most extreme form of political engagement imaginable — because he believed that silence in the face of the destruction of innocent life was itself complicity. Yet he also knew that the defeat of Nazism would not, by itself, change the hearts that had made Nazism possible.

The honest answer is that both legislation and persuasion are necessary, and neither is sufficient alone. Laws that protect unborn life are justified by the same logic that justifies laws against any form of violence against the vulnerable. But laws without a culture of life — without churches that support women, communities that welcome children, and economies that make parenthood viable — are walls without foundations.

Christians on the political right need to hear this: fighting for legal restrictions on abortion while voting against programs that support mothers and children is a contradiction that the watching world sees clearly. Christians on the political left need to hear this: treating the legal protection of unborn life as an imposition of religion, while supporting legal protections for every other vulnerable group, is a contradiction of equal magnitude.

Going Deeper

What would a both/and approach look like in your community? Imagine a church that simultaneously advocates for legal protections for the unborn, funds crisis pregnancy centers, provides housing and childcare for single mothers, lobbies for paid family leave, and mentors young fathers. Would such a church be more or less credible than one that only does one of these things?