"Taxation without representation": That was the classic explanation in our US
History texts of why the thirteen British colonies in the New World rose up
against King George III and started the Revolutionary War (1775-6 to1783). Tired of paying the Crown's high taxes on imports
such as tea, the colonists finally rebelled against their government, especially
since they had no voice in Parliament. Colonists
who chose not to rebel, called Loyalists, fled to Canada, while the revolutionaries
declared, "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God!" Until this past September, I believed that the
USA was born out of a protest over taxes and powerlessness. Americans still won't stand for high taxes. They tend to regard their money as theirs, not the government's. Of course, Jesus might remind us to look and
see whose image is on a US dollar bill.
We see the face of the nation's first president, General George
Washington, who personally fought for independence from George III. I had always assumed that my country,
populated in 1776 by only 3 million souls, most of whom belonged to various
Calvinist faiths, including 900,000 Scots-Irish, an ethnic group known for
being extremely prudent with money, was the result of a heated battle over
unfair prices. Much to my surprise, I
recently discovered another reason for the American Revolution when my elderly American
auntie handed me the bulletin from her congregation's annual Scottish Sunday
service and I read in an insert talking about the Presbyterian Church that scholars
of US history have often referred to the American Revolution as "the Presbyterian
Rebellion"! Being familiar since
infancy with that straight-laced Calvinist denomination known as
Presbyterianism, a Protestant faith in America with deep Scottish roots thanks
to a certain Reformer named John Knox (1513-1572) of Edinburgh, at first I
could not fathom the meaning of this revelation. The Presbyterian Rebellion? I had always known that at least eight American
presidents were Presbyterians, but that fact meant nothing in light of the
notion that the USA was the product of a religious war! Apparently, it was not only King George III
but also the Anglican Church against the Calvinist dissenters who were generally
lumped together and referred to as "Presbyterians"! In all fairness, in addition to the 900,000
Scots-Irish, who were easily bonafide Presbyterians or Congregationalists,
there were 600,000 Puritan English and 400,000 German or Dutch Reformed along
with French Huguenots. The Episcopalians,
in addition, had a Calvinistic confession in their Thirty-Nine Articles. As far as King George was concerned, however, all
of these American revolutionaries were simply "Presbyterians", then a
synonym for Calvinists, dissenters and republicans. Those who remained loyal to the Crown, on the
other hand, were commonly referred to as "churchmen", or Anglicans,
adherents to the Church of England and her bishops. Yet a Hessian captain, fighting on behalf of
the British, told a German friend in 1778, "Call this war by whatsoever
name you may, only call it not an American Revolution, it is nothing more than
nor less than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion." The ground for the American Revolution, or
the Presbyterian Rebellion, had been prepared decades before by a widespread
movement inside the Colonies known as the Great Awakening, a period when the
colonists attended plainspoken, gospel-based revivals en masse, seeking direct
experience with God and praying for the hastened arrival of Christ's Second
Coming and the establishment of His kingdom on Earth. At the same time, these largely Protestant
colonists were acquiring a new spirit of independence from the very idea of Old
World monarchs, authoritarian tyrants, and popes. The Great Awakening was a religious
phenomenon that swept the Colonies throughout the 1700's and surely it prepared
the foundation for the ultimate "Presbyterian Rebellion." The very notion of individual rights and
responsibilities before God, and before God alone, was imbedded in their
struggle. Now that I think of it, in a forced
search for religious liberty, the first colonists crossed the Atlantic at their
own peril in the first place. I will
conclude this post for now with a famous quote by an American patriot, Patrick
Henry, pronounced in a speech given by him at Saint John's Church in Richmond,
Virginia, in 1775. These words are still
taught in every school in the nation: "Give
me liberty or give me death." UN'AMERICANA A VENEZIA
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