American cities are filled with unrest. The death of George Floyd, another unarmed black person killed while in police custody, has set off a wave of protests. The pain of this moment is informed by a string of incidents.
We can not talk about the moment without reference to the death of Breonna Taylor in March, Ahmaud Arbery on February 23rd and other black victims of state violence. There are so many. What should we do? What does God want us to do? Is there any room in the church for protests?
As a pastor, I teach that we should seek to found all of our actions on a spiritual basis. Then, what is the role of protest in a spiritual life?
Let’s start with a basic definition. Dictionary.com says protest is “an expression or declaration of objection, disapproval, or dissent, often in opposition to something a person is powerless to prevent or avoid.”
Is this type of expression a defendable action by the Church? A brief survey of the Christian Scriptures quickly gives us a clear answer.
In the Old Testament, Christians have often turned to the Book of Daniel to find guidance about how to act in an unfavorable political situation. The book lays out the reality of a vast, vicious kingdom, the Babylonian Empire. It had invaded the Jewish kingdom, captured its people and forced them to migrant into servitude to Babylon. The state had a high interest in making sure that the Jews knew their place.
The Babylonian king, Nebachadnezzar, is quite famous in ancient history for his ruthless incorporation of conquered peoples into the empire. Consequently in regard to the Jews, he gathered them together and demanded allegiance. The Jews were supposed to show their acquiescence by kneeling down to an image of Nebuchadnezzar himself. An important Jewish leader Daniel and three friends refused to bow down and were thrown into a hot furnace for their defiant protest. This seemed to be an impossible situation to get out of alive.
Miraculously, God rescued them. The king then decided to reward Daniel, but the young Jew constantly spoke up about the values of God. He was a regular protestor. Subsequently, the Book of Daniel was prepared to remind Jews that they should be prepared to stand up and speak on behalf of God’s values.
Daniel wanted to persuade his fellow Jews to join his life of resistance against the oppression and wickedness so often found in the Babylonian Empire. Some may claim that Daniel’s uprightness in the face of extreme danger was merely a test of religious piety. This is true, but at the same time it was intrinsically a protest against unjust rule. Jews had a special calling to worship God as the King of the Universe. This meant that their lives were supposed to be characterized by a spirituality that intrinsically called attention to a different political ideal, a different kingdom. That is what made the Babylonian king regard Daniel as dangerous and as one to be admired also.
The same theme is continued in the New Testament. Jesus himself was accused and sentenced to death by the Romans for claiming to be the “King of the Jews.” The phrase was nailed along with his bloody body to a cross.
His initial followers formulated a confession to identify themselves. This confession is found in the early Christian Book of Romans 10:9 which urged, “Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.”
Here, you need to take a moment of time-out from our modern Western understanding. Too often, that phrase is interpreted in strictly religious terms, but actually in the early days of the church, it was pregnant with political significance. The word that the Roman Caesars used to celebrate reports of their military success and political strength was the word we translate as “gospel.” Their their confessional formula was, “Caesar is Lord.” So, Christians deliberately used “gospel” and “Jesus is Lord” to confront the Romans’ idolatrous worship of an oppressive State Regime. The crucifixion of Jesus and the confessional formula of the church were intrinsically political. But what about protest?
The Apostle Paul and Silas ministered in the Roman colony of Philippi. There, they rescued a girl being exploited and trafficked. Their efforts enraged her captors who seized them and brought them before the authorities. The traffickers trumped up some charges based on the Roman legal code. Somehow, the officials found justification for the brutality of the traffickers. Perhaps, this says something bad about the Empire’s law. Paul’s companion Luke wrote up the legal conclusion in Acts 16:23:: “And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison.”
This account is often celebrated because of the miraculous rescue of Paul and Silas via an earthquake and their dramatic conversion of the Roman guard whose plan to die by suicide was prevented by Paul. But what happened next reveals the role of protest in this miracle story.
The next day, when the local magistrate said that Paul could go quietly free, Paul refused. He explained (as Luke recorded in Acts 16:37), “They beat us publicly without trial, even though we are Roman citizens, and threw us into prison. And now do they want to get rid us quietly?! No! Let them come themselves and escort us out.”
The New Testament story seems pretty relevant to protests today! Paul protested. He leveraged his Roman citizenship to decry police brutality. Paul the Roman citizen, was also a faith leader, and a “human being” who suffered the indignity of being treated as less than the Imago Dei (image of God) whom he represented. Paul’s protest was an affirmation of all of those things at once.
He recognized that part of the duty of proclaiming “Jesus is Lord” necessarily involved speaking out against the violence of the Roman state. His protesting spirit was dramatically brought to us by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
While he languished in a Birmingham jail, King received word that his protests had been publicly condemned by a group of clergy as “unwise and untimely” for a pastor. He responded by writing a literary masterpiece.
King wrote: “Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.” He wrote that the church could either be the thermometer that silently reflects cultural expectations or the thermostat that raises its voice and changes the temperature.
Right now our cities are burning hot with the fever of frustration and anger. The gospel of grace and mercy is a rebuke against the state violence on the oppressed. The gospel says that black bodies are God’s, not the states’. That they are made in the image of God, not the image of the state ruler.
So, instead of sitting on the sidelines, the Bridge Church along with over thirty other New York City churches plan to pray, protest and proclaim that Jesus is King. Injustice must be challenged.
We stand with Dr. King in choosing to follow the mandate of the King of Kings. Why should Christians participate in protest? Because being a Christian is intrinsically a political protest. We invite you to join us in our protests. @rasoolberry
Rasool Berry is Teaching Pastor at The Bridge Church, which meets Sundays @ 4PM and 6PM with a Children’s Ministry offered at the 4PM service. 98 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217 (near The Barclays Center). Berry has been on CRU staff for 20 years and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in Africana Studies and minor in Sociology. He has done theological studies at Reformed Theological Seminary. He has a podcast “Where Ya From?“
