Jonathan Mayhew, Romans 13, and the American Revolution
In the twilight years of his life,
while writing from his home in Quincy, Massachusetts, John Adams had cause to
reflect on those bygone years in which the play that was the American
Revolution took center stage for the world to see.
Writing to his fellow revolutionary sage,
Thomas Jefferson, Adams expressed to his one-time friend, turned foe, turned
friend anew, his innermost feelings on myriad of topics ranging from simple farming
tips to complex theological debates.
Aside
from letters little more was ever exchanged between these two statesmen, with
one major exception.
Included in his
July, 1818 letter to Monticello, Adams enclosed what he called “a curious piece
of New England Antiquities” which had proven to leave a profound impact on a
young John Adams.
At the tender age of fourteen, Adams had
digested a sermon which he claimed to have read “until the substance of it was
incorporated into my Nature and indelibly engraved on my memory.”
This sermon, along with the minister who
delivered it, were credited by Adams for having destroyed the bigotry and
fanaticism of all who remained loyal to England’s king, and served as a
catalyst for the Revolution itself.
The
sermon to which Adams referred was the now widely lauded
A Discourse
Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-resistance to the Higher Powers by Congregationalist
Minister Jonathan Mayhew.
Historians
have recognized the brilliance of Mayhew’s sermon for literally generations,
crediting Mayhew with leading public opposition to Britain long before the
first shots at Lexington were fired.
And
while the acclaim is certainly justified, the crux of Mayhew’s contribution to the
American Revolution often goes overlooked.
In a world in which Biblical reasoning was needed for virtually every
important question in life, the dilemma of justifying opposition to authority proved
to be of paramount importance.
The
Apostle Paul’s admonition, found in the thirteenth chapter of the Book of
Romans, to “be subject unto the higher powers,” along with the reminder that “Whosoever
therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that
resist shall receive to themselves damnation,” proved to be a
formidable obstacle in America’s path to independence.
In his quest to better comprehend heaven’s
will as it related to scripture, Jonathan Mayhew established not only a
framework for better understanding the critical admonitions of Romans, Chapter
13, but also developed the requisite rhetorical ammunition that would galvanize
an entire generation of American colonists to the cause of revolution.
The Christian Paradox of the American
Revolution
Colonial American
society, particularly in Boston, was a world saturated in Christian and
Biblical dogma.
As acclaimed American
Historian Mark Noll put it,
“The Bible
sanctified all manner of public speech…Once the Bible had achieved a place of
honored distinction for selves and society, it became a lens through which
believers perceived the external significance of temporal events, but also a
torch that shone its illuminating rays on those events.”
As the events leading up to the American
Revolution transpired, American colonists were left to decipher God’s divine purpose
for such trials.
And since the Bible served
as the proverbial Rorschach test through which all important decisions were assessed,
it was only natural that ministers and parishioners alike would consult what the
Good Book had to say on such matters.
Chief among these
matters was the issue of opposition to authority.
Historian Daniel Dreisbach supports this
assertion when he writes, “Bible texts weighed heavy on the American mind
during the conflict with Great Britain…Romans 13 was the single most cited…and on
their face, these texts made little allowance for resistance to civic rulers.”
The cognitive dissonance created by these two
seemingly divergent desires –
the
aspiration to please God and the yearning for independence from Britain – meant
that the colonists had arrived at a critical fork in the road.
Would revolution imply an overt disregard for
God’s holy warning as found in Romans 13?
The answer to that
question proved to be anything but simple.
If American Christians were to follow the admonitions of scripture, then
they could not ignore the caution issued by Paul in Romans 13. At the same time, if these same colonists wanted
to separate from Great Britain, a powerful and palpable biblical justification
would be needed in order to rationalize their act of rebellion.
In the end the
division would come down to personal interpretation of scripture, as Loyalists
tended to embrace a more absolutist view of the Bible while Patriots took a
more nuanced perspective. Historian Gregg Frazer’s work on this very
issue supports this conclusion. Frazer
writes:
In their
sermons, as a general rule, the Loyalist preachers appealed more to the Bible
and held to a more literal and
contextual interpretation of the relevant tests of scripture than did the Patriot preachers. In addition, Loyalists typically took
passages at face value without adding to or
subtracting from the text, while the Patriot preachers adjusted texts to fit
their purpose by adding
qualifying language.
