Was the American revolution unbiblical?

[Joe S]

Been tossing this around in my head. In light of (as far as I know) the biblical standard of submission and passive resistance toward civil government, was the colonial rebellion an unbiblical venture? When is active and or militant resistance warranted?

[JBaker45]

Been tossing this around in my head. In light of (as far as I know) the biblical standard of submission and passive resistance toward civil government, was the colonial rebellion an unbiblical venture? When is active and or militant resistance warranted?
To quote our forefathers, "when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which had connected them with another.."

Seeing how these were human events, it seems fitting to me that they were resolved through human means.

[bartalonis]

So, should the reformers just have quietly nuckled under to the pope and the papal states?

bartalonis

[bartalonis]

How should a Christian feel about our $600,000,000,000 defense budget? I have read that our nation spends $600 B on our defense budget where all the rest of the world combined spends $500,000,000,000.
Should we be concerned about this?

Charles

[raderag]

Been tossing this around in my head. In light of (as far as I know) the biblical standard of submission and passive resistance toward civil government, was the colonial rebellion an unbiblical venture? When is active and or militant resistance warranted?

Joe, I think Edmund Burke, had a good understanding of both the American and French revolutions. (he was called a traitor by Thomas Jefferson as he was against the French revolution.

Reading Burke really helped put the nail in the coffin in 2004 in me not supporting the Constitution Party has they are radicals in the same vain as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who were godless deists. The anti-federalists view of the world is enlightenment liberalism, where as the federalists tended to take into account fallen man into their views.

Burke is the ultimate balance of authority and liberty.

All quotes from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke#American_Revolution

And Burkes article called Reflections on the Revolution in France (http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm)



Again and again, revert to your old principles—seek peace and ensue it; leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the distinctions of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it...Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it...Do not burthen them with taxes...But if intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of government by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question...If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No body of men will be argued into slavery. Sir, let the gentlemen on the other side...tell me, what one character of liberty the Americans have, and what one brand of slavery they are free from, if they are bound in their property and industry by all the restraints you can imagine on commerce, and at the same time are made pack-horses of every tax you choose to impose, without the least share in granting them. When they bear the burthens of unlimited monopoly, will you bring them to bear the burthens of unlimited revenue too? The Englishman in America will feel that this is slavery; that it is legal slavery, will be no compensation either to his feelings or to his understandings.[24] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke#cite_note-23)
On 22 March 1775 Burke gave a speech (published in May 1775) on conciliation with America:
...the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen...They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles. The people are Protestants...a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it...My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government,—they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation,—the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you.[25] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke#cite_note-24)ON the French Revolution:


I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman of that society, be he who he will; and perhaps I have given as good proofs of my attachment to that cause in the whole course of my public conduct. I think I envy liberty as little as they do to any other nation. But I cannot stand forward and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without inquiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer who has broke prison upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.Then look at what he predicted:


In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things. But the moment in which that event shall happen, the person who really commands the army is your master — the master (that is little) of your king, the master of your Assembly, the master of your whole republic.

Then along came that tyrant Napoleon claiming to be a liberal.

[Joe S]

Different circumstances. The Reformers were recovering the gospel which had been lost to apostasy, exercising faithfulness to the recovered Scripture. And I realize that it lead to a lot of bloodshed. But I don't think the American revolution was about that. It's comparing apples and oranges.

[Joe S]

You got me. You got an answer? I lean isolationist but I'm too ignorant to talk about it really. I lean that way 'cause I don't see international affairs being beneficial to us right now; my lack of understanding being the source of my ignorance :P

They say, for example, we can compete economically with anybody in the world. I make $15 an hour. A Chinese person makes $5 a day. I have to be as productive in one hour as a Chinese person is in 3 days. I'm not Super Joe. I'm actually lazy Joe.

[raderag]

They say, for example, we can compete economically with anybody in the world. I make $15 an hour. A Chinese person makes $5 a day. I have to be as productive in one hour as a Chinese person is in 3 days. I'm not Super Joe. I'm actually lazy Joe.

Get rid of trade with China, and you can have his $5 a day job, and the stuff you buy will cost 10 times as much.

Its just simple capitalism that trade benefits all parties; its not at the expense of one.

