A number of Christian leaders say that Christians must obey the government … no matter what. For example, Robert Deffinbaugh – pastor at Community Bible Chapel in Richardson, Texas – says:
Whether the government be totalitarian or democratic, the Christian’s obligation to submit to it is the same.
Many ministers tell us we should act like slaves, blindly submitting to the government:
Some even allege that the U.S. government is coordinating with Christian ministers nationwide so that – if the government imposes martial – the ministers will urge their flocks to obey the government. See this and this.
This is not an unrealistic or abstract concept. After all, most churches in Nazi-era Germany supported the Nazis. The German clergy used the same rationale to support Hitler that many American churches are using today to demand obedience to authority … Romans 13:
The German Christians were strongly nationalistic, and adopted … respect for state authority. This passage in Romans 13 was often cited as proof of a correlation between the Church and State:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists the what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.
German church leaders even criticized Christians for disobeying their “governing authorities” … by protecting Jewish refugees by hiding them in their homes.
And Hitler shows how tyrannical rulers view those who obey a demand for obedience … he ridiculed German Christians behind their backs for being so submissive in obeying the Nazis:
The Protestants haven’t the faintest conception of a church. You can do anything you like with them– they will submit. These pastors are used to cares and worries… they learnt them from their squires…. They are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them.
The Bible Urges Us to CHALLENGE – Not Obey – Bad Government
In reality, Christian (and Jewish) leaders throughout history have explained that we must disobeytyrannical governments.
The Book of Maccabees – an ancient Jewish book purporting to document the events which Chanukah celebrates - apparently says:
Gordan Runyan – pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church – points out numerous instances in the Bible of men and women who disobeyed their government rulers, and were rewarded by God and praised as holy.
Did John the Baptist violate God’s principle of submission to authority when he publicly scolded King Herod for his infidelity? Did Simon Peter and the other Apostles violate God’s principle of submission to authority when they refused to stop preaching on the streets of Jerusalem? Did Paul violate God’s principle of submission to authority when he refused to obey those authorities who demanded that he abandon his missionary work? In fact, Paul spent almost as much time in jail as he did out of jail.
Remember that every apostle of Christ (except John) was killed by hostile civil authorities opposed to their endeavors. Christians throughout church history were imprisoned, tortured, or killed by civil authorities of all stripes for refusing to submit to their various laws and prohibitions. Did all of these Christian martyrs violate God’s principle of submission to authority?
So, even the great prophets, apostles, and writers of the Bible (including the writer of Romans Chapter 13) understood that human authority – even civil authority – is limited.
Plus, Paul makes it clear that our submission to civil authority must be predicated on more than fear of governmental retaliation. Notice, he said, “Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.” Meaning, our obedience to civil authority is more than just “because they said so.” It is also a matter of conscience. This means we must think and reason for ourselves regarding the justness and rightness of our government’s laws. Obedience is not automatic or robotic. It is a result of both rational deliberation and moral approbation.
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Therefore, there are times when civil authority may need to be resisted. Either governmental abuse of power or the violation of conscience (or both) could precipitate civil disobedience.”
As modern New Testament scholars have reconstructed the context in which Jesus lived and taught, they have realized that Jesus was not simply a religious figure. He was a severe critic of those who controlled the temple, those who controlled the empire, and those who controlled the economic systems that starved and robbed the poor and left the orphan and the widow to fend for themselves. To Jesus, these issues were all tied together.
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He advocated overthrow of a corrupt system. He believed the days of the oppressors were numbered. But he believed the overthrow could be accomplished by love, mercy and kindness.
