Issue 6 - Civil Disobedience
Theology
I’ve dedicated this entire newsletter to the topic of Christian civil disobedience.
Civil disobedience is the act of deliberately defying government authority.
The Bible expressly commands us to obey civil authorities (see Romans 13:1-7).
However, the Bible includes several instances of civil disobedience, such as:
Hebrew midwives refusing to kill baby boys despite Pharoah’s explicit command to do so.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refusing to bow to the golden statue of King Nebuchadnezzar.
Daniel praying to God instead of King Darius despite the king’s command that residents of the empire could only pray to him.
In Acts 5, the apostles continued to preach in Jerusalem despite the civil authorities demanding that they cease.
As Christians, we should begin thinking now about principles of civil disobedience and what could or should compel us to such actions, as our culture becomes more opposed to Christian beliefs.
For example, in one Australian province, and in Canada, it is potentially illegal for a preacher to counsel or pray for somebody to stop homosexual behavior, or to stop living as a transgender individual (To the best of my knowledge nobody has been prosecuted under these laws, which have been on the books for a year or two - but if you click on the links above you’ll see concerns are legitimate).
Similarly, a law in Canada makes it technically illegal to preach against assisted suicide.
Under new Title IX regulations that take effect in August, schools that don’t respect students’ preferred pronouns could be found guilty of a civil rights violation. This could make it impossible for teachers to receive religious accommodation not to use the wrong pronouns.
My small group recently had a lengthy discussion about civil disobedience in the book of Daniel and noted several principles modeled in that book:
Know scripture (so you have wisdom to discern when God’s commands are being violated).
Be in prayer (ask the Holy Spirit for guidance).
Be in community (ask for Godly counsel from friends)
Check your heart (am I disobeying because I feel like my rights/preferences are being violated, or am I disobeying out of a higher obedience to God).
Act respectfully (Daniel and his friends were firm but neither deliberately confrontational, nor bombastic)
Act consistently (Daniel prayed every day, so his prayer in defiance of the King was defiance consistent with his prior behavior, not a deliberate provocation).
This Gospel Coalition article adds several additional principles that overlap somewhat with the ones my small group discussed:
You must have a clear command of God if you disobey because as a general rule we have a clear command to be subject to civil authorities.
Civil disobedience does not entitle you to dishonor civil authorities.
Civil disobedience does not entitle you to resist arrest.
Punishments should be accepted in good spirit.
If civil disobedience is legitimate, then the forbidden action should not cease after initial censure and punishment.
I confess that the first principle the author lists is the hardest one for me to discern:
In each of the Biblical cases I listed above, civil disobedience was undertaken to avoid directly contradicting God’s commands.
However, there are many instances in the history of civil disobedience that were based on Christian principles, but not direct commands, that we celebrate as righteous.
For example, we (rightly) praise Christians who hid runaway slaves, or who peacefully broke the law to combat segregation in the American South. However, the near-universally accepted appropriateness of these acts is based on an extrapolation of Christian ethical principles beyond what is explicitly listed in scripture. It is now understood that Biblical principles clearly prohibit slavery or racial segregation, but the Bible does not have one specific verse you can point to that states that slavery or racial segregation directly violate God’s explicit commands in the same way that the Bible prohibits murder or the worship of other gods.
In the book of Daniel, the exiled boys receive Babylonian names that glorified their captors’ false gods. While the text does suggest they still used their given Hebrew names among themselves, they could not have avoided living life with those names and being addressed by them in going about their daily work. So while they didn’t accept the names for themselves, neither did they put up a fight and put their lives on the line to prevent others from using them.
One question we can ask ourselves when faced with moral gray areas is whether an action equates to receiving a Babylonian name (something we may not love but which does not directly violate God’s laws), or whether it is more like bowing to the golden statue (something that does violate God’s laws)?
I strongly encourage you to begin thinking about where these gray areas may be and praying about how God would have you respond to them. While I am not claiming that serious Christian persecution is around the corner in the US, I do think obedience to God is going to become more costly moving forward, and we should prepare ourselves accordingly.
Addendum - A Case Study in Civil Disobedience
Background
I drafted this newsletter a couple of months ago, and I had originally planned to end it here. Since then, as many of you know, I have engaged in deliberate defiance of authority because of my Christian convictions. Specifically, my company recently issued updated guidelines for email signatures that mandated inclusion of one’s preferred pronouns. I updated my signature to otherwise conform with the new guidelines, without including that information. As of this writing, the situation is in limbo. The guidelines went into effect a few weeks ago, and it is unclear whether they will be enforced or what the potential penalty for noncompliance would be if enforced. However, I am prepared to file a religious accommodation request, and if necessary, lose my job over this.
This example does not meet the precise definition of civil disobedience because I did not defy the government. Rather, I have defied my employer. But I have submitted to the authority of my employer. So to violate their rules, if those rules were not in conflict with God’s commands, would, I think, be sinful, and so many of the same principles apply.
