10 By Teaching, by Life, by Action 131
There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate. The Christian is not to take the law into his own hands and become a law unto himself. But when all avenues to flight and protest have closed, force in the defensive posture is appropriate. This was the situation of the American Revolution. The colonists used force in defending themselves. Great Britain, because of its policy toward the colonies, was seen as a foreign power invading America. The colonists defended their homeland. As such, the American Revolution was a conservative counterrevolution. The colonists saw the British as the revolutionaries trying to overthrow the legitimate colonial governments.
A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state and hidden his Jewish neighbors from the German SS Troops. The government had abrogated its authority, and it had no right to make any demands.
This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States-the issue of abortion. What is involved is the whole issue of the value of human life. A recent report indicates that for every three live births, one child is aborted. Christians must come to the children's defense, and Christians must come to the defense of human life as such.
This defense should be carried out on at least four fronts:
First, we should aggressively support a human life bill or a constitutional amendment protecting unborn children.
Second, we must enter the courts seeking to overturn the Supreme Court's abortion decision.
Third, legal and political action should be taken against hospitals and abortion clinics that perform abortions.
In order to operate, many hospitals and abortion clinics receive tax money in some form-at least from individual states. Our representatives must be confronted with political force (if they will not do so out of principle) into introducing legislation cutting off such funds. If this fails, then lawsuits should be initiated to stop such funds from flowing to such institutions.
Simultaneously with these steps, some Christians have picketed. I greatly admired Dr. William S. Barker, President of Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, when he supported seminary students who had been arrested for picketing an abortion clinic in St. Louis. The Covenant Seminary students said:
"We feel we owe the Covenant community an explanation. First, we consulted a lawyer on what is the most effective way to combat this problem; according to him, it is through being arrested which most effectually draws attention to the situation.
"Second, we wanted to demonstrate to the media and to the courts that abortion is not primarily a Catholic issue.
"Third, we felt the need to demonstrate our commitment in the view of the media and the pro-life organizations. We felt our Christian testimony was at stake here.
"Finally, we wanted to get involved in the court system: our case will receive a trial and could possibly be taken to higher courts. If abortion is to be eradicated, it will have to be through the proper legal means.
"It was not an easy decision to be disobedient to the magistrates, but in light of the facts-the destroying of human life on a grand scale-we felt this was the most effective way to respond. It is an urgent situation which requires response now."1
Dr. Barker acknowledged some differences within the seminary community but explained that he personally supported the students:
"Such non-violent civil disobedience is proper, I believe, when other channels have been exhausted or will not serve to avoid or oppose the evil which one finds he cannot in obedience to God ignore or tolerate. At the same time one who violates man's law must be prepared to suffer the consequences."2
Fourth, the State must be made to feel the presence of the Christian community.
State officials must know that we are serious about stopping abortion, which is a matter of clear principle concerning the babies themselves and concerning a high view of human life. This may include doing such things as sit-ins in legislatures and courts, including the Supreme Court, when other constitutional means fail. We must make people aware that this is not a political game, but totally crucial and serious. And we must also demonstrate to people that there is indeed a proper bottom line. To repeat: the bottom line is that at a certain point there is not only the right, but the duty, to disobey the state.
Of course, this is scary. There are at least four reasons why.
First, we must make definite that we are in no way talking about any kind of a theocracy. Let me say that with great emphasis. Witherspoon, Jefferson, the American Founders had no idea of a theocracy. That is made plain by the First Amendment, and we must continually emphasize the fact that we are not talking about some kind, or any kind, of a theocracy.
In the Old Testament there was a theocracy com manded by God. In the New Testament, with the church being made up of Jews and Gentiles, and spreading over all the known world from India to Spain in one generation, the church was its own entity. There is no New Testament basis for a linking of church and state until Christ, the King returns. The whole "Constantine mentality" from the fourth century up to our day was a mistake. Constantine, as the Roman Emperor, in 313 ended the persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, the support he gave to the church led by 381 to the enforcing of Christianity, by Theodosius I, as the official state religion. Making Christianity the official state religion opened the way for confusion up till our own day. There have been times of very good government when this interrelationship of church and state has been present. But through the centuries it has caused great confusion between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Christ, between patriotism and being a Christian.
We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way: "We should not wrap Christianity in our national flag."
None of this, however, changes the fact that the United States was founded upon a Christian consensus, nor that we today should bring Judeo-Christian principles into play in regard to government. But that is very different from a theocracy in name or in fact.