The entire basis of the Reformation was that of disobedience to the “governing authorities” of Rome– the Pope and the Emperor, who both demanded submission to the Roman Catholic church as the religious and political establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth. When it was demanded of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms to recant of his opposition to papal authority, his only response was as follows:
Unless I am refuted and convicted by testimonies of the Scriptures or by clear arguments… I am conquered by the Holy Scriptures quoted by me, and my conscience is bound in the word of God: I can not and will not recant any thing, since it is unsafe and dangerous to do any thing against the conscience. Here I stand. God help me! Amen. [See Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church]
Luther’s courageous stand against tyranny literally set off the spark which would eventually ignite the Protestant Reformation. As stated by Church historian, Philip Schaff:
Luther’s testimony before the Diet is an event of world-historical importance and far-reaching effect. It opened an intellectual conflict which is still going on in the civilized world. He stood there as the fearless champion of the supremacy of the word of God over the traditions of men, and of the liberty of conscience over the tyranny of authority….
When tradition becomes a wall against freedom, when authority degenerates into tyranny, the very blessing is turned into a curse, and history is threatened with stagnation and death. At such rare junctures, Providence raises those pioneers of progress, who have the intellectual and moral courage to break through the restraints at the risk of their lives, and to open new paths for the onward march of history…. Conscience is the voice of God in man.
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This principle of the primacy of the Scripture-bound conscience over human tradition, whether it be magisterial or ecclesiastical, resounds throughout the writings of the most prominent Protestant leaders whom God raised up to defend the faith after Luther. Not one of these great men interpreted Romans 13:1-7 in the way it is so often interpreted today, and that should be sufficient reason to at least reconsider what is so commonly taught from the modern pulpit on the subject of civil obedience and disobedience. Without succumbing to the error of traditionalism, we are nevertheless to look upon the views of godly men of times past with respect.
John Calvin, known even by many of his theological opponents as the “prince of exegetes,” advocated the same position with regards to civil disobedience previously set forth by Luther.
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He concluded his exhortations to Christians to submit to the authorities who have been placed by God over them with the following qualifications:
But in that obedience which we hold to be due to the commands of rulers, we must always make the exception, nay, must be particularly careful that it is not incompatible with obedience to Him to whose will the wishes of all kings should be subject, to whose decrees their commands must yield, to whose majesty their sceptres must bow. And, indeed, how preposterous were it, in pleasing men, to incur the offense of Him for whose sake you obey men!
The Lord, therefore, is King of kings. When He opens His sacred mouth, He alone is to be heard, instead of all and above all. We are subject to the men who rule over us, but subject only in the Lord. If they command anything against Him let us not pay the least regard to it, nor be moved by all the dignity which they possess as magistrates– a dignity to which no injury is done when it is subordinated to the special and truly supreme power of God. [Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion.]
Calvin’s purpose for writing his commentary on Romans 13:1-7 was entirely different than that which prompted his discussion of civil government in the Institutes. Therefore, when we turn to the commentary, we find a somewhat different tenor of thought. While still maintaining that it is the duty of Christians to submit to the “governing authorities,” we more clearly see that it is the legitimate rule of the magistrate to which we are to submit ourselves:
The reason why we ought to be subject to magistrates is, because they are constituted by God’s ordination…. [T]yrannies and unjust exercise of power, as they are full of disorder, are not an ordained government; yet the right of government is ordained by God for the well being of mankind…. [T]hey are the means which he designedly appoints for the preservation of legitimate order….
…[Paul] speaks here of the true, and, as it were, of the native duty of the magistrate, from which however they who hold power often degenerate. [Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans.]
To ensure that Calvin’s point was not missed, Henry Beveridge, the editor of the Scottish publication of the Commentaries wrote the following:
…[I]t is remarkable, that often in Scripture things are stated broadly and without any qualifying terms, and yet they have limits, as it is clear from other portions. This peculiarity is worthy of notice. Power is from God, the abuse of power is from what is evil in men. The Apostle [i.e. Paul in writing Romans] throughout refers only to power justly exercised. He does not enter into the subject of tyranny and oppression. And this is probably the reason why he does not set limits to the obedience required: he contemplated no other than the proper and legitimate use of power. [Henry Beveridge, in John Calvin, ibid., p. 478 (footnote).] ***
Even the Westminster Confession of Faith is agreed on this point:
God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to His Word…. So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also…. [Westminster Confession of Faith.] ***
When a civil magistrate becomes a tyrant and commands us to do that which the Bible forbids, either explicitly or by necessary implication, then we are not to either fear him or honor him.
