Christians Have the Duty to Speak Truth to Power
John Knox died in his own bed. Things may have ended otherwise if Mary Queen of Scots had had her way. The young Catholic Queen endured a series of stormy confrontations at court with the unbending leader of the Scottish Reformation and once charged him with treason. After Knox warned in a sermon in 1563 that Mary’s rumored marriage to the son of Spain’s monarch, Philip II, would “bring God’s vengeance upon the country,” she summoned him to answer for his remarks.
Distraught, weeping, and vowing revenge, the queen lashed out: “What have you to do with my marriage, or what are you in this commonwealth?” Knox had warned against the union because it would place on the throne an “infidel”whose father persecuted Protestants. He told the queen that God had set him as a “watchman, both over the realm, and over the kirk [church] of God gathered within the same.” For that reason, he said, “I was bound in conscience to blow the trumpet publicly” at any “apparent danger.”
If the Scottish nobility consented to the presumed marriage, he told the queen, they would “renounce Christ,” “banish His truth from them,” and “betray the freedom of the realm.” As Dr. D. James Kennedy explained, “Knox knew that God had placed him as a leader in two realms: the realm of faith and the realm of society.”
“I Have Trained Them for This Very Hour”
Jonas Clark knew it as well. Clark, a 1752 graduate of Harvard, had pastored the church at Lexington for 20 years by the time British Redcoats faced off with his parishioners at Lexington Green on April 19, 1775. The night before the British arrived, Clark met with patriot leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams at his home. Armed with intelligence that the British were on the march toward Lexington, these two visitors asked Clark if the villagers would fight. “I have trained them for this very hour,” Clark said. They would be willing to both fight and die he said, “under the shadow of the house of God.”
Indeed, twelve years earlier, some of these men had undoubtedly heard him give a short sermon to his young parishioners, in which he had instructed them about the “important Errand” for which New England’s founders had come into the new world. “It was,” he said, “for the sake of God, Religion, Liberty of conscience and the free Enjoyment of the Gospel in its simplicity.” Clark was ensuring, as historian Harry Stout states, that “the rising generation would be prepared to take their turn in the long line of worthies who had defined and embodied New England’s innermost meaning for over a century.” When the militia men who had sat under Pastor Clark’s preaching were fired upon by the British, eight died. When he saw the fallen, Clark said, “From this day will be dated the liberty of the world.”
Just as Knox, Clark knew that God had placed him as a leader in two realms. He did not fail to address the storm brewing with England. He knew, along with other New England ministers who formed the so-called “Black Regiment” of the Revolutionary era, that his duty was to apply Scripture to every area of life, including politics. These clergymen understood, as Stout states, that “they would be remiss if, as God’s watchmen, they failed to sound the alarm.”
No Neutral Ground
Knox, Clark, and all those of the Black Regiment who supplied the “moral force which won our independence” understood that they could not remain silent. They responded to the call to become involved. They accepted that there is no morally neutral ground in the entire universe. Every square inch on heaven and earth, as Christian philosopher Cornelius Van Til states, is subject to the contest between Christ and Satan:
No one can stand back, refusing to become involved. He is involved from the day of his birth and even from before his birth. Jesus said: “He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathered not with me scattereth abroad.” If you say that you are “not involved,” you are, in fact, involved in Satan’s side.
Esther, the young Jewish woman who became queen in Persia, faced the choice of whether to become involved when her people faced genocide. When she trusted God, He used her to save her entire people from perishing.
In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a priest and a Levite passed by on the other side, rather than become involved and give aid to a man who had been mugged on the road to Jericho. They not only failed to love their neighbor, they ignored the wounds of a victim of evil. Likewise Christians who today ignore the plight of the unborn and remain indifferent and uninvolved, fail to love their unborn neighbor and wind up aiding evil by their inaction.
Church Free Speech Is the Reason for the First Amendment
Christians have not only a duty, but also the right, as Americans, to prescribe biblical solutions to public moral questions. The whole purpose of the First Amendment, according to American University Professor Daniel Dreisbach, was “to create an environment in which churchmen and moral spokesmen, in general, could speak out boldly without restraint or fear of retribution on matters of public morality.”
Dreisbach told a Coral Ridge Ministries conference in 2005 that “the founders wanted the prophetic voice of the church to be free to judge civil society in terms of the Word of God.” With their ears still ringing from the clerical moral pronouncements that compelled the colonies to fight, the founders well understood that “the very survival of the civil state . . . is dependent on Christian principles shaping public values and morals, guiding the consciences of its public leaders, and informing public policy and law.” A pastor who speaks out on moral and political concerns, said Dreisbach, is doing “exactly what the First Amendment was written to encourage clergymen to do. That pastor is not threatening the First Amendment; he’s living the First Amendment.”
He is also performing a public service. As Dr. Kennedy stated in testimony presented to members of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002, “In a culture like ours, which sometimes seems on moral life support, the voice of the church and her message of reconciliation, virtue, and hope must not be silenced.”
Sadly, as Francis Schaeffer has pointed out, we Christians have too often been far too silent. In the following chapter, we will see that there may be consequences for such silence; God holds His people accountable for their civic stewardship Sadly, as Francis Schaeffer has pointed out, we Christians have too often been far too silent. In the following chapter, we will see that there may be consequences for such silence; God holds His people accountable for their civic stewardship.
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