Civil Disobedience: Is Now the Time?

Last week, I devoted two of my blogs (July 13 & 15) to the subject of civil disobedience as expressed by Matt Barber (founder and editor-in-chief of BarbWire.com).  In this blog, I’m sharing the words of Pat Buchanan (founding editor of The American Conservative magazine).  Both have eloquently raised the thought – Is it time for civil disobedience?

Earlier this month, the Oklahoma Supreme Court (in a 7-2 decision) ordered a monument of the Ten Commandments be removed from the Capitol.  They called the Commandments “religious in nature and an integral part of the Jewish and Christian faiths” … therefore, the monument must go.

Gov. Mary Fallin has refused; and Oklahoma law-makers have filed legislation to let voters cut out of their constitution the specific article the justices invoked.  Some legislators want the justices impeached.

Buchanan believes, “Fallin’s action seems a harbinger of what is to come in America – an era of civil disobedience like the 1960s, where court orders are defied and laws ignored in the name of conscience and a higher law.  Only this time, the rebellion is likely to arise from the right.”  Buchanan goes on to point out, “Certainly, Americans are no strangers to lawbreaking.  What else was our revolution but a rebellion to over-throw the centuries-old rule and law of king and Parliament, and establish our own?”

Buchanan observes several cases of civil disobedience in our American history:

• “U.S. Supreme Court decisions have been defied, and those who defied them lionized by modernity.  Thomas Jefferson freed all imprisoned under the sedition act, including those convicted in court trials presided over by Supreme Court justices.  Jefferson then declared the law dead.
• Some Americans want to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, who, defying the Dred Scott decision and fugitive slave acts, led slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
• New England abolitionists backed the anti-slavery fanatic John Brown, who conducted the raid on Harpers Ferry that got him hanged but helped to precipitate a Civil War.  That war was fought over whether 11-Southern states had the same right to break free of Mr. Lincoln’s Union as the 13-colonies did to break free of George III’s England.
• Millions of Americans, with untroubled consciences, defied the Volstead Act, imbibed alcohol and brought an end to Prohibition.
• In the civil rights era, defying laws mandating segregation and ignoring court orders banning demonstrations became badges of honor.  Rosa Parks is a heroine because she refused to give up her seat on a Birmingham bus, despite the laws segregating public transit that relegated blacks to the ‘back of the bus.’
• In ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’ Dr. King, defending civil disobedience, cited Augustine – ‘an unjust law is no law at all’ – and Aquinas who defined an unjust law as ‘a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.’  Said King, ‘one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws’ ”

But who decides what is an “unjust law?”

Buchanan responds, “If, for example, one believes that abortion is the killing of an unborn child and same-sex marriage is an abomination that violates ‘eternal law and natural law,’ do those who believe this not have a moral right if not a ‘moral responsibility to disobey such laws’?  Rosa Parks is celebrated.  But the pizza lady who said her Christian beliefs would not permit her to cater a same-sex wedding was declared a bigot.  And the LGBT crowd, crowing over its Supreme Court triumph, is writing legislation to make it a violation of federal civil rights law for that lady to refuse to cater that wedding. … And if cities, states or Congress enact laws that make it a crime not to rent to homosexuals, or to refuse services at celebrations of their unions, would not dissenting Christians stand on the same moral ground as Dr. King if they disobeyed those laws? … Already, some businesses have refused to comply with the Obamacare mandate to provide contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs to their employees.  Priests and pastors are going to refuse to perform same-sex marriages.  Churches and chapels will refuse to host them.  Christian colleges and universities will deny married-couple facilities to homosexuals. … Laws will be passed to outlaw such practices as discrimination; and those laws, which the Christians believe violate eternal law and natural law, will, as Dr. King instructed, be disobeyed.  And the removal of tax exemptions will then be on the table.”

Buchanan concludes, “If a family disagreed as broadly as we Americans do on issues so fundamental as right and wrong, good and evil – the family would fall apart, the couple would divorce, and the children would go their separate ways.  Something like that is happening in the country.  A secession of the heart has already taken place in America, and a secession, not of states, but of people from one another, caused by divisions on social, moral, cultural, and political views and values, is taking place.”

It can’t be denied that we are entering into a post-Christian and anti-Christian era in America … a time that rejects the beliefs, values and laws of just 50-years ago.  America is disuniting, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote 25 years ago.

As one who takes the spoken word seriously, it’s getting increasing difficult to pledge allegiance to the flag and say “indivisible” … let alone “under God.”  And because I love this country, and gave 25-years of my life in its military service “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies – both foreign and domestic,” I can’t just sit back and say, “whatever!”  Perhaps this is the time of civil disobedience.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel