¨Let every person be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.” (Romans 13:1-2)
“Then the kings of the earth and the magnates and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb ….’” (Revelation 6:15-16)
“What about Romans 13?” That’s what two Baptist friends asked me recently, one after a class on Baptist dissent, and the other at a Christmas cocktail party. When Romans 13 shows up at a Christmas cocktail party, it’s time to take notice! When should we be “subject to the governing authorities” and when should we run to the “rocks of the mountains” for conscience sake? Such questions are both ancient and modern, asked in the church under monarchies, dictatorships, democracies, and military occupations.
The apostle Paul used his Roman citizenship to extend his life amid persecution, appealing his case all the way to Rome, probably martyred there around 67CE by the same empire that sent Jesus to the cross. The “governing authorities” to which Paul was subject, did him in.
Several decades later, the book of the Revelation sketched a different vision, warning that the principalities and powers of this world would themselves be subject to the dreadful day of the Lord. From Pharaoh to Herod to Nero, “kings of the earth” are consistently challenged in holy writ, often with apocalyptic implications.
My 17th-century Baptist forebears lived somewhere between Romans 13 and Revelation 6, as citizens of two worlds, secular and spiritual. The Standard Confession of 1660, composed by British General Baptists (free will folks), says explicitly: “We believe that there ought to be civil Magistrates in all Nations, for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well”; affirming that “we and all men are obliged by Gospel rules to be subject to the higher Powers, to obey Magistrates. …”
They added: “But in case the Civil Powers do, or shall at any time impose things about matters of Religion, which we through conscience to God cannot actually obey, then we with Peter also do say, that we ought (in such cases) to obey God rather than men. …” Facing persecution, they insisted that when government commands violated their consciences, “we will not yield, nor … in the least actually obey them; yet humbly purposing (in the Lord’s strength) patiently to suffer whatsoever shall be inflicted upon us, for our conscionable forbearance.” Historian William Lumpkin called the Standard Confession “one of the clearest statements of the seventeenth century in favor of absolute liberty of conscience.”
The Second London Confession of Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists (1677) declared: “God alone is Lord of the Conscience, and that left it free from the Doctrines and Commands of men which are in any thing contrary to his Word, or not contained in it.” For these early Baptists, Romans 13 mandated subjection to governmental authority except when it contradicted Christian conscience. Personal and communal dissent lies at the heart of Baptist identity; yet discerning when to “be subject” and when “to obey God rather than men,” is no easy decision. Dissent can be dangerous.
Challenges to colonial church-state authoritarianism got Roger Williams and Ann Hutchinson exiled, and Quaker Mary Dyer hanged, by colonial court order. Conscience made religionists and non-religionists “conductors” on the Underground Railroad, ferrying slaves to freedom, violating the Fugitive Slave Law. Conscience sent Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels to Alabama in 1965 to defy Jim Crow and voting rights laws, to be shot dead by a member of the KKK, the same organization whose members staged a “celebration parade” in Roxboro, N.C., two weeks ago.
Conscience often sets Christians at odds with each other over laws related to abortion, divorce, voting rights, civil rights, LGBT rights, and other government regulations. Such dissent may change hearts, minds, and laws, but even when that fails, it remains a powerful witness, often not recognized for years, if ever. Civil laws are relative, as history shows us.
Given our national divisions, I suspect that matters of conscience and sustained dissent are probably the nature of things for the American Republic in the days ahead. Conscience, nurtured by Baptist dissent, compels my own opposition to government-funded vouchers for parochial schools, whatever denomination they may represent. Conscience demands that I respond to the reality, the science, of global warming before Boston, Norfolk, and Miami wash out to sea. (Let’s not forget the naysayers when Galileo suggested that the Earth revolved around the Sun!) Conscience requires me to insist that governments protect religious liberty while opposing any government attempt to privilege one religion over another. The state must guard the church’s right to tell the Jesus story in America, but that story belongs to the church, not congress, courts, or presidents. The church that requires governmental privilege to compensate for loss of the “nones” has already lost its soul.
So let’s gird up our consciences. Make no mistake, we’re going to need them when “the mountains and the rocks” start to fall.