Dr. Dreisbach seems to agree with
Frazer’s conclusion when he states, “Many Americans came to believe there were
nuanced interpretations of these proof texts for submission and passive obedience
which permitted a righteous disobedience of civil authorities.”
While
it is certainly the case that most Patriot ministers adopted a nuanced approach
to Romans 13 and other scriptures, which may have appeased a portion of the colonists,
the fact remains that a viable, concrete solution to the Romans 13 problem was
not to be found among the Patriot clergy.
Loyalist preachers still occupied the moral high ground from the
perspective of allegiance to Bible teachings.
As Anglican Bishop Charles Inglis reminded his fellow colonists, “I feel
inclined to think that Paul did not believe that Government of kings was an
invention of the devil.
‘I exhort,’ says
the same apostle, in another place, ‘that first of all supplications and
prayers be made for all men and for Kings, and for all that are in authority,
that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and honesty.”
Simply put, Paul’s words were to be taken at face value.
There was no wiggle room with Romans 13, and
those who played fast and loose with such revelation were doomed to the
damnation Paul had promised.
For Patriot
ministers, simply twisting the words of Paul would only go so far with a very
small minority of colonial Christians.
Finding
a way to both uphold the Apostle Paul’s original admonition of submission to authority,
while at the same time opposing that authority, was the defining paradox of the
American Revolution.
Setting the Stage
Jonathan
Mayhew began his career as a Congregationalist minister in Boston during a time
of tremendous change.
The Calvinist
hegemony, which had dominated New England Protestantism for generations, was
beginning to erode making room for different interpretations of Christian soteriology.
For Mayhew, this meant that newer ways of understanding
God’s plan for mankind, and humanity’s role in that plan, were slowly gaining traction.
Many of these concepts appealed to Mayhew in
ways that would change him as a minister.
From his days at a student at Harvard, Mayhew became enamored with teachings
on natural law and appeals to a more rationalist view of Christianity, which
caused many to question his devotion to traditional orthodoxy.
As Mayhew biographer J. Patrick Mullins
points out, Mayhew had begun to adopt the study of “natural religion” that would
eventually cause the young preacher to “declare his independence from the
orthodox Calvinism of his fellow Boston clergymen.”
This
change in Mayhew’s theological beliefs was foundational to how he would come to
understand the concept of submission to authority.
The
shift from strict Calvinist beliefs to a more Arminian (and some even thought
Unitarian) theology did not always resonate with Mayhew’s Boston neighbors.
As Historian Chris Beneke points out, “Mayhew
represented a small, but outspoken, liberal faction within New England Congregationalism.
Shunned by strict Calvinists, he was known
early on as an ‘amiable heretic.’”
Despite the labels, Mayhew established for himself a reputation for
being a thoughtful and sincere pastor.
Mayhew’s liberal leanings as a pastor were
not simply the creation of his mind but were deeply influenced by the men he
studied and came to admire.
In turn,
these same figures would shape Mayhew’s understanding of how resistance to
authority could be both biblically justified and even divinely mandated.
The
person most responsible for shaping Jonathan Mayhew’s views on resistance
theory is John Locke.
Locke’s contributions
to the development of classical republicanism have been well known to
historians for centuries.
For a young
Mayhew, however, it was Locke’s treatise on the Bible that would leave the
greatest impact.
As a child of seventeenth
century, Locke was aware of the political upheavals that had captivated England,
culminating in the English Civil War and eventual execution of Charles I.
As such, Locke had seen the good and the bad
that had happened when a people chose not to submit to their leaders as Paul
had admonished.
What had emerged, for
Locke, from all this bloodshed and upheaval was a simple truth that would come
to define not only his life but also the world view of Mayhew a century
later.
The simple truth was that “the
doctrine of Christ was a doctrine of liberty…Christians were exempt from subjection
to the laws of heathen governments.”
What
these heathen governments looked like was something Locke never answered.
Instead, Locke concluded his treatise on
Romans 13 with a quasi-rebuking of the Apostle Paul, who “is wholly silent and
says nothing” with regards to “how men come by a rightful title to this power.”
In other words, Locke could see in Christianity
a religion based on human liberty, but was not able to provide the context in
which one should assert that same liberty.
