HE PUT HIS HAND TO THE GOSPEL PLOW:

I touched on this on the weekend when Lewis died, but how many times in American life have we seen a better marriage of Christian belief and Christian behavior than the nonviolent resistance to segregation and Jim Crow in the American South? Remember Lewis's own words, from a 2004 interview:

During those early days, we didn't study the Constitution, the Supreme Court decision of 1954. We studied the great religions of the world. We discussed and debated the teachings of the great teacher. And we would ask questions about what would Jesus do. In preparing for the sit-ins, we felt that the message was one of love -- the message of love in action: don't hate. If someone hits you, don't strike back. Just turn the other side. Be prepared to forgive. That's not anything any Constitution say anything about forgiveness. It is straight from the Scripture: reconciliation.

In his legendary "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King Jr. didn't just deliver a master class on the injustice of segregation, he also delivered a lesson in the method of nonviolence, of the graduated approach before he took to the streets. "In any nonviolent campaign," King wrote, "there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action."

And he appealed of course to scriptural principle and scriptural example:

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire.

Moreover, it's important to remember that the civil rights movement's success was hardly assured. In other words, the fact that the tactics "worked" is not the reason they were justified. They were right regardless of the outcome. And they were pursued against great odds.

What looks inevitable in hindsight was anything but certain. In fact, if you were placing contemporary bets on a political outcome, would you guess that some version of a three-century status quo would prevail, or that the civil rights movement would achieve a legal revolution nearly on par with emancipation itself? 

At the same time, can we even recall a modern Christian political movement so consistent with the upside-down logic of biblical Christianity? To gain your life you must lose your life. Bless those who persecute you. Love your enemies. The last shall be first. 

In fact, the turning point of the movement came in 1963, in the Birmingham "Children's Crusade," when the least-powerful members of Southern society, the black children of Alabama, confronted Bull Connor's dogs and firehoses, and--finally--shocked the conscience of a nation chock full of Christians and moved it to take decisive legal and political action. 

That's what a Christian political theology looks like in action. Both ends and means are suffused with Gospel truth.

Tweet   @brothersjudd