Should Christians break the law? Civil disobedience, climate protest and heavy-handed policing

A landmark court case in the UK recently saw five radical climate activists jailed for up to five years for their role in organising the blockage of a major motorway to protest against fossil fuels. The group were charged for holding a Zoom call to organise a protest in 2022, which led to a group of volunteers climbing up gantries over the M25 motorway around London, halting traffic for hours. The sentences are thought to be the longest ever handed down in British legal history for a non-violent demonstration, and are the latest in an escalating battle between the radical group Just Stop Oil and the government. 

After several years of increasingly brazen protests including blocking traffic, defacing public art, and interrupting sports events, Just Stop Oil and associated climate activists have prompted the authorities to significantly toughen the law. Now, the police can arrest people for a slew of new offences, sometimes quite vaguely worded, and sentences have been increased to try and deter activists from their more disruptive actions. 

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The earthly city and the city of God

The long jail terms (and the new public order laws underlying them) have been criticised by many as excessive, including UN human rights representatives. And they raise challenging questions for believers too, about the place of civil disobedience and disruptive protest in a democratic society. For millennia Christians have disagreed about the place of the state in theology and to what extent the people of God are bound by secular authorities. The highly influential church father Augustine famously wrote The City of God as the then-Christianised Roman Empire began to decline and fall. In it, he argued that Christians held a dual citizenship – they were both citizens of the earthly city of Rome, and the heavenly kingdom of God, but that it is the heavenly city which will ultimately win out. 

This was also a deep concern even earlier, in the first century, when Israel was occupied as part of the Roman Empire, forcing Jews to live under the oppressive rule of a foreign, idolatrous leader. Jesus addresses this tension in the gospels, when he tells his disciples to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s (in this instance, taxes using Roman currency), but also to give to God what is God’s. Later, Paul writes to the nascent church in Rome, the heart of the empire, and explains that even the Roman authorities have been given their place by God and so the Christians should obey, where possible. 

Unlike what some of his disciples thought or hoped, Jesus was a not a political revolutionary who sought to overthrow the rule of the Romans and establish an earthly kingdom. Instead, Jesus explicitly recognised to an extent the authority of the secular Roman empire, while at the same time pointing to a God who was the true ruler of all. Even the idolatrous Roman emperors, who played at being demi-gods and often violently persecuted the early Christians, were to be given due respect and allegiance. This draws on an even older tradition dating back to the exile of the Jews to Babylon in the Old Testament era, when a series of prophets told God’s people their job while in exile was not to fight against the regime but to seek its prosperity, to settle down and work hard within the pagan nation they had been taken to. 

When to break the law

And so, while Christians have disagreed over the centuries about the precise boundaries of that lawful living and respect for secular authority, most have concluded that usually believers are required to not live in open defiance of the government God has installed over them. Does this mean civil disobedience, including the kind implemented by Just Stop Oil, is illegitimate?

Clearly, it cannot be the case that any law-breaking is wrong, given the pattern set by Jesus who repeatedly flouted the Pharisees’ temple laws which he recognised were actually hampering people getting to God and finding freedom and fullness of life. And obviously, if a government compels Christians to disobey fundamental commands from God, the believer’s obligation is to their ultimate Lord and not the earthly ruler. The challenge is in discerning which laws can be broken, when, and for what reason? 

God is deeply concerned about the climate crisis and fossil fuel emissions which damage his planet and cause harm to the some of the poorest communities around the world. But is this cause – stopping fossil fuel extraction – serious enough to warrant impeding thousands of innocent, unconnected people trying to get to work? Some argue that while direct action can sometimes be legitimate, it must be closely targeted at the source of any injustice. A classic example might be Rosa Parks deliberately breaking the law by sitting in a whites-only seat on the bus, using her subsequent arrest to highlight the indignity of the unchristian laws which denied the full humanity of black Americans. In the 1950s Parks was denounced by many as a scoundrel, troublemaker and radical. Today she is hailed universally as a hero and lionised on stamps. Who is to say which laws need breaking today by people who future generations will recognise as far-sighted prophets?

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Unlike the civil rights activists in the United States who ruthlessly aimed their deliberate law-breaking at indefensible racist local governments, however, Just Stop Oil and their ilk instead prefer to go for splashier, higher-profile targets. Rather than glueing themselves to an oil tanker, they block central London road junctions. Instead of disrupting a gas company’s annual meeting, they storm into Wimbledon or the snooker final on TV. This is undoubtedly more effective at grabbing the media (and government’s attention), but is it proportionate and directly targeted civil disobedience?  

Climate activists, including the sizeable contingent of Christians among them, may well argue that only radical action such as this is sufficient to provoke the urgent action that is needed. There is a small short-term cost of disrupting the lives of innocent citizens, but it is worth it in the big picture if we can forestall catastrophic climate disaster down the line. However, others question if M25-style civil disobedience is really a last resort – pointing to the fact that the core demand of Just Stop Oil (not granting any new licences to drill for North Sea oil) has just been secured by the old-fashioned method of democratically electing a new government who then changed policy.

Protecting the right to protest and disobey

Nevertheless, Christians perhaps should be concerned by the ramping up of heavy-handed policing of peaceful protest and increasingly draconian prison sentences. Even if we cannot join Just Stop Oil in blocking motorways, it seems the government may perhaps be over-reacting to the radical eco protest movement. Vaguely worded public order laws now allow the police to intervene when a peaceful protest might cause ‘serious disruption’ or if they believe an activist has brought material to attach themselves to something. This saw entirely legal and peaceful anti-monarchy activists locked up for the duration of the coronation of King Charles, simply because they had cable ties in their bags to attach their placards with. 

Even the UN’s High Commissioner on Human Rights has warned that the new powers passed into law and their vague scope will block people of “all political views” from taking part in demonstrations on important issues. Everyone interested in the health of our democracy should want people to have the right to protest loudly and occasionally disruptively to make their voices heard, to challenge injustice and speak truth to power. We may not share the preoccupations of Just Stop Oil, but one day we will be angry about a government policy and we too may cherish our human rights to protest, even to peacefully and politely disobey laws which we believe are wrong. 

This is particularly pressing for Christians too, who exist as a relatively small minority in a rapidly secularising society. Our views, our deeply-held beliefs, our ancient traditions and practices might become the target of government overreach in the coming years. Defending the right of protesters we don’t necessarily agree with is the first step in upholding precious democratic freedoms the church may one day need to rely on in order to be faithful to Christ.

Tim Wyatt is a freelance journalist and co-host of Matters of Life & Death, a podcast from Premier Unbelievable.