Politics & Power Quote by Randall Terry

Randall Terry’s line is built to detonate the cozy civic myth that politics can be “neutral.” He starts with an if-then that sounds like tidy logic, but it’s really a loyalty test: if you accept God’s sovereignty, you’ve already conceded the rest. “Neutrality” becomes not a principle but a dodge, a mask worn by secular elites to smuggle their own moral commitments into law while pretending they’re just enforcing procedure.

The subtext is a reframing of the culture war. Terry isn’t arguing that religion influences law (a banal point); he’s arguing that only one side gets accused of “imposing values,” while the other side hides behind technocratic language. By insisting “all law is based in some religious code,” he collapses the distinction between moral philosophy and theology on purpose. That move lets him treat secular frameworks - human rights, autonomy, harm reduction - as rival religions rather than shared civic tools. Once you label your opponents’ premises “religious,” pluralism stops looking like compromise and starts looking like idolatry.

Context matters because Terry is a movement celebrity, not a detached theologian: his public career is tied to anti-abortion activism and confrontational tactics. The quote functions as a rallying device, giving followers an intellectual-sounding justification for explicitly Christian legislation. It’s also a preemptive counterpunch to church-state criticism: if neutrality is impossible, then accusations of theocracy are just partisan complaints. The cleverness is in how it recasts power as honesty. If everyone’s “religious” anyway, the only sin left is admitting it.