The Bible’s Influence on the American Founding

The Bible figured prominently in the political thought and practices of the patriotic Americans who, in the last third of the eighteenth century, fought for and secured independence from Great Britain and established new constitutional republics in their respective states and nation. It was, after all, the most accessible, authoritative, and venerated book in the world of the American founders.

The founders read the Bible. Their many quotations from and allusions to both familiar and obscure scriptural texts confirm that they knew the Bible from cover to cover. Biblical language and themes liberally seasoned their rhetoric. The phrases and cadences of the King James Bible, especially, informed their written and spoken words. Its ideas shaped their habits of mind and informed their political pursuits.

Although the founders held diverse theological views and some even doubted Christianity’s transcendent claims, including the Bible’s divine origins, many turned to Christianity and its sacred text for insights into human nature, civic virtue, social order, political authority, the rights and responsibilities of citizens, and other concepts essential to the establishment of a political society.

In various conventions and representative assemblies of the age, as well as in state papers, political pamphlets, and private writings, founding figures appealed to the Bible for principles, precedents, and normative standards to shape their political communities and order their civic projects. There were founders who thought Scripture provided political and legal models—such as republicanism, separation of powers, and due process of law—that they believed enjoyed divine favor and were worthy of emulation in their polities.

The Pursuit of Liberty

In the American experience, few political or constitutional themes are more important or persistent than the pursuit of liberty. Liberty is mentioned in the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence and in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. It is an ideal and an aspiration the definition of which Americans have long debated and even fought over. It inspired patriots in 1776 in their conflict with Great Britain. It was the ideal that inspired and mobilized abolitionists, suffragettes, and Freedom Riders, among others, in the centuries that followed.

Across the centuries, the Bible has informed the way many Americans have thought about liberty and the pursuit of liberty. Among the most recognizable symbols of liberty in American history is the Liberty Bell, which once hung in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, emblazoned with the biblical text: “Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof. Lev. [25:10].” Drawing on the same tradition, Americans have appealed to no source more frequently to represent the pursuit of liberty than the exodus story recounted in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Americans have returned to the exodus narrative at decisive moments in their history, beginning with seventeenth-century Pilgrim and Puritan settlers who believed they had escaped religious oppression in the Old World in pursuit of religious liberty in a new promised land, and continuing with the eighteenth-century patriots who fought the “tyranny” of George III (their Pharaoh), nineteenth-century abolitionists who sought the emancipation of African slaves and an end to slavery, and twentieth-century activists who struggled to secure the civil rights of African Americans and other minorities.

The book of Exodus tells of the Hebrew people enslaved in Egypt. Their leader, Moses, as directed by God, would miraculously deliver them from their Egyptian bondage. This story of liberation and liberty has resonated through the ages. The major themes and motifs of the narrative—a chosen people, an oppressed community yearning for freedom, a tyrannical ruler, a leader-liberator of his people (and a forger of a nation), providential deliverance from oppression, and the pursuit of a promised land—have been appropriated by diverse peoples and communities.

The Pilgrims and Puritans who settled in New England in the seventeenth century imagined that they were reliving the exodus story. They saw themselves as a divinely directed and chosen (or elect) people—God’s new Israel. England, a land of political repression and religious intolerance from which they fled, was their Egypt; the Stuart monarchs were their intransigent Pharaoh; and the treacherous waters of the Atlantic Ocean were their Red Sea. They embarked on a dangerous journey in pursuit of liberty—specifically religious liberty.

In their new Canaan, like the ancient Israelites, they found a land of hope and opportunity; they also encountered a forbidding terrain and hostile inhabitants. These would be recurring themes and motifs in the stories Americans would tell of their own experiences in the New World; and these themes, many Americans would come to believe, defined their national identity and shaped their own pursuits and aspirations.

On July 4th, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson to a committee to design a great seal for the United States. The Bible was, again, a source of inspiration. Franklin proposed an image of Moses extending his hand over the Red Sea in anticipation of God’s supernatural parting and then closing of the waters, allowing the divinely-directed Israelites to escape Pharaoh and his army (Exod. 14). He also suggested, and the committee later concurred, that the following motto be added to the design: “Rebellion to Tyrants Is Obedience to God.” According to Adams’s recollection, Jefferson initially recommended a portrayal of the “Children of Israel in the Wilderness, led by a Cloud by Day, and a Pillar of Fire by night” (Exod. 13:21–22).¹Proposal for the Great Seal of the United States, [Before 14 August 1776], in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. William B. Willcox (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), 22:562–563; Report on a Seal for the United States, with Related Papers, [20 August 1776], in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton University Press, 1950), 1:494-495; John Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 August 1776, in The Adams Papers, series II, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield (New York: Atheneum, 1965), 2:96.

