Occasionally people ask my opinion on various personal or church issues. I recently received the following question which I have reprinted below, followed by my response.

QUESTION

Bob,

I read your recent post about the relationship between God and the United States, but I struggle to reconcile celebrating the American Revolution with the mandates in the books of Romans and Titus requiring Christians to be subject to governing authority:

“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. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. …Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience” (Romans 13:1-5).

“Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone” (Titus 3:1-3).

From that passage and the context of the Revolution, must we not acknowledge that God established the British throne and that by rebelling against it, our forefathers rebelled against something God had instituted? Is there any other conclusion but to say that the 4th of July amounts to a celebration of something this passage would describe as disobedience against God?

MY ANSWER

I appreciate your question and the civil tone of your comments. To be transparent, I too have wondered whether as a preacher I would have sided with the revolutionaries in 1776 or with those who remained loyal to England.  That would have been a difficult decision, especially in light of Romans 13:1-5.  However, in retrospect, I believe the Revolutionary effort was God-ordained and God-blessed.  Here are a couple of principles to consider:

1.  There are times when it’s right for God’s people to resist the laws of the government over them.  In the Old Testament, Daniel refused to bow to the king’s idol as ordered. In the New Testament, Peter and John refused to obey the authorities who commanded them not to preach about Jesus’ resurrection. They said, “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29).

I believe Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right when, as a German citizen, he attempted to unseat Adolph Hitler.  We applaud preachers who preached against slavery even though it was the law of the land.  Most believe Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was correct in practicing civil disobedience against unjust laws that enabled segregation. If radical Muslims somehow took control of our local government, I don’t think believers should passively obey Sharia law.

2.  Part of the rationale for the Revolution was that Great Britain did not have a divine right to claim rule over the Americas.  The government authorities were so far removed that they had little understanding of the needs of the people in the thirteen colonies.  They were claiming jurisdiction without justification.

In August 2014 when Vladimir Putin and the Russian Army invaded Ukraine and sought to annex it as Russian territory, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko referred to the conflict as Ukraine’s “Patriotic War of 2014” and a war against “external aggression.” The Ukrainian people did not have a mandate from Romans 13 to be submissive to the Russian Army. Putin was claiming territory that was not his to claim.

John Witherspoon, a Revolutionary-era preacher, said, “It is, however, to be added, that such is their distance from us, that a wise and prudent administration of our affairs is as impossible as the claim of authority is unjust. Such is and must be their ignorance of the state of things here, so much time must elapse before an error can be seen and remedied, and so much injustice and partiality must be expected from the arts and misrepresentation of interested persons, that for these colonies to depend wholly upon the legislature of Great-Britain, would be like many other oppressive connections, injury to the master, and ruin to the slave.”

There’s a book titled, “Political Sermons of the American Founding Era” that is a compilation of messages preached from frontier pulpits supporting the Revolutionary War. Those sermons pointed out that the Revolution wasn’t one individual resisting legitimate government authority but a band of thirteen colonies declaring independence from an illegitimate power and seeking to establish a new nation altogether.

You express concern that Evangelicals “are being malevolently tricked into diluting their Christianity with Americanism.” That is a danger. But I am more concerned with the opposite—young evangelicals becoming so passive about our government that it’s being taken over by those who pursue an agenda which is anti-Biblical and anti-Christ.  We are not under tyranny like Rome.  In our Constitutional Republic, we are the government.  And to do nothing to assure it is properly directed is to be poor stewards of the magnificent gift God has entrusted to us.

Most evangelicals I know who are politically involved, do so, not because they’re concerned with power or money but because they are concerned about the right to life and the sanctity of marriage—basic Biblical issues that are in danger of being decided in favor of the one who comes to kill, steal, and destroy.

Again, thanks for being able to discuss issues like the one above with civility.  We may not agree on every issue, but we are brothers in Christ and are blessed to live in a free land.

– Bob

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