The Birmingham Campaign continues: incarcerated President Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, writes his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail”:

       I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.  Just as … the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.

       … Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. …

· · · · · ·

       We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. …

· · · · · ·

       …  There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. … One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust.  I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws.  One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.  Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.  I would agree with St.  Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

       … How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust?  A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.  An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.  To put it in the terms of St.  Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. …

       … Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

       Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application.  For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit.  Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade.  But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

       One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.  I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

       Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience.  It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake.  It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire.  To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.  In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

       We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.  Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.  If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

· · · · · ·

       There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed.  … But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. … By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.  Things are different now. …  So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. …

       But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before.  If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.  Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

       [restored 10/5/2022]