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Christian Network

The American Revolution was a God-sanctioned, holy cause which resulted in the creation of a ‘New Jerusalem’. The United States is a ‘City on a Hill’ and our Founding Fathers were godly men who should be revered for bringing a new birth of freedom to the world.

Such is the rhetoric of the Religious Right in America. Conservative Christians will, of course, quickly add that our country has profoundly and tragically strayed from its pious roots and is in danger of complete moral breakdown. But most seem to agree that we were originally an anointed nation, quite possibly brought into being by the very will of God. It all sounds great, if you happen to be an American, doesn’t it? Well, here is one American who would beg to differ.

While proclaiming the righteousness of the ‘Spirit of ‘76’ no one here ever seems to remember what the Bible has to say about respecting the authorities who have been placed over us by God. Both Jesus and His apostles had much to say about submitting to civil authority. In Matthew, when the Pharisees asked Jesus a famous question about taxes designed to force Him to take a side, he declared ‘Render onto Caesar what is Caesar’s and on to God what is God’s’. He basically said that civil government is allowed to tax its people. In fact, in one of His miracles, Jesus told a disciple to go pull a Drachma from the mouth of a fish to pay those taxes (Mat 17:27). And these, mind you, were taxes paid to the hated Romans.

In more than one of their epistles the Apostles Paul and Peter re-inforced the idea of Christian submission to the secular governments over them (see Rom. 13:1, Tit. 3:1, 1 Tim 1:1-2 and 1 Peter 2:17). These men pointed out that God Himself had established such governments to maintain civil order in the world. About the only places in Scripture where we find men of God deliberately and justifiably disobeying the kings over them is in places like the Old Testament book of Daniel where a ruler demanded to be worshipped as God. But nowhere else.

So let us return to the days of the American Revolution when the great hue and cry was ‘No taxation without representation!’ King George the III was vilified for his admittedly unfair and overly burdensome taxes on England’s colonies in the New World; taxation that, indeed, bought the colonists no greater influence in the kingdom. Fair enough, but was this biblical justification for taking up arms against a ruler presumedly given His authority by ‘divine right’ in the scriptural sense of the term? Do Christians have the right to revolt because they think they are paying too much in taxes? From reading the above verses the answer would have to be no.

So the leaders of our revolution were mostly devout Christians? This is what those who would like to wrap the Cross in the American flag tell us over and over again here in the States. It is probably more accurate to say that they were disciples of the Enlightenment, a secular intellectual movement of the period which taught far more about the ‘natural rights of man’ than the sovereignty of God. This philosophy certainly could be used to sanction revolutions, including the later one in France which was mostly influenced by atheists and produced years of bloodshed and repression. The reason our revolution did not lead to such darkness is because, despite the inspiration of things other than the Word of God, the Founding Fathers were still heavily influenced by the Christianity that flourished in America at the time.

Bottom line? Had I lived in that time and place I suspect, as a Bible-believing Christian, that I would have had to side with those loyal to the king. In short, I would have been a Tory.

Now, obviously, it is a little late to return England her colonies. By the grace of God the United States has become a great nation and has, in many ways, been used by God for good in the world. But let’s not claim that it was because of our Glorious Christian Revolution that He has blessed us. Perhaps it has been in spite of it.