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HOUSTON—With Christian and secular morality increasingly in conflict in the United States—in the public square and the courtroom—how should Christians respond to real and perceived infringements upon their duty to speak God’s truth into the culture? Is civil disobedience ever an option?
A representative group of Southern Baptists whose work can be or is being impacted by the moral shift addressed these questions during a panel discussion about church and state, Nov. 10 during the 18th annual Southern Baptists of Texas Convention in Houston. The panelists included Jason Allen, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; Steven Goodspeed, attorney with The Church Law Group; O.S. Hawkins, president of Guidestone Financial Resources; Raymond Perry, pastor of Trinity Friendship Baptist Church in Wylie; Kris Segrest, pastor of First Baptist Church in Wylie; and Steve Washburn, pastor of First Baptist Church in Pflugerville. Gary Ledbetter, SBTC director of communications, moderated the discussion. Allowing for the natural conflict between Christians and the world, the panelists agreed disobedience was part of that paradigm. However, they differed on when to initiate intentional pushback to ungodly encroachments.
If the cultural or legal mandate is in direct contradiction with Scripture then, yes, Christians should stand in opposition to it, Hawkins said, adding they must be willing to deal with the consequences of their actions.
“This is an issue that ought to be nuanced,” said Allen. “We don’t want to gin ourselves up to be makeshift anarchists or insurrectionists where we kind of shoot from the hip,” said Allen.
Christians must distinguish whether a government action is incentivizing or dis-incentivizing an action or whether it is forbidding and permitting an action. One is merely an irritant while the other comes in direct conflict with Christian convictions. One requires submission. But when and how a Christian throws off the submissive role as it relates to the government should be given careful consideration.
Pastors should take particular care to guard their pulpits, Washburn said. With few constitutional limits pastors can preach about all manner of people and issues, including politics. But politicians cross a line when they presume to speak about the morals of God.
“Do politicians by their involvement decide what we as pastors, preachers and leaders can address and speak to?” Washburn asked. “Our response needs to be a unified and resounding, ‘No!’”
Perry said civil society does not reflect biblical morals because Christians have withdrawn from engagement in civil society. And it will take courage to take back what has been acquiesced. If Christians today do not take seriously the need to impact the culture for Christ, future generations will be lost.
“We may win the war, but we’ll lose the battle,” Perry said.
Asked how pastors can negotiate subtleties in the relationship between churches and the law, Goodspeed, an attorney, half-joked that pastors and ministry leaders should not defer too much to lawyers in determining what is Caesar’s and what is God’s. But his concern, like Perry’s, stems from a recognition of the destructive nature of “the spirit of the age.”
“One of the concerns that I have is that pastors are at risk of having the spirit of the times whispering in their ears about the selection of sermons and about the power in which they preach from the pulpit,” Goodspeed said. “And the concern out there in civil society that can begin to encroach on the pulpit in very insidious ways.”
Ledbetter asked how the panelists would have handled the Houston controversy over a pro-LGBT civil rights ordinance—a battle that put pastors and their churches at the forefront of the debate where they were subjected to the scorn of their ideological opponents.
Each affirmed the mandate to preach the whole counsel of Scripture as a prescriptive and proscriptive antidote.
“It should not be a confusing or vexing responsibility to do that,” Allen said. Civil disobedience should be “the nuclear option.”
Goodspeed believes churches still stand on solid constitutional ground and will be the last place where “civil society impedes on the pulpits.” But the farther an entity gets from its direct association with a church, faith-based entities, like Guidestone, come under increasing scrutiny. Goodspeed said, “You start to get out of the shadow of First Amendment protection.”
But Hawkins called for perspective. The early church was persecuted—beaten, imprisoned and scattered.
“I don’t see them organizing protests against the Roman government or petition drives. I see them preaching the gospel,” Hawkins said. Civil engagement is good and right, but it was not the priority of the first-century church that ignited the spread of the gospel across the world.
Perry said the attack on the church will be subtle and, therefore, more damaging. Moral decay in the society will eventually be incorporated into the church as seen in the acceptance of same-sex marriage in culture and as mandated by the court.
“I think it’s time for the church to be more proactive in what we are facing than reactive,” Perry said.
