Love Thy Neighbor in Public Policy!

I recently listened to an interview with Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel on Kimmel’s YouTube channel. Talarico, the Democratic nominee, is running against Republican nominee Ken Paxton in Texas.

Among the many things discussed in that interview that deserve consideration, one expression caught my attention and, I believe, deserves greater amplification. It goes back to one of Christianity’s central teachings: love God and love thy neighbor.

Later in the interview, Talarico described what he is trying to do as “love my neighbor through public policy.” The phrase immediately struck me.

The Moral Demand and Dilemma

Here is another one of those intersections between faith and politics that intrigues me. A Democratic candidate was invoking Scripture not simply as an expression of personal religious identity, but as a principle for understanding the purpose of public service.

That distinction matters for Christians, especially for someone running for public office and for the person who would vote for them.

The moral demand, however, is understood and implemented very differently in the political public sphere. The left has its priorities, and the right has competing ones. Both may appeal to moral principles while reaching very different conclusions about what government owes its citizens and what citizens owe one another.

This disagreement has become increasingly difficult to negotiate within an intensely polarized political environment. Over recent decades, the ideological distance between the two major parties has widened, while the political space for compromise has narrowed. Political competition can then become less about finding common ground in service of the people and more about gaining or retaining the power necessary to advance one's own political agenda.

It is here that the Christian question becomes particularly difficult. If morality is filtered through competing political ideologies, what happens to the moral demand of the Gospel itself? Does our politics become an expression of our faith, or does our politics gradually determine how we interpret our faith?

“Love thy neighbor,” then, raises a much more difficult question: What would it actually mean to love our neighbor through public policy?

It would mean asking whether our faith is expressed merely in words and political identity, or whether it is translated into policies concerned with the good and dignity of the people government is meant to serve.

Naturally, this question invites us to revisit the moment when an expert in the law asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ reply, through the parable of the Good Samaritan, shifted the argument from “Who is my neighbor?” toward a more demanding question: “What kind of neighbor am I to others?”

Turning Inward: Me and Us

That distinction invites us to turn the moral examination inward. Elsewhere, Jesus makes the point even more forcefully when he asks why we notice the speck in another person’s eye while failing to see the log in our own. Taken together, these teachings move the moral question away from they and much closer to home: me and us.

In public policy, then, the neighbor cannot simply be the person who looks like me, acts like me, believes what I believe, votes as I do, belongs to my political party, or worships as I do. American society is far too diverse for that. Public policy must govern people of different religions, cultures, political convictions, economic circumstances, and understandings of what constitutes the good.

And therein lies the challenge: How does a Christian bring a distinctly Christian moral conviction into public life while recognizing that the neighbor whom government serves may not share that conviction?

Testing the Conservative Argument

Consider Texas Senate Bill 10, for example. The law requires every public elementary and secondary school classroom in Texas to display the Ten Commandments.

At first glance, a Christian might regard this as a moral act and a conservative win: placing before children commandments such as thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and thou shalt not bear false witness. These are moral principles that many people, religious or otherwise, would readily recognize.

But the Ten Commandments do not begin there. The text required by Texas law begins: “I AM the LORD thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” It also commands observance of the Sabbath. We have therefore moved beyond generally shared moral principles into explicitly religious claims about God and humanity’s obligations toward God.

As a Christian, I personally embrace the Ten Commandments. But that is precisely why the Texas law must challenge me and my perception of neighbor. Is the public-school classroom the appropriate place for the state to require their display in a religiously pluralistic society? And, returning to our original question, how am I treating my neighbor when I use the power of government to place my religious affirmation before my neighbor’s child?

Parents who want explicitly Christian education for their children have many religious schools and other avenues to pursue it.

A public school, however, serves Christians alongside Jews, Muslims, members of other faiths, and people who profess no religion at all.

The public sphere belongs to all of us—to me and to my neighbor.

Testing the Liberal Argument

On the other side of the political debate, consider abortion. Supporters of abortion rights emphasize a woman’s autonomy and argue that government should not impose upon her one moral or religious understanding of pregnancy. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Democrats have advocated restoring federal protections for abortion rights.

Here again, however, “love thy neighbor” complicates the argument. The woman is my neighbor, and her dignity, circumstances, freedom, health, and future cannot simply be dismissed. But what about the unborn child? If I believe that this developing human life also possesses dignity, is she not my neighbor as well and deserving of consideration?

The difficulty, therefore, lies precisely in refusing to define the neighbor according to what makes our preferred political conclusion easier.

When Faith Challenges Our Politics

Perhaps loving my neighbor in public policy requires something more difficult than securing government recognition for what I believe. It requires asking whether I take the dignity, conscience, freedom, and welfare of my neighbor as seriously as I take my own—even when doing so complicates my politics.

Jesus’ turning of the question from “Who is my neighbor?” toward “What kind of neighbor am I?” cannot be confined to its first-century context. It continues to challenge Christians wherever Christian moral convictions encounter public power.

“Love thy neighbor in public policy” is therefore more than an appealing political phrase. It is a demanding test. It asks the politician, the voter, the conservative, the liberal—and first of all, me—whether faith is being used to justify the politics we already hold, or whether our faith is courageous enough to challenge those politics when our neighbor requires it.

Perhaps that is where Christian engagement in public policy should begin—not with the question, “How can I make my neighbor live according to what I believe?” but with the much more uncomfortable question Jesus leaves with us:

“What kind of neighbor am I?”