Pope Francis recently criticized governments which allow financial corruption:
The scandalous concentration of global wealth is possible due to the connivance of public leaders with the powers that be. The corruption is itself a process of death … when life dies, there is corruption.There are few things more difficult than opening a breach in a corrupt heart: “So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich with God” (Luke 12:21). When the personal situation of the corrupt becomes complicated, he knows all the loopholes to escape as did the dishonest steward of the Gospel (cf. Lk 16.1 to 8).
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The corrupt does not perceive his corruption. It’s a little like what happens with bad breath … it’s hard for those who have it to know, unless someone else tells them.
For this reason, the corrupt can hardly get out of their internal state by way of remorse of conscience. Corruption is a greater evil than sin. More than forgiven, this evil must be cured.
Corruption has become “natural” to the point of getting to statehood linked to personal and social custom, a common practice in commercial and financial transactions, in public procurement, in any negotiation involving State agents. It is the victory of appearances over reality …
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There are now many international conventions and treaties on the matter … not so much geared to protect the citizens, who ultimately are the latest victims – particularly the most vulnerable – but how to protect the interests of operators of economic markets and financial companies.
Criticizing such governments is the opposite of obeying them simply because they are the authorities.
The influential Christian writer Francis A. Schaeffer said:
If we as Christians do not speak out as authoritarian governments grow from within or come from outside, eventually we or our children will be the enemy of society and the state. No truly authoritarian government can tolerate those who have real absolute by which to judge its arbitrary absolutes and who speak out and act upon that absolute.
Mark Lewis Taylor – the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary – said:
The power of Jesus is one that enables us to critique the nation and the empire. Unfortunately, that gospel is being sacrificed and squandered by Christians who have cozied up to power and wealth.
Similarly, Martin Luther King Jr. castigated the modern-day church for being “so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.”
King noted:
There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators” … They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.
Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry explains:
What about the bad governments like the Nazis or the communist regimes where they killed millions? If God is the one who sets up governments, are we supposed to obey those bad governments?
The answer is no.
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If a government were to declare that we should kill all Asians or immigrants or people with Down’s syndrome, we should disobey. Governments are run by people and often become corrupt.
Finally, Runyan notes that believing that Romans compels us to blindly obey authority is absurd … as it would mean that we have to obey the devil and to commit spiritual treason:
If we assert that God approves of all governing authority, regardless of how it came to be or what it does once it gets there, what we are really saying is that we think Might Makes Right.
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This is not materially different from the old-world idea of the Divine Right of Kings. All lovers of liberty, and especially those who know their Bibles, should be repulsed by this idea.
As Willson decries concerning this ridiculous idea:
“No doctrine could be more agreeable than this to tyrants, and to all that panders to unholy power; for, if this be Paul’s meaning, there is no despot, no usurper, no bloody conqueror, but could plead the divine sanction and, more than this, the devil himself could lay the teachings of Paul under contribution to enforce his pre-eminently unholy authority.
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There is nothing in this about serving tyrants, or offering them a passive non-resistance. To insert a wicked government into this Bible text not only overturns the text itself, but would end up committing spiritual treason, by giving aid and comfort to the enemies of God and His Christ. Surely no one having the Spirit of God within would receive an idea like that with anything other than revulsion.
Has Romans Been Mistranslated?
Runyan argues that Romans may have been mistranslated:
Every person is to submit to the “governing” authorities. The word translated “governing” there by the ESV is the Greek word huperecho. It means to excel, to be superior, or better than; to surpass. The King James at this place has “higher powers,” which makes room for the idea of being better than something else.
The reason this is of some interest is that huperecho appears four other times in the New Testament. Once is in 1 Peter 2:13, in that letter’s passage about civil government. The majority of uses occur, however, in Philippians, where Paul uses it three times, at 2:3; 3:8; and 4:7. These are quoted below. For ease of understanding, I’ve put the English words in ALL CAPS which are the renderings of huperecho.
Philippians 2:3 — “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others MORE SIGNIFICANT than yourselves.”