[Joe S]

What if somebody decides they can do better by getting the Chinese guy to do my job for $5 a day? (It's hypothetical, I'm a machinist, a kind of service). What is it that we produce that the Chinese can't make cheaper? Are we all going to work in a service job rather than production?

Know why Detroit is still making cars?

[raderag]

What if somebody decides they can do better by getting the Chinese guy to do my job for $5 a day? (It's hypothetical, I'm a machinist, a kind of service). What is it that we produce that the Chinese can't make cheaper? </i>

Then you can buy the materials that the chinese guy is making and get back to your $15/hour job. Has there ever been a country that has had a decreased employment or standard of living from trade? (no)


[quote]Are we all going to work in a service job rather than production?

Know why Detroit is still making cars?

No, there are many other jobs such as high tech. Gotta go to bed.

[Swordman53]

Been tossing this around in my head. In light of (as far as I know) the biblical standard of submission and passive resistance toward civil government, was the colonial rebellion an unbiblical venture? When is active and or militant resistance warranted?
I have been reading Mark Nanos' book on Romans lately. The Jews operated as a separate people in the Roman empire, with the synagogues granted privileges by Julius Caesar beyond the standards of a collegia (civil organzation) because of their assistance to Rome in the rebellion against the Seleucids. (Of course, this all fell apart after the first century, when they rebelled against Rome itself.) They were also respected because their religion was more ancient than the Roman religions.

The synagogue had powers for local governing of life in the community, including limited courts, education of the people, collection of taxes, etc. Effectly, they operated as a city state with the empire.

If Nanos is correct, then perhaps we are reading Romans 13 wrong. Paul would be arguing that the synagogue is the power the Christians are to submit to. These powers have been ordained by God as civil powers because "the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable." The church as not seen as a separate entity from the synagogue and the break with the synagogue does not occur until the end of the first century, with the decree at Jamnia. (The Christians refused to join the Jewish rebellion against Rome and were excluded by the decree about "two powers.")

I am just diving into this book (The Mystery of Romans), but the approach is to read Romans within a Jewish context.

As to your current question, it is clear that the Jews rebelled against the Seleucids on religious and moral grounds. The Reformation was a necessary correction at the time, bringing about change both in the protestant churches and in the Catholic church itself. The free church of Germany resisted the Nazi regime during WWII by staying in Germany, preaching the truth, and, as in the case of Bonnhoeffer, active rebellion against the Nazi regime. The church as actively engaged in the civil rights movement of the 1960s in America and in South Africa.

Resistance for the truth is always part of what it means to be a Christian, as is willingness to suffer for the truth.

[bartalonis]

Different circumstances. The Reformers were recovering the gospel which had been lost to apostasy, exercising faithfulness to the recovered Scripture. And I realize that it lead to a lot of bloodshed. But I don't think the American revolution was about that. It's comparing apples and oranges.

I understand that they were reforming the church and reclaiming the gospel and it was a wonderful thing; however, during the reformation there still occured rebellion against certain established governments to a certain extent. That was my point.

bartalonis

[bartalonis]

[quote=Joe S;23299]What if somebody decides they can do better by getting the Chinese guy to do my job for $5 a day? (It's hypothetical, I'm a machinist, a kind of service). What is it that we produce that the Chinese can't make cheaper? </i>

Then you can buy the materials that the chinese guy is making and get back to your $15/hour job. Has there ever been a country that has had a decreased employment or standard of living from trade? (no)

No, there are many other jobs such as high tech. Gotta go to bed.

raderag,

There is generally not anything wrong with free trade if it is conducted in the traditional manner where each sovereign country works out the trade agreement for their mutual benefit. However, trade agreements such as NAFTA actually destroy part of the sovereignty of each participating nation. Agreements such as NAFTA work under the world trade organization and set up supra-national organizations which actually trump organizations in the governments envolved. The sovereignty of each government is slowly broken down.

A case in point is the Europeon Union. The EU began as a simple trade agreement between several of the
European nations. Slowly but surely as the supra-national regulating bodies were established the sovereignty of each nation was broken down. The politicians of each nation were behind it and kept signing these agreements. However, if you think that the average citizen of these nations understood that they were loosing their sovereignty think again. Here, again, this doesn't take a lot of research.

