Was the Revolutionary War Biblically Justified?

I am teaching this 4th of July weekend from Titus 3:1-2 where Paul tells Titus to remind the believers on Crete "to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient." In light of the clear teaching of the text, I'm wondering, "Were the Patriots Biblically justified in fighting the Revolutionary War against Great Britan?"

I really would like to do some more reading about the nature of preaching during the Revolutionary War era. To read some of these sermons, check out The Online Library of Liberty. Just how did the preachers of the day use the Bible to justify their pro-Revolutionary War position?

The preachers of the day were basing their willingness to rebel against what they considered the tyranical British King on their reading of the Old Testament. The stories that influenced them most were Genesis, which taught all men were created equal; Exodus, which taught that the Pharaoh must be defied; and Judges, which taught that seeking the rule of a king was sinful. (In fact, Thomas Paine's very influential booklet,"Common Sense," prominently used the argument for revolution from Judges.)

John Witherspoon was President of Princeton and he was very influential through his published sermons. His most famous sermon, about the Israelites rebelling against Pharaoh, was distributed to 500 Presbyterian churches seven weeks before the Declaration of Independence.

One pastor from that era, Abraham Keteltas, celebrated the American effort as "the cause of truth, against error and falsehood . . .the cause of pure and undefiled religion, against bigotry, superstition, and human invention . . .in short, it is the cause of heaven against hell--of the kind Parent of the Universe against the prince of darkness, and the destroyer of the human race."

But in an Article in Christianity Today, Mark A. Noll, author of Christians in the American Revolution (Eerdmans), answers the question, "Was the Revolutionary War Justified?" Noll's answer is that while there were clear abuses by Britain, it was really only African American slaves who were justified in making war on Britain.

Noll then writes, "Many sermons in America (and some in Britain) supported revolt, while a few in America and England argued against it. Serious exegesis, however, of what would seem to us like the relevant passages (such as Romans 13) was very rare. Rather, it was much more common for patriots to liken George III to Pharaoh and George Washington to Moses, or to depict the conflict as a struggle between the Woman and the Beast of Revelation 12. Patriots and Loyalists were both much more likely to add scriptural authority to political reasoning rooted in some other ideology than they were to attempt reasoning from the ground up on the basis of Scripture."

In other words, it appears to Noll that many pastors were reading into the text what they wanted it to say instead of getting out of the text what it actually said.

One common theme that the Patriots used for rebellion against England was the problem of "taxation without representation." But when we look at scripture, this argument doesn't seem to hold up. Jesus told the Jewish people of His day to pay taxes to the Romans. And the Jews had no real political representation in the Roman Empire. In Matthew 22:21 Jesus says, "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." We can conclude then that a lack of popular representation in a government does not mean that the government is therefore illegitimate. So, it appears that the colonists' "taxation without representation" argument for rebelling against England lacks Biblical support.

My friend Sam Jackson, a pastor from Detroit who was once a West Point Cadet, wrote, "When I was in [Columbia Biblical] Seminary, we had a good number of British classmates. To a person, they felt the answer [to the question "Was the Revolutionary War Biblical?"] was "No." They especially felt it was hypocritical of many of our founding fathers to consider taxation as slavery when they themselves were slaves owners in an outright fashion. They also pointed out that had the colonies remained attached to Britain [then] slavery would have been begun to be officially abolished without a war in 1833. The sentiments were rather strong on the issue. It was definitely interesting to hear their point of view and the view of other incredibly committed and dynamic Bible-believing Christians who were not US citizens."

So, what do you think? Let's have some conversation. The conversation might inform us about future decisions we might have to make as a nation. Was the Revolutionary War Biblically justified or not?