If you've been with us the last two days,
you've had a good introduction to the topic
and to some of the intricacies of the discussion.
We had a great discussion yesterday, so good
that as he announced yesterday, Len Anderson
left town and is out there.
Seriously, he was already scheduled to be out.
We've got his chair flying in missing man
formation over there, just in remembrance
of him.
If you haven't been with us, let me introduce
our panel again and then I'll lead us in prayer
as we get started.
Sitting just here to my right is Randy Harris,
who is an instructor in Bible Missions and
Ministry here at ACU.
Next to him is Tim Spivey, who is the Senior
Minister at the Highland Oaks Church of Christ
in Garland, Texas.
In the middle there is Lee Camp, Associate
Professor of Theology and Ethics at Lipscomb University.
Seated next to him is Dr. Ron Cox, Assistant
Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University,
and at the very end there is David Young, who
is the Teaching Minister at the North
Boulevard Church of Christ in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
My name is Joey Cope.
I'm the Director of the Center for Conflict
Resolution here at ACU, and I will sort of
serve as the moderator.
I'll just try to get out of the way as soon as
these guys start talking.
Let's pray together as we start.
Our Most High God, we love You, we adore You,
and we thank You for all that You've given,
for all that You've promised, and all that You
will deliver.
God as part of that, we know that what we will
see someday is true and unmitigated peace,
and we pray that that peace break out all over
this world.
We pray that Your Kingdom be advanced, that we
be vessels of Your teaching, of Your example,
and of Your goodness and mercy.
Bless this conversation today, we pray in
Jesus' name, amen.
Once again, glad to have you here today.
We have talked about, the first day we
presented more or less positions where each of these
gentlemen has come down as they approach this
topic, sort of, because it's very difficult
to even describe fully what we're talking about here.
In fact, I thought it was interesting yesterday
during the discussion that almost every statement
for a while was started with, well, let me tell
you what I think this is about, and then
the answers that came from others saying, no, I
don't think that's what this is about,
and we talked about more things.
Here, there is so much to this topic that we
can't fully address it in these three sessions,
but we had a good discussion yesterday, and I
hope that your thoughts were provoked as
mine were, as these brothers shared with us.
What we thought we'd do today is, as I
mentioned yesterday, is try to bring together
an embrace
of the collectives that we talked about
yesterday about how church and church leaders might
address questions that would come up, and in a
move to be practical in that approach,
we have a case study that I will read.
We've asked Lee Camp to give the initial
response to that, and then to let the others
have comments
on that.
Right now, Colin has some cards.
If we have time, if you have questions, we'd be
glad for you to write down your questions,
and we'll ask for those, and we'll try to ask a
few questions of the panel.
Camp promised that we'll have time, so if that
doesn't happen, you can give me those
cards, and I'm not sure exactly what I'll do
with them.
I'm sure I'll pray over them at some point, but
we'll maybe send these to these guys,
and we'll see what we can do with that.
So this is the case that we bring to you.
Judy came to the elders of the North Point
Church in May of 2002, some eight months after
the 9-1-1 terrorist attacks.
Judy came from a military family.
Judy's father, a former Marine, served in Korea.
He died in a VA hospital after a brief illness
in March, just a few months earlier.
Her brother, Marty, currently served in the
military and had been one of the first soldiers
in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and search
for Al-Qaeda.
Judy was very proud of her brother and his
service to keep America free.
While Judy attended worship regularly, she was
not a highly visible member and had never
come to the elders with a request or a concern.
But this Tuesday night, she came to their
meeting with a special request.
Memorial Day was just a few weeks away, and
with a world in conflict and soldiers in harm's
way, she wondered if the worship service on the
Sunday prior to Memorial Day might make
some modest acknowledgment of those who have
served and given their lives for us.
Judy offered that the point of worship was not
to honor men and women, but to honor God.
Still, she thought, it was appropriate to be
thankful for people who offered their lives
for the sake of others as long as it was clear
that the main focus of the worship service
was on God.
She suggested that perhaps a more patriotic
hymn could be sung, like God Bless America.
And maybe the communion servers that day could
be veterans who would be encouraged to wear
their uniforms, and perhaps there could be a
time of silence for prayer to focus on our
soldiers past and present.
The elders listened politely to Judy's request.
When she finished, they told her that they
would have to discuss the matter and get back
with her.
Tom, the elder chair, smiled at her and
reassured her that at least something could be done
to honor the lives of good men like her father.
With that, she left.
As the door closed behind her, Sam, a newer
elder, challenged Tom, Why did you promise
her we would do anything?
I am very uncomfortable with this entire thing.
