The Arena Journal

Most Americans are familiar with the traditional story of the American Revolution: as the British government grew increasingly tyrannical, they inflicted abuses upon the colonists that compelled the people to throw off the yoke of tyranny, eventually creating the freest and most prosperous country in the world. Although this simplified story of the Revolution conveys certain truths, it is woefully incomplete. To start, only about forty-five percent of the colonists actually identified as Patriots—that is, in opposition to the Crown of England—with the rest roughly split between Loyalists and noncommittal. Considering these demographics, it is often easy to forget the radical nature of rebellion against one’s mother country for the individual Patriots, especially those intellectuals among them who sought to morally justify the Revolution through Christian tradition and contemporary political thought. Beginning with an analysis of Scripture and Catholic just war theory, I will argue that the justification for the American Revolution’s moral legitimacy was not traditionally Christian. I will then trace how Protestant theology, by shaping Enlightened political thought, fundamentally transformed the traditional Christian understanding of authority in the Church and state, furnishing the Colonists with an intellectual justification for revolution.