Non-violent protests

A good resource to start with is Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail (you can read it here: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html). King is responding to fellow clergyman. King is a helpful example I think as both a Baptist pastor and an outspoken nonviolent activist. But here goes my attempts at responding to your struggles. I’ve responded to each in turn.

‘You knowingly broke the law, planned it, a premeditated choice…’

I’m not sure what the problem is with this, are you saying it would be better if I hadn’t thought about it beforehand and just did it on the spur of the moment? If it’s a problem with breaking the law at all, then it’s worth making a distinction between just and unjust laws. So, for example, laws that prohibited the harboring of Jewish people would be an example of an unjust law (as would the laws that required their persecution in the first place). That can be further broken down into just laws which are applied unjustly, and just laws which serve to protect injustice. King, for example, believed that the law that required a permit for public marches was just, but in rejecting applications from African Americans based on their race, the law was applied unjustly, and therefore he felt justified breaking it.

I think trespass laws are probably ok (though I think law itself is a blunt instrument), but in this case they served to protect injustice and therefore they had to be broken to prevent genuine crimes. We defended ourselves based on the necessity defence – that is, that our actions were necessary to prevent greater harm. In order to be successful, you need to persuade the judge that a) you had exhausted all other possible courses of action, b) that your actions were proportionate to the threat, that c) that you have a reasonable belief that the threat is serious enough to warrant such an action and that d) these are actions any reasonable person (yes, a very vague definition but it’s defined in case law) would take under the circumstances. We managed to persuade her of all but the last one.

When we run nonviolence trainings, and people have had a chance to work through some of their concerns and fears, one of the common questions at the end isn’t “why would you break the law?” but “why aren’t more Christians breaking the law?” There are so many situations where laws that protect injustice or which are outright unjust in the first place are left unchallenged – and as Gandhi and King used to say, noncooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.

At the end of the day my allegiance, my loyalty, is not due to any government or legal system, but to God alone. It’s God’s law I follow first, and human ones later. As John Dear puts it, Jesus was himself like a one man crime wave – breaking laws of every kind, and eventually killed for it – his followers were also constantly in prison or being killed by the State.

It’s also worth being aware too that one of the central principles of nonviolence is transparency and honesty. You need to build trust with your opponent – if they can’t trust you, you can’t build a relationship. So yes, we planned it, it was premeditated, but it was not deceitful. We warned the Defence Department beforehand about our actions, so they knew what we were planning to do. Last time we didn’t have a huge amount of time to do that as well as I would have liked, but this next time (these military exercises run every two years, the next is in July 09) I will be liasing with the Defence Department, police, the Generals themselves and probably also the Environment Minister to ensure that they know our intention should negotiations in the meantime fail (and we’ll have extensive negotiations). There will be no surprises for them to be worried about, and if/when we arrive they should not be surprised. Which brings us to the next question…

- ‘Your actions potentially put people at risk (planes landing etc.)

as well as put soldiers in a situation of potentially making a really devastating choice. While you tried to be obvious, this may have looked totally different to approaching soldiers. While it all worked out, what would have the soldiers had to live with if things went pear shaped???’

Our actions really didn’t put anyone at risk – it’s not hard to tell if there’s a plane landing (you can hear them from a long way away, and there was no-one anywhere near the tarmac as there would be if planes were preparing to land, so there was no danger there). We held our arms out so we didn’t look threatening (frankly after 3 hours walking through the bush in pouring rain we looked more comical than threatening), and the first thing we said was “we’re unarmed, peaceful people”. In other words, we did everything we could to minimise the risks to ourselves and to ensure they didn’t feel threatened by us.

Having said all this, if there were risks they were mainly being incurred by us. And we were prepared to wear those risks. People are being killed every day. What are we doing to stop or minimise that happening, even when it involves risks to ourselves? If war involves that much risk and discipline, how much more risk and discipline is nonviolent peacemaking going to require of us?