Locke
was not unique in this dilemma.
Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin, who also esteemed the
Christian faith to be a religion of liberty, were unable (or unwilling) to
contradict Paul’s admonition to “be subject unto the higher powers.” For Luther, Romans 13 was “truly the most
important piece in the New Testament” but was also an example of how God’s laws
and man’s laws deserve different treatment.
Luther writes:
You must not
understand the word law here in human fashion, i.e., a regulation about what
sort of works must be done or must not be done. That's the way it is with human
laws: you satisfy the demands of the law with works, whether your heart is in
it or not. God judges what is in the depths of the heart. Therefore his law
also makes demands on the depths of the heart and doesn't let the heart rest
content in works; rather it punishes as hypocrisy and lies all works done apart
from the depths of the heart.
Along with Luther, fellow
Reformer John Calvin did not remain silent on the words of Paul in Romans 13:
[Paul] calls
them the higher powers, not the supreme,
who possess the chief authority, but such as
excel other men…And it seems indeed to me, that the Apostle intended by this
word to take away the
frivolous curiosity of men, who are wont often to inquire by what right they
who rule have obtained
their authority; but it ought to be enough for us, that they do
rule; for they have not
ascended by their own power into this high station, but have been placed there
by the Lord’s hand. And by
mentioning every soul, he removes every exception, lest any
one should claim an immunity from the
common duty of obedience.
In short, Luther encapsulated his
understanding of Romans 13 into the framework of his emerging theology on grace
vs. works, while Calvin left absolutely zero wiggle room at all. For these important Reformers, the question
of absolute authority was just that: absolute.
There was no arguing with Paul’s divine declaration, which meant
Jonathan Mayhew had to look elsewhere to find the requisite reconciliation.
Mayhew
would find all the theological ammunition he needed in two powerful sources.
First, the
Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (
A
Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants), written at some point in the middle of
the sixteenth century, was an anonymous treatise which defiantly suggested that
a people were not bound to obey a king who had disobeyed divine law.
Appealing to biblical examples in which
opposition to authority was warranted by God himself, the
Vindiciae portrayed
the relationship between king and subordinate as a covenant in which all honor
and reverence to God’s laws was promised by the monarch, who in turn received
the adoration and allegiance of his subjects.
Any violation of this arrangement was a breach of the covenant and merited
the wrath of God’s vengeance.
The
second source upon which Mayhew drew inspiration was the Scottish Presbyterian
minister Samuel Rutherford, who in the 17th century began to
challenge to concept of divine right kingship.
His bombshell work, entitled Lex Rex; or the Law and the Prince (Lex
Rex meaning “the law is king” was a play on words, since its reverse “the
king is law” had served as the traditional creed for all monarchical government up to that point), refuted the
notion that a king deserved absolute loyalty but instead was subject to the
laws of God, for God had chosen them to serve as his agents on earth. As Rutherford put it, “The people have power
over the king by reason of his covenant and promise. — Covenants and promises
violated, infer co-action, de jure, by law.”
The Sermon that Changed a Nation
For Jonathan
Mayhew, the teachings of natural law, supported by men like Locke and
Rutherford, served as the principal lens through which he would decipher the true
message of Paul as found in Romans 13.
Instead
of trying to justify or twist the words of scripture, as had been done by many
of his predecessors, Mayhew took Paul at face value.
As J. Patrick Mullins reminds us, Mayhew “reconciled
the natural right of resistance with the Christian duty of obedience in light
of scripture, history and real Whig political philosophy.”
In other words, Mayhew’s hermeneutics adopted
many of the same beliefs as those of his predecessors, but ignored the notion that
one had to twist the words of Romans 13 in order to support an agenda.
Mayhew believed he could have his cake and eat
it too.
The year 1750
marked the debut of Jonathan Mayhew’s landmark sermon. As opposed to so many of his predecessors,
Mayhew didn’t look to twist words of scripture or to double down on their
absolute significance. Instead, Mayhew let
prudence dictate the interpretation of scripture. Appealing to other Bible examples in which an
absolutist tone is rarely if ever assumed, Mayhew wrote:
But who supposes
that the apostle ever intended to teach, that children, servants and wives, should, in all cases whatever, obey their
parents, masters and husbands respectively, never making any opposition to their will, even although they should
require them to break the commandments
of God, or should causelessly make an attempt upon their lives ? No one puts such a sense upon these expressions, however
absolute and unlimited. Why then should it be supposed,
that the apostle designed to teach universal obedience, whether active or
passive, to the higher powers,
merely because his precepts are delivered in absolute and unlimited terms?