Second, it is frightening when we realize that our consideration of these things, and this book, will cer tainly get behind the Iron Curtain and into other tyrannical countries where Christians face these questions in practice every day of their lives, in prison or out of prison. Their position is very different from ours. We have freedom from physical oppression and they do not.
The early church carried out their civil disobedience in the only way available to them. They came to the clear issue of worshipping Caesar or not, and rebelled in refusing to do so, though they knew the cost.
It seems to me that in most of the Iron Curtain countries the Christians are in about the same position as the early church. They are not in a position to change the system because of their low numbers, because as Christians they are systematically shut out of places of influence, and because of the iron control. Thus they must resist, in the manner the early church did, when they are commanded to disobey God. An illustration would be the state's command not to give their children religious training. To do so is considered an act of civil disobedience under the Criminal Codes of the Soviet Union. Jan Pit in Persecution: It Will Never Happen Here? writes about one of the restrictions on religious freedom in Iron Curtain countries: "Christians are forbidden to teach religion to children; therefore Sunday schools and youth gatherings are not allowed. Even within the home, Christian training is not to take place."3 That clearly disobeys God's commands-as well as the parents' deepest longings if in deed the parents believe Christ is the way of eternal life-and the law would have to be disobeyed. Civil disobedience in that case would be continuing the instruction and, if apprehended, paying the price of being sent to the labor camps in Siberia, which at times still means certain death, and certainly great suffering. The labor camps take the place of the lions.
In the communist countries and in other countries in Africa, etc., God's leading might be to further action as in Poland at the present time-or at some point to an even more violent action.
With their idea of the "Perfectibility of Man" the Soviet leaders expected the "New Man" to be brought forth by changed economic conditions. This, of course, has not happened. The Christians have the opportunity to show that Christ, and the Christian understanding of reality, can, and do, bring forth the "New Man"-not perfectly of course until Christ returns, but still in a substantial way, whereas the Soviets have failed. In order for Christians to show forth the New Man they must demonstrate a positive practice and exhibit a caring Christian community in the group and care beyond the Christian group. But showing forth the New Man also means a standing against the law of the state which would destroy the very things Christians should produce in society. The civil disobedience forced upon them by the tyranny of the state is an essential part of being the New Man, because to obey would destroy both what Christians should be and also what they should be producing in society.
Three things must be stressed for those in all totalitarian countries:
1. A platonic concept of spirituality which does not include all of life is not true biblical spirituality. True spirituality touches all of life, including things of government and law, and not just "religious things."
2. We who are outside of such countries must allow those in these countries to know what "the appropriate level" is in their time and place. We in our place of lesser physical danger must not heap guilt on them. That is not to say that some of them will not compromise, but that is their responsibility before God.
3. They should understand that there is a bottom line of civil disobedience on the appropriate level. They should recognize that this is biblical because any government that commands what contradicts God's Law abrogates its authority. It is no longer our proper legal government, and at that point we have the right, and the duty, to disobey it.
Third, speaking of civil disobedience is frightening because of an opposite situation from the second. That is, with the prevalence of Marxist thinking-and especially with the attempted synthesis of Marxism and Christianity in certain forms of liberation theology in South America and other places-what we are saying could become a Marxist and terrorist tool to bring anarchy. Or in a similar vein, it could become a tool to impose by force the humanist world view resulting in the loss of humanness and in some form of authoritarianism.
Much of liberation theology is built on the concept of Man being basically good, linked with the idea that all people need is to be released from their economic chains. This is utopian, because Man is not basically good (bound only by social, economic, and political chains). Man is fallen. The Perfectibility of Man was the basis of much of the Enlightenment and of the French Revolution. Theoretically it was a basis of the Marxist-Lenin revolution in Russia. Each place this concept of the Perfectibility of Man has been acted on it has led to tragedy, to political chains, and to the loss of humanness.4 Every attempt to put this utopian concept into practice has led to failure because it is false to what Man as he now is, really is. Man is not intrinsically unselfish, corrupted only by outward circumstances. He is fallen; he is not what he was created to be.
Even if some in this general stream of thought do not go as far as to be infiltrated by Marxism and the concept of the Perfectibility of Man, there is still the danger of confusing the Kingdom of God with the socialistic program. Those who have this tendency also could misuse this book.
Even as we say this, however, we must also say that the use of the freedoms we do have does not remove from us the duty of making and using our possessions with compassion. That is a Christian duty which the church has often not emphasized.' We can understand why some, reacting to the church's lack of emphasis concerning the proper compassionate use of possessions, then make the mistake of equating the Kingdom of God with a state program. Nevertheless, we should clearly recognize that those who do confuse the Kingdom of God with a socialistic program could misuse this book, and we must see that they do not do so.