I am not sure we really want patriotic songs
and military dress uniforms to be part of
our worship.
Another elder, Bill, straightened in his chair.
He asked Sam, Are you ashamed of your country?
Bill had served in Vietnam, and while certainly
not an advocate for war, he felt very proud
to have served.
The 9-1-1 attacks had stirred that pride to an
even greater degree.
He had found an old American flag lapel pin and
returned it to its place on the sports
jacket he wore every week to church.
Bill felt that Sam's position was little more
than rank and gratitude.
A long, passionate, and heated discussion ensued.
While a few of the elders voiced support for
Sam personally, his opposition to doing anything
that marked the day in a special way was an
isolated view.
Other positions varied from doing everything
Judy had asked for and more, to simply having
a time of special prayer for our soldiers.
After about 30 minutes, the elders agreed to
table the discussion until they could focus
more thoughtfully on the issues at hand.
I want to start this morning just by
acknowledging I'm no fan of old Woodrow
Wilson's foreign
policy and his naivete when he suggested that
they were going to wage a war to end all wars.
I think that was a little bit utopian.
The one thing he did say that I always thought
was quite helpful was that he said, If you
don't know in the back of your mind somewhere
that you might be wrong, you're an idiot.
And I've always tried to hold on to that, and I
think that's an indispensable kind of
virtue among brothers and sisters in Christ.
We come and we offer as best we understand it,
where we are and what we've experienced
and what we've studied and what we've prayed
and so forth.
And so I try to do that in that sentiment.
And I say that because some of the things I'm
going to say today touch on extremely
volatile emotional kinds of responses.
And I just want to acknowledge that in the
spirit of Christ and reconciliation, kind
of start with that.
Some of the questions that we had at the end of
the case were what are the issues as you
see it, and what would you do?
And so let me just kind of hit that real quick,
and I'm going to point to three issues as
any good theologian should in honor of the Trinity.
Okay, first.
The first issue I think that is of paramount
importance in something like this is the unity
of the church and the sectarianism of the
nation state, the unity of the church and
the sectarianism of the nation state.
It seems to me that to serve communion, for
example, while wearing U.S. military uniform
or to serve communion with a flag present or
whatever the case may be, to serve communion
while wearing a U.S. military uniform is akin
to a Notre Dame football player telling his
coach, coach, I think I want to wear my jersey
from my high school team in the opening game
this fall.
Or it's like the current U.S. president doing a
State of the Union address and insisting
that during his address that he display the
Texas flag rather than the U.S. flag.
Or it's like a groomsman asking his bride to
select as bridesmaids in the wedding all
his old lovers.
That is, what we claim as baptized believers,
we are one in Christ, no longer Jew nor Greek,
male nor female, bond nor free, but all are one
in Christ Jesus.
All of our old allegiances are trumped by this allegiance.
Of course, we've talked about that doesn't mean
that you don't have anything to do with
these other things.
You still do to the degree that is permitted by
your calling under God's kingdom.
Again, it's not a withdrawal thing, but it's a
clear statement of this is the one to whom
I give my allegiance.
Religion and common worship calls us to worship
the God of all nations and all peoples.
This baptized identity must always be held
before us of utmost importance.
So it's not that we want to somehow by
suggesting, it's not that I want to somehow
suggest that
the virtues of self-sacrifice or service of
veterans is not something to be honored.
We can look at that and say, those are
precisely the kind of virtues that in a materialistic
age we live in, we should remind people of,
that there are things bigger than our own
little individualistic petty agendas, there are
things bigger than us that are worth giving
our life over to.
It's not that we have a problem with those
virtues, those are very important virtues.
Instead, it's the goal or the end toward which
those nationalistic or militaristic virtues
are pointed, namely the sectarian nation-state.
I don't know if it's still true or not, but
when I was a student here, in this student
here, you go out to Dice Air Force Base and on
the largest hanger there at the side of
the runway, there's a humongous sign that read,
global power for America.
And I think sometimes we forget that we do live
in the greatest empire, militarily speaking,
power speaking, wealth speaking, the world has
ever known, and at a very real point it's
about global power for us.
And so it's a problem, I think, to get
ourselves wrapped up in those sorts of things.
It's because of this, for example, none of us
have even touched on the literal title
of our course, pledging allegiance, but it's
because of this kind of stuff I'm talking
about that I cannot in good conscience say the
pledge of allegiance.
Baptism is my pledge of allegiance.
And so it's that we have to always hold before
ourselves in common worship, it seems to me.
Second, what we don't celebrate and what we
don't say is oftentimes as important as what
we do say.
We're thinking about it a different way.
