Churches such as North Shore Fellowship downtown teach that the Christian gospel’s goal is the transformation of individuals and cities to be more loving — and more just. (Photo David Tulis)
A city that adopts a policy of obeying Tennessee law regarding transportation and police traffic stops will effectively be altering its morals.
Chattanooga is out of compliance with state and federal law as regards the use of police officers to stop travelers in cars and trucks. But it’s only a matter of time that city government will change course and halt a system that keeps the jail overfull and bondsmen happy.
By David Tulis / 92.7 NoogaRadio
Mayor Andy Berke
All law and all law enforcement Is a codification of morals.
Every law that commands a duty or prohibits an act is making a moral statement about right and wrong, about good and evil. Every code puts into writing some presupposition about ultimate causes, too. About whom, in other words, is God.
A city that tolerates the slaughter of very small boys and girls is making a statement about God. A town that harasses impoverished homeless people with an anti-vagrancy or squatting ordinance is saying something about how God views strangers. (He hates them, it avers, and so does the town council).
A county that runs a public school with a state curriculum is declaring that there is no God, there is no free market and that all rights are a state privilege.
A village that fines a shopkeep for selling milk or bread on Sunday declares something about its belief in God and the Lord’s Day, how that day is rightly kept, and whether God esteems it today as He did at the time of the children of Israel.
Romans 13 government
A city in Tennessee that opts to obey Tenn. Code Ann. Title 55, the transportation code, says that it believes in the state constitution and the rights of the people.
It makes a religious claim about Romans 13 and the office of judge or magistrate. It makes a religious claim about Revelation 13, where the opposite form of government is described in all its viciousness and jealousy against the people, whom it has enumerated and enslaved.
A city that respects the rights of the traveler and the stranger and does not attempt to use police authority to seize this person is one who is open to the blessings of God on account of his protection of the orphan, the widow, the alien and stranger and the poor.
Policing by its very nature is a social engineering and social management function of the executive state.
To restrain that function by obedience to Title 55 in the Tennessee code, a city gives up some of the prerogative of what a faithful Christian would call a false god, and bend a knee toward the true sovereign God.
God’s protection of poor, His grant of liberty
For a mayor or city council to order obedience to Title 55 is an implicit recognition that God protects strangers and allows free movement. To restrain enforcement of Title 55 gives a city a claim upon the blessings of God because it is relinquishing a power that previously it has seized apart from statutory authority, and apart from God’s grant of civil authority in Romans 13.
Our liberal TN traffic law is warning to police officers, deputies; it has limits
What exists today in 100 percent of municipal jurisdictions in Tennessee is the Revelation 13 premise of government and the civil magistrate. It is a consuming dragon, and exercises lofty powers and fire. (“He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” vv. 16, 17)
Reform would pull a city from the violence and abuse that most affects African-Americans, Spanish-speaking immigrants and the poor in Tennessee. A few days ago state government said it will appeal a U.S. district court judge’s ruling that its driver license revocation scheme injuring the poor is unconstitutional.
Across the 50 states these schemes are similar, thanks to work of the legal guild and groups such as the uniform law commission, which has the so-called best lawyers in each state working to unify the state’s legal systems, to bring disparate 50 into a homogeneous, more or less unified whole.
In fact, transportation statutes must reflect and abide by the federal transportation system if a state wants to receive U.S. transportation cash.
People leave the sanctuary after a worship service at North Shore Fellowship, whose overseers preach a gospel of “practicing the king’s economy” of mutual aid and justice. (Photo David Tulis)
Defying convention
If a city defies convention, if a mayor goes against the routine and every other jurisdiction in Tennessee, he can do so within Tennessee law, and also alter the moral framework of his city.
As we have suggested, this reform has a lawful and legal basis, and also a religious foundation, premised on God’s claims for free movement of innocent people, of individuals who are not criminals and not subject to the magistrate because of any public crime. The Hebrew republic was an open society with no border wall, whereas kingdoms around it required kingly license to enter or travel.
Purpose of transportation administrative notice
Brent Lambert of East Ridge has been asked to reform the city’s transportation enforcement protocols under administrative notice.
Thus far, only a handful of jurisdiction to Southeast Tennessee have received this notice, transportation administrative notice, which strips from law enforcement officers their legal protection to oppress the poor and the innocent.
There is in Title 55 reform a good action to avoid penalty upon these state actors, to avoid their private and personal ruination in litigation, but also a positive claim for a righteous good before God.
So Titie 55 reorm brings obedience to man-made law, and favor with God for its underlying change in ethics.
Hammond mulls 7 questions on travel right, transportation privilege
How Berke could win all sides by restraining cops, ordering ’open’ city
Pinkston prosecutorial practice: ‘No constitutional “right to travel,”’ & that’s that
Berke would make enemies if takes tough action over roadside abuses
Pinkston gets copy of administrative notice; will officers be notified?
Journalist gives city administrative notice on limits to police power
Double-nickel police reform enjoys major political constituencies
Small towns, big cities should mind limits of Title 55: Only transportation subject to cop controls
City’s poor get relief, cops avoid liability suits — fruits of administrative notice
