GroshLink

How about some history regarding the relationship of faith and the Revolutionary War? Check out Harry S. Stoudt's Preaching the Insurrection: Angry colonists were rallied to declare independence and take up arms because of what they heard from the pulpit.  So as you celebrate the Sabbath this Independence Day weekend, here's some quotes to reflect upon:

Rulers, he [Jonathan Mayhew, a liberal who favored Unitarianism] said, “have no authority from God to do mischief.… It is blasphemy to call tyrants and oppressors God’s ministers.” Far from being sinful, resistance to corrupt ministers and tyrannical rulers is a divine imperative. The greater sin lies in passively sacrificing the covenant for tyranny, that is, in failing to resist.

Who determines whether government is “moral and religious”? In the Revolutionary era, the answer was simple: the individual. There were no established institutions that would support violent revolution. Ultimate justification resided in the will of a people acting self-consciously as united individuals joined in a common cause. Where a government was found to be deficient in moral and spiritual terms, the individual conscience was freed to resist.

Clergy in the Revolutionary era reminded people not only what they were fighting against, namely tyranny and idolatry, but also what they were fighting for: a new heaven and a new earth. ...

For most American ministers and many in their congregations, the religious dimension of the war was precisely the point of revolution. Revolution and a new republican government would enable Americans to continue to realize their destiny as a “redeemer nation.” If time would prove that self-defined mission tragically arrogant, it was not apparent to the participants themselves. With backs against the wall, and precious little to take confidence in, words like those of Mayhew’s, Emerson’s, and Paine’s were their only hope.

Now keep in mind, several Christian tradition were not represented in this stream of preaching, Anabaptism being one.