American Independence — Sinful or Sacred?

I’m often asked whether the United States’ Founding Fathers sinned by revolting against the British crown. After all, the apostle Paul writes in Romans 13 that people should submit to civil authorities, which God has appointed to administer justice by punishing and deterring evil, and to promote goodness. Doesn’t that rule out rebellion?

No. It rules out anarchy. It also rules out submission to authorities that themselves rebel, repeatedly and irrevocably, against God’s design and decrees for government. The Declaration of Independence explicitly rejects both of these unbiblical positions.

The Founders were in fact obsessed with subjecting themselves to civil authorities. That’s why they did not revolt sooner. It’s why they convened representative bodies between 1765 and 1774, before the Revolutionary War started 250 years ago, in April of 1775 (more than a year before signing the Declaration). The Founders’ submission is what enabled the colonies to govern themselves for the century before Parliament broke from the norm in the 1760–70s.

So committed were the Founders to submission, they delayed separation from Britain until not separating would have made them complicit in the British government’s transgressions. For that reason, it was not only “their right” but also “their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new Guards for their future security” (DOI, second paragraph; see also second-last paragraph). —MTH