Why Exactly Should We Oppose Blasphemy Laws?

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This past week, Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, a Christian pastor in Iraq who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy, was acquitted and released after being imprisoned for nearly three years.

In the wake of this wonderful news, Russell Moore asked an interesting question in a blog post the other day: Why exactly should Christians oppose blasphemy laws. At first thought it would seem the answer is self evident: We should oppose them so that we have the freedom to worship God according to the Bible. But Moore states that we should be against all blasphemy laws, even those which favor Christians.

Fundamentally, this is because blasphemy laws and other uses of state power to enforce religious belief or worship are themselves a repudiation of the beliefs themselves. A religion that needs state power to enforce obedience to its beliefs is a religion that has lost confidence in the power of its Deity.

Christians should fight for the liberty of Muslims in America and around the world to be Muslims, to worship in mosques and to freely seek to persuade others that the Koran is a true revelation of God. This isn’t because we believe in Islamic claims but precisely because we don’t. If we really believe the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, we don’t need bureaucrats to herd people into cowering before it.

The gospel is big enough to fight for itself. And the gospel fights not with the invincible sword of Caesar but with the invisible sword of the Spirit. When we seek to freely persuade our neighbors, and not to coerce them, we are confessing that the Spirit of God is mighty enough to convict of sin, to pull down strongholds and fortresses of the mind and the conscience.

Click here to read Moore's entire post.