Please: Kim Davis Is Not Rosa Parks

Attempting to block integration at the University of Alabama, Governor of Alabama George Wallace stands at the door of the Foster Auditorium while being confronted by United States Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:8

Yesterday I was driving south on the Maine Turnpike, listening to Margery Eagen and Jim Braude on Boston Public Radio, WGBH. I came into range of the program when they were inviting listeners to tell them, “What one issue would cause you to support or oppose a presidential candidate, and why?”

And the calls came in. One guy said that he wasn’t a one issue person but he was very concerned that there were people who knew nothing about guns, yet would support a candidate on the basis of his or her support for gun control. He thought that most people in favor of gun control had not owned a gun or fired a gun, and how could they possibly understand the issue.

And then.

A very well-spoken and seemingly intelligent man called in from Cambridge to say that he was supporting Mike Huckabee because of Huckabee’s support for Kim Davis, the Kentucky County Clerk who went to jail (she was released yesterday afternoon) for refusing to issue a marriage license to same sex couples. Davis, he said, was like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He said that people did not understand civil disobedience. If they did, then even if they did not agree with her views on gay marriage, they would support her actions.

Oddly, my head did not explode. 

Kim Davis has been called the Rosa Parks of Religious Freedom.

No. And, no. 

Arguments by analogy can be helpful. Often we can understand something new by the comparison with something we already understand well. But analogies are inherently imperfect and inexact. That being said, Kim Davis is not to Religious Freedom as Rosa Parks was to Civil Rights.

A better analogy for Kim Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples would be George Wallace’s refusal to permit the integration of public all white schools and colleges in Alabama. Wallace was, as Davis is, a government official who refused to uphold the law.

Beyond that, it is hard to think of anyone who has done more harm to the Christian witness in recent months than Kim Davis. (I said, it’s hard, not impossible. And, yes, it’s a long list. There are other contenders.)

P.S.: On this date in 1963, Governor George Wallace was served with a federal injunction directing him to stop state police from barring black students from enrolling at white schools.

Bree Newsome's Act of Faithful Obedience

The LORD is my light and my salvation; 
whom shall I fear? 
The LORD is the stronghold of my life; 
of whom shall I be afraid?
When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh— 
my adversaries and foes—
 they shall stumble and fall.
Though an army encamp against me, 
my heart shall not fear;
though war rise up against me,
 yet I will be confident.
One thing I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after:
 to live in the house of the LORD 
all the days of my life, 
to behold the beauty of the LORD, 
and to inquire in his temple.
For he will hide me in his shelter 
in the day of trouble; 
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; 
he will set me high on a rock.
Psalm 27:1-5

On Saturday morning Bree Newsome, an African American activist and film maker, climbed the flag pole at the South Carolina State Capitol and took down the Confederate flag.

It was a bold act of civil disobedience for which she was promptly and peacefully arrested. She was taken to jail, charged with defacing a monument, and the Confederate flag was raised again. The whole event took just minutes. There were no large crowds, and absent the pictures on social media it would have passed unnoticed.

This morning I saw the video for the first time.

As she takes down the flag you can hear the guards shouting for her to stop and telling her that she will be arrested. She cheerfully assures them that she is prepared to be arrested, and then she shouts to them, “You come against me in hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God.”

As she climbs down the pole she recites the 27th Psalm:

The LORD is my light and my salvation; 
whom shall I fear? 
The LORD is the stronghold of my life; 
of whom shall I be afraid?

Finally, as they lead her away in handcuffs you can hear her reciting the 23rd Psalm.

The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside still waters;
He restoreth my soul . . .

I have a confession. I am not comfortable with civil disobedience. Even when it is completely non-violent and respectful of people and property, it makes me uneasy.

Intellectually, I love it. I am completely at home with Henry David Thoreau’s essay. I celebrate the civil disobedience of Gandhi and King. But my intellectual affirmation is not matched by my emotions.

Of course, civil disobedience is supposed to make us uncomfortable. That is part of the strategy. But I confess it troubles me that I am uncomfortable. 

When I was at Wesleyan I was part of a small group that briefly occupied an office to protest campus recruitment by Dow Chemical, which was making napalm for the war in Vietnam. But that was then, and this is now. 

I am older now and in some ways I am wiser. But I am also more cautious. More respectful of order and authority. And I am not sure that is a good thing. At some point we need to be more committed to the Gospel than we are to being orderly and polite.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.”