Civil Disobedience — Adventist Peace Fellowship

I was recently invited to speak for a Sabbath School class on the intersection of Daniel and peacemaking. After consulting with my wife, we decided that civil disobedience was the theme to pursue, so this Sabbath morning I will be exploring Daniel 6. Below is content from a 3-page reference guide I made to help me make the most of the 60 minutes. There is so much more that could be added to this. —Jeff Boyd

“DANIEL & CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE”

Civil Disobedience: Act of disobeying either a negative (thou shalt not) or a positive (thou shalt) command or law enacted by a recognized governmental body. (See also “Civil Disobedience,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

BIBLICAL MATERIAL

Daniel 6

Daniel & Prayer: Peacemaking Remnant, p. 47-48 (Ryan Bell, “Civil Disobedience: Daniel and the Intersection of Allegiances”).

Acts 5:29 “We must obey God rather than men.”

John Howard Yoder & Romans 13

John Howard Yoder, the noted Mennonite theologian, analyzed Romans 13 in his most well-known work, The Politics of Jesus (Ch. 10, “Let Every Soul Be Subject”). Yoder points out the difference between obedience and subordination:

“It is not by accident that the imperative of 13:1 is not literally one of obedience. The Greek language has good words to denote obedience, in the sense of completely bending one’s will and one’s actions to the desires of another. What Paul calls for, however, is subordination. This verb is based upon the same root as the ordering of the powers of God. Subordination is significantly different from obedience. The conscientious objector who refuses to do what government demands, but still remains under the sovereignty of that government and accepts the penalties which it imposes, or the Christian who refuses to worship Caesar but still permits Caesar to put him or her to death, is being subordinate even though not obeying.” (pp. 208-209)

HISTORICAL ROOTS

Ancient Israel: The Politics of Jesus, Ch 5, p. 89-92

Thoreau: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau, 1849).

Gandhi: The Essential Gandhi, p. 122-123, cf 31-32 (1916).

King & Civil Rights: A Testament of Hope, “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” p. 293-294 (1963).

Also: “Therefore the individuals who stand up on the basis of civil disobedience realize that they are following something that says that there are just laws and there are unjust laws. Now, they are not anarchists. They believe that there are laws which must be followed; they do not seek to defy the law, they do not seek to evade the law…. And I submit that the individual who disobeys the law, whose conscience tells him it is unjust and who is willing to accept the penalty by staying in jail until that law is altered, is expressing at the moment the very highest respect for law.” (“Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience” in A Testament of Hope, p. 49)

Mugshot of Martin Luther King Jr following his 1963 arrest in Birmingham. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

ADVENTIST EXAMPLES

Ellen White & Fugitive Slave Act

The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850.... It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. (Wikipedia)

Ellen White taught that Adventists should disregard the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required citizens to return slaves who had fled their “homes” and were heading north to freedom. “When the laws of men conflict with the word and law of God, we are to obey the latter, whatever the consequences may be. The law of our land requiring us to deliver a slave to his master, we are not to obey; and we must abide the consequences of violating the law. The slave is not the property of any man” (Testimonies, Vol. 1, pp. 201-202; 1859-1860).
https://advactivism.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/white-civil-disobedience-and-subordination/

John Hendrik Weidner & The Dutch Paris

The son of a Dutch Seventh-day Adventist minister, Weidner (1912-1994) credited his Adventist faith with giving him the moral courage to resist the Nazis during World War II. In 1941, he founded the “Dutch-Paris” underground to help Jews, Allied pilots, and other persecuted peoples escape from Europe. The operation became one of the largest and most successful of the entire war, saving more than one thousand lives (comparable to Oskar Schindler) including more than 800 Dutch Jews and 100 downed airmen. Weidner’s sister was captured by the Nazis and died in Ravensbrück. He was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to a concentration camp but managed to escape by jumping from a train bound for Germany. Weidner is honored as one of the Righteous Among the Nations at Israel’s Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem. He was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom and the Legion of Honor (France’s highest award). Weidner’s story is told in Herbert Ford’s 1966 classic, Flee the Captor. A more recent account is The Escape Line by Megan Koreman. https://www.adventistpeace.org/john-henry-weidner