Remarkably, both men drew on familiar Old Testament images of the children of Israel who were miraculously released from Pharaoh’s bondage just as they hoped Americans would be providentially delivered from King George III’s tyranny, as fitting allegorical portrayals of the new nation’s plight. The committee eventually recommended a design drawn from Franklin’s proposal, which the Congress tabled, and no further action was taken on it.

The Call for Liberation

Enslaved Africans in the New World heard and experienced the same narrative in reverse order: they were transported from their homelands in chains across a great water to the land of Egypt where they were held captive by another Pharaoh. European Americans who, during their conflict with Great Britain, compared themselves to enslaved Hebrews in Egypt became, ironically, enslaving Pharaohs in African American accounts. In time, African American slaves came to identify with the children of Israel, and in spirituals, sermons, stories, and symbols they expressed a yearning to be liberated from their Egyptian bondage.

Writing in early 1774, Phillis Wheatley, the acclaimed African American poet who was sold into slavery in Africa, transported to the British colony of Massachusetts-Bay, and sold to a prominent Bostonian family, drew on this biblical text to express a universal longing for liberty: “…for in every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance; and by the Leave of our modern Egyptians I will assert, that the same Principle lives in us.”²Phillis Wheatley to the Reverend Samson Occum, February 11, 1774; reprinted in Connecticut Gazette, March 11, 1774.

Sojourning in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1775, just as the revolution was heating up, a missionary of African descent (perhaps a fugitive slave) from Great Britain named David Margrett “preach[ed] to several white People and Negroes” that “God would send Deliverance to the Negroes, from the power of their Masters, as He freed the Children of Israel from Egyptian Bondage.”³James Habersham to Robert Keen, 11 May 1775, in “The Letters of Hon. James Habersham, 1756–1775,” Collections of the Georgia Historical Society (Georgia Historical Society, 1904), 6: 243–244; Tim Lockley, “David Margrett: A Black Missionary in the Revolutionary Atlantic,” Journal of American Studies 46, no. 3 (2012): 729–745. To white authorities this sounded like incitement of a slave rebellion, and David was forced to flee the town to preserve his life.

Continuing into the next century, the rhetoric of abolitionists—both black and white—was replete with appeals to the exodus story. Indeed, this narrative frequently inspired and explained the anti-slavery cause in the nineteenth century. For example, in the summer of 1822, Denmark Vesey, a former slave who had purchased his own freedom, was accused of, and swiftly convicted and executed for, plotting a slave insurrection in Charleston, South Carolina. An informant testified that, at a meeting of the conspirators in Vesey’s house, Vesey “was the first to rise up and speak, and he read to us from the bible, how the children of Israel were delivered out of Egypt from bondage.”⁴Negro Plot. An account of the late intended insurrection among a portion of the blacks of the city of Charleston, South Carolina (Boston, 1822), 36. William Lloyd Garrison, one of the most prominent anti-slavery activists of the nineteenth century, speaking in the voice of Moses in an 1829 Fourth of July oration, thundered: “I call upon the ambassadors of Christ everywhere to make known this proclamation: ‘Thus saith the Lord God of the Africans, Let this people go, that they may serve me.’”⁵William Lloyd Garrison, Garrison’s first anti-slavery address in Boston. Address at Park Street Church, Boston, July 4, 1829 [Boston, Directors of the Old South Work, 1907], 10.

The major themes and motifs of the narrative continued to resonate in the civil rights struggles of the mid-twentieth century. Speaking to a massive audience in Montgomery, Alabama, on November 14, 1956, at a decisive moment in that city’s bus boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr. declaimed: “We have been in Egypt long enough, and now we’ve gotten orders from headquarters. The Red Sea has opened for us, we have crossed the banks, we are moving now, and as we look back we see the Egyptian system of segregation drowned upon the seashore.” Opposition, he continued, is still ahead, “but we are going on because we’ve got to get to Canaan.”⁶Martin Luther King, Jr., Address to the Montgomery Improvement Association, meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, November 14, 1956, in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., vol. III: Birth of a New Age, December 1955— December 1956, ed. Clayborne Carson et al. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), 3:433.

The Bible informed the way the founding generation, as well as later generations of Americans, conceived of liberty and liberation. This is confirmed by frequent appeals to and invocations of the exodus narrative in their political discourse. Other biblical texts and themes would also shape American pursuits of liberty and liberation.

The Right of Resistance

Among the most vexing questions the founding generation confronted was: Do a people ever have a right to resist an unjust, tyrannical ruler? In their struggle for liberation from what they regarded as Great Britain’s “tyrannical” rule, patriotic Americans turned to Scripture for a political theology justifying resistance to their colonial master. Their rationales for a right of resistance drew on diverse sources and traditions, and among these sources was a political theology, with deep roots in western political thought, that claimed to be based on a nuanced reading of Scripture.

