No Disturbance

“Some states have a law against ‘disturbing the peace of a person,’” writes Simeon Stylites in The Christian Century. “Wouldn’t it make a rousing headline in the paper, ‘Preacher Arrested!’—being the story of some parishioners’ having the Rev. Luther Calvin Wesley seized by policemen after the sermon and hustled away to the city jail for ‘disturbing the peace’ of the congregation? That happened to Paul as a standard procedure. It happened to Martin Luther. It happened to John Wesley. Why not around the corner? There is just one hitch. In order to disturb the peace, one must disturb.”