President Donald Trump is coming to Springfield, Missouri
tomorrow, August 30. There are people of faith who are planning to protest his
presence. So I’ve been thinking about protest as it relates to John Wesley’s General Rule
#1, Do no harm.
Is protesting “doing harm” and therefore to be avoided? Is
there some intrinsic quality to protesting that makes it automatically harmful?
I mean, protests can turn violent, right? And violence is never a viable long
term solution, as history has proven again and again. So should a person of
faith protest at all?
Here it is helpful for me to listen closely to the words of
Bishop Rueben Job in his prophetic book, “Three Simple Rules.” He makes a point
to mention how one’s silence
can “add injury to another of God’s children or to any part of God’s creation”
(p. 31). In other words, staying silent when harm is being done is, in fact,
doing harm to another.
I am also reminded of Martin Luther King’s powerful quote,
“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social
transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling
silence of the good people.” What was true in his day is certainly true in our
present times.
Sinful silence is also a part of the liturgy of the church,
as in the World Methodist Social Affirmation, which says, “We confess our sin,
individual and collective, by silence
or action…” There is a familiar prayer of confession that reads, “Most merciful
God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by
what we have done, and by what we have
left undone.”
Thus it is clear to me that people of faith should not stay
silent in the presence of injustice. To do so would be sinful, a clear “sin of
omission.” And many people of faith believe wholeheartedly that many of the
policies, priorities, and stated goals of the current administration are
unjust. And so, to refrain from speaking would be to allow the harm being done
to continue, something “left undone,” a sin by silence.
So protesting, if it is truly speaking out against
injustice, seems to me to be a faithful act in which a follower of Jesus may
very well feel called to engage. And rightly so.
Now let me make things more complicated. A while back, a
group from Westboro Baptist Church was going to be in Springfield doing their
abhorrent, hateful, and decidedly non-Christian thing. At that time, I
advocated for people to not protest their presence, as that would only
feed their voracious attention-seeking appetite. How is this week different?
It is different, in my humble opinion, because Westboro is a
tiny fringe group and Donald Trump is the President of the United States. To
protest Westboro is to metaphorically add fuel to an ember. To protest the
President is to throw a few buckets of water onto an already raging fire.
Rule number one is still, “Do no harm.” But following rule
number one is not passive. If our silence contributes to the harm being done,
then following rule number one would compel us to speak, to protest, to make
our voices heard. Yes of course, to do so peacefully, non-violently, but with
strength and with clarity, boldly and without fear.
I don’t know what will happen in Springfield tomorrow. I
hope people gather, hold signs, chant, sing together, even link arms and march
through the streets. I just pray that no harm is done. There’s already enough
of that happening. In fact, that’s exactly why so many people of faith will be
there in the first place. Because Rule Number One is “Do no harm.”
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