Posted on 09/09/2015 10:03:11 AM PDT by xzins
Before a judge today ordered her release, Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee announced their plans to meet with Kentucky clerk Kim Davis whose refusal to worship at the First Church of Justice Kennedy and sign her name to same-sex marriage licenses landed her in jail over the Labor Day weekend. Had her stand happened a few short centuries ago, Huckabee and Cruz would likely have been joined by a few notable figures from Christian history — men like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox — the men who first put the “protest” in “Protestant.” They would have understood her stand completely. It’s the stand of the “lesser magistrate” — the lesser public figure — against a “greater magistrate” who has not only abandoned his God-given role and forsaken his God-ordained responsibilities, but is demanding that his subordinates participate in his rebellion.
At the dawn of the Reformation, the early Protestants faced the twin challenge of defying both ecclesiastical and earthly authority — often combined in the form of rulers acting in the name of the Catholic Church. The result wasn’t just a clash of arms, but a clash of ideas — a theological argument over whether the Reformers, including Protestant public officials, were required to obey their Catholic rulers as God-ordained authorities, abandon their new faith practices, and bring themselves — and their cities — back into obedience to the Holy Roman Emperor.
The theological response was relatively simple: When rulers defy God, they lose their God-ordained authority. When rulers require lesser authorities to cooperate in and facilitate evil, the lesser authorities must resist. As John Knox stated, “True it is, God has commanded kings to be obeyed; but likewise true it is, that in things which they commit against His glory, He has commanded no obedience, but rather, He has approved, yea, and greatly rewarded, such as have opposed themselves to their ungodly commandments and blind rage.” Calvin was even more blunt: “For earthly princes lay aside their power when they rise up against God, and are unworthy to be reckoned among the number of mankind. We ought, rather, to spit upon their heads than to obey them.” In support of this assertion, the Reformers could point to no shortage of biblical examples, including such luminaries as David and Daniel.
But resistance is not to be mounted impulsively or lightly. The Magdeburg Confession, a 1550 statement of defiance of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, notes that all men — both greater and lesser rulers — are subject to “natural weakness” — their own “vices and sins” — yet these common, “remedial” offenses present no cause for defiance or rebellion. But the situation grows more grave as a ruler takes away the rights of others and graver still as the ruler commands that the lesser magistrate participate in his wrongful acts. The “highest level of injury” comes when rulers “persecute God, the author of right in persons, not by any sudden and momentary fury, but with deliberate and persistent attempt to destroy good works for all posterity.” This — the reformers would argue — was precisely the goal of the Holy Roman Emperor, to “extinguish the true worshippers of God, that is, the true Church of God.” One can see the influence of this doctrine in our own American Revolution, which began as a conflict between greater and lesser magistrates, with colonial legislatures and then the Continental Congress serving as the vehicle of American efforts first to appeal to, and then later to defy the crown. Mob violence occurred, but it was mercifully brief and relatively bloodless (especially as compared with that of the French Revolution). Indeed, the Establishment Clause itself — part of the First Amendment — has historically stood as a bulwark against just the kind of crisis triggered by Charles V and other religious rulers of Europe.
It’s critical for the social-justice warriors to understand that victory over the faithful in political and even cultural clashes will not cause them to yield.
Mercifully, for much of our nation’s history, not only has our government not adopted positions explicitly opposed to orthodox Christian faith and practice, when it has encroached on religious conscience, it has been generous in granting exemptions for the faithful. Even when the nation’s very existence is at stake, we don’t demand that pacifists take up arms. Even as our nation’s judiciary created a right to kill innocent children, lesser magistrates erected a labyrinth of conscience exemptions to prevent taxpayers from directly funding abortion and to protect health-care practitioners from participating in murder. In fact, our system is built from the ground up to withstand a high degree of religious dissent.
But this time of relative peace may be at an end. Ever since Justice Kennedy began to establish a new federal religion, most concisely articulated in his infamous “sweet-mystery-of-life” passage in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”), America’s Christians have seen their space in the public square shrink, with dissent re-labeled as discrimination and orthodox religious faith slandered as bigotry. Yet it’s critical for the social-justice warriors to understand that victory over the faithful in political and even cultural clashes will not cause them to yield. The alternative to accommodation isn’t coercion but rather conflict.
Last year — while writing in support of Religious Freedom Restoration Acts — I noted: : “Religious liberty exists as a core civilizational value not just because pluralist societies profit from it, but because the human heart demands it. If history teaches anything, it teaches that the religious impulse — the sense of eternity set in the hearts of men (to paraphrase Solomon) — is nothing if not powerful.” Or to put things more bluntly, Justice Kennedy can purport to change the Constitution, but he can’t transform Christian conviction. Unless his social-justice church grows more tolerant, the Kim Davis case is a harbinger of more conflict to come. We Protestants are simply returning to our roots.
