What is "passive obedience"

Obedience \O*be"di*ence\, n. [F. ob['e]dience, L. obedientia, oboedientia. See Obedient, and cf. Obeisance.]

1. The act of obeying, or the state of being obedient; compliance with that which is required by authority; subjection to rightful restraint or control.

   Government must compel the obedience of individuals.
   --Ames.

2. Words or actions denoting submission to authority; dutifulness.
   --Shak.

3. (Eccl.)

   1. A following; a body of adherents; as, the Roman Catholic obedience, or the whole body of persons who submit to the authority of the pope.

   2. A cell (or offshoot of a larger monastery) governed by a prior.

   3. One of the three monastic vows.
      --Shipley.

   4. The written precept of a superior in a religious order or congregation to a subject.

      Canonical obedience. See under Canonical.

      Passive obedience. See under Passive.

Passive \Pas"sive\, a. [L. passivus: cf. F. passif. See Passion.]

1. Not active, but acted upon; suffering or receiving impressions or influences; as, they were passive spectators, not actors in the scene.

   The passive air Upbore their nimble tread.
   --Milton.

   The mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple ideas.
   --Locke.

2. Receiving or enduring without either active sympathy or active resistance; without emotion or excitement; patient; not opposing; unresisting; as, passive obedience; passive submission.

   The best virtue, passive fortitude.
   --Massinger.

3. (Chem.) Inactive; inert; not showing strong affinity; as, red phosphorus is comparatively passive.

4. (Med.) Designating certain morbid conditions, as hemorrhage or dropsy, characterized by relaxation of the vessels and tissues, with deficient vitality and lack of reaction in the affected tissues.

   Passive congestion (Med.), congestion due to obstruction to the return of the blood from the affected part.

   Passive iron (Chem.), iron which has been subjected to the action of heat, of strong nitric acid, chlorine, etc. It is then not easily acted upon by acids.

   Passive movement (Med.), a movement of a part, in order to exercise it, made without the assistance of the muscles which ordinarily move the part.

   Passive obedience (as used by writers on government), obedience or submission of the subject or citizen as a duty in all cases to the existing government.

   Passive prayer, among mystic divines, a suspension of the activity of the soul or intellectual faculties, the soul remaining quiet, and yielding only to the impulses of grace.

   Passive verb, or Passive voice (Gram.), a verb, or form of a verb, which expresses the effect of the action of some agent; as, in Latin, doceor, I am taught; in English, she is loved; the picture is admired by all; he is assailed by slander.

   Syn: Inactive; inert; quiescent; unresisting; unopposing; suffering; enduring; submissive; patient.

Passive obedience is a religious and political doctrine advocating the absolute supremacy of the Crown and the treatment of any dissent (or more precisely, disobedience) as sinful and unlawful. It was usually associated with the seventeenth-century Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was central to the ideology of the Tory Party and the Jacobites. It is most generally seen in reference to Tory opposition to the Glorious Revolution, which saw Parliamentary determination of the succession of the English crown against primogeniture and the wishes of James II. The most notable publication was Bishop George Berkeley's A Discourse on Passive Obedience on Christian Doctrine of not resisting the Supreme Power.

The Scottish theologian John Cameron's support for passive obedience at the start of the 17th century meant that he was principal of the University of Glasgow for less than a year.

In Calvinism, salvation depends on Christ's active obedience, obeying the laws and commands of God the Father, and passive obedience, enduring the punishment of the crucifixion suffering all the just penalties due to men for their sins. The two are seen as distinct but inseparable; passive obedience on its own only takes men back to the state of Adam before the Fall. Reformed theologian, Louis Berkhof helpfully wrote: "His active obedience consists in all that He did to observe the law in behalf of sinners, as a condition for obtaining eternal life; and His passive obedience in all that He suffered in paying the penalty of sin and thus discharging the debt of all his people."(Manual of Christian Doctrine 215)

Passive obedience appears twice in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, first as a scene heading "The Heroism of Passive Obedience" when the bishop entertains Valjean, and later in the text on the impact of armies when describing French intervention in Spain in 1823.

It is not to be confused with passive resistance, a doctrine advocating the refusal to follow a law combined with the willing acceptance of punishment for that refusal.