Irene Morgan & the Bus Protest

When Seventh-day Adventist Irene Morgan (1917-2007) refused to give up her seat as a black woman traveling on an interstate bus in 1944, the driver summoned a Virginia sheriff to arrest her. Morgan tore up the arrest warrant and resisted the officer. She fought her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court with the help of the NAACP’s legal counsel, future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. In the landmark Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia decision in 1946, the Court ruled in Morgan’s favor, declaring that segregation was illegal in interstate travel. Morgan’s example inspired the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation in which civil rights activists rode buses into the Deep South to test enforcement of the Court’s ruling, meeting with arrests and violence along the way. The Journey of Reconciliation in turn inspired the famous Freedom rides of 1961. https://www.adventistpeace.org/irene-morgan

See also: Seventh-day Adventists and the Civil Rights Movement (Samuel G. London, Jr., University Press of Mississippi, 2009, p. 105-106).

Rosa Parks: “On December 1, 1955, Parks was arrested for refusing a bus driver's instructions to give up her seat to a white passenger. She later recalled that her refusal wasn't because she was physically tired, but that she was tired of giving in.” https://www.biography.com/activist/rosa-parks

DISCUSSION

1) What would you have done if you were Daniel? Do you think he was right to disobey the law in order to perform a discretionary act of worship (i.e., praying toward Jerusalem was not listed in the 10 Commandments)?

2) What other biblical examples of nonviolent civil disobedience can you think of, either in Daniel or other books of the Bible?

3) Do you think it is ever acceptable to break a law? If so, what is your criteria for deciding which to follow and which to disregard? How did you arrive at this criteria? (When and why should Christians disobey laws?)

4) What are some of your favorite historical or current examples of civil disobedience? What about these events is meaningful to you?

5) Have you ever witnessed civil disobedience? What was the situation, and what did the participants do?

6) Have you ever engaged in civil disobedience? Have you ever wanted to participate but decided not to? What influenced your decision to participate or not to participate?

7) Would you disregard a law only because of a religious belief or value, or would you also choose to disobey a law addressing other social issues?

8) If there were a law forbidding church attendance on Saturday, would you still go? If there were a law requiring church attendance on Sunday, would you go? Why or why not?

9) How does Romans 13 speak to this theme of civil disobedience? How does one disobey a law and still submit to authority? [Yoder]

10) Do you think “Christian anarchism” is of God or the devil?

RESOURCE LIST: Publications

Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel (Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Imprint Academic, 2011).

“Civil Disobedience,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Online: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/.

A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil (Candice Delmas, Oxford University Press, 2018).

The Escape Line: How the Ordinary Heroes of Dutch-Paris Resisted the Nazi Occupation of Western Europe (Megan Koreman, Oxford University Press, 2018).

The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas (Louis Fischer, ed., Vintage, 1962/1990).

Flee the Captor: The True Story of the Dutch-Paris Underground and its Compassionate Leader, John Henry Weidner (Herbert Ford, Review & Herald, 1966/1994).

“Gabrielle’s Story,” Adventist Review, October 24, 2013. Online: https://www.adventistreview.org/2013-1521-p18.

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau, 1849). Online: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/71/71-h/71-h.htm.

The Peacemaking Remnant: Essays and Historical Documents (Douglas Morgan, ed., Adventist Peace Fellowship, 2005).

The Politics of Jesus (John Howard Yoder, Eerdmans, 1972/1994).

A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. (James M. Washington, ed., HarperOne, 1986).

Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 1 (Ellen White, Pacific Press, 1948).

Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (Gene Sharp, Extending Horizons, 2005).

“Was Jesus an Anarchist?” William Crawley interview with Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, BBC, May 17, 2011. Online: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2011/05/was_jesus_an_anarchist.html.

When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice (Jason Brennan, Princeton University Press, 2019).

RESOURCE LIST: Films

A Force More Powerful (York Zimmerman, 2000)

The Singing Revolution (Docuramafilms, 2008)

The Square (Noujaim Films, 2013)