Law & Humanities Blog

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Resisting the Evil State Posted: 20 Apr 2011 07:51 AM PDT Joel A. Nichols, University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota) and James William McCarty III (Emory University) have published When the State is Evil: Biblical Civil (Dis)Obedience in South Africa in volume 84 of St. John's Law Review (2011). Here is the abstract. How should Christians respond to an oppressive government regime? This question has vexed believers for centuries, including in the best known recent example of an "evil state": Nazi Germany. This Article explores the Christian response to the demands of the apartheid state in South Africa in the late 20th century. This Article particularly focuses upon the way that Biblical text is used – both by the state and against the state. Specifically, governments and ruling Christians in power frequently appeal to Romans 13:1-7 and its command that Christians should submit to the governing authorities, for those authorities have been put in place by God. But disenfranchised, out-of power Christians often look instead to a theme of Biblical resistance to ungodly authority, following the example of Peter in Acts 5:27-30 where the Apostles insist that they must "obey God rather than men." These differing thematic responses to Scripture - submission vs. resistance, authority vs. liberation, order vs. renewal - have come into tension and conflict throughout church history. The Article first explores the New Testament texts that speak to the relationship of Christians to the civil government.