In a recent Providence essay, J. Daryl Charles persuasively argued that the American War for Independence was a justified conflict according to the moral and prudential criteria of the just war tradition. I agree with his conclusion, but want to add an important pillar to the argument—one that the colonists themselves thought was vital. How did the colonists have rightful authority to rebel against their government, particularly in view of Scripture’s imperatives that citizens submit to civil authority?
Readers of Providence will no doubt be familiar with the Apostle Paul’s exhortation regarding submission to civil authority in his letter to the Romans: “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” (Romans 13:1). The Apostle Peter offers a parallel charge in his first letter: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.” (1 Peter 2:13-14). In view of these Biblical directives, how can the American colonists’ armed revolution against Great Britain and King George III possibly be considered justified from a Biblical perspective? Perhaps the best answer is provided by the American revolutionaries themselves.
America’s founding generation possessed a deep Biblical literacy and was well familiar with the above Scriptural imperatives. They did not enter armed conflict with Britain without considerable deliberation regarding the Bible’s instruction on the topic. Foremost among such deliberation was the work of influential Boston minister Dr. Jonathan Mayhew—widely regarded by his fellow New Englanders as the premier preacher of his day.
In his famous 1750 sermon, A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers, Mayhew delivered a stirring analysis on the proper Christian posture toward civil authority, which distilled for the founding generation a Biblically grounded understanding of when resistance to the civil magistrate may be justified John Adams noted that the sermon “was read by every Body” in the colonies at the time and catalyzed the revolutionary spirit before the war. Adams further advised future Americans that if they “really wish to investigate the principles and Feelings which produced the Revolution, they ought to study… Dr. Mayhew’s Sermon on Passive Obedience and Non Risistance [sic]”.
Mayhew’s sermon was a detailed analysis of Paul’s instruction in Romans 13:1-7 regarding Christian submission to civil authority, with a particular eye to the practical application and real-world extent of this doctrine. Mayhew affirmed the general directive of Paul’s teaching, attesting that Christ followers “are under an indispensable obligation, as Christians, to honor [the civil magistrate’s] office, and to submit to them in the execution of it.” While acknowledging this default posture of Christians toward their civil governors, Mayhew was additionally interested in “whether disobedience and resistance [to the civil magistrate] may not be justifiable in some cases.”
Mayhew considered the most reasonable interpretation of Paul’s words not to be a blanket directive requiring undiscerning obedience without exception. Rather, Paul was installing a general admonition to Christians that applied when government broadly fulfilled the functions that God designed it to perform—which is why Romans 13:1-7 includes an extended description of the civil authority’s proper purpose and character:
“[I]f we attend to the nature of the argument with which the apostle [Paul] here inforces the duty of submission to the higher powers, we shall find it to be such an one as concludes not in favor of submission to all who bear the title of rulers, in common; but only, to those who actually perform the duty of rulers, by exercising a reasonable and just authority, for the good of human society … It is obvious, then, in general, that the civil rulers whom the apostle here speaks of, and obedience to whom he presses upon Christians as a duty, are good rulers, such as are, in the exercise of their office and power, benefactors to society. Such they are described to be, thro’out this passage.”
The thrust of Mayhew’s argument was that when civil authorities clearly and consistently violate their divine mandate to govern for the common good, the corresponding imperative for Christians to submit to such authorities becomes void. Mayhew regarded it as a gross misreading of Paul’s teaching to suggest that Christian obedience to civil authority is required under all circumstances, even under the most despotic and tyrannical of rulers. Such rulers, he argued, cannot rightly be said to be ordained by God, for their persistent defiance of God’s design for civil government disqualifies them from being regarded as legitimate authorities established by Him:
“[T]he apostle’s argument for submission to rulers, is wholly built and grounded upon a presumption that they do in fact answer this character; and is of no force at all upon supposition of the contrary. If rulers are a terror to good works, and not to the evil; if they are not ministers for good to society, but for evil and distress, by violence and oppression; if they execute wrath upon sober, peaceable persons, who do their duty as members of society; and suffer rich and honourable knaves to escape with impunity; if, instead of attending continually upon the good work of advancing the publick welfare, they attend only upon the gratification of their own lust and pride and ambition, to the destruction of the public welfare; if this be the case, it is plain that the apostle’s argument for submission does not reach them; they are not the same, but different persons from those whom he characterizes; and who must be obeyed according to his reasoning.”
From this analysis, Mayhew contended that “[c]ommon tyrants, and public oppressors, are not intitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of any thing here laid down by the inspired apostle.” He concluded that Christian resistance to civil authorities who habitually flouted God’s intention for proper governance was analogous to resisting the devil himself:
“[H]ow does what [Paul] here says, prove the duty of a chearful and conscientious subjection to those who forfeit the character of rulers? To those who encourage the bad, and discourage the good? The argument here used no more proves it to be a sin to resist such rulers, than it does, to resist the devil, that he may free from us. For one is as truly the minister of God as the other.”
Through this powerful sermon, Mayhew provided America’s founding generation with a persuasive, sincerely reasoned, and Biblically faithful perspective for approaching their Christian duty as subjects of Britain and King George III. With Mayhew’s framework in mind, the Founders addressed their qualms with Parliament and the Crown from a starting assumption that they were loyal Englishmen and wished to remain such. So earnest was the Founder’s desire to resolve their grievances through nonviolent means that a brief glimpse into the prewar period reveals a plethora of diplomatic efforts by the colonies to reconcile with their mother country—many of which are superbly detailed in Charles’ aforementioned essay.
In his indelible 1775 speech, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, Patrick Henry catalogued the extensive energies expended by the colonial side to rectify tensions with Britain via diplomatic channels. Speaking of the colonists’ multitudinous appeals to the throne of King George III, Henry proclaimed:
“Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? … Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne!”
For this reason, when the Continental Congress released the Declaration of Independence the following year, the bulk of the Declaration’s body was devoted to enumerating 27 distinct grievances committed and unaddressed by the British Monarch. The Declaration’s text noted that the “history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” This led the Founders back to Mayhew’s memorable sermon. In the Founders’ estimation, George III had clearly and consistently vacated his divine duty to govern well. He had not only violated his commission to be “God’s servant for your good” (Romans 13:4); in the Founders’ estimation, he was no longer even making an effort to do so. Consequently, and with a recall to Mayhew’s discourse, the Declaration asserts:
“[W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce [the People] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government… In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
In approaching their war for independence against Great Britain, therefore, the American revolutionaries believed they had faithfully discharged their Christian duty to follow Biblical teaching on submission to civil authorities. They did not interpret Scripture to command unlimited and unqualified submission to civil magistrates. When rulers abrogated their obligation to govern in accord with God’s righteous decrees, they simultaneously relinquished their right to passive obedience by the citizenry. Accordingly, Benjamin Franklin could state with full sincerity that “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God”—a phrase that was temporarily considered for the official motto of the United States. Thomas Jefferson even incorporated the motto into his personal seal.
The Founders recognized their Christian obligation to submit to the rule of Great Britain and King George III, and this conviction repeatedly led them to pursue their grievances against the Crown through humble, diplomatic means. Although the founding generation rejected the doctrine of absolute and unlimited Christian submission to civil authority, it was only after years of repeated abuses and injuries by their king—with no other avenue of recourse remaining—that they reluctantly entered armed resistance against the British Monarch. Their consciences were clear in doing so, however, which is why they submitted their revolution “to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions” and frequently petitioned God for His favor throughout the contest. Perhaps Providence’s very apparent and affirmative response to the Founders’ supplications—victory in America’s War for Independence—reveals the ultimate answer to the question.