Over against what we do say or celebrate, what
we fail to say speaks volumes.
What I mean by that is this, how many times
have we had a case where we've had an argument
in the church over whether or not to celebrate
Martin Luther King Day in church?
How often have you had a celebration or an
argument in church over whether to celebrate
International Day of Peace, or do you even know
when that is, this week?
Or how often have we argued about whether or
not to celebrate the feast of St. Matthew
or any of the other martyrs of the church?
That is, why do we celebrate this publicly but
not any of these other things?
And what we fail to say over against what we do
say I think speaks volumes about what
we value and what we place importance upon in
our gatherings together.
I'm deeply troubled in the church.
I remember a church I was in a number of years
ago and one of the elders at communion said
the United States is the greatest nation in the
history of the world.
And I was very disturbed when he said that
because I was at least concerned about the
two African American brothers and sisters who
were in our gathering.
Because I think we forget a lot of times, we
white people forget that other people,
when they hear that, what are they to do with
their history of enslavement or racism or
John Crow laws or what are the descendants of
Native Americans to do in light of that
history when we say this is the greatest nation
in the face of the earth?
Or what are we to do with Japanese Americans
whose families were decimated by the only
atomic bomb attack in the history of the world?
And again, the point is not to say America is
an awful place, it's probably like Churchill
said or Tony Campallo said, we're the best
Babylon ever.
Of all the nation states, maybe we are the
best, the best form of government.
But still, we're Babylon, it's not the kingdom
of God.
And so it's very important in our gatherings
together to remember, yes, we have virtues
in this place, wonderful virtues.
But that doesn't mean that we are the
embodiment of God's purposes.
So in other words, liturgy, our worship, common
worship forms and shapes us as a people.
And we always need to be asking the question
about what kind of people are we forming by
what we do together.
Third issue for me, I hesitate to bring this
one up because it could take us off on a tangent
that I don't think today is the right time for
us to go off on this tangent.
But nonetheless, it is a very alive question
and issue.
And that is, it's the very alive question of
whether war making is in itself a legitimate
Christian enterprise.
We can talk about those first two points
without even getting into this third one.
But again, the third issue is, is it legitimate
for Christians to participate in war making?
And I think we need to remember also that there
are some in our midst who would be as
disturbed by Memorial Day celebration in church
as other people would be disturbed by Gay
Pride Day celebration in church.
That is, it has equivalent kind of moral
significance to them.
And so it's a thing where, you know, how do we
acknowledge the fact that there are deeply
kind of moral sensibilities around this on both sides?
What to do?
What do we do in this case?
I'd give two options on what to do.
First, just don't do it.
That would be the most simple.
Second, if we do decide to do it, if we do
decide to do such a thing.
I would suggest this, that we do it without
uniforms and we do it with as little nationalist
sentiment as possible.
That is, it does seem appropriate that we could
on a Memorial Day remember all peoples
who have been killed by war.
That we could remember and pray that we do
remember and we do memorialize the victims
of tyrants.
And we also remember the victims of Western democracies.
We remember that the world is torn by war.
And we remember that the world is torn by violence.
And we also remember the promise of the coming
kingdom in which those rips in human history
will be healed.
Or we might, in our prayer, remember that not
only is the world torn, but that the church
is torn.
The church is torn even about this issue.
So we pray to God not only to heal the world,
but to heal the church with the power of God's
Spirit so that we might bear witness to the
unity that we're called to.
That we remember this one Lord of all peoples
who gave his life and love, who loved his
enemies in order to bring peace.
I agree with pretty much everything Lee said.
I just kind of get there a different way.
You know, I want to go ahead and say that my
general, I hate to call it a policy, but
the way I would do it is to simply not do it.
For different reasons.
My primary reason is I think it tends to, just
as a minister, how much a church can
get distracted by politics.
I could do nothing else with my entire life as
a minister except fight this bill or that
bill that's going on, it's going through the Congress.
I get emails about every bill going through the
Arizona state this.
And so what can happen is if churches take up
that mantle as their cause, they tend to
get a little ADD and kind of end up chasing a
lot of wabbits that maybe they shouldn't.
The other thing is when I was even younger than
I am now, I made the mistake of sticking
my toe in that water once and you finally reach
a cause in which good people can come
out on different sides of the equation.
And when you get into that kind of a situation,
now you've really got a mess on your hands.
You know, in the last election, I had people
lobbying me to, you know, we need to support
Kerry, we need to support Bush and all that.
So if Tim gets up and says, hey, I support John
Kerry where all the Bush people get mad
and then the unity of the church is really at stake.