What would the soldiers have had to live with if things went wrong? Probably nothing much different than they would have to live with if they killed someone in combat, which is what they were training for. Suicide rates in the US armed forces are twice the civilian population – 120 per week. The Australian Defense Force has lost many more lives to suicide in recent years than to the enemy. Many people are lured in by the promise of “big boys’ toys”, ignoring or being naive about the reality of what participating in an army means (we’ve all seen the ADF ads…how many dead bodies or actual combat do you see?) And before you say “that’s not true”, that’s straight from some of the boys’ mouths that we spoke to.

‘Who draws the lines on the type of things that we can protest against, it sound very blurry to me. I probably have a different world view to you but at least see where you are coming from in this particular protest. But what if someone was to start a similar protest about something that was less arguably a Christian justice issue(not expressed well but hope you get my point)?’

I think I get your point, but why is there a need to draw lines on the type of things that we can protest against? Surely that’s freedom of speech and freedom of expression, the basis of our Baptist identity (and Australia’s democratic ideal). That’s the great thing about nonviolence I reckon – as I’ve said before it’s a struggle for truth, so it can be employed by anyone (young or old, people of any ability) on just about any campaign. Of course I wage nonviolent struggle for the reign of God, but that doesn’t stop anyone else employing it as a tactic for other ends.

Which brings me to one of the other great things about nonviolence…I reckon the best indication of something’s value is to see how much people are prepared to suffer in order to get it, or make getting it more likely. This is intuitively true – we all know how much more valuable things that we’ve worked hard for are than those we have simply come across. This is how nonviolence works. If someone is prepared to suffer for something, then it must be valuable. If someone is only prepared to make someone else suffer for what they want, then it’s not as valuable I reckon.

So even if I disagree with what someone wants, if they are prepared to suffer greatly for it, over a long period, without hurting others in order to get it, then I have to admit it has great value and I will look much further at whether they are more right than me (or I will oppose it myself with nonviolence and see who lasts longer). They will have won me over by their love. This is what Gandhi meant by nonviolence being a struggle for truth. Truth is discovered in the preparedness to suffer – or as King put it, unjust suffering can be redemptive. That’s true for the opponent as well as the sufferer, because the opponent will realise how valuable a thing the sufferer’s truth is.

‘As a minister of the gospel have you “bought it into disrepute”? by such actions (again this is a question and not a statement) I know some would say you have added repute(mmmmm another good phrase)’

I don’t think I’ve brought it into disrepute. In my opinion if I did nothing at all it would bring it into disrepute (that’s not aimed at anyone, by the way, just how I’d feel myself about doing nothing). How can I sit by while human beings, my brothers and sisters, are being slaughtered by soldiers of both sides? I’m not sure most Christians really grasp how revolutionary the Kingdom of God is. If anything our (and I include myself here) domestication of the gospel brings it into more disrepute. This is a socially and politically dangerous, seditious story we hold in our hands. It blows apart the status quo. If we allowed it to actually permeate us instead of being so ‘conformed to the patterns of this age’, we would soon challenge the system to the point where it would be transformed or we’d all be crucified. But that’s a whole lotta resurrections!

By the way, I checked the Baptist Union of Victoria Pastoral leaders code of conduct before doing it, and saw that there was a civil disobedience (which I tend to call divine obedience ) clause in there (I was delighted that the committee had put it in there, shows real trust). I also talked to my area super beforehand. I am always accountable to my community (at the time, 3 Christian communities) and all of them knew about it beforehand and were given the opportunity to veto it. All stood behind me 100%.

If I had abused people, or in some other way broken or contradicted God’s law, then I think that would bring the gospel into disrepute. But when it comes to refusing to obey worldly laws that protect violence and injustice, I reckon that’s a Christian duty.

Of course I don’t doubt that people will misunderstand us, as they misunderstood Jesus and his disciples and so many Christians throughout history. That shouldn’t be a reason for inaction. I do all I can to explain my actions, and the result is left up to the Holy Spirit.

Hope that goes some way to explaining things…if anything’s not clear, let me know and I’m happy to explain further.

Blessings of peace, Simon

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