Sermons

Preaching the Insurrection

Roderic Frohman                              Third Presbyterian Church  July, 6 2003                                                  Romans 13:1-6

A day celebrating independence provides the occasion for any nation to stop and reflect on the meaning of its society. The French celebrate Bastille Day, the Kenyans celebrate the overthrow of English colonialism, so Americans ought to celebrate their liberation from the shackles of colonialism, and we do.

Our family recently saw the play “1776” at the GEVA. It was an outstanding performance by a very talented cast. As a matter of fact the young man who portrayed the military courier and sang the plaintive song, “Moma Look Smart”, is a friend of my daughter Jennifer and was her date to her junior prom in Minneapolis. The play is a fitting celebration of this nation’s 227th birthday because the play honestly looks at the great issues of power and race, which still challenge our society.

But a sermon for the occasion of insurrection (and indeed the Revolutionary War was just that, an insurrection) needs to take particular shape, hence the title of my sermon, Preaching the Insurrection.

Depending on how one reads the Bible, insurrection by Christians against their government is a no no. The Epistle text of the morning from Romans 13 says clearly;

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God and those [authorities] which exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad....For the same reason you should also pay taxes because the authorities are God's servants busy with this thing. (Romans 13: 1-6)

Apparently St. Paul was quite satisfied with the Roman government about 55 AD when he penned those words. But about 50 years later John of Patmos wrote the Book of Revelation and called the Roman government the "whore of Babylon”. So one can see how ancient good can be made uncouth in a relatively short amount of time.

The intellectual founder of the Reformed, Protestant tradition, John Calvin of 16th century Geneva, Switzerland, writing over 200 years before the American Revolution, gave the same advice as St. Paul, namely, "obedience to [even] bad kings is required in scripture." (Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 1515) Calvin drew the troublesome analogy of a bad king's relationship to his subjects like an abusive husband is related to his family. "Suppose husbands most despitefully use their wives, whom they are commanded to love [Eph. 5:25] and to spare as weaker vessels [I Peter 3:7]. Shall either children be less obedient to their parents, or wives to their husbands? They are still subject even to those who are wicked and undutiful." (Ibid. p. 1516)

Needless to say Calvin is against insurrection in any form, even against abusive husbands.

Now why all this about the Bible's and Calvin's opposition to insurrection? Because it was on the Bible and Calvin that our patriotic forbears based their culture.

Harry Stout, a professor of history at Yale University says, "Eighteenth century America was a deeply religious culture that lived self-consciously 'under the cape of heaven'... 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 on 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." (Christian History Magazine Issue # 50 p. 14)

The point is that the colonists understood that God was on their side in this holy experiment to set a "city upon a hill" for all the world to see. (John Winthrop) So, for over 100 years the colonists looked to England for protection and culture. The rulers who ruled over them were seen to be ruling under the providence of God. Indeed King George III was a devout Christian with sympathies toward even the evangelical excesses of Colonial Protestantism. (Ibid. p. 15)

Why then did the Calvinist children of NEW England turn on their Calvinist parents in OLD England?

This was a question that puzzled John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, as he looked at colonial events from his home in OLD England. His Methodist movement was beginning to take root in the American colonies, so in 1775 he wrote an open letter to his constituents in New England entitled, A Calm Address To Our (sic.) American Colonies. Wesley reminded Americans that those who could vote and hold property in England could also do so in the colonies. "Can you hope for a more desirable form of government, either in England or America, than that which you now enjoy?" he asked. "After all the vehement cry for liberty, what more liberty can you have?" Wesley further stated that all the complaining by American colonists to the British crown about slavery was highly exaggerated. His stinging indictment was, "Who then is a slave? Look America, and you may easily see. See that the Negro, fainting under that load, bleeding under the lash! He is a slave. And is there no difference between him and his master? Yes, the one is screaming, 'Murder! Slavery!' The other silently bleeds and dies." (Ibid. p. 39)

Among the few to make the connection between the slavery of Africans and slavery to England was the slave poet Phyllis Wheatley. She was a sensation in both England and the colonies. She was praised by Washington and Franklin but dismissed as a fraud by Thomas Jefferson. Her comparison of American oppression by England to that of black bondage gave fire to the American cause. She wrote:

Such, such my case. And can I then but pray

Others may never feel the tyrannic sway? (Ibid. p. 19)

Wesley reminded the colonists that England had fought and won the French and Indian war on the colonies' behalf and was now taxing the colonies to pay for their defense. "But" he asked, "How is possible that the taking of this reasonable and legal step [of taxation] should have set all America in a flame?" (Ibid.)

Many American clergy would have reacted that Wesley just didn't “get it.” Further, it was more than just one tax that was being levied, it was many. Beginning with the Stamp Act of 1765, The Declaratory Act of 1766 which stated that the British Parliament had sovereignty over the colonies in 'all cases whatsoever', the Boston Massacre of 1770, the Tea Act of 1773, martial law and quartering of British troops in private homes in Massachusetts, and the threat of the Church of England to impose a bishop on all of the colonies, all combined to create a climate of hostility which clergyman John Wesley could not/did not understand.