A key biblical text in discussions concerning resistance to political authority is Romans 13:1–7, which by some accounts was the most referenced biblical text in the political literature of the founding era.⁷James P. Byrd, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 170. All authority is “ordained of God,” one reads in this text, and a ruler is “the minister of God to thee for good.” Accordingly, citizens are instructed to be subject to those in authority over them. This was a challenging text for Americans contemplating resistance to what they regarded as oppressive, tyrannical British rule. It was the subject of many pamphlets and political sermons; and Americans, to be sure, were divided on whether Scripture approved or disapproved of resistance to British colonial authority.

The founders knew that Romans 13 taught citizens to “be subject to the governing authorities” (Rom. 13:1 ESV); but they also learned from Acts 5:29—and from biblical accounts of the prophet Daniel and many other biblical characters—that God, rather than man, must be obeyed. Drawing on a resistance theology most clearly articulated in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, patriotic Americans adopted a nuanced interpretation of Romans 13. God ordains and establishes civil authority to serve the public good, and citizens are subject to civil magistrates who serve as God’s ministers. In short, resistance to civil authorities is resistance to God. Rulers are to be supporters of good works and a terror to evil conduct.

Indeed, the argument continues, civil magistrates have no authority from God to act contrary to the public good. Accordingly, one who bears the title of “ruler” (or civil magistrate) but is a terror to good works and fails to serve the public good deposes himself (or abdicates the office) and is no longer God’s minister. Such a person claiming the mantle of civil authority is not a legitimate ruler but is a tyrant and is not entitled to the people’s submission and obedience. Scripture, in short, does not obligate a citizen to submit to a tyrant; indeed, a citizen has the right, even the duty, to resist a tyrant.⁸See U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776); Maryland Declaration of Rights and Constitution of 1776, Declaration of Rights, Article IV; New Hampshire Constitution of 1784, Part I, Article 10 [Right of Revolution]. For other mentions of the right of resistance in state papers of the era, see John M. Kang, “Appeal to Heaven: On the Religious Origins of the Constitutional Right of Revolution,” William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 18 (2009): 288–289.

Those Americans following this interpretation of Scripture thus concluded that “rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” In political tracts and sermons, patriotic Americans appealed to this interpretation of Scripture to justify their resistance to King George III and Parliament.

Conclusion

Americans have read widely and borrowed liberally in the formation of their civic ideas and ideals. Among the sources to which they have turned is the Bible. This is particularly true of American conceptions of liberty, liberation, and the right of resistance, as evidenced by the frequent invocations of Scripture, specifically the exodus narrative, in American political discourse on and contemplations of the great themes of political liberty.

This article is adapted from Dreisbach, Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers (2017).

Notes

• 1
  Proposal for the Great Seal of the United States, [Before 14 August 1776], in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. William B. Willcox (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), 22:562–563; Report on a Seal for the United States, with Related Papers, [20 August 1776], in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton University Press, 1950), 1:494-495; John Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 August 1776, in The Adams Papers, series II, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield (New York: Atheneum, 1965), 2:96.
• 2
  Phillis Wheatley to the Reverend Samson Occum, February 11, 1774; reprinted in Connecticut Gazette, March 11, 1774.
• 3
  James Habersham to Robert Keen, 11 May 1775, in “The Letters of Hon. James Habersham, 1756–1775,” Collections of the Georgia Historical Society (Georgia Historical Society, 1904), 6: 243–244; Tim Lockley, “David Margrett: A Black Missionary in the Revolutionary Atlantic,” Journal of American Studies 46, no. 3 (2012): 729–745.
• 4
  Negro Plot. An account of the late intended insurrection among a portion of the blacks of the city of Charleston, South Carolina (Boston, 1822), 36.
• 5
  William Lloyd Garrison, Garrison’s first anti-slavery address in Boston. Address at Park Street Church, Boston, July 4, 1829 [Boston, Directors of the Old South Work, 1907], 10.
• 6
  Martin Luther King, Jr., Address to the Montgomery Improvement Association, meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, November 14, 1956, in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., vol. III: Birth of a New Age, December 1955— December 1956, ed. Clayborne Carson et al. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), 3:433.
• 7
  James P. Byrd, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 170.
• 8
  See U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776); Maryland Declaration of Rights and Constitution of 1776, Declaration of Rights, Article IV; New Hampshire Constitution of 1784, Part I, Article 10 [Right of Revolution]. For other mentions of the right of resistance in state papers of the era, see John M. Kang, “Appeal to Heaven: On the Religious Origins of the Constitutional Right of Revolution,” William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 18 (2009): 288–289.

Daniel L. Dreisbach

Daniel (DPhil, University of Oxford; JD, University of Virginia) is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, DC. His research interests include the intersection of religion, politics, and law in American public life. He has authored or edited numerous books, including Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers and Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State.