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Should we, as Christians and Americans, support and finance the Canadian trucker protests? Here is a helpful perspective by Kevin Bauder, professor at Central Baptist Seminary in Plymouth, Minnesota (IFB). He posted this in August, 2020, at a time when the Antifa and Black Lives Matter protests were prominent, although he did not mention them by name. I guess the question is, do his objections apply to left-wing civil disobedience only, or also to right-wing civil disobedience?
"To be clear, however, no justified protest can ever breach a just law—not even for the purpose of protesting an unjust act. For example, laws that permit abortions on demand are evil laws. Christians can rightly protest these laws and seek to change them. They might even choose to protest abortion clinics. If they do, however, they must respect the property rights of those clinics. Laws that protect property are just laws, even when they protect unjust people. To undermine property law is to undermine something fundamental to human life and liberty.
"The principle is simple: no one can live without property. If someone deprives you of all possessions (clothing, shelter, food, and the means to obtain them), you will die. Whoever can deprive you of property can deprive you of life. It is no accident that “Thou shalt not steal” is a fundamental moral law.
"Consequently, when protestors commit trespass or seize a building, they become renegades. They are answerable for breaching just laws. The same is true of protestors that block public streets and hinder traffic: access and egress is part of the means to obtain property. If the street leads to a hospital or some other essential service, then access and egress may even be immediately critical to life.
"Certain perspectives commonly distinguish violent from non-violent protests. This distinction, however, hardly matters; it is nearly meaningless. When a just law is breached, the difference between violence and non-violence is at most one of degree. The correct distinction is between protests that respect just laws and protests that breach them. If a protest breaches just laws, then it is really in the same class as a violent protest or a riot.
"Liberty rests upon order, and when order collapses, liberty topples. The fundamental duty of all civil authority is to maintain good order and to execute retribution upon those who rupture it. The Bible makes this point all the way from Genesis 9:6 to 1 Peter 2:14, but it would still be true even if we had no Bible. Nothing is worse or more destructive to liberty than anarchy—even when it masquerades as anti-Fascism.
"This principle also applies to supposedly 'non-violent' protests that transgress just laws—including property and trespass laws. The fact that protestors are unarmed does not mean that they have the right to intimidate the innocent or to stem the normal flow of normal human liberty. Where just laws are breached, government has a primary duty to intervene."
centralseminary.edu
"To be clear, however, no justified protest can ever breach a just law—not even for the purpose of protesting an unjust act. For example, laws that permit abortions on demand are evil laws. Christians can rightly protest these laws and seek to change them. They might even choose to protest abortion clinics. If they do, however, they must respect the property rights of those clinics. Laws that protect property are just laws, even when they protect unjust people. To undermine property law is to undermine something fundamental to human life and liberty.
"The principle is simple: no one can live without property. If someone deprives you of all possessions (clothing, shelter, food, and the means to obtain them), you will die. Whoever can deprive you of property can deprive you of life. It is no accident that “Thou shalt not steal” is a fundamental moral law.
"Consequently, when protestors commit trespass or seize a building, they become renegades. They are answerable for breaching just laws. The same is true of protestors that block public streets and hinder traffic: access and egress is part of the means to obtain property. If the street leads to a hospital or some other essential service, then access and egress may even be immediately critical to life.
"Certain perspectives commonly distinguish violent from non-violent protests. This distinction, however, hardly matters; it is nearly meaningless. When a just law is breached, the difference between violence and non-violence is at most one of degree. The correct distinction is between protests that respect just laws and protests that breach them. If a protest breaches just laws, then it is really in the same class as a violent protest or a riot.
"Liberty rests upon order, and when order collapses, liberty topples. The fundamental duty of all civil authority is to maintain good order and to execute retribution upon those who rupture it. The Bible makes this point all the way from Genesis 9:6 to 1 Peter 2:14, but it would still be true even if we had no Bible. Nothing is worse or more destructive to liberty than anarchy—even when it masquerades as anti-Fascism.
"This principle also applies to supposedly 'non-violent' protests that transgress just laws—including property and trespass laws. The fact that protestors are unarmed does not mean that they have the right to intimidate the innocent or to stem the normal flow of normal human liberty. Where just laws are breached, government has a primary duty to intervene."
Protests, Yes. Lawbreaking, NO! - Central Baptist Theological Seminary
One of the blessings of living in the United States of America is freedom of speech. No American needs to ask permission to state his mind, whether in public or in private. This freedom is recognized as a fundamental right—the kind of right that the Declaration of Independence calls...
centralseminary.edu
