Last week, Brian noted that Jeffrey Kuhner was outraged by the Obama administration’s decision to require most employers to cover contraception in their health plans, calling it an an effort to “smash the traditional family by relentlessly advancing the sexual revolution” and calling upon Catholics to “engage in civil disobedience.”
But it is not just Catholics, apparently, as Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention was equally outraged about the decision on his weekly radio program, where he too raised the specter of Christians engaging in civil disobedience and ending up in jail:
Land said the question of when civil disobedience becomes a moral option hinges on whether other means of protest are available. “The threshold was lower for Dr. King than it is for us, and the reason is that he and most of the people he was seeking to free couldn’t vote,” Land said.
“We have the right to vote. We have the right to file suit in court,” Land said. “I would argue that there are certain means that need to be exhausted before we reach civil disobedience, but that civil disobedience must always remain the ultimate option if the government forces us to choose between obeying God or man.”
“What I’ve argued is that if we all say we’re going to obey God rather than man — we’re going to not allow them to restrict our religious freedom — if we all hang together, then none of us will have to go to jail,” he said. “If we don’t, we may all end up in jail.”