One thing that concerned me is I don't know, I
don't personally feel as bad about praying
for the country itself or thanking God for
certain people or countries.
Because to me, you know, being more specific as
you pray collectively helps put some flesh
on your prayers.
If we chose not to display thanks for every
entity or person that had done something evil,
we would pray for no one and we would give
thanks for nothing.
I can pray for my father without, you know,
without it being an affront to fathers everywhere
because I didn't pray for all dads.
And he's not perfect.
He's done plenty of horrible things in his life
that he regrets.
But for me to not to say, well, because he's
done those things and because there are people
who would say, boy, my opinion of him is
different, then I shouldn't pray for him,
that's an interesting thing.
If you kind of take the logic and carry it out
a little bit further, then you end up
in an interesting place.
Now, I've said that, I'm also one who, if it
were up to me, we would not pray for American church.
So I'm not, I'm not really, I agree with your
points, I'm just kind of coming
at it or the rationale may be a bit
differently, be a bit different in terms of why.
I just, I think if we get to a point where, you
know, I'm wondering if the ethics of praying
for all of the nations, if our reason for not
praying for just America is it's wrongs
of the past, why we would bother praying for
all nations?
Because all nations have their stuff.
So that's kind of what I'm struggling with is
the consistency.
If we go ahead and we say, all right, because
there was Hiroshima or there was slavery or
there was this and that and the other, then
we're not going to pray for America.
What kind of, or that we wouldn't do it in
church, let me put it that way, that's a better
way to put it.
Then where do you end up if you use that
measuring stick for prayer?
Those who are worthy of our prayers get them
and those who, you know, or we only pray things
that we think everybody can feel good about,
which I do think is valuable.
That point I think is good, the unity of the church.
Those are a few questions that kind of popped
up and I'll turn it over to somebody else.
As they all lunge for their microphones, let me
add to the case of just a little bit.
This is a part of the case the panel has not
heard yet.
This is the best part of the moderator's job.
Babjan, an Iraqi national living in the U.S.,
has been worshiping with the North Point Church.
He left Iraq after the first Gulf War, but
still has considerable family in Iraq who
have been Christians for generations.
Babjan was as appalled as everyone about the
9-1-1 attacks, but he's also concerned about
the talk of pending war with Iraq and what that
will mean and what danger that could
bring for his family.
He had come to feel increasingly uncomfortable
at church, conspicuous because of his ethnic
identity, and he was troubled by prayers that
asked God to protect our soldiers.
Babjan wondered what it meant for Christians to
describe members of the national military
as our soldiers.
At a recent Wednesday evening church meal,
Babjan overheard Judy talking to others about
the proposed Memorial Day service.
Would the elders really allow members to wear
their uniforms and worship?
Would the congregation really sing God Bless America?
Babjan decided then to ask the elders not to
allow national symbolism and language to
be used in the upcoming worship.
He needed to feel that God looked with as much
favor on him and his Iraqi family as
they did in any citizen of the United States.
If you were a member of that eldership, would
that change your approach to this case?
I have to start by saying that I was, I
stumbled, Lee, over your, what I considered a veiled
insult to Randy there when you talked about a
man bringing his former lovers into his
marriage ceremony, and I'm still working on that.
I would say this, all of us agree nationalism
is idolatrous, I think, and that it's a sore
temptation and evidently it's very seductive.
And so whatever we say about Christians in
government, we should acknowledge up front
that this is, it's very easy to become
idolatrous in this country in particular.
Having said that, I still want to defend the
position that just as we encourage Christians
to work out the implications of their faith in
business and industry, in arts and entertainment,
in their families and their communities, it is
good and wholesome for Christians to work
out the implications of their faith in
government and in politics.
We should expect that in a democracy.
That's a good thing.
We should be suspicious of government.
We should be suspicious of power and so forth.
And we are fortunate to have, and I don't mean
this patronizingly, we're fortunate to
have voices like Lee's that are nice prophetic
voices about, from our past, from the past
of Christianity, and Lee probably stands in a
great tradition that many of us in the Church
of the Christ are completely unaware of.
And so thank you for your work.
Even if I'm not there, you certainly, man,
you're striking chords in me.
As far as a flag and the worship service, the
church service up on the stage, the church
I left in Overland Park had one because a group
of veterans came together and said this
is what we need to do.
I suggested to them it was a bad idea for a
couple of reasons, and one of them is that
a flag is a symbol that means all sorts of
things to different people.
And I do know that it sent nationalistic
signals to people, including to me.
And Memorial Day services can easily do that.
All the guards that Lee suggested, I think, are
good guards to put up.
To pray for America is a good thing.
You know, the Scriptures would teach us to pray
for our kings and those in power.
