What Is Religiously-Informed Public Policy?

Let me begin with a line from Richard John Neuhaus:

All matters of public policy, subject to intense debate, if essential to organizing our shared life, can be debated on the basis of reason.

That is, of course, correct, but we all believe that our faith traditions ought to inform our convictions. But that raises a question: Are our faith traditions disconnected from reason—the bounds of reason that Neuhaus says will be the grounds upon which we debate in the public square?

Are we putting ourselves in a religious ghetto?

I want to argue that religiously informed public policy is not a sectarian imposition.

But neither am I claiming that quoting a Bible verse settles a legislative dispute.

It means that our moral vision is shaped by ultimate convictions, and then translated into public reason for the sake of persuasion, justice, and the common good.

To put it simply: Faith forms conscience. Reason carries the faith-formed conscience into the public square.

My argument is simple: Everyone brings moral convictions into public life. Religious citizens should not be asked to leave theirs behind.

But if we want to persuade our neighbors in a pluralistic society, we must learn to speak in two registers at once — theological and rational. So we must be bilingual in public policy debates.

The Myth of Moral Neutrality

One of the great myths of modern public life is the myth of moral neutrality.

But secular citizens operate from first principles, too.

They appeal to equality, autonomy, dignity, liberty, and harm.

Those are moral concepts. They are not self-interpreting.

They rest on philosophical judgments about what the human person is and what society is for.

So the religious citizen should refuse the false accusation that only he is bringing ultimate beliefs into politics. Everyone is. The real civic task is to argue openly and persuasively about which vision of the human good best serves our shared life.

And this is why the slogan “You cannot legislate morality” is so misleading.

Of course, law legislates morality.

Every law says something about what a society should permit, prohibit, protect, or punish.

The question is not whether law moralizes.

The question is whether it moralizes truthfully and justly.

We should also clear our throats and say that the First Amendment does not mean the state has no moral commitments.

It means the state is not institutionally fused with the church.

A disestablished order still must make judgments about good and evil, justice and injustice, human flourishing and human harm.

How Should Religious Believers Participate?

Not by hiding their convictions.

Not by pretending they have no theological commitments.

And not by speaking as though theology alone, asserted without argument, is sufficient for public persuasion.

We must be bilingual. We should be able to say, without embarrassment: “I believe this because I believe in God, because I believe human beings are made in His image, because I believe moral order is real.”

And they should also be able to say: “Here is why this position is rational, publicly intelligible, and connected to human flourishing and the common good.”

That second step is not a betrayal of faith but an extension of faith into a shared civic vocabulary.

There are always moral commitments that governments must make, and religion will inevitably serve as the major premise for how millions of citizens think about justice, rights, and morality.

But there’s a tension here for people who do not share our religious presuppositions that we must admit.

Matthew Frank observed years ago: “The attribution of a ‘strictly religious’ motivation to a policy view offers an incomplete account of how people actually reason in political life. Beliefs that may be called ‘strictly’ religious or theological typically supply only a major premise for a policy conclusion. The minor premise will usually be supplied by other considerations—of cost, of prudence or practicality, of justice to others, of forbearance toward those same others.”

This raises the need to be bilingual.

Two Examples of Bilingual Argument

In a televised debate over legislation opposing DEI offices in higher education, I made an explicitly theological argument: every individual is made in the image of God, and we ought to treat others as we would want to be treated. Therefore, discrimination is unjust.

But I did not stop there.

I also argued from reason: DEI bureaucracies often do the very thing they claim to remedy. They sort human beings into categories of oppressor and oppressed.

They create ideological litmus tests.

We can see it in practice — antisemitism has raged on elite campuses while Christian students have been penalized for expressing orthodox convictions.

If an office established to eliminate discrimination instead institutionalizes new forms of viewpoint discrimination, it has become part of the problem.

The theological claim gives the deepest reason: human beings bear the image of God. The rational claim shows the public consequence: DEI regimes frequently violate the equal treatment they promise. That is bilingual public engagement.

A second example.

After the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ruling in 2024, I was interviewed on the Vox morning podcast.

I stated plainly that I believe God is the author of life and that every human being bears His image.

But I also made a biological and philosophical case.

I told the hosts: we were all former embryos. The difference between two adults having a conversation and an embryo in cryopreservation is not a difference in kind, but in stage of development and location.

Our development continued; theirs was suspended.

But the nature of the being is the same — human. Therefore, the moral question cannot be settled simply by size, dependency, level of development, or environment.

Do I believe God is the ultimate source of human life’s value?

Yes.

But did I think citing Genesis 1 alone would be the most persuasive form of argument in that setting? No.

That was not cowardice or lack of trust in God’s Word.

That was prudence.

Reasoned argument forces your interlocutor to engage the substance of the claim.

They may reject your theology.

But they cannot so easily wave away a coherent argument about human nature, moral coherence, political justice, and harm.

From Moral Principle to Public Policy

Consider the Sixth Commandment: “You shall not murder.”

Christian moral thought holds that this prohibits unjust killing and commands actions that prosper and protect life.

But here is the point — one need not be a Christian to understand that murder is wrong. Paul writes in Romans 2 that the Gentiles do by nature what the law requires.

Conscience is not the exclusive property of the baptized.

What the Sixth Commandment teaches in its broadest application is a moral principle accessible to practical reason: it is better to live than to be dead; and so, act in ways that cause people to flourish.

But moving from moral principle to public policy requires wisdom.

That is why American law distinguishes first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and manslaughter.

Law is deduced and specified from an underlying moral principle through prudential judgment. Simply declaring “the Sixth Commandment should be law” offers almost no practical guidance. The work of translation is not optional.

Reason is never disconnected from theology. It is theology’s entailment.

Religiously-informed public policy is not irrational policy. Why? Moral reasoning begins with a truthful account of reality and works outward toward public justification.

Conclusion

So what is religiously-informed public policy?

It is public reasoning shaped by theological conviction.

It is translation without surrender of our bedrock convictions.

It is persuasion aimed at the common good.

It requires religious citizens to recover confidence in two truths at once: first, that our theology tells the truth about the world; second, that truth about the world can be known, in meaningful measure, by reason.

If Christianity is true, then the moral claims it makes are not true only for Christians.

They are true for everyone.

They may be known more fully through revelation, but they are not therefore inaccessible to public reason.

Natural law, common grace, conscience, practical wisdom — these are not the surrender of theology to Rawlsian “public reason.”

They are part of how theology expects truth to be publicly legible.

No political order can function without moral judgments. No moral judgments exist without deeper convictions about reality.

And citizens shaped by religious belief have every right — and, I would say, every duty — to bring those convictions into public life.

But they must do so with prudence. With charity. With intelligence. And with bilingual fluency.

Speak as a religious persons.

Argue as a citizen.

Persuade as someone who believes truth is known through revelation and reason.