When it comes to following a well-formed conscience, Robert P. George doesn’t leave any room for compromise, especially in the face of persecution.
In an interview with IJ.com, the influential Christian thinker and Princeton professor of jurisprudence said people of conscience, especially Christians, have an obligation to disobey unjust or morally wrong laws:
“There’s not a theory of it or elaborate plan or strategy. It’s just you don’t do stuff, even under legal compulsion, that’s morally wrong.”
This is part of George’s ongoing call for American Christians and other religious believers to recognize what he says is their obligation to civil disobedience when faced with unjust laws and court decisions.
George said:
“I’d like to minimize the need for civil disobedience by creating just laws … and creating conscience protections so people are not compelled to participate in unjust or otherwise immoral activities.
“But where civil disobedience is required, it is simply where you’re being forced or compelled by law to do something contrary to your best conscientious judgment of what’s right or wrong.”
George draws a distinction, however, between civil disobedience and the actions taken by Kim Davis, the Kentucky country clerk who declined to issue marriage licenses because of her religious opposition to same-sex marriage.
“Civil disobedience is where you break a validly enacted law for the sake of justice,” said George, and gave an example of a hypothetical doctor who is required by law to perform an abortion. George said the doctor should refuse, in violation of the law.
But Davis, said George, “honor(ed) the law, not a lawless Supreme Court decision.”
Image Credit: Robert George.
George is referring to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges — the case this summer that determined the Constitution grants a right to same-sex marriage.
According to George:
“There’s nothing in the text or logic or structure or historical understanding of the Constitution to justify a judicial intervention to impose any particular view of marriage on the states. …
“It’s an anti-constitutional, illegitimate decision. It should be defied by public officials for the sake of the Constitution.”
Doubt that the Supreme Court can misinterpret the Constitution?
George responds:
“If you don’t believe in the possibility of lawless Supreme Court decision, then basically you’re a believer in the divine right of justices.
“And the divine right of judges has no more constitutional basis than the divine right of kings.”
George has stressed American Christians should be prepared to break the law for the sake of their faith and conscience before.
In 2009, George led a group of well-known Evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox leaders in releasing the Manhattan Declaration, a call to civil disobedience if Christians feel that their civil liberties and right to free exercise of religion is being violated:
“Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions … nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships … or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.”
The 148 signatories conclude:
“We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.”
In an interview with National Review Online shortly after the release of the Manhattan Declaration, George said explicitly that when individuals or institutions are faced with either violating the dictates of their faith, or leaving the world of business:
“Their obligation will be to go out of business. Of course, this would be a tragedy … but the legal imposition will leave them no choice.”
Such was the case, George told IJ.com, with Brendan Eich, the CEO and co-founder of Mozilla who was forced to leave his company because of his opposition to same-sex marriage:
“When what I sometimes call the mob went after Brendan Eich, they got him.
“He was trying to function in an area and in an industry in which socially liberal opinion was very dominant and he found it impossible to continue.”
But that’s the price one pays for living in the right, according to George.
Stay tuned tomorrow for a transcript of the entire interview with Robert George.