Kim Davis: When Should Christians Engage in Civil Disobedience?

Should Christians ever disobey their government? Some say no. But Kim Davis sides with Martin Luther King and thinks civil disobedience is justified.

Ms. Davis is the Rowan County Kentucky clerk who spent four days in jail for refusing to put her name on same sex marriage licenses. Claiming to be a new Christian, Ms. Davis is also a long-time Democrat.

In court last week, Judge David Bunning told Davis: "The court cannot condone the willful disobedience of its lawfully issued order." He said that "if you give people the opportunity to choose which orders they follow, that's what potentially causes problems."

Judge Bunning is absolutely right. This is the kind of chaos that results when people do not respect the law. But I'm not referring to Kim Davis — I'm referring to the United States Supreme Court.

As I've written before, and the multiple dissents state more eloquently, there is no justification in the Constitution for judicially imposing genderless marriage on every state in the union. Five unelected justices simply imposed their own law on 330 million people.

Certainly, there is a line somewhere. After all, we laud those behind the Underground Railroad who freed slaves and those who protected Jews in Nazi Germany.

While bad marriage laws are obviously not as serious, consider a more equivalent scenario: Suppose the Supreme Court decided to drop the age of consent in every state to twelve years old (a position Ruth Bader Ginsberg supported before she became a Supreme Court Justice). Would you think that Kim Davis should be forced to endorse the marriage of a 75 year-old man who brought a twelve year-old girl into her office? I hope you can see that there is a line and it's not far from Kim Davis.

Despite chanting, "Do your job!" outside Kim Davis's office, liberals were rejoicing when San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom ordered clerks to violate California law and issue marriage licenses to same sex couples in 2004. They certainly were not chanting "Do your job" outside of Attorney General Eric Holder's office when he told the states last year to ignore their own laws that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman. And liberals were not asking a federal judge to throw President Obama in jail when he refused to do his job of defending the Defense of Marriage Act in Court.

So just ten minutes ago liberals believed that defying marriage laws was heroic! Now their blatant double standard is all too obvious — they laud civil disobedience when it's used to advance the religion of sex and denounce it when it's used to protect Christian or natural law beliefs.

But on what authority does one defy the government? One man who wanted a same-sex marriage license asked Kim Davis on "what authority" was she not issuing licenses. She cited God.

Yet, the question needs to be asked of both sides. By what authority did Newsom, Holder, Obama and other liberal politicians defy the law? They certainly weren't citing God or the Creator cited in our Declaration of Independence who gives us unalienable rights. But without an authority beyond man's law, there is no authority for their actions nor is there any objective standard to ground unalienable rights.

Without God, every right claim is merely a human opinion. At least Kim Davis, agree with her or not, is citing an authority beyond herself.

Civil disobedience has rich precedent in the United States. In fact, our country was founded on it largely to secure religious freedom. Civil disobedience also has precedent in the Bible. When Pharaoh ordered Hebrew midwives to murder all Hebrew boys, they disobeyed and even lied to the authorities (Exodus 1). And Daniel and his friends peacefully defied laws that contracted God's commands. Likewise, when the Jewish authorities told John and Peter to stop telling people the good news that Jesus paid for your sins and rose from the dead, they disobeyed saying that they would obey God rather than men (Acts 4).

Therefore, the principle for Christians is this: civil disobedience is necessary when a government compels you to sin or prevents you from doing something God commands you to do.

You don't disobey the government merely because it permits others to sin — only when it compels you to do so. Kim Davis thinks that line has been crossed.

It's actually not hard to avoid crossing the line. Both parties can be accommodated as Judge Bunning finally figured out when he released Davis Wednesday. In North Carolina, we passed a law to allow people like Kim Davis to opt out of endorsing relationships that violated their religious or moral beliefs. Since other government employees are more than happy to issue licenses, no one is inconvenienced or forced to violate conscience. We do this for far more serious issues than weddings. For example, even during a time of war when we draft people to defend the country, we allow for conscientious objectors to opt out. If we can allow exemptions for government employees involved in protecting the very existence of our nation, we can certainly allow exemptions for government employees involved in weddings!

