When is it right for a Christian to disobey the law or resist the government? It is a question that has faced Christians from the very earliest days of the Church as they began to face persecution from the Roman authorities for simply practising their faith, and it is still as relevant today. St. Paul is clear in his letters that we should always obey the lawfully constituted authority, but there have been many believers down the centuries who have felt that the policy or behaviour of rulers and governments is so contrary to Christianity that they have to resist. The Church commemorates many of them and there are two recent anniversaries – Oscar Romero and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Oscar Romero was the Archbishop of San Salvador in Central America in the 1970s. Although by nature he was a quiet and unassuming man and a good pastor, he was deeply moved by the violence practised by the military government of El Salvador at the time and spoke out in support of the demands of the poor for economic and social justice. He refused to be silenced and continued to preach against those in power until he was assassinated by a gunman on 24th March 1980. He has since been widely regarded as a martyr for the faith.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 and was ordained into the Lutheran Church, where he became an influential theologian and travelled all over the world. He was strongly opposed to the philosophy of Nazism and became one of the leaders of the Confessing Church, a movement that broke away from the Nazi-dominated Lutherans in 1934. Banned from teaching and harassed by Hitler’s regime, he bravely returned to Germany at the outbreak of war in 1939, despite being on a lecture tour of the USA at the time. His defiant opposition to the Nazis led to his arrest in 1943 and he was murdered in Flossenburg concentration camp on 9th April 1945.

Neither of these men found it easy to disobey the law, still less to pursue their conviction to the ultimate sacrifice. Both struggled in thought and prayer before they came to realise that there are sometimes deeper principles at stake. Mercifully we live in a society where such resistance is not necessary, although there are plenty of Christians in this country today who are prepared to break the law because they see it as wrong. 

There are no easy answers here. In a broken and messy world we will always have moral and ethical challenges to face, some of them very serious indeed, so it is vital to stay close to God in prayer, knowing that he is with us by his Holy Spirit to guide, strengthen and inspire.  The path we follow may not be as radical as that of Oscar Romero or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but we can be confident that whatever situation we find ourselves in, God is with us. He has shown us how close he is by giving us his only Son, Jesus Christ, to live with us and to die for us. Jesus went through every kind of torment to help us see that God is absolutely at one with us, and next week we shall see just how far he went.

Almighty God, 

by whose grace and power your holy martyrs Oscar Romero and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

triumphed over suffering and were faithful unto death:

strengthen us with your grace,

that we may endure reproach and persecution 

and faithfully bear witness to the name of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

Amen.