If you think that we have become richer because of NAFTA think again. Oh yes in one way - we get cheaper goods; however, what good are all these cheaper goods if our wealth producing industries are destroyed in the process. We are loosing our manufacturing jobs everyday. We're even beginning to import our agricultural products and we are becoming a service oriented economy. When times get hard people can mow their own yards or cook their own hamburgers and Walmart can fire their door greeters.

Suppose we were to get into a war with China? Are we going to order our warships and other hardware from China? I wonder how well this will work out?

bartalonis

[bartalonis]

There are also some moral things to take into consideration about trade with China. Here's a case in point. I read an article about a well known tennis shoe company that makes all of it's shoes in China. Their factories work mostly women. These women live in dormatories on the factory property where a number of women are in a room with double decked bunks and a night stand for each. They pay the company rent for these lodgings and the food they eat but have very little freedom. At the end of the week these women get a meager living after their exspenses. The company lands the pair of shoes in the states for around $17.00 and sells the pair of shoes for over $100. Environmental laws, safety laws, and child labor laws don't exist in China or at the least recieve little attention. However, we do get our shoes and the shoe company does make a tidy little profit.

bartalonis

[bartalonis]

Here's something else to think on. Go look at your average fast food restaurant and think about what is going on. One sits at a window and takes an order, another sits at a window and hands the order out, several stand behind a counter and take orders, one cleans up the parking lot, another cleans up the tables, several are in the back flipping hamburgers and filling the bags. Most of these jobs can be taught to someone in a couple of hours so people are easily aquired. Also, little wealth for the country is created here. A fast food restaurant is generally a service oriented business. If we had a severe recession many of these jobs could dry up overnite because people can cook their own hamburgers and the fast food restaurant can let the people go as fast as they were hired because their is no skill to amount to.

However, in factories, farms, and mines and all of the industries that support them there are many skilled jobs and wealth is created from the raw materials that are used. The skills that people aquire are even considered capital and are a source of wealth. It takes time to train many of these people and the trained people are not as easily aquired so these businesses tend to hang to their people longer during an economic downturn. The differences between a manufacturing economy verses a service economy are very real. One is truly wealthier and more secure than the other.

bartalonis

[Tallen]

The church as not seen as a separate entity from the synagogue and the break with the synagogue does not occur until the end of the first century, with the decree at Jamnia.

Believe it or not, I have been leaning this way for the last couple of years. I have been thinking about the role of the synagogue (thus the role of the Law) within the early Christians. We know for sure that the Apostles were active in them, and often taught there. :bigthink:

[Swordman53]

Believe it or not, I have been leaning this way for the last couple of years. I have been thinking about the role of the synagogue (thus the role of the Law) within the early Christians. We know for sure that the Apostles were active in them, and often taught there. :bigthink:
You should read Nanos' book. It is very enlightening. I am into his chapter on the weak and the strong. He is raising issues I never thought about.

[Tallen]

You should read Nanos' book. It is very enlightening. I am into his chapter on the weak and the strong. He is raising issues I never thought about.

I will put it on my reading list, sounds interesting.

[Athanasius]

I asked our senior pastor the same queston about the American Revolution, and he seemed to consider it possibly out of order biblically, but not really too badly so. However, when I asked him about the War of Succession (the Civil War) he didn't have much to say. By the way, he's a deep-Southerner.

[Tallen]

Been tossing this around in my head. In light of (as far as I know) the biblical standard of submission and passive resistance toward civil government, was the colonial rebellion an unbiblical venture? When is active and or militant resistance warranted?

Was it unbiblical for Europeans to come to North America and take lands from the native Americans?

I am thinking that the Revolutionary War was fought over land that didn't belong to those who were fighting for it. :medium-smiley-010:

[Swordman53]

I will put it on my reading list, sounds interesting.
Finished Nanos while away. I would put this on my recommended reading list for all Christians. I will be contemplating this book for some time.

If Nanos is right, the American Revolution was not UNBIBLICAL simply because it was a rebellion against England. We have been misreading Romans 13:1-7 for too long. It has been leveraged for centuries as a justification for unrighteous actions of government.

If Nanos is right, we have been reading Romans wrong for quite some time, as a means of justifying ourselves, our actions, and all our abuses of Scripture.

And I think Nanos is right. Contextually, in terms of history, culture and the text of Scripture, he makes an excellent case.

