Submission: Did Our Founding Fathers Sin by Rebelling Against Our Sovereign King George III?

Submission: Did Our Founding Fathers Sin by Rebelling Against Our Sovereign King George III?

There were many voices in the time of the American War for Independence which stated that the Thirteen Colonies should obey their rulers and that rebellion was as the sin of witchcraft.  This article is an attempt to defend the Founding Fathers from a scriptural viewpoint.  One would be the whole of
Scripture and second would be the case of hundreds of years of Church History.

An excellent resource is the collection of sermons edited by Ellis Sandoz entitled Political Sermons of the American Founding Era 1730-1805. With 1596 pages, it is no light assignment but one that contains treasure.  Among the authors are George Whitefield, Charles Chauncy, Samuel Davies, John Joachim Zubly, John Witherspoon, Samuel Cooper,Samuel Miller, Noah Webster and Timothy Dwight.  There are many others but what a cast!

There is also a sermon by John Wesley entitled "A Calm Address to Our American Colonies" written in 1775.  It is hardly a sermon.  I was surprised to not see one verse of the Bible quoted.  There was a passing reference to Ahithophel (a counselor to King David who later sided with the rebel Absalom and later committed suicide) but no explanation to the readers.  It was assumed that the readers would be familiar with his siding with Absalom.  Wesley's "Calm Address" elicited an anonymous response entitled: "A Constitutional Answer to Wesley's Calm Address" also in 1775.

An anonymous pastor wrote a reply in "A Constitutional Answer to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley's Calm Address to the American Colonies."  In the second paragraph, this pastor says the following:
   
     "You present your book to the world, as your own; but the greatest part of it is taken, verbatim, from Taxation No Tyranny, written by the pensioned Dr. Johnson, a declared enemy of civil and religious liberty! This is another deception, equally mean and obvious."

This anonymous pastor does not deal with scriptural texts either but appeals to Magna Carta and Pennsylvania laws.

Many well meaning people will blindly rattle off Romans 13: 1a  "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities."  They leave it at that.  Just blindly submit, do not ask questions!  Get in line for the Jim Jones koolaid.  Churches like the example given of Jim Jones have used that line of thinking.  If these same people had lived in the time of Moses would have gone alone with the government edict of killing all the Hebrew babies.  They might have had to tow the government line when King Herod gave the rule that all babies in Bethlehem must be killed.  Would these blind goverment-followers have taken part in the killing of their own founder [Jesus]?

Let us read what the whole text of Romans 13:1 states.  "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities for there is no authority except that which God has established.  The Founders of the United States followed the example of the British rulers in Magna Carta.  The king of England was held to limitations on his power.  Our Founders did not believe in the Divine Right of Kings.  King Charles I wrote a book entitled the Divine Right of Kings.  That same king was beheaded by Parliament under Oliver Cromwell.  The king is also held responsible to God's law.  If the king goes against God's law, the people have to hold the king responsible.

What should Christians have done in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s?  Should they have just been docile submissive creatures for everything Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party demanded? Christians like Deitrich Bonhoeffer saw that they had to make a stand in their culture.

Our Founders took the second part of Romans 13:1 and followed the whole verse.  There is no authority except that which God has established.  They saw that the established Church of England in many cases was a political appointment.  There were sincere believers in the Church of England but there were also many wolves in sheep's clothing.  There were many in the ministry that had not been born again.  Especially from New England there was a cry to make sure that there was freedom of religion.  Take note of the tie of the established Church of England in the states of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and New York with the slave trade.