C.S. Hayden's Blog

Was the American War for Independence Biblically Justified and Lawful?

The American colonies were all Christian republics. They were, first of all, free and independent states, self-governing republics. There were never a part of England, whatever the school textbooks may say. Each colony began its existence with a charter or constitution, created by its own governmental bodies, and had no relationship to the mother country, England, except that they shared a king in common, and the king was a feudal, contractual monarch over the colonies.

There were mutual obligations between king and people. The royal governor represented the king, the freely elected legislators represented the people. Each colony could issue its own money, an obvious sign of an independent country. The trouble between king and people came in two ways. First, the English kings claimed divine rights and the absolute power of rule, and, after 1688, the English Parliament claimed this right for itself. After the French and Indian War, Parliament, a foreign government, took over the king's power in America, and then it tried to usurp the powers of the American legislatures and the American peoples. Parliament had no legal relationship to the Colonies except in imperial matters, none with respect to the internal affairs of these American states.

Parliament invaded the American colonies in three ways: first, it tried to take over their internal affairs by taxing and governing them; second, it quartered troops on them when they resisted this invasion; third, it declared war on them and a full-scale invasion of America. The American states then declared their independence of King George III for violating his contractual kingship. They did not declare their independence of Parliament because they had never been subjects of the English Parliament or of England. The Declaration of Independence was directed against King George III and cited the reasons why his relationship to America had been rendered null and void by his own actions. The Declaration plainly stated: "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be FREE and INDEPENDENT STATES." Thus, the American states asserted that their independence dated from their first settlement: they had never been subjects of England; they had been his majesty's loyal subjects until King George himself destroyed the constitution and rendered it null and void.

All of the American colonies being Christian republics bring us to the other great reason for the War of Independence, a war to maintain independence against invasion. John Adams declared that, "as much as any other cause," the American resistance to Parliament was aroused by the projected attempt of Parliament to force bishops onto the colonies. Adams wrote in a letter to Dr. Jedediah Morse, December 2, 1815, that, "The objection was not merely to the office of a bishop, though even that was dreaded, but to the authority of Parliament, on which it must be founded" (John Adams, Works, vol. 10, 1865 edition, 185). Each American state had its own religious settlement; none of them wanted an outside government to force a religious establishment on them. They wanted the freedom to be Christian republics according to their own Biblical beliefs. Every state, when the Constitution was adopted, was a Christian republic. Nine of the thirteen had one or more established churches. Christianity as a religion, rather than a particular church, was the established faith of the other states.

posted by C.S. Hayden @ 12:30 AM