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So, if you can make a case for something outside of a strictly biblical argument, then you would support a law on that case?

Yes. We are in a pluralistic society. It is a secular society, but it is not an atheistic society. An atheistic society means that you can't use any biblical arguments at all. A secular society means that you can use biblical arguments, but you also have to have a compelling reason for the state to impose those values on people that don't believe the Bible. You can't just randomly say, since it's in the Bible, then it applies to everybody. Christ doesn't even do that. He lets people choose whether or not they respond to the wooing of his grace (I'm an Arminian).

Where do you stand on the Supreme Court nominations?

The NAE does not have an official position, but I've had correspondence with several of the senators that have written to my personal e-mail address, saying how do you want to manage this Supreme Court thing? At first, I was going to give them my list of what I would really like to see, a strict constructionist, somebody that has a much higher view of the Constitution than Sandra Day O'Connor did. But then I decided that maybe the NAE doesn't need to be saying that. Maybe what we need to be saying is that we want order. We want the hearings and the debate and the vote. I said, we don't want a filibuster, and we don't want disrespect. We want the Senate to rise to its highest dignity level and ask the appropriate questions and then let the senators vote.

Where is the NAE on environmental issues?

We've released a document, "For the Health of the Nation," that talks about environmental issues. And we hold that, along with several other items, as very important issues for evangelicals. Our position on environmentalism is that God created the heavens and the earth, we are human beings made in the image and likeness of God, and we have domination, control over the earth right now. That makes us responsible for it.

We think there needs to be a strong environmental voice that believes that human beings are superior to animals and that human beings are not animals. We are the image and likeness of God on the earth. We are his representatives. We're salt and light. We are the church. So because of it, we can eat cows and chickens, and we can swat mosquitoes with no guilt. But we also have a responsibility to endangered species and to the forests and to the oceans to make sure that we are stewards of the earth.

So, how have the environmentalist groups taken to what you say?

We don't respond to them. They've all tried to reach us and communicate with us, but we are so diametrically opposed to some of the traditional environmentalist philosophies that we don't return their phone calls, because we think this should be an evangelical Christian issue. We think the environmental solutions should come from our philosophy of human responsibility and dignity, because we're in the image and likeness of God, rather than we're a fellow animal in the animal kingdom.

We think that our approach is a pro-business, pro-free market approach to environmental problems, where their approach is typically anti-business and anti-free market. Their solutions will never work. It's going to require our approach to improve some of our environmental problems. I think our strategy is better. Our strategy is more thoughtful.

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November (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49