Praying for America is a healthy thing.
But the problem with churches and government,
which is different from Christians in government,
is that churches can so easily become
nationalistic and partisan and therefore end up somehow
elevating the kingdom of humans above the
kingdom of God.
So in the end, it seems to me that churches
ought to take their stands on social issues,
justice issues, mercy issues, issues of
integrity and holiness and purity, but should
not take
our stands on policies and on persons and that
sort of thing.
I don't agree that we should have flags in the assembly.
In our church auditoriums, because they're
distracting, I like how you said they mean
all kinds of different things for all kinds of
different reasons.
I'm sort of trying to envision what Lee was
saying about basically if we have two choices,
we have the choice of not doing it, which is
his first choice.
But if we do it in such a way that it really
isn't about what Memorial Day is about.
It's about basically a day of not just
remembering soldiers or remembering the
sacrifice for
... that people have paid for their government
or for their society, but it's the casualties.
It's basically it's remembrance of violence.
I agree with that, that that should be on our hearts.
That should be out in the open all the time and
not just on any given day.
That should be remembered.
Maybe there should be days where we stop and we
repent of our sins as a church, of our
sins as a community, and of our sins, our
complicit sins in our nation.
But there is also, I think, room for informed
by the fact that these people who gave their
lives in military service weren't all good,
didn't do all good, but there is a point where
there is that service for the community that I
think is worthy of remembering.
Perhaps I'm wrong here, but when I think about
the sacrifices that our soldiers make, at
least at their level, maybe not at the policy
makers and the generals' levels, but at least
at the levels of the soldiers, I think of, to a
certain degree, I think of the firefighters
and the police officers on 9-11.
I think of people who make those types of
willful decisions to go and put their lives
on the line for not just for a general cause,
but for our society.
Perhaps they're wrong to do that.
Perhaps that's war-making, but there's still,
at their level, a nobility in the fact that
they're willing to sacrifice their lives for others.
And so I think that's part of my reaction is
that I can't imagine a worship service
that does all of that.
I would rather imagine a year in the life of
the church that tries to cover the spread,
that tries to point out all these different
things, so that when we come to Memorial Day
services, this woman who asked the question,
what's her name, Judy, will know a bit more
about what she's asking, or that the Iraqi
brother will know a bit more to trust his
church and his eldership to look out for his
interests as well as Judy's interests.
To me, that kind of communication is really important.
One of the things that bothers me about the way
that this goes is that this becomes a
backroom decision.
The elders make this decision.
They don't consult anybody.
They don't bring the congregation into it.
This is the biggest problem that I have.
The reason why I'm on this panel is not because
I'm trying to advocate my politics, but because
we have to communicate this.
We have to find a way in our churches to have
this discussion so that everybody knows what's
on the table.
Nobody knows what's on the table.
We just assume our side is right.
It just really concerns me that we're so naive.
We don't know about things like the pacifist tradition.
We don't know about just war tradition.
We don't know the facts about how this war has
been executed, the good or the bad.
We don't know those things.
We just make assumptions.
It is extremely important to me that we start
knowing these things.
I think it's the responsibility of our church
leadership to start communicating, to risk
their elderships, to risk their pulpits, to
risk their professorships, to communicate
with the awareness they may be wrong, but to
communicate and just to dialogue.
We are always trying to protect our
self-interest, and a lot of times what we do is
we protect
our self-interest by shutting things down.
This story just unnerves me.
As we look at this idea of bringing
conversations to the table, what would be an appropriate
forum that any of you see that would allow this
to happen, for this sort of conversation
to happen within the church?
Not to monopolize, I just want to say two things.
One of the reasons why I'm so grateful for
Lee's book, though I look forward to the second
edition of it.
One of the reasons why I'm so grateful for
Lee's book is because all of a sudden people
are talking about these things.
This has challenged me to figure out where I'm
at in all of this.
I don't come out where Lee comes out, but I
have thought more about this because somebody
I respected, somebody I care about, somebody
who is a close friend, challenged me on this.
His book, but getting people who think
differently to articulate and to dialogue in
books and
all of that, and then saying, that brings
people to the table.
For one thing, what Lee has done and what you
all do when you're preaching, that's
really huge.
The other thing, from my point of view, is I
just feel like people don't understand what
government is for or what government is about.
I think that the issue of nationalism, we all
agree, nationalism is an evil.
I'm not convinced, I suddenly, I discovered
last night, I have sort of an Aristotle view
of government.
I found out that I kind of believe that
government is a natural part of our world and
might in
fact be as good as anything else in this world,
like trees or marriages or something like that.