Such was the tone
of Mayhew’s entire sermon.
He was quick
to rebuke the standard practices of both the Loyalists and the Patriots and
instead turned Romans 13 from being a warning for the subjects of a king into a
divine admonition that put the king himself on alert.
Emphasizing
Paul’s reminder that a king was to be a “minister of authority to thee for
good,” Mayhew wrote, “They are to consult the good of society as such; not to
dictate in religious concerns; not to make laws for the government of men’s
consciences; and to inflict civil penalties for religious crimes.”
Mayhew went even
further with his condemnation of evil leaders, stating that Paul’s message rebuked
those who “use all their power to hurt and injure the public,” adding that “such
as are not God’s ministers, but Satan’s.”
In so doing, Mayhew had successfully shifted
the burden of Romans 13 to God’s chosen leaders and off of the masses.
In Mayhew’s mind, it wasn’t the American
colonists who needed to worry about God’s wrath but rather the King of England,
who was “acting in an illegal and oppressive manner.”
Even though his
sermon was delivered two decades before independence was even debated in
Philadelphia, Mayhew’s perspective on Romans 13 reveals an important truth
about how many Americans came to view the American Revolution.
The American Revolution was not a coup
d’etat.
There was no removal of the King
of England.
Instead, the American
Revolution was a separation due to the perceived wickedness and illegitimate
reign of the King.
This perspective, of
a separation of Britain, can be traced, in large part, to Mayhew’s unique
interpretation of Paul’s declaration in Romans 13, and this view was later
canonized by Jefferson in the very words of the Declaration of Independence
when he wrote, “"He has abdicated Government here, by
declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us" and, “For
abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing
therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render
it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule
into these Colonies” and finally, “For taking away our Charters, abolishing our
most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.”
For Mayhew (and
Jefferson?), King George, III was in clear violation of Paul’s reminder to all
in authority:
“For he [the king] is
the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be
afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a
revenger to [execute] wrath upon him that doeth evil.”
The King had violated the laws of God by
infringing, in an evil manner, upon the laws of man.
He had neglected to live up to his end of the
bargain, or as Jefferson put it, “We have reminded them of the circumstances of
our emigration and settlement here” and, “A Prince whose character is thus
marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a
free people.”
There is no demand to remove the King, nor was
any act of violence ever attempted on his life.
Instead, the colonists simply removed themselves from the source of the
problem.
Such a remedy was
precisely the purpose of Jonathan Mayhew’s sermon. The goal was not to usurp a ruler but to arm a
people with the necessary language and understanding that would keep them safe
from the usurpation of a selfish monarch.
As Mayhew stated:
For a nation
thus abused to arise unanimously, and to resist their prince, even to the
dethroning him, is not
criminal ; but a reasonable I way of vindicating their liberties and just
rights ; it is making use of the means,
and the only means, which God has put into their power, for mutual and self-defense. And it would
be highly criminal in them, not to make use of this means.
Mayhew not only gave his countrymen
the justification they needed to move forward with independence, but he also
clothed Paul’s message in a quasi-divine mandate which suggested that independence
was the very will of heaven. As a
result, Mayhew was able to achieve something that Martin, Luther, John Calvin,
John Locke, etc. were never able to accomplish.
Jonathan Mayhew had made a divine mandate to obey God’s leaders a
heavenly directive to insist that one’s leaders live in accordance with God’s
laws, first and foremost, otherwise no allegiance was merited. Such a revelation may not seem dramatic to
those in the modern world, but it was revolutionary for a community that continued
to pray for their king.
Now, more than any
time before, Paul’s words of warning, in Romans 13, did not seem as
daunting. Instead, Jonathan Mayhew had
made them a liberating cry of freedom from any leader who would not live up to
their end of the bargain. The spirit of
his message not only galvanized a people but found its way into the very
founding charters of a new nation; a nation which Mayhew never got the privilege
of seeing but whose soul will forever be etched in its collective character.