But on this side of the pond the English Parliament's claims represented acts of tyranny and idolatry. Calvinist thinking may have reasoned that the king was appointed by God but the king could not claim sovereignty "in all cases whatsoever”. This was a right only God could claim.

Among the most articulate of colonial preachers of insurrection was Boston's Jonathan Mayhew, a Unitarian, who wrote A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission which was based on our Epistle text, Romans 13: 1-6. Mayhew preached that the requirement of St. Paul to be subject to the governing authorities was "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.” “Rulers,” he said, 'have no authority from God to do mischief...It is blasphemy to call tyrants and oppressors God's ministers." This idea not only represented a break with England, it was a break from the 200-year domination of John Calvin on American religion.

Another firebrand Rev. Samuel Sherwood, examined the prophecies in the book of Revelation in his sermon, The Church's Flight Into the Wilderness, and declared that England's monarchy "appears to have many of the features and much of the temper and character of the image of the beast." (Ibid. p. 15)

The deist Thomas Paine got into the act by quoting scripture in his famous tract, Common Sense. With elaborate detail Paine traced Israel's "national delusion" in search for a king and God's subsequent displeasure at a "form of government which so impiously invades the prerogative of heaven." From the Bible, Paine, the revivalist of revolt, concluded, "These portions of Scripture are direct and positive. They admit of no equivocal construction. That the Almighty has here entered his protest against monarchical government is true, or the Scripture is false." (Ibid. p. 15)

"No minister studied the rapidly unfolding events more closely than did Concord's 32 year old minister William Emerson, who turned out to be the grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In March and April of 1775 Emerson and other Concord patriots knew that British spies had infiltrated their town and had informed the British that of a hidden cache of arms and munitions stockpiled by the 'Sons of Liberty.' During a sermon before the Concord militia on March 13, 1775 Emerson preached, 'Should we neglect to defend ourselves by military preparation we never could answer to God and to our own consciences of the rising generations.' 'The Lord will cover your head in the day of battle,' he declared, and quoting from II Chronicles 13:12 said, 'God himself is with us as our captain'."

One month later 800 British troops marched on Lexington and Concord to destroy the patriot ammunition stockpile. Before their arrival the alarm had been sounded by silversmith Paul Revere. Rev. Emerson was the first to arrive at the Concord Common where he joined with other Concord minuteman and 'fired the shot heard round the world.' (Ibid. p.17)

One of the more famous firebrands of insurrection was Rev. John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister, and President of the College of New Jersey, later Princeton University, and the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. From his pulpit he thundered, "There is not a single instance in human history in which civil liberty was lost and religious liberty preserved”. In light of Congress’ adoption of the Patriot Act in October of 2001 and the subsequent “Patriot Act II” now being proposed by Attorney General Ashcroft, both of which trample on the Bill of Rights, it is worth to hear again the words of Witherspoon; "There is not a single instance in human history in which civil liberty was lost and religious liberty preserved." For this and his other partisan actions the Torys (the loyalists) gave him the title "Doctor Silverspoon, Preacher of Sedition in America." Witherspoon was member of the Second Continental Congress in 1776 and as the delegates wavered about declaring independence he rose to the floor and declared, "America is not only ripe for independence but in danger of rotting for the want of it." (Ibid. p. 20) No wonder several members of the British Parliament called the War for Independence the “Presbyterian Rebellion”.

In the Baptist freedom fighter Isaac Backus, a pastor in Middleborough, Massachusetts, Presbyterian Witherspoon found an ally. Backus was a champion of the cause of separation of church and state and was most concerned about the possibility of Anglicanism becoming the established religion of the colonies. He wanted the "exclusion of any hereditary, lordly power and any religious tests" for holding public office. He was a lobbyist to the First Continental Congress in 1774 to insure religious liberty.

Perhaps the most flashy of the clergy to support the American insurrection was Anglican clergyman Peter Muhlenberg. He was present at St. John's Church in Richmond, VA, when Patrick Henry gave his immortal cry, "Give me liberty or give me death”. Muhlenberg was so moved by Patrick Henry's speech that he enlisted with George Washington and returned to his congregation to give his last sermon. After reading from Ecclesiastes chapter three which, as you recall, speaks about a "time for every purpose under heaven, Muhlenberg thundered, "There is a time to preach and a time to pray, but there is also a time to fight, and that time has now come." Muhlenberg then threw off his clerical robes to reveal the uniform of a militia colonel. (Ibid. p. 13)

Now why bother to mention all these patriotic, insurrectionist clergy? Well, for two reasons. First, I hope we can see that, depending on the era in which we live, ministers have meddled in politics from the pulpit quite regularly. As they attempted to discern what God was doing in the world and the church they had the courage to preach about their convictions. They had a significant impact on the life of church members, especially in colonial times.

The second reason is rather self-serving. By citing Peter Muhlenberg, Jonathan Mayhew, Samuel Sherwood, John Witherspoon and other firebrands of the American Revolution, I just want to remind everyone, including myself, that when clergy stand in this pulpit and preach about the idols of American culture; about women's rights, about gay ordination, about unjust wars, about reform in the church and community, we not preaching in a vacuum. As a matter of fact when we preach about these controversial issues we are being as American as apple pie.