It's subject to our views.
You pick marriage and then I have a lane, trees.
I've said enough.
I think maybe responding to questions from
those who are here might be more interesting
than anything I'd have to say on this
particular case.
I do think an interesting thought experiment
would be if you're a church that's kind of
a flag displaying church in the sanctuary,
auditorium, whatever you have, maybe make
it a practice of picking the flag up each
Sunday and laying it at the foot of the cross
and seeing what kind of reaction you get.
Because how people would react to that would
tell you worlds.
I think we have, a lot of people would be more
comfortable with planting the cross at
the foot of the flag than they would laying the
flag down at the foot of the cross.
That's just my impression from traveling about
a bit, might be wrong, but not bad.
Do we have questions?
Have you, we have some people fill out some
cards, did you fill, go ahead I'll try to
repeat this for the-
Do we have a, I'm sorry.
I'm wondering why, and I'm just, I was not
going to answer that one.
I'm wondering where that takes place in that
morning service,
that ensures we've been socially active,
socially interested in what is going on
and how do you put that into practice with the government?
For purposes of the recording, this is kind of
like one of those foreign movies you watch
where somebody talks for 15 minutes and then
they say three words.
Where does civil disobedience fit into this conversation?
Is there a place for that for Christians, and
is that a need as we address social issues?
I want to give you a quick kind of layout of
the way it seems to me
that if Christians are going to be engaged in
the process, they can be engaged.
I think there's five ways.
I think most people agree one is wrong, five is
right, five is wrong,
and all the discussion is about two, three, and four.
Number one would be persuasion.
That is, by our life and our words, we try to
persuade people into a certain way of life.
I think most people agree that one's right.
Number two would be ordinary political action.
That would be stuff like voting.
Number three would be extraordinary political action.
That might be like petitions, running for
office yourself, that kind of thing.
It's kind of a step up.
The fourth would be civil disobedience, which I love.
I mean, anything with the word disobedience in
it's got my attention.
The fifth would be terrorism, a dominant
abortion clinic.
Most people are going to agree one is okay and
five is not.
The question is, what do we think about two,
three, and four?
Two, three, and four are, in one way or
another, the assertion of power.
Then we kind of have the question about whether
Christians may practice the politics of peace
and justice
or whether their position ought to be to just
be persuasive and stand apart from that structure.
I think everybody's going to make their own
decisions about what level of that they're
comfortable with.
I think when you put it to people in a certain
way, everybody agrees that civil disobedience
is sometimes the right thing to do.
There are some justices that are so over the
top and heinous that Christians must stand
against them.
Civil disobedience shows enormous respect for
government because what civil disobedience is
trying to do is not overthrow the government.
What civil disobedience is trying to do is
appeal to the wider community sense of justice
to work within the system to correct that.
It comes from outside the system, but its
intention is to do something to the system.
I think if you live in a world that is deeply
racist in its policy, I would think that civil
disobedience would be the gospel-like thing to do.
There was quite a famous article written in
Mission magazine.
Back in the 60s, this was kind of a hot topic.
It appears to me it's not anymore.
For instance, I have to explain to my students
what it is. I just can't quite get them interested.
They want to be disobedient, but not to any
real point as far as I can tell.
One thing that strikes me about the question is
that, one, I don't like the way Randy did his Continuum.
He should put civil disobedience at number two
rather than number four because it comes across
as civil disobedience is right there next to terrorism.
It may be that civil disobedience, like number
one, is not so sure that the system works all
that well.
At the level of church, one of the things I was
talking about in my points in response to the
case is that what we do in church shapes us
into a particular kind of people.
If we have Memorial Day celebrations but we
don't have celebrations where we remember those
who are civilly disobedient in our midst, what
kind of people does that shape our kids to be?
I think that whenever we talk about government
and we read Romans 13, but we don't ever go
over and read Revelation 13, that shapes the
way people think about government and the response.
If I read my church Revelation 13 more than
Romans 13, then civil disobedience becomes one
of those things that's like,
well, this is a real, very viable practice of
the church that we should commemorate and
memorialize. And it goes back to my notion of
how often have we remembered MLK Day in church?
And so I think it's a very helpful question.
I meant to do this earlier. I want to give you
one book for your reading list.
The author is Hedges and the book is called The
Truth About War. And it's written by a
journalist and it's nothing but questions and answers.
The book has almost no adjectives in it.
He's not arguing for or against war. As a
matter of fact, he thinks war is sometimes necessary.
But what he says is you ought to know the truth
about war before you do it.
And so what he's done is just extensive
research trying to figure out what the truth
about war is.