Philippians 3:8 — “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the SURPASSING worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”
Philippians 4:7 — “And the peace of God, which SURPASSES all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
As you can see, the Greek word means that which is morally better or excellent or weighty.
In these places, modern English translations usually have some combination of “important,” “significant,” and “surpassing” to translate huperecho. The KJV has “better,” “excellency,” and “passeth” (as in going beyond or surpassing) in the Philippians texts.
All this is simply meant to show that huperecho may legitimately refer to moral excellence, and does in fact, in most of its New Testament appearances. The modern use of “surpassing” in the Philippians passages is a moral surpassing. It is being better, rising above, doing well.
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So that, when Romans 13:1 enjoins subjection to the huperecho powers, it’s not out of the question that this could be referring to surpassing morality.
On this idea, Willson writes, “Hence, some expositors have been disposed to lay no little stress upon this epithet, as distinctly defining the character of the powers here intended, and as limiting to such the subjection here enjoined, the ‘excelling powers;’ that is, powers possessing a due measure of the qualifications requisite to the rightful exercise of the power of civil rule.” [p.11, The Establishment and Limits of Civil Government.]
Some have suggested that to put “governing” instead of “higher” or “excelling” for huperecho in this place is really more of an interpretation than a word-for-word translation.
It should be noted that most modern translations, the New King James Version included, have erroneously rendered the Greek phrase “exousias huperechousias” (literally, “authorities above”) as “governing authorities,” rather than “higher powers,” as it appears in the older King James Version.
Whether or not the actual words were mistranslated, one thing is for sure … the spirit and meaning of Romans has been forgotten.
Angry colonists were rallied to declare independence and take up arms because of what they heard from the pulpit. By Harry S. Stout
No turning back. At the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775) Americans suffered 441 casualties and the British 1,150. Though a strategic victory for the British, English nerve was shaken, the colonists were emboldened, and any hope for peaceful reconciliation was lost.
It’s 1775. The year 1787, with its novel constitution and separation of church and state is a long 12 years away. At the moment, you and your friends are just a bunch of outlaws.
You’ve heard the debates in Parliament over taxation and representation; you’ve seen British troops enforce royal supremacy at the point of a bayonet. Your king, George III, and Parliament have issued a declaration asserting their sovereignty in “all cases whatsoever” in the colonies. You are, at least in New England, a people under siege with British troops quartered in Boston. You’ve dumped tea into Boston’s harbor in a fit of rage and had your port closed.
Who will you turn to now for direction? There are no presidents or vice-presidents, no supreme court justices or public defenders to call on. There are a handful of young, radical lawyers, like the Adams cousins, John and Samuel, but they’re largely concentrated in cities, while you and most of your friends live in the country. In many colonies, including Massachusetts, there are not even elected governors or councilors—they have all been appointed by the British crown and are answerable to it.
Where you turn is where you have habitually turned for over a century: to the prophets of your society, your ministers.
The American Revolutionary era is known as the “Golden Age of Oratory.” What school child has not heard or read Patrick Henry’s immortal words, “Give me liberty or give me death”? Who has not seen reenactments or heard summaries of Ben Franklin’s heroic appearance before a hostile British Parliament?
Yet often lost in this celebration of patriotic oratory is the key role preaching played in the Revolutionary movement.
TV, INTERNET AND MORE A few broad statistics can help us appreciate more fully the unique power the sermon wielded in Revolutionary America.
Over the span of the colonial era, American ministers delivered approximately 8 million sermons, each lasting one to one-and-a-half hours. The average 70-year-old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime, totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening. This is the number of classroom hours it would take to receive ten separate undergraduate degrees in a modern university, without ever repeating the same course!
The pulpits were Congregational and Baptist in New England; Presbyterian, Lutheran, and German Reformed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; and Anglican and Methodist in the South. But no matter the denomination, colonial congregations heard sermons more than any other form of oratory. The colonial sermon was prophet, newspaper, video, Internet, community college, and social therapist all wrapped in one. Such was the range of its influence on all aspects of life that even contemporary television and personal computers pale in comparison.
