It Bears Repeating and It's Quite Clear, Really

"If the government required that we all wear orange beanies, we would be obliged to obey until we were able to vote them out of office." - Archbishop Mark Haverland

"The conclusion for me is that I am under no obligation to obey unconstitutional or irrational laws. . . .

The right to resist unjust and irrational laws is as American as pumpkin pie, and a good thing it is too if the thought of Cranmer, Hooker, Andrewes et al. lead us to the conclusion that if the government requires us to wear orange beanies we are obligated to obey. . . .

As I mull over my answer to your questions, I'm thinking about starting at the patently absurd proposition that if the government requires us to wear beanies we are obligated to do so, and then working back from there.  .  . .

The long and the short of all this is that the people may assert certain rights and powers. One of those rights and powers would be to tell a government who required orange beanie wearing to go pound sand, and if it came to it, to rise up in revolt, with armed revolt as the last resort. And I don't particularly care whether such a belief isn't Anglican. I'm not infallible, but then again, neither are Anglican musings on political theory - or anything else for that matter. We Anglicans say that Scripture is the font of what we should believe and practice, and I think Scripture's answer on this looks significantly different than that of the Anglican divines you reference. As does the answer of reason. . . .

There is *good reason* to obey the traffic laws, and none of them violate constitutional rights. There is *no good reason* behind an arbitrary orange beanie law, and it is violative of a person’s right to wear or not wear a beanie of any color. I submit that is not a prescription for chaos.

Secondly, yes, there are remedies at law – except in cases such as when there are way more orange beanie voters than there are anti-orange beanie voters. No possibility of throwing the bum orange beanie tyrant out because too many irrational voters are on his side. And except when the courts have become hopelessly politicized. (Ahem.) That’s when the recourse to civil disobedience is taken. I don’t agree with your stance that for Christians civil disobedience must only be passive. Our revolution was anything but passive, and this idea of the legitimacy of active resistance is enshrined in our fundamental law, principally the Second Amendment.

We Anglicans are subject to the political milieu in which we live, and if we simply can’t come to terms with one of the basic facts of our American political system, which is that active resistance is justified in some cases, well, maybe we’d be happier living in the UK, the land of the Anglican divines you keep referencing. Things are just peachy for Anglicans there these days. ;)

Your Eminence, I believe that we are at an impasse here and further exchanges here would be pointless, though I will indeed take you up on the challenge of writing an article and posting it at my blog. Thanks for this challenging and irenic exchange." - The Embryo Parson

May a Christian Engage in Acrtrive Ciivil Disobedience?