America was founded on the principles of religious freedom and rule by the people. Our constitution was designed to protect our religious freedom and all of our freedoms by severely restricting the federal government’s powers to only those actually enumerated and delegated to it by the constitution and reserving all others to the states and the people. Control over marriage is not an enumerated power for the feds and is clearly left to the people.
The majority of the people in the majority of the states from before the founding and right up to today are for one man-one woman marriage. The vast majority of the states had laws against same sex marriage before the scotus ruling. Only a handful of states had legislated to make it legal.
The courts have no business and no authority to toss out thousands of years of natural law, nullify our constitutionally protected rights to free exercise of religion, overturn the laws of majority of states, and overrule the majority will of the people!!
We the people do not consent to unjust laws!! Read and comprehend the Declaration of Independence! Unjust laws are not laws at all!!
Resist hell!! The founders would already be up in arms over this tyranny!!
Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer all bravely resisted government tyranny at the cost of their lives. All three patriotic Germans were executed by the Nazis in the 1942-45 era.
Today, more of us will have to be willing to risk our lives and fortunes in order to save this country from falling further into the abyss.
Control over marriage is not an enumerated power for the feds and is clearly left to the people.
this is lost on most !
Hear-hear!
Resist hell!
“...The courts have no business and no authority to toss out thousands of years of natural law, nullify our constitutionally protected rights to free exercise of religion, overturn the laws of majority of states, and overrule the majority will of the people!!...”
We suffer under a judicial tyranny and our oppressors are becoming ever more arrogant.
And Huckabee locked Sen. Cruz out of being with everyone when Ms. Davis was released from jail. Shame. On. Him.
Too right!!!
Probably because Luther normally gets grouped with the others. Note, however, that there is no parallel Luther quote as there is for Knox and Calvin.
Luther certainly had his problems. Initially, though, he was a rebel.
Part of that is on Cruz who should have found a way.
Brother: one third of the angels were rebels. We can’t just stop at saying “so-and-so was a rebel” without discerning further.
But now that Jim’s on-thread I don’t want to distract from what should hopefully be a Constitutional discussion.
Good night, and may God lead us all into just rebellion.
At the top of the paper that Judge Anthony Kennedy wrote on Obergefell, it says OPINION.
That’s it....an opinion.
His opinion versus rebellion. I’m putting my money on the rebellion.
I am not Lutheran, but I think there is more to that story. Also, Calvin and a few protestants were complicit in the murder of a few Baptists. I would say that they were wrong. Dead wrong. They do not do that anymore and Catholics have stopped murdering non-Catholics. May God grant that the brutality never happens again.
An excellent article, especially in a time where so many Caesarists are creeping around preaching abject capitulation to principalities and powers. I am amazed and happy to see it came from NRO.
Resist hell!! The founders would already be up in arms over this tyranny!!
I’m your Huckleberry
When the State requires what God forbids, or forbids what God requires; then we obey God. The civil authorities receive their authority from God, hence they must call good what God calls good, and evil what God calls evil(Gay marriage-Romans 1). Scripture does not sanction the Christian to obey evil laws crafted by the civil Magistrate and disobey God, so long as we prove we were doing so at the command of the State. Our own Constitution was informed by this principle and our Declaration made it the case for Revolution. As Thomas Paine wrote: The Tree of Liberty must, from time to time, be watered by the blood of tyrants and patriots.
Didn’t the Reformers think that marriage is simply a civil matter? Not that any of them would ever accept ‘gay marriage’ like the civil authorities have. But it seems to me that once it became a civil matter and defined by the civil authorities it became subject to changing in the minds of many, because civil matters have stipulated ways of changing. Thus no-fault divorce, bans on interracial marriage, and now acceptance of ‘gay marriage.’ Heck, the faith groups that have accepted ‘gay marriage’ didn’t even start marrying their gay members until the states they happened to be in also agreed.
Freegards
if they mean to have a war—let it begin here—and Now. I will NOT comply with any illegal order— Nor with with any unconstitutional mandate —Neither will I compromise my Conscience.
I will NOT Comply with any illegal order—Nor with any unconstitutional mandate— Neither will I compromise my Conscience. Or as the Code puts it — “I will NEVER surrender of my own free will.”
Who knew all those Christians in the Roman arena were Protestants!
Good comments Jim...
I agree with you.
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.