Faith, Justice, and the Law

WHEN I RECENTLY spoke at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., on the subject of my book America’s Original Sin, the moderator introduced me with something that isn’t in my official bio. “Our speaker today has been arrested 22 times.”

It’s up to 23 times now, after I was arrested in December in the Hart Senate Office Building for reading biblical passages about poverty to protest the GOP tax plan, which disproportionately favors the rich.

In Shane Claiborne’s piece in this issue, he provides an overview of civil disobedience—both the biblical basis for disobeying unjust laws and how people doing so, often at great risk, have changed the course of history again and again. I want to share a few of my own reflections on civil disobedience.

In late 1983, on the heels of the Reagan administration’s invasion of Grenada, church leaders in Nicaragua called Sojourners and pleaded with us to help stop the invasion of their country, rightly fearing that the U.S. would target Nicaragua next. We asked ourselves, What can we do?

After much prayer and discernment, and in collaboration with many allies in the Christian peace movement, we launched “The Pledge of Resistance,” wherein Christians across the United States “pledged” to fill the offices of their members of Congress in massive civil disobedience if Nicaragua were invaded. Eighty thousand people eventually signed the pledge. Most of the signers were prepared to be arrested and go to jail if necessary.

Our hope in creating this pledge was to increase the domestic cost of a U.S. invasion—with a credible promise to mobilize tens of thousands to engage in principled law-breaking all over America—hoping that might make decision-makers reconsider. It worked. In the end, the United States did not send troops to directly invade Nicaragua (the Iran-contra scandal and the U.S.- paid mercenaries is a story for another time). Later, we got reliable information that the Pledge of Resistance was a significant factor in the White House decision not to invade.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE is just one tactic in the toolbox of social change, and it exists along a continuum of protest. It should be something we are willing to undertake when the stakes are high enough to demand such action and other tactics have been exhausted.

Civil disobedience on occasion has been the culmination of broader movements around particular justice and peace commitments. For example, for decades Sojourners helped lead faith-based national campaigns to stop and reverse the Cold War nuclear arms race. We focused on bringing needed biblical and theological reflection to the public debates, including producing study guides that were used by hundreds of thousands of people in churches across the U.S. Our writing, speaking, and acting engaged Christians across the country, so that when Congress debated dangerous first-strike nuclear weapons in 1983, we were ready to respond with what at the time was the largest civil disobedience action in Washington since the Vietnam War, as 242 of us were arrested for singing and praying in the U.S. Capitol.

People often come up to me and say, “I was arrested with you!” Many who have joined Sojourners in civil disobedience have learned that it can indeed change history, but it can be deeply transformational on a personal level as well. When middle-class white people find themselves inside a jail cell for the first time, on the wrong side of the law they were raised to obey, it can be an emotional and life-changing experience.

Of course, many people of color have had those experiences throughout their lives, and civil disobedience actions conducted by people of color are often treated in much more brutal ways. Consequently, when white people choose to engage in civil disobedience, they need to do so while fully recognizing their privilege and commit to using that privilege constructively.

FROM PROTETS AT the nuclear weapons test site in Nevada and arrests at the South African embassy to oppose apartheid, from actions at the State Department against U.S. wars in Central America and torture and blocking illegal evictions of low-income people in our own neighborhoods—we have learned a great deal over the years about faith, justice, and the law.

In our current climate, my prayer is that we will gather the lessons many of us have learned over the years about when and how civil disobedience is appropriate and necessary and be ready to act when circumstances call for it. Inevitably, there will be moments ahead when nonviolent, prayerful civil disobedience will be part of the way forward. It seems inescapable, given the injustice and dangers we see in America and the rest of the world. My 23rd arrest this winter is unlikely to be my last.