Who gets killed? How many get killed? What
happens when? Et cetera, Et cetera.
And I think it's just a wonderful starting
place because whatever your position about
that's going to be,
it ought to be informed by what the truth about
it really is because what we are told both on
left and right about war often has too many
adjectives and not enough nouns. Hedges?
I think civil disobedience has its place. I
think the trick there is the virtues that are
held up should be more --
should be the virtues themselves. Civil
disobedience not becoming a virtue in and of itself.
Because you don't want -- it's too easy then to
kind of create a counterdependent culture that
simply enjoys going against whatever is going on.
And that's not necessarily a God-honoring thing.
I'm trying to picture a worship service in
which this is how your mind plays games on you
while you're on a panel.
I'm sitting there picturing people laying in
the aisles refusing to move or something like
that because the elders have made a certain
decision they didn't agree with or thought was immoral.
That hasn't happened where you are?
No. But you know what I mean? There's a place
in which you create a society and you create
people that do not have the capacity to follow well.
And anything that they disagree with becomes a
serious offense. So I think it has its place.
I think the main thing is to make sure -- and
then also to exhibit the virtues of Jesus in
how you demonstrate and how you disobey.
For instance, do we slander others? You who
say, thou shalt not kill, are we doing the
things that we're accusing other people of?
Or are we exhibiting Christ in how we disobey civilly?
It's one thing to say we disagree with war.
It's another to bomb a building as a
demonstration of being against war.
See what I'm saying? That's all I'm saying.
My instinct on this is to say what's the
difference between somebody who lays down her
life in military action and somebody who stands
up against a social injustice perpetrated by
the government and by society?
And I'm not sure there's a substantive difference.
Somebody might say, well, one's working for the
man, but I think both are motivated out of
their hearts for service to society.
And I think it's a failure of our church, of
the church, to not honor the glorious brothers
and sisters who stood up more against social
injustice, against all the injustices of our society.
Again, there are the people who are civilly
disobedient just for kicks, and I don't want to
acknowledge them, but there are military people
who are that for kicks, and that's a bit more frightening.
But the problem I have is I don't see Memorial
Day as an attack upon civilly disobedient
people who have been civilly disobedient.
I wouldn't mind having a day set aside for that
or acknowledging that frequently.
And I don't know if we want to do Memorial Day
on Memorial Day, but I think a lot of times we
feel like-and I'm going to say something, and I
don't know-I'm not the last person I would be
calling cowardly as Lee.
It sounds like you're about to do that.
It may sound like that, but it really-you know
me, you know my heart, I think.
But a lot of times when we do something like a
memorial service, but it tries to be all things
to all people, we don't have the guts to come
out and say what it is.
We're afraid of offending people, and I'm
certainly not worried about you being afraid to
offend people, but we are afraid to take stands.
And I think we're afraid, you know, that if we
stand up with those who are civilly
disobedient-and you know, I mean, from the
things that I've said, that I believe that
government is very important.
I believe that it goes back to the fact that I
tend to be more trustworthy of that.
But that's why I think civil disobedience is
such a good, is it works the system for justice.
And anyway, I just think that part of this is a
fear of coming out and saying, you know, on
Memorial Day, we can take a stand with those
who've given their lives,
recognizing all the things that we need to
recognize, but doing it in a sensitive way to
those who've given their lives and at other times.
But we don't do that. We feel like we have to
equivocate and footnote and parenthesize
everything in order to be all things to all people.
There is one huge, obvious difference between
civil disobedience as it took place in the
1960s and what you're memorializing in Memorial Day.
Both gave their lives, right? But the
difference is method. They're both exertions of
power, but the difference is in method.
And one is the method of a willingness or an
actual practice of killing one's enemy.
And the other is the actual practice of being
willing to let the enemy kill you.
And that's a huge ethical difference between
the two.
You're right to name that. And I'm aware of
that. I didn't state it. I should have stated it.
But that's where I think it's very important
that we understand what war is about. But I'm
of the mindset still that it is not the same
thing as just simply going on a killing spree.
I think war can be necessary at times from a
state's perspective, not from a Christian's
perspective for his or herself, but from a
state's perspective.
It can be necessary at times. And I think there
have been, and again, I'm talking at the
individual level, not talking about what the
government is doing.
I'm talking about what those people are doing.
Did they go out to kill? Did those men go out
to kill the enemy out of the same kind of
malicious capriciousness that a murderer goes out?
And I don't agree with that.
Go ahead. I've gotten this discussion once with
folks over whether it was appropriate or not to
give the Aggie war hoop when someone was
baptized there.
And the question was, was it irreverent or not?
