Injudicious Religious Activism by Thomas Brewton

The Wall Street Journal, in its July 20, 2007, edition printed an article based on a Time Magazine story in the July 30 edition. The first two paragraphs are the following:

Sanctuary Drive Could Bolster Religious Left

TIME -- JULY 30

A movement to give sanctuary in churches to illegal immigrants threatened with deportation might bring new firepower to the long-quiescent religious left, writes David Van Biema in Time.

Inspired by churches who offered sanctuary to Central Americans fleeing civil wars in the 1980s, members of a range of religious faiths have launched the New Sanctuary Movement in cities around the U.S. The effort has been small-scale, housing eight undocumented immigrants in churches in five U.S. cities. (While immigration authorities legally can raid a church, they rarely do.) NSM activists say four more congregations will house immigrants in August, and the mainline Protestant United Church of Christ has resolved to work with it.

A few observations:

First, deciding to break the law of the land solely on the basis of what an individual or a group, including a church, thinks the law ought to be is essentially what activist judges do when they ignore the Constitution or statute law and, in effect, legislate from the bench.

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