Will the Kentucky legislature act when it returns in January to pass such a law? Unfortunately, I doubt the activists who are always demanding tolerance will tolerate such reasonableness. It seems that some people just can't live and let live. They will not rest until all opposition is crushed and everyone is forced to celebrate what they are doing.

If that's your position, I have a question for you: Why would you want anyone who disagrees with your wedding to have anything to do with it? Go to another clerk, another florist, another photographer. Why force people to violate their conscience when there are so many other people willing to help you and celebrate with you? After all, isn't this supposed to be a time when "love wins?"

Apparently not. For some liberals "love wins" as long as everyone agrees with them. Those that disagree will not like the kind of "love" some liberals dish out. Are the same people who are chanting "love wins" some of the same people who issued death threats to Kim Davis? It's certainly wasn't the Christians.

The truth is Kim Davis and other victims of "tolerance" don't want a holy war. Davis just doesn't want her signature on the license. She suggested other government officials sign, and Judge Bunning finally agreed. But a law needs to be passed to prevent future problems.

North Carolina has led the way. It remains to be seen if liberals in Kentucky will accept that way. If their recent history is a guide, I'm afraid they will demand that every knee bow and every tongue confess the dogma of their secular religion.

-- Frank Turek is the president of CrossExamined.org, coauthor of I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, and the author of the new book Stealing from God: Why atheists need God to make their case.

Americans will not stand with SODOMITES !

Radical Islamist" dictates from the Oval Office's ILLEGAL ALIEN IN CHIEF and his IRANIAN SPY ?

Take these GREAT WORDS with you.
Put them on posters along with the faces that said them.

Let us remember WHERE we came from.

Footnote: U.S. Constitution

And let us NOT FORGET THESE GREAT MEN and WHAT they SAID !

“For what business, in the name of common sense, has the magistrate with our religion?
The state does not have any concern in the matter.
In what manner does it affect society in what outward form we think it best to pay our adoration to God?
The consciences of men are not the objects of human legislation.
In contrast with this spiritual tyranny, how beautiful appears our constitution in disclaiming all jurisdiction over the souls of men,
securing by a never-to-be- repealed section the voluntary, unchecked moral persuasion of every person by his own self-directed communication with the Father of spirits!”

– William Livingston, Constitution Signer

“Security under our constitution is given to the rights of conscience and private judgment.
They are by nature subject to no control but that of Deity, a
nd in that free situation they are now left.”

– John Jay, first Supreme Court Chief Justice

Original Intent of the First Amendment

“Not only should the Bible be in our schools, it should be the primary textbook of our schools.”

Zero.

ever being infringed

because the Constitution builds “a wall of separation between Church and State.”

David Barton’s article in the November 2003 issue of the Notre Dame Law Review

“or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

What About Separation of Church & State

ignore history and rewrite it

We’ve Got the Wrong Guy

intent of the First Amendment.

are irrelevant

Jefferson did not give us the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

One passage of the paper you enclosed must be corrected.
It is the following.
‘I will say it was yourself more than any other individual that planned and established the Constitution.’

he “was in Europe when the Constitution was planned,
and never saw it
until after it had been established.”

the judge allows those who were not at the scene of the murder

to come forth and tell us what happened.

the intent

you must scrutinize the thoughts of those who took part in the debate,
the ones who actually gave us the First Amendment.
That debate emphasized the need to avoid another Church of England being established in America.

forced upon the citizens.

they wanted to foster free expression,

he attended the weekly church service being held AT the U.S. Capitol.

he had helped to start and faithfully attended throughout the remainder of his presidency.li

far removed from

a man who himself established and attended religious services on federal property while holding the office of the President,

against

for children to pray for their teachers, parents, and country at the beginning of each school day?

You decide.

Notes:

xliv.

xlv.

xlvi.

xlvii.

Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson Writings 510 (Merrill D. Peterson et al. eds., 1984)
(1802): Believing with you
that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God,
that he owes account to none other for faith or his worship,
that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions,
I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared
that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,”
thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

Engle v. Vitale,

lii.

Letter to Dr. Joseph Priestly (Washington ed., 441)

li.

Life, Journal, and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.