And of course, that's not the question. Of
course it's inappropriate. It's highly inappropriate.
Inflammatorily inappropriate because it's
tribal. And we belong to a community that calls
us out of our tribalism.
And I think that one of the things that falling
apart of the great world powers at the end of
the 20th century has shown is we are as tribal
as we ever were.
And the only thing that is holding back tribal
warfare is the raw assertion of power.
And when that power is removed, here it comes
all over again.
Now, one of the things that tells me is, okay,
I'm going to take Ron seriously here. His
concerns about disorder are well-placed because
there's chaos lying just beneath the surface
all the time.
But I also want to really watch anything in the
church that is going to smack or lean towards
tribalism because everything in my culture is
pressing me towards that.
And the church has got to be the counterweight
to our tribal impulses.
We're trying to do the Christian thing here at
ACU. And right underneath the surface and
sometimes right on the surface, we have this
incredible tribalism here.
And you don't have to look very astutely to see it.
Rwanda, by my understanding, is one of the most
Christian countries in Africa.
But unfortunately, what has ruled there is not
that Christianity, it's tribalism.
Okay, you can argue we're doing a little better
here. I know Lee doesn't think we're doing very
well, but he's a gloomy Gus.
But the threat is serious and everywhere around us.
And I guess that's why I would keep coming back
to that it is different when you're talking
about nations and when you're talking about
firemen or policemen
because there is a pull towards tribalism in
one that there's not quite in the other.
And that we have this responsibility to be the
counterweight to that.
The end. Amen.
That's all I have to say with this edition. I
agree with all your points.
But the reason, to go back to something Ron
said, there are good reasons why churches don't
have these discussions.
Underneath all of that, the aversion to talking
about church and state issues or patriotism in
the church,
is the fact that we do not have the capacity to
talk about much without it breaking out into
some sort of church-harming dispute.
It's hard for me to imagine a church in which
the whole church would come apart at the seams
because they hired this preacher instead of
this preacher, being able to take on an issue
like this with any maturity.
I think the way that you get to a point where
you can have those conversations is you have to
create a church and a community that is
peaceful by its nature
because only peaceful people can actually have
discussions like that.
It doesn't mean they aren't passionate and it
doesn't mean that they're apathetic or stoic in
the way that they do it.
But the most common reasons why churches don't
talk about things aren't that they really just
don't know it's important to people.
They know it's important to people. They do it
out of fear of the response that they'll get
from just laying it on the table.
To me, not having a peaceful environment,
period, not just for the discussion of all of
the issues like this,
has probably been one of the church's downfalls
in this regard.
As it gets harder and harder and harder over
time, if you don't have a peaceful environment
in which to have these discussions
where there's trust and people can talk about
it in ways that would honor God, it's very hard
to bring it up.
And so what happens is the preaching and the
leadership falls into a state of ambiguity.
The sermons just don't get very specific or
challenging because they're afraid to challenge people.
Well, the same, I think, happens with
discussions like these.
It's very hard to have these discussions
because of the fear that's probably under the
surface in some people about
what is this going to do to the church? Would
this be beneficial or would it not?
One more quick question. I just wanted to say
that I have had, out of our discussion, costs
for repentance today
because to be called by Randy Harris a gloomy
Gus means that something has to be wrong.
I'll have to do some soul searching somewhere.
One more quick question.
I just wonder, pardon my simple mind, but I
don't know why we're having this discussion
because it seems to me that
Scripture teaches that God is very involved in
governments, in nations.
He makes nations rise. He makes nations fall.
He tells us to pray for the leaders.
He had his nation of Israel involved in war.
If God is involved in something and uses
something and instructs us to pray for the
leaders of that thing, what's the issue?
For me, the issue is Romans 12 and Romans 13.
All you said is exactly right, but if we read
the Old Testament carefully, the nations that
God is very often involved in
are Assyria, Babylon, Egypt. He's using the
principalities and powers of the world of human
history to do his bidding
under his providence and his sovereignty, but
that doesn't mean that he then wants his people
to go be Babylonians or Assyrians.
He still wants them to be the Jews and do what
Jews are supposed to do.
This is the same thing with Romans 12 and 13. I
think if we read Romans 13 through the lens of
the Old Testament,
we get a better picture of what Paul is saying.
He's saying God and God's sovereignty uses the
Assyrians, the Babylonians,
the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the
British Empire, the United States Empire, the
Iraqi Empire.
Our task is not to try to run those empires.
Our task is to be what he describes in Romans 12.
It's a question worth a lot more discussion
than that, but that's my kind of quick...
really all the time we have today. Would you
join me in thanking these gentlemen for their efforts?