For
several decades, colonial Americans had listened to preachers
who told their parishioners civil and religious liberty was
ordained by God.
Jonathan Mayhew, pastor of the West
Church in Boston, delivered one of the most influential sermons in American
history. It was 1749. He insisted that people were not obliged
to suffer under an oppressive ruler and "resistance" to a
tyrant was a "glorious" Christian duty. His philosophy
anticipated the position most ministers took during the
Revolutionary War.
Needlework from the time demonstrates how colonials drew
parallels between political events and Bible stories.
Depicting King David’s son Absalom as a patriot, rebelling
against the capricious whims of his father (George III in the
needlework), the artist even turns Absalom’s executioner into a Redcoat.
Believing God and Biblical authority backed their quest for
freedom, early Americans heard sermons from clergy like
Abraham Keteltas who saw the Patriot’s efforts as:
...the cause
of truth, against error and falsehood...the cause of pure
and undefiled religion, against bigotry, superstition, and
human invention...in short, it is the cause of heaven
against hell - of the kind Parent of the Universe against
the prince of darkness, and the destroyer of the human
race.
Such passion
could only encourage the colonists to embrace the Biblical
verse: "If God is for us, who can stand against us?"