Eighteenth-century America was a deeply religious culture that lived self-consciously “under the cope of heaven.” In Sunday worship, and weekday (or “occasional”) sermons, ministers drew the populace into a rhetorical world that was more compelling and immediate than the physical settlements surrounding them. Sermons taught not only the way to personal salvation in Christ but also the way to temporal and national prosperity for God’s chosen people.
Events were perceived not from the mundane, human vantage point but from God’s. The vast majority of colonists were Reformed or Calvinist, to whom things were not as they might appear at ground level: all events, no matter how mundane or seemingly random, were parts of a larger pattern of meaning, part of God’s providential design. The outlines of this pattern were contained in Scripture and interpreted by discerning pastors. Colonial congregations saw themselves as the “New Israel,” endowed with a sacred mission that destined them as lead actors in the last triumphant chapter in redemption history.
Thus colonial audiences learned to perceive themselves not as a ragtag settlement of religious exiles and eccentrics but as God’s special people, planted in the American wilderness to bring light to the Old World left behind. Europeans might ignore or revile them as “fanatics,” but through the sermon, they knew better. Better to absorb the barbs of English ridicule than to forget their glorious commission.
For over a century, colonial congregations had turned to England for protection and culture. Despite religious differences separating many colonists from the Church of England, they shared a common identity as Englishmen, an identity that stood firm against all foes. But almost overnight, these loyalties were challenged by a series of British imperial laws. Beginning with the Stamp Act of 1765 and running through the “Boston Massacre” of 1770, the Tea Act of 1773, and finally, martial law in Massachusetts, patriotic Americans perceived a British plot to deprive them of their fundamental English rights and their God-ordained liberties.
In the twentieth-century, taxation and representation are political and constitutional issues, having nothing to do with religion. But to eighteenth-century ears, attuned to lifetimes of preaching, the issues were inevitably religious as well, so colonists naturally turned to their ministers to learn God’s will about these troubling matters.
TYRANNY IS “IDOLATRY” When understood in its own times, the American Revolution was first and foremost a religious event. This is especially true in New England, where the first blood was shed.
By 1775 the ranks of Harvard- and Yale-educated clergymen swelled to over600 ministers, distributed throughout every town and village in New England. Clergymen surveyed the events swirling around them; by 1775 liberals and evangelicals, Congregationalists and Presbyterians, men and women—all saw in British actions grounds for armed resistance.
In fact, not only was it right for colonists to resist British “tyranny,” it would actually be sinful not to pick up guns.
How did they come to this conclusion? They fastened on two arguments.
First, they focused on Parliament’s 1766 Declaratory Act, which stated that Parliament had sovereignty over the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” For clergymen this phrase took on the air of blasphemy. These were fighting words not only because they violated principles of representative government but even more because they violated the logic of sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”) and God’s exclusive claim to sovereignty “in all cases whatsoever.”
From the first colonial settlements, Americans—especially New England Americans—were accustomed to constraining all power and granting absolute authority to no mere human being.
For Reformed colonists, these ideas were tied up with their historic, covenant theology. At stake was the preservation of their identity as a covenant people. Not only did Parliament’s claims represent tyranny, they also represented idolatry. For colonists to honor those claims would be tantamount to forsaking God and abdicating their national covenant pledge to “have no other gods” before them.
In a classic sermon on the subject of resistance entitled A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission, Boston’s Jonathan Mayhew, a liberal(he favored Unitarianism), took as his text Romans 13:1-6, in which Paul enjoins Christians to “be subject unto the higher powers.” The day he picked for this sermon was portentous—it came on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, when Anglican ministers routinely abhorred the Puritan revolution, and Puritans routinely kept silent. Mayhew would not keep silent.
For centuries, rulers had used this text to discourage resistance and riot. But circumstances had changed, and in the chilling climate of impending Anglo-American conflict, Mayhew asked if there were any limits to this law? He concluded that the law is binding only insofar as government honors its “moral and religious” obligations. When government fails to honor that obligation, or contract, then the duty of submission is likewise nullified. Submission, in other words, is not unlimited.
