A friend of mine sent me this quote without any context. I checked around a little and it’s by Greg Bahnsen, who is referred to as “the man atheists fear most.” I’m sure that’s more than a little ridiculous as a claim, of course. But after you read this passage, maybe you’ll start to see what they mean:

When someone comes and proselytizes for another god or another final authority (and by the way, that god may be man)–when someone tries to undermine the commitment to Jehovah which is fundamental to the civil order of a godly state–then that person needs to be restrained by the magistrate. However, this does not mean that individuals should be punished for holding heretical views, the views that Baptists think are heretical or Lutherans think are heretical and so forth. It simply means that those who will not acknowledge Jehovah as the ultimate authority behind the civil law code which the magistrate is enforcing would be punished and repressed. You would, therefore, be open, I believe, to hold Muslim views or Hindu views in the privacy of your own home, provided it was not a Christian home that you’ve now come into to subvert and draw away from Jehovah. You would be able to hold these views as a private conviction. But you would not be allowed to proselytize and undermine the order of the state. Before people who are non-theonomists get too terribly upset about this view, I would at least ask them to reflect on this fact: every civil order protects its foundations.

Haha! Don’t get upset, because EVERYBODY does this! Um, not quite! Anyway, I also didn’t know what theonomy was: it’s tied to Christian Reconstructionism and aims to “prove” that Old Testament laws and ethics still apply today. For a fun and simple look at what OT laws were all about, check out this section of the delightful Brick Testament.