[Athanasius]

Was it unbiblical for Europeans to come to North America and take lands from the native Americans?

I am thinking that the Revolutionary War was fought over land that didn't belong to those who were fighting for it. :medium-smiley-010:

But, was it biblical for the Athabascan migration to displace the Pueblo people who were here first? You see, it has always been that way. Even Moses led people to a Promised Land inhabited by others.

And, one could also make a case for the English not being the legal government over the American Continent - after all, the Spanish were here first. And on it goes.

So, yes, I think free men have a right to throw off tyrants, and maybe even a biblical duty, if we use the Old Testament model.

[Joe S]

If you keep boiling it down, the English had no right to the Americas, the Angles and Saxons had no right to Briton, and on and on. So much for the just war concept.


Just cause. The right to self-defense against an aggressor has consistently been regarded as fundamental. Only defensive war is legitimate.

Last resort. War may be waged only when all negotiations and compromise have been attempted and have failed. In his "Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount," Luther remarks that "anyone who claims to be a Christian and a child of God, not only does not start war or unrest; also he gives help and counsel on the side of peace wherever he can, even though there be a just and adequate cause for going to war."

Formal declaration. Since the use of military force is the prerogative of government and not of private individuals, properly constituted procedure for declaring and waging war must be followed. As Thomas Aquinas commented, it is not the business of a private individual to declare war ... as the care of the common weal is committed to those who are in authority."

Just Intention. War must be carried out to secure a just peace, not for territorial conquest, economic gain, or ideological supremacy. The only legitimate intention of war is to secure peace.

The American Revolution was a relatively peaceful rebellion as far as I know until the Brits attacked at Lexington and Concord, so the war could be viewed as a self defence. But the rebellious colonial provocations that lead to the clash of arms still bring me back to the OP.

The problem with everything I've read is, no one is dealing with the text. And I don't just mean that for LADers.

[Athanasius]

If you keep boiling it down, the English had no right to the Americas, the Angles and Saxons had no right to Briton, and on and on. So much for the just war concept.



The American Revolution was a relatively peaceful rebellion as far as I know until the Brits attacked at Lexington and Concord, so the war could be viewed as a self defence. But the rebellious colonial provocations that lead to the clash of arms still bring me back to the OP.

The problem with everything I've read is, no one is dealing with the text. And I don't just mean that for LADers.

It might not have been within an absolute biblical model, but surely the American Revolution was within God's permissive will. The fruit of that Revolution brought forth a nation instrumental in world-wide evangelization. The freedoms nurtured in this nation, a nation where Basptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and so forth thrived outside the control of the state Anglican Church of England, was a major instrument in fulfilling Christ's commandment to reach all the world with the Gospel. We encouraged and supported missionaries who set sail for lands still in pagan darkness, and others where the light of the Gospel had nearly been extinguished. So, as Martha Stewart might say, "it's a good thing."

[Joe S]

I'm not sure what you mean by permissive will, but if you mean according to his decree and ordaining I agree wholeheartedly, and America has been I believe a blessing to the globe, and I enjoy the benefits of her.

But if you mean God's revealed will, as in his commandments to men, then I'm not so sure that the patriots acted in fidelity to the NT revelation in the revolution. It was not a righteous thing per say. (I'm starting to sound like a liberal scholar. They like to say per say :medium-smiley-137:)

[Tallen]

If you keep boiling it down, the English had no right to the Americas, the Angles and Saxons had no right to Briton, and on and on. So much for the just war concept.

As far as I can tell, war is for protecting your borders and citizens from foriegn harm. An expansionist mentality is nothing more than coveting your neighbors posessions. If expansion is the goal, it should be done through treaties and covenants allowing for a peaceful transition for the citizens of those nations.


The American Revolution was a relatively peaceful rebellion as far as I know until the Brits attacked at Lexington and Concord, so the war could be viewed as a self defence. But the rebellious colonial provocations that lead to the clash of arms still bring me back to the OP.

I think the war was inevitable. Unfair taxes were at the center of what was happening, and I suspect sooner or later a Boston Tea Party would have led to blood shed. These folks rebelled at less than 20% taxation, I wonder what they would do in America today where we are hit with taxes that amount to 45-50% and there is talk of them going higher.