Rulers, he said, “have no authority from God to do mischief…. It is blasphemy to call tyrants and oppressors God’s ministers.” Far from being sinful, resistance to corrupt ministers and tyrannical rulers is a divine imperative. The greater sin lies in passively sacrificing the covenant for tyranny, that is, in failing to resist.
Who determines whether government is “moral and religious”? In the Revolutionary era, the answer was simple: the individual. There were no established institutions that would support violent revolution. Ultimate justification resided in the will of a people acting self-consciously as united individuals joined in a common cause. Where a government was found to be deficient in moral and spiritual terms, the individual conscience was freed to resist.
AMERICA: A NEW HEAVEN Clergy in the Revolutionary era reminded people not only what they were fighting against, namely tyranny and idolatry, but also what they were fighting for: a new heaven and a new earth.
Many early American settlers arrived believing they were part of the New Israel, that they would be instruments for Christ’s triumphant return to earth. Interpretations varied on whether the last days would be marked by progressive revelations and triumphs (the “postmillennial” view), or whether they would be marked by sudden judgments and calamities (the “pre millennial” view), or some combination thereof. But all agreed the present was portentous, and American colonists were going to play a direct role in the great things looming.
Wars, first with France and later with England, accelerated these millennial speculations. In fighting against England and George III, people felt they were at once fighting against the Antichrist in a climactic battle between good and evil, tyranny and freedom.
Freedom and liberty (like individual) were both political and religious terms. They helped not only preserve fundamental human rights but also sustain loyalty to Christ and to sola Scriptura. So closely intertwined were the political and religious connotations, it was virtually impossible for colonists to separate them.
In his 1776 sermon on The Church’s Flight into the Wilderness, Samuel Sherwood examined the prophecies in the Book of Revelation and concluded that American Christians were the “church in the wilderness,” nurtured in a faraway hiding place and raised to battle and defeat Antichrist. He argued that the powers of Antichrist were “not confined to the boundaries of the Roman empire, nor strictly to the territory of the pope’s usurped authority.” Rather, they extended to all enemies of Christ’s church and people. He concluded that England’s monarchy “appears to have many of the features and much of the temper and character of the image of the beast.”
In only slightly more secular terms, the greatest pamphlet of the Revolutionary era invoked this millennial imagery. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was the runaway bestseller of the American Revolution. In time Paine would be unveiled as a wild-eyed deist, and worse, an atheist. But you couldn’t guess that from Common Sense. It read like a sermon. Paine knew his audience well, and he knew what biblical allusions would bring them to arms.
His sermonic pamphlet begins by berating George III as the “royal brute” of England, noting that monarchy, like aristocracy, had its origins among ruffians who enforced their “superiority” at the point of a sword. Then they masked this brute coercion with the trappings of refined culture and regal bearing. Nevertheless, “How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!” He then identifies the monarchy with tyranny, and tyranny with idolatry and blasphemy. Paine traces in elaborate detail Israel’s “national delusion” in requesting a king as did other nations, and God’s subsequent displeasure at a “form of government which so impiously invades the prerogative of heaven.”
From scriptural precedent, Paine, the revivalist of revolt, concludes, “These portions of Scripture are direct and positive. They admit of no equivocal construction. That the Almighty hath here entered his protest against monarchical government is true, or the Scripture is false.”
Paine then went on to echo ministerial visions of a new millennial age. With unmitigated confidence, Paine reiterated John Winthrop’s 17th-century Puritan vision of America as a “city upon a hill.” But unlike Winthrop, Paine’s millennial city was modeled on republican principles (rather than hierarchical)and religious toleration (rather than state-enforced conformity). With words certain to thrill, he likened the colonists to a young tree on which small characters were carved, characters of liberty and freedom. In time this tree would grow huge, and with it, the characters boldly would proclaim the birth of a new adventure in freedom that would be seen throughout the world.
