Christian Resistance: Theology and Tactics

Gary North

March 26, 2010

In 1983, I edited two issues of a short-lived journal, Christianity and Civilization. They were large issues. One was titled Theology of Christian Resistance. The second was titled Tactics of Christian Resistance. I am making them available here:

www.GaryNorth.com/TheologyCR.pdf
www.GaryNorth.com/TacticsCR.pdf

If you download them, expect 30 seconds per volume. Save the PDF files to your hard disk for faster access later.

My motivation was both theological and practical, as the titles indicate. I had been motivated by the late 1982 resistance movement associated with a church and church-run school in Nebraska. A local judge had ordered the school closed. It had not met accreditation standards.

The school was prepared. It had a video camera. The confrontation was recorded. It escalated. Finally, the sheriff had the church padlocked.

The pastor was thrown in jail.

Then the CBS Evening news picked up the story. The reporter was Meredith Viera, now of the Today show on NBC.

The publicity for the county was bad. Bureaucrats do not like bad publicity. They like anonymity.

The publicity escalated. A man I had known for twenty years also went to Nebraska. He wrote a book about it: The Day They Padlocked the Church: Pastor Sileven and 1,000 Christians Who Defied Nebraska Tyranny in America's Crisis of Freedom: An Eyewitness Account .

The battle went on for a year. A good summary of the events appears on the site of the Southern Poverty Law Center, at the other end of the political spectrum.

The case dragged on. Classes began again, school parents were jailed for contempt of court and, in November 1983, a warrant was issued for Sileven's arrest. He fled the state, giving speeches nationwide, but returned dramatically, in a helicopter, to hole up in the church for another standoff with the sheriff.

Back in court, he was again found in contempt. This time, he got an eight-month sentence.

But Sileven eventually won. In 1984, a governor's panel decided that the Nebraska statute was probably unconstitutional, and the legislature exempted church schools from the certification requirements.

Sileven's eight-month sentence was overturned on appeal, and a panel of federal judges ruled that the sheriff had acted unconstitutionally by arresting dozens of people in the October 1982 raid on the church.

That was the setting for my two volumes. I flew to Nebraska while the pastor was across the border. I met with him in a motel room.

The two issues of the journal are not time-bound.

On pages xxxvii-xl, I provided a detailed survey of Saul Alinsky's tactics in his book, Rules for Radicals. Read my comments here.

Note: Alinksy's book is on the recommended reading list for the Website that used to be candidate Obama's site: Obama for America. It is now called Organizing for America, The new site is for training high school students in tax-funded schools. The story is all over the Web. Click here.