Why Should Christians Serve on a Jury? ( A Special Postmodern Realities Podblast)

Everyone seems to take jury service lightly and try to get out of it. But what are biblical reasons why Christians should want to and in fact serve on a jury? This excerpt from Episode 439 of Postmodern Realities Podcast is from a conversation with JOURNAL author and attorney David Hagopian about his film review article, “The ‘Juror #2’ in Everyone.” Read the film review here. https://www.equip.org/articles/the-juror-2-in-everyone/

 Listen to full podcast episode here. https://www.spreaker.com/episode/postmodern-realities-podcast-episode-439-the-juror-2-in-everyone--65288080

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is an excerpt from the Postmodern Realities podcast, brought
to you by the Christian Research Institute and the Christian
Research Journal. Well, I want to wrap up our jury
you know discussion, go back to that is, like you
mentioned jury service and Christians. I would have to say

(00:33):
probably most universally as I. You know, if I get
a jury summons, whether someone's a Christian or non Christian,
I pretty much hear that people are trying to figure
out how they can get out of jury service. I
get service anddn't be very inconvenient. It was inconvenient for
me when I did serve. But why do you think
it's important for Christians to serve on a jury?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah? I don't know if you could hear me giggling.
It's probably not funny, but I think it's pretty commonplace
at dinner parties, or you know, when you're grabbing a
cup of coffee at the office or what have you,
to have people trade stories about how they successfully evaded
jury service. I guess maybe we start, Melanie with the

(01:16):
observation that it's never going to be completely convenient, that
there's going to be some inconvenience involved. I think we
could all readily acknowledge that that, But I think that
for Christians the response would be twofold. First of all,
you know, in Romans Chapter thirteen, verses one through three
were called to obey lawful authorities, and they're lawful or

(01:40):
just mandates. And as I mentioned before, jury service starts
with the jury summons, which is a legal mandate to serve.
And so I think if we as believers keep in
mind the fact that it's a mandate to serve, it
might help adjust our mental set or the niche reaction

(02:00):
that many many people seem to have. How can I
evade as opposed to how can I fulfill my civic
duty as a believer to serve in this specific context.
But I think there's an even greater reason why believers
in particulars should feel compelled to serve. And really this

(02:21):
is not an argument that would be limited to believers,
but really, the jury system is there ultimately to protect
us all. It's there to protect us alf from governmental
overreach and tyranny because in this particular instance, in the
case of criminal proceedings, as you know, it is the

(02:44):
state that carries the significant burden of proving that the
accused actually committed the crime in question, and serving on
a jury gives us the opportunity to put the state
to the burden of justifying the harm it wishes to
impose on the accused. But serving on a jury gives

(03:08):
us the opportunity to participate in that process, because one
day it could very well be the case where we're
wrongfully accused of something, and just like we are called
to serve in the case of another, we would want
others to be willing to serve because if everybody evated service,

(03:31):
we'd never be able to unpanel juries, and it seems
like the system would just grind to an overall halt.
And so there's an overall systemic concern or argument I
think that we can take to heart as believers. And
as I mentioned at the outset, Melanie, it's not going
to be one hundred percent convenient. There's always going to

(03:52):
be a measure of incovenience. But at least here in California,
I know it's the case that you can postpone your
call to serve to a more convenient time. So, for example,
if you have a prepaid vacation and you can't make it,
the system understands that and you can simply be scheduled
to serve at a later time. So I think that

(04:13):
many of the reasons let's just be honest and call
them excuses that we use or that we want to
use to try to evade an obligation to serve, really
are a matter of simply postponing the service obligation to
a later date when it would be more convenient. Then
maybe it is initially