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501(c)3 Religion:
Reemergence Of the Divine Right Of Kings

by: Peter Kershaw

In the book, Religious Origins of the American Revolution, the author makes the following observations:

Arnold Toynbee has written that the American Revolution was made possible by American Protestantism...

The American Revolution might thus be said to have started, in a sense, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenburg. It received a substantial part of its theological and philosophical underpinnings from John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion and much of its social theory from the Puritan Revolution of 1640-1660, and, perhaps less obviously, from the Glorious Revolution of 1689.

Put another way, the American Revolution is inconceivable in the absence of the context of ideas which have constituted radical Christianity. The leaders of the Revolution in every colony were imbued with the precepts of the Reformed faith...

If the American Revolution is indeed inconceivable without the imperatives of radical Christianity, what does this fact suggest about the Church (or churches) today? How is the complacent and conservative body of Christians to be roused from its lethargy...?1

Few questions in our day could be of as much significance as this one, nor is the author exaggerating, or being mean-spirited, when he describes the church as complacent and lethargic. If we wish to understand how to rouse the church from her slumber, it is imperative that we first begin to comprehend what the church in America once represented, and how it later devolved into the predicament that it is in today.

This is what the Lord says: "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls."2

Many millions of Americans have begun to recognize that we have been diverted far from the path that the Founding Fathers mapped out for us. It is presumed that the readership of this periodical are already well-informed as to the problems we face, both on a national and an international level. We, therefore, have little need of itemizing them here.

If we truly seek to reestablish America as the Founders intended it, we must do as the prophet Jeremiah admonished. We must "ask for the ancient paths." This is in stark contrast to William J. Clinton's scheme of "building a bridge to the 21st century." Clinton's bridge building is, in reality, a blueprint for annihilation. The solution lies in rediscovering those truths from the past, from which our forefathers relied in establishing a free and independent America. Discerning where "the good way is" is impossible without an understanding of our heritage.

America's early settlers came here primarily for the purpose of establishing a Christian Republic, a place in which they could be free to worship God "according to the dictates of their conscience." Even many modern humanist historians readily acknowledge this to be the case. Nothing else could account for their eagerness to leave the relative ease and predictability of European comfort, for the hardships and uncertainties of a hostile and rugged new world. It was the State-Church which drove many thousands of Europeans, particularly English and Scottish, to the primitive American Colonies.

The British crown represented the establishment church system—the Church of England. Moreover, the king, by royal edict, was "lord sovereign head" of the Church. Even many years subsequent to the official separation of the Church of England from the Church of Rome, Anglicanism remained thoroughly steeped in the tyrannical and despotic traditions of popery. In Rome, the pope was sovereign head of the Church; but in England, it was the monarchy. The "divine right of popes" was exchanged for the "divine right of kings."

All preaching and publishing was sanctioned by royal license. No religious license could be obtained without the public proclamation that the king was "lord sovereign head" of the Church. For those of Romish persuasion, there was no personal conflict in such an affirmation; but no Christian of Reformational faith could swear such an oath of assent. Many thousands of Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist and Independent ministers were excommunicated, their churches locked, and they were ordered to preach and publish no more. Most defied the ban on unlicensed preaching, taking to their horses and preaching wherever they could find an audience. The era of the circuit-riding preacher was born!

Anglican Bishops routinely engaged in a campaign of terror against "Nonconformist" ministers. The most brutal and barbaric of men often received their Bishoprics as a direct result of their notorious and gruesome reputations. Such is the case of Bishop Paterson, inventor of the thumbscrews.3

Many a bishop actively engaged in inventing "machines of torture." If excruciating pain proved unsuccessful in compelling the "Dissenter" to recant of his "heresy," he would be shackled to a stake and burned alive. Few bishops showed any mercy, and this became their final, and most tormenting, of all punishments. Rather than setting light to combustibles which would engulf the victim in a roaring inferno and promptly dispatch them, the bishops would quite often select green wood. Many a bishop delighted in "slow-roasting" their victims.

It is, therefore, easy to understand why thousands of Nonconformist preachers fled to America's shores, and for a time at least, the Stuart monarchy was glad to be rid of them. Few colonists shared the religious convictions of the British crown. For the most part, they were of the "Protesting faith." Many of the emigrant clergy had been convicted criminals, guilty of "preaching without a license" and "publishing without a license." Some had been "banished to the plantations." Others were fugitives of the law, having received subpoenas to appear before the king's Star Chamber, but fleeing rather than facing a heretic's trial. Some had even escaped from the king's prisons.

Felon preachers were commonplace in early America, among them, William Penn. In 1668, Penn published a religious tract, entitled The Sandy Foundation Shaken. It was published without a license, and Penn was arrested, tried and jailed in the Tower of London. The only reason Penn received a lenient punishment is because his father was Admiral of the British Navy. Almost immediately after his release, Penn was arrested on Grace-Church Street in London, for preaching without a license. As a direct result of the Rev. Penn's trial, two of the greatest "charters of liberty" were forever established—jury nullification and the writ of habeas corpus.4 Penn later became the founder and first governor of Pennsylvania.

But the arrival of thousands of unlicensed preachers in America did not spontaneously result in freedom of religion. While Protestants firmly adhered to a policy of the independence of the church from the State, Anglicans exerted their influence in an attempt to bring all American churches under the sway of the monarchy, and later, also under the parliament. In an effort to control religion, the British crown established hundreds of Anglican churches throughout the American Colonies. Through imposition of various "religious acts," the king sought a church monopoly. Unlicensed preaching and publishing was forbidden, and just as in England, the king declared himself "sovereign head" of America's churches. To America's Dissenting clergy, this was nothing short of blasphemy. It was in the unlicensed pulpits of America's Nonconformist churches that the phrase was coined, "No king but King Jesus!" It was also there that such patriotic phrases originated as "Live free or die!"

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