“A few good men”: Racism and the Elevation of Police Power in America
In this third presentation at the 2016 Providential History Festival, I expand upon the previous two discussions to discuss how many in America attempted to maintain a racist hegemony through a series of laws designed to enforce segregation and disenfranchisement. These “Jim Crow” laws are rarely given a biblical analysis, and we rarely discuss the input from the clergy in support of them. But out of these moves and the reactions against them has grown a powerful police state, Left and Right, slowly eroding the biblical protections built into our Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Today Christians face increasing tyranny through a variety of administrative laws and courts, including Child Protective Services, as well as the erosion of religious liberty, due largely to our own failures to protect the vital foundations of these throughout church history.
Drawing from the lessons given about the police state that arose under Saul (1 Sam. 14:52), I analyze the rise of such powers, pro and con, in our own history. This involves the rise of the shift from the defense of segregation after the Civil Rights era to a more politically-acceptable push for “law and order,” which nevertheless sought to enforce some of the same goals as segregation. Then we watched the lowering of standards and creation of double standards in law largely through the augmentation of the war on drugs. Because Christians chose to support the moves of secular conservatism rather than confront the problems biblically, we are today suffering from the increase in police powers and loss of liberty we helped create and defend. Understanding this history will be vital to restoring Christendom in the future in such a way as to learn from the lessons of the past.