I bring up this situation because I get the sense that many people I have told about it don’t really understand why I would take such a hard line over something that seems so minor and innocuous. In addition to explaining my rationale for taking this stance, I hope that this serves as a useful case study in thinking about where to draw the line in acts of civil disobedience, and specifically, thinking about when and how to resist LGBTQ ideology in our society (which I suspect will be a key fault line where disobedience is required).
I will also caveat that I have dear friends, who I believe sincerely love Jesus, that draw the exact opposite conclusion from me - going so far as to say Christians should volunteer their pronouns without being asked in order to be inclusive to marginalized coworkers. I am not saying that to disagree with me on this issue means you are not a Christian or don’t love Jesus. If you are unconvinced by my reasoning, I certainly welcome feedback.
What is Communicated by Giving Pronouns
My stance hinges on the fact that the purpose of providing pronouns is not simply providing information or promoting inclusivity: if it was, I would have no problem with it. However, it also serves as a symbolic act affirming the beliefs underlying transgender ideology. This assertion is not just based on my own interpretation of the ritual.
As this secular essay notes:
“When you ask someone to declare pronouns, you are doing one of two things. You are either saying that you are having trouble identifying this person’s sex, or you are saying that you believe in the notion of gender identity and expect others to do the same. As a species we are very well attuned to recognizing the sex of other people, so, for the most part, to ask for pronouns is an expression of fealty to a fashionable ideology — and to set a test for others to do likewise.”
Baptist ethics professor Andrew Walker also describes how offering one’s pronouns signals acceptance of the transgender worldview.
But it’s not just opponents of transgender ideology who offer this interpretation. LGBTQ allies also cite affirmation of transgender ideology as a primary reason for providing pronouns.
For example, a blog on women’s employment website InHerSight says “The purpose behind the pronoun-identifying practice is to normalize the fact that gender is not binary.” Bybrand, a company that provides email signature software, notes “When organizations adopt gender pronouns as a way to acknowledge gender identity or gender expression, they send a strong message they view gender as non-binary.”
A Duke University resource I’ve seen cited in multiple email signatures at work notes that sharing pronouns and asking others to share theirs helps build an “affirming campus.” While tolerance refers to allowing a thought or behavior without resistance or intervention, affirmation crosses the line from acceptance to “confirming or ratifying; expressing agreement with or commitment to.” Thus, creating an “affirming” environment, rather than just a “safe” or “tolerant” one, requires explicit action (such as sharing pronouns) that serves to express agreement with the underlying worldview.
Why I Think Christians Shouldn’t Give Their Pronouns
If it is the case that providing pronouns serves to confirm/ratify/express agreement with people’s decisions to live as a different gender, or the idea that gender is not binary, then I think there are three reasons why it would be wrong for me to provide my pronouns in any context.
1.) It is lying. I do not believe that it is possible for men to “be” women if they feel that they are women, or vice versa. I don’t believe it’s possible to be “non-binary” and have no gender, or that gender “exists on a continuum.” Giving my pronouns communicates not just my tolerance for, but my acceptance of, a worldview that does believe those things. This would be a lie.
2.) It affirms sin. As I laid out in my fourth newsletter, I believe that trying to live as anything besides your actual biological sex is a sin. As noted above, providing your pronouns is intended to communicate “I am agreeing with the idea of trying to live as the opposite sex, or as no sex at all.” This is affirming sinful behavior.
3.) It advances a false and dangerous ideology. As I also laid out in my fourth newsletter, transgender ideology causes real harm to transgender individuals and to non-trans women, and preys on vulnerable young people, particularly girls. Transgender ideology corrodes trust in our institutions (e.g., when Supreme Court Justices can’t define what a woman is) and habituates people to repeating things they know to be untrue.
Ideologies gain their strength in large part from the number of people who behave as if they believe them, whether or not they actually do. People who don’t believe that sex is on a continuum but share their pronouns anyway are, in a small way, empowering that worldview. I believe the only way we will begin to halt, and ultimately reverse, the damage being done by this ideology is for people to refuse to “normalize the idea that gender isn’t binary,” stop pretending that “trans women are women” and otherwise refuse to affirm the ideology when asked to do so. Or, as famed anti-communist dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it: “to live not by lies.”
This is not to say that Christians are required to go on the offensive with regards to these issues. But I do think that Christians should at least be unwilling to knowingly participate in a lie, particularly one that promotes such a destructive ideology and the sin of those caught up in that ideology.
As noted in the first half of this issue, processing in Christian community is one of the ways we ensure that civil disobedience is not based on personal preference or incorrect understanding of God’s commands. If you disagree with the case I’ve laid out, I welcome your feedback. Either way, I hope that this has provided a useful template for thinking through issues of Christian conscience - something I think is going to become increasingly relevant for us in the future.