Religious Liberty at Davos
- David Lane
- Jan 6
- 4 min read
Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick delivered last week an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The heart of his remarks was religious liberty; not as a side issue, but as a core American principle: a foundational freedom and a primary driver of prosperity, freedom, and economic growth.
The Lt. Governor conveyed the clear message that religious liberty is central to why America became a beacon of liberty to the world, not an accessory to it. WATCH:
Patrick’s defense of religious liberty as both a human and civic right brings to mind historian William Federer’s succinct observation that if the Church’s most important task is winning people to Christ, then preserving the freedom to do so is necessarily of equal importance. It is precisely here that contemporary American Christendom has lost its footing.
Religious liberty was treated as assumed rather than guarded and protected, resulting in culture being ceded to secularism, not by enforcement, but by neglect. Pastors were explicitly and implicitly taught that civic engagement was a distraction from spiritual faithfulness, despite Scripture’s warning that authority does not disappear but simply is transferred when the righteous withdraw. [Proverbs 29:2]
The hour now demands both atonement for abdication and restoration of valiance. Pastors ought to understand that safeguarding the freedom to proclaim the gospel is not a political distraction, but a Biblical obligation owed to the next generation. That is what makes the present apathy and naïveté of American Christendom so bewildering. Over the last 150 years, the Church has steadily relinquished the reins of government to secularism, forgetting that ‘being apolitical’ is itself a political stance, and one that invariably cedes culture to others.
This did not begin in the pews. Much of the church’s current apathy in the public square can be traced to the seminaries training its pastors. Over decades, theological formation quietly turned toward withdrawal, teaching disengagement as wisdom and silence as faithfulness.
As theologian Peter J. Leithart has observed, modern academic theology is often shaped by scholars who have never faced political struggles anymore serious than annual departmental budget battles. Formed inside institutions insulated from civic consequence, such theology detaches faith from law, power, and public responsibility.
The result is not neutrality, but abdication. While pastors engage in shepherding souls, secularists shape cities and communities, leaving the Church perplexed by outcomes it long since had given up on willingly.
The consequences are now unmistakable: public education discipled by secular activists, courts molded by secular ideologies, and state legislatures, city councils, school boards, county commissions, and local culture formed in the absence of Biblical wisdom or Scriptural restraint. Apathy was not accidental. It was taught.
Once the Church decided that public life should be someone else’s problem, it did not stop there. American Christendom lazily delegated entire Biblical responsibilities to the State, frequently without ever admitting what was being relinquished. The question is not whether the Church lost influence, but what it voluntarily handed over besides care for the poor.
First among them was education, the guidance of the young. Scripture assigns the responsibility regarding the transmission of truth, wisdom, and moral order unmistakably to parents and God’s people [Deuteronomy 6; Proverbs 1-4]. Yet the Church meekly yielded the schools, curricula, moral standards, and sexual ethics to the State.
The result was inevitable. The State began indoctrinating children, while parents and pastors were left reacting downstream. Whoever educates governs the future. Having vacated the classroom, the Church therefore should not be surprised by the misguided doctrines now taught there. When the Church retreated from public life, the State did not become neutral, it became formative.
The American Renewal Project is not asking pastors to take over government. It is calling them to resume the responsibilities Scripture never sanctioned them to abandon. What must be retrieved is the fortitude to understand that faithfulness is never confined to the sanctuary, that silence is never neutral, and that the ekklesia was never meant to be a spectator to history, but a steward of it.
The prophets did not speak up because they enjoyed confrontation; they did so because silence would have been disobedience. Jeremiah did not wait until the walls were demolished to raise his voice; he warned Judah while repentance was still possible. Nehemiah did not convene a symposium to analyze Jerusalem’s decline; he wept, prayed, rose up, and rebuilt what had been shattered, while others learned to live comfortably among the ruins.
Scripture never treats retreat as prudence when the truth is known and the assignment is clear.
We are living in such a moment. The walls of moral order have been breached, the gates broken down, and the people have grown accustomed to wreckage and devastation. The question before the Church is not whether the culture is hostile - that has always been true - but whether the shepherds will once again understand their charge.
“If you remain silent at this time,” Mordecai warned Esther, “relief and deliverance will arise from another place.” Yet, history will still record who stood firm and who stood aside.
The American Renewal Project exists for this hour: to call pastors out of retreat, back into responsibility, and forward into obedience; not to seize power, but to rebuild the gates, faithfully, locally, and resolutely, until our cities once again know the difference between truth and lies, righteousness and ruin.
Thankfully, Gideons and Rahabs are entering the public square, and a cloud the size of a man’s hand is on the horizon [1 Kings 18:44-46].
David Lane
American Renewal Project
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