Many colonists were fearful that, if they failed, their leaders would be hung as traitors and the people enslaved in tyranny. But Paine exulted, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom…. How trifling, how ridiculous do the little paltry cavillings of a few weak or interested men appear when weighed against the business of a world.”
With rhetoric like this, Paine fused the liberal Mayhew’s defense of resistance with an evangelical-like appeal to passion. It is not surprising that liberals and evangelicals united in “the business of a world.”
VOICE OF HOPE AND COURAGE No minister studied the rapidly unfolding events against scriptural teachings more closely than did Concord’s 32-year-old minister, William Emerson (grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson). For a long time, his world had been dominated by local concerns and salvation preaching. But all of this changed in March and April 1775, when all the members of his congregation were propelled into what he termed “the greatest events taking place in the present age.”
By March, Emerson and other Concord patriots knew that British spies had infiltrated their town and informed General Thomas Gage of a hidden armory and munitions supplies stocked by the local “Sons of Liberty” (a secret society of radicals). Many believed Gage was planning a preemptive strike on these supplies, and they feared for their lives. At a muster of the Concord militia on March 13, Emerson preached a sermon on 2 Chronicles 13:12: “And behold, God himself is with us for our captain…. O children of Israel, fight ye not against the Lord God of your fathers, for ye shall not prosper” (KJV).
Never would he deliver a more momentous sermon. He had it within his means to promote or discourage an almost certainly violent call to arms. What was he to say? What was God’s will for his American people?
With obvious agitation, Emerson began his sermon with the somber note that recent intelligence warned of “an approaching storm of war and bloodshed.” Many in attendance would soon be called upon for “real service.” Were they ready? Real readiness, Emerson explained, depended not only on martial skill and weaponry but also on moral and spiritual resolve. To be successful, soldiers must believe in what they were fighting for, and they must trust in God’s power to uphold them. Otherwise they would scatter in fear before the superior British redcoats.
What were the men of Concord fighting for? In strident political terms that coupled the roles of prophet and statesman, Emerson argued for colonial resistance. For standing by their liberties and trusting only in God, the American people were “cruelly charged with rebellion and sedition.” That charge, Emerson cried, was a lie put forward by plotters against American liberty. With all of the integrity of his sacred office behind him, Emerson took his stand before the Concord militia:
“For my own part, the more I reflect upon the movements of the British nation…the more satisfied I am that our military preparation here for our own defense is…justified in the eyes of the impartial world. Nay, for should we neglect to defend ourselves by military preparation, we never could answer it to God and to our own consciences of the rising [generations].”
The road ahead would be difficult, Emerson cautioned, but the outcome was one preordained from the beginning of time. Accordingly, the soldiers could go forth to war assured that “the Lord will cover your head in the day of battle and carry you on from victory to victory.” In the end, he concluded, the whole world would know “that there is a God” in America.
On April 19, the mounting apprehensions became fact as 800 British troops marched on Lexington and Concord to destroy the patriot munitions. At Lexington, Gage’s troops were met by a small “army of observation,” who were fired upon and sustained 17 casualties. From there the British troops marched to Concord. Before their arrival, the alarm had been sounded by patriot silversmith Paul Revere, and militiamen rushed to the common. William Emerson arrived first, and he was soon joined by “minutemen” from nearby towns. Again a shot was fired—the famed “shot heard ’round the world”—and in the ensuing exchange, three Americans and twelve British soldiers were killed or wounded. America’s colonial war for independence had begun.
Words like Emerson’s continued to sound for the next eight years, goading, consoling, and impelling colonists forward in the cause of independence. The pulpit served as the single most powerful voice to inspire the colonists.
For most American ministers and many in their congregations, the religious dimension of the war was precisely the point of revolution. Revolution and a new republican government would enable Americans to continue to realize their destiny as a “redeemer nation.” If time would prove that self-defined mission tragically arrogant, it was not apparent to the participants themselves. With backs against the wall, and precious little to take confidence in, words like those of Mayhew’s, Emerson’s, and Paine’s were their only hope.
Harry Stout is Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity at Yale University. He is author of The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (Oxford).