And fourth, we must say that speaking of civil disobedience is frightening because there are so many kooky people around. People are always irresponsible in a fallen world. But we live in a special time of irresponsible people, and such people will in their unbalanced way tend to do the very opposite from considering the appropriate means at the appropriate time and place. Anarchy is never appropriate.
But these very real problems do not change the principle that the men of the Reformation and the Founding Fathers of the United States knew and operated on. This principle is that there is a bottom line that must be faced squarely if the state is not to become all-powerful and usurp God's primacy. We must recognize that there is a bottom line if we are to have real freedom of thought and action at the present time-even if, happily, we never reach that bottom line. If we have not faced the possibility of civil disobedience, if needed, our thinking and action at the present time will lack the freedom they should have. Locke understood that. Without the possibility of his fourth point-the right to resist unlawful authority-the other three would have been meaningless.
All the problems which do indeed exist do not change the need of thinking about the possibility of civil disobedience. Let us remind ourselves that Jonathan Blanchard and Charles Finney in their day thought through and taught this bottom line in regard to the need for the abolition of slavery. They taught this-facing the possibility that they might have to pay the price of going to jail, or more, if that was the result of civil disobedience.
The colonists followed Rutherford's model in the American Revolution. They elected representatives from every state who, by way of the Declaration of Independence, protested the acts of Great Britain. Failing that, they defended themselves by force.
The Declaration of Independence contains many elements of the Reformation thinking of Knox and Rutherford and should be carefully considered when discussing resistance. It speaks directly to the responsibility of citizens concerning oppressive civil government.
After recognizing man's God-given absolute rights, the Declaration goes on to declare that whenever civil government becomes destructive of these rights, "it is the right of the people to alter and abolish it, and institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." The Founding Fathers, in the spirit of Lex Rex, cautioned in the Declaration of Independence that established governments should not be altered or abolished for "light and transient causes." But when there is a "long train of abuses and usurpations" designed to produce an oppressive, authoritarian state, "it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government..."
Simply put, the Declaration of Independence states that the people, if they find that their basic rights are being systematically attacked by the state, have a duty to try to change that government, and if they cannot do so, to abolish it.
Numerous historians have noted the strong religious influence on the American Revolution. One such historian was Harvard professor Perry Miller. Professor Miller was a convinced atheist, but he probably knew the primary sources of colonial history better than anyone of his generation. He concluded in Nature's Nation: "Actually, European deism was an exotic plant in America, which never struck roots in the soil. `Rationalism' was never so widespread as liberal historians, or those fascinated by Jefferson, have imagined. The basic fact is that the Revolution had been preached to the masses as a religious revival, and had the astounding fortune to succeed. "6
The importance of America's clergy has been too often ignored as a primary factor in the coming revolu tion and the support of it. They were called the "black regiment"-referring to their clerical robes-of the revolution. Professor Miller's words are vitally important:
[We] still do not realize how effective were generations of Protestant preaching in evoking patriotic enthusiasm. No interpretation of the religious utterances as being merely sanctimonious window dressing will do justice to the facts or to the character of the populace. Circumstances and the nature of the dominant opinion in Europe made it necessary for the official statement [that is, Declaration of Independence] to be released in primarily "political" terms-the social compact, inalienable rights, the right of revolution. But those terms, in and by themselves, would never have supplied the drive to victory, however mightily they weighed with the literate minority. What carried the ranks of militia and citizens was the universal persuasion that they, by administering to themselves a spiritual purge, acquired the energies God has always, in the manner of the Old Testament, been ready to impart to His repentant children.7
And we must again remember the Wall Street Journal's statement about the place the earlier revivals had in America "that helped sow the seeds of the American Revolution."
The thirteen colonies concluded that the time had come and they disobeyed. We must understand that for Rutherford and Locke, and for the Founding Fathers, the bottom line was not an abstract point of conversation over a tea table; at a certain point it had to be acted upon. The thirteen colonies reached the bottom line: they acted in civil disobedience. That civil disobedience led to open war in which men and women died. And that led to the founding of the United States of America. There would have been no founding of the United States of America without the Founding Fathers' realization that there is a bottom line. And to them the basic bottom line was not pragmatic; it was one of principle.
Please read most thoughtfully what I am going to say in the next sentence: If there is no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the Living God. If there is no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been put in the place of the Living God, because then you are to obey it even when it tells you in its own way at that time to worship Caesar. And that point is exactly where the early Christians performed their acts of civil disobedience even when it cost them their lives.