If the Declaration of Independence didn’t create a new nation and it didn’t technically declare independence, what was its point? Nearly fifty years after he drafted it, Jefferson wrote about “the object of the Declaration of Independence.”9 It was “[n]ot to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of” or “to say things which had never been said before.”10 It was meant “to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent.”11 It did not aim “at originality of principle or sentiment.”12 Put simply, “it was intended to be an expression of the American mind.”13 Carl Becker, the American historian who wrote the book on the subject—The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (1922)—thought that “the primary purpose of the Declaration was not to declare independence, but to proclaim to the world the reasons for declaring independence. It was intended to formally justify an act already accomplished.”14
It was a justification, and as part of that justification it laid out a political philosophy. That philosophy was not new, but Jefferson’s formulation of it was more beautiful, simpler, and more powerful than any previously, and perhaps since, written. The central pillar of this political philosophy—that governments are instituted for and by the people—had never been put fully into practice. But it would be enshrined in the first three words of the Constitution eleven years later and then carved into the American mind forever: “We the People.”
The Declaration of Independence had several purposes, but above all, it was written to persuade. It needed “to convince a candid world that the colonies had a moral and legal right to separate from Great Britain,” according to Becker.15 It also needed to unite the colonies, to meld them into one people by influencing public opinion. Independence would also allow the colonies to treat and trade with other countries. Finally, it may have been a bit of an attempt to convince a king, who believed himself to be a Christian hero and the spiritual head of a church, to end hostilities—not to reconcile, but to stop the war. And it, or at least the philosophy it laid out, was something of a repudiation of the divine right of kings.
The first two purposes—severing the connection with Great Britain and unifying the colonies—are best understood if treated together, because Jefferson accomplished both by explaining the American political philosophy and applying that philosophy to the colonial situation. He took the theoretical construct and put it into concrete terms involving real people. The bulk of the Declaration’s 1,300-plus words is dedicated to listing the grievances against the king. But before Jefferson indicted George, he described the logic and the political theory on which the case against George would rest.16
The theory is twofold. First, despotic governments can and should be overthrown. Second, people are the source of governmental power and must consent to their government. This is a philosophy of rebellion against arbitrary power, and of self-government. Jefferson wanted the Declaration to be “the signal…to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded [men] to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.”17 As that language indicates and as we’ll see, that philosophy makes the Declaration thoroughly anti-biblical. These two philosophical prongs, rebellion and self-government, line up nicely with the Declaration’s primary purposes—severing political ties and uniting the colonies.
After spelling out these “truths,” Jefferson then fit the British-American relationship within this two-prong philosophy. The first 274 words, beginning with “When in the Course of human events” and continuing until “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security,” say nothing about Britain or the colonies. Neither is mentioned until the end of the second paragraph, after the philosophy has been laid out. As Professor Stephen Lucas has observed, the Declaration argues by syllogism. Jefferson argues his major premise first and Britain’s violation of that premise second:18
Major Premise Because governments are instituted to protect citizens’ rights, people have a right and a duty to throw off despotic governments and to create “new guards” for those rights.
Minor Premise The British government is despotic, as the following 28 charges show.
Conclusion Therefore, the American people have a right and a duty to throw off British rule.
The heavy lifting is done up front. The catalog of crimes validates the end result, but the important ideas and legal rationales come first.
Those are the revolutionary purposes of the Declaration. But there were other purposes as well, including gaining foreign recognition and support. Two years of embargoes and war were destroying the American economy and trade. “Most of the delegates to the Continental Congress regarded the Declaration as a ceremonial confirmation of what had already occurred,” writes Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis, adding, “its chief practical value, apart from publicizing a foregone conclusion in lyrical terms, was to enhance the prospects of a wartime alliance with France, and all the revolutionary leaders understood the French alliance to be the urgent issue at the time.”19 After all, who were the colonies? They were distant, rebellious outposts of a vast, powerful empire. At least, that is what other monarchs and countries would believe. What ruler would treat or trade with a group of rogue colonies? Virginia Continental Congressman George Wythe raised this issue a few months before July 1776:
But other things are to be considered, before such a measure is adopted; in what character shall we treat?—as subjects of Great Britain,—as rebels? Why should we be so fond of calling ourselves dutiful subjects? If we should offer our trade to the Court of France, would they take notice of it any more than if Bristol or Liverpool should offer theirs, while we profess to be subjects? No. We must declare ourselves a free people.20
Samuel Adams worried about this as well: “no foreign Power can consistently yield Comfort to Rebels, or enter into any kind of Treaty with these Colonies till they declare themselves free and independent.”21 The colonies’ instructions to delegates at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia show that acquiring foreign aid was an important aim of the Declaration. North Carolina empowered its delegates in April 1776 to “concur with the delegates of the other Colonies in declaring independency and forming foreign alliances.”22 If the colonies wished to continue the war, if they wished to restore and revive trade, they needed a treaty with a foreign power.23 Negotiating one required declaring independence and achieving legitimacy as a state. The Declaration helped accomplish the first. And Jefferson started the process in the first sentence, when he listed the British and Americans as two separate people: “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.”24 That treatment, the obvious yet somehow subtle differentiation between two peoples, was a powerful announcement to the world.
Yet one more purpose was to unite the colonies in the war against Britain. In 1776, the citizens who would come to be known as the American people were divided. Some were committed to independence, some were opposed, and some were wavering despite the convincing arguments in Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. King George issued an ultimatum: “The colonies must either submit or triumph.”25 There was no turning back. If Patrick Henry did, in fact, proclaim “give me liberty or give me death,” he was right: the choice was to win or die.26 Or, as Franklin put it: “Join, or Die.” But the people had to be convinced. Adams, Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, and other founders were traitors in the eyes of the king. The Declaration essentially put every citizen on the enemies list. As Franklin may have said, “we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”27
Looking back on the revolution forty years later, John Adams wrote about why unification was such a monumental task: “The colonies had grown up under constitutions of government so different, there was so great a variety of religions, they were composed of so many different nations, the
ir customs, manners, and habits had so little resemblance, and their intercourse had been so rare, and their knowledge of each other so imperfect, that to unite them in the same principles in theory and the same system of action, was certainly a very difficult enterprise. The complete accomplishment of it, in so short a time and by such simple means, was perhaps a singular example in the history of mankind. Thirteen clocks were made to strike together—a perfection of mechanism, which no artist had ever before effected.”28
THE DECLARATION MAY ALSO HAVE BEEN AN ATTEMPT to convince the man who was both a Christian king and the head of the Church of England to stop an unjust war. King George III was not only the titular head of the Church of England, but also a faithful and active supporter.29 Ecclesiastical debates raged in England during the 1770s, and they helped to bind George’s religiosity to his political views, particularly with respect to the American colonies.30 His opposition to the Revolutionary War stemmed, at least in part, from his opposition to religious heterodoxy.31
George conflated morality with “the ideal of a Christian people led by a Christian king,” according to biographer Jeremy Black.32 Throughout the Revolution, George believed that his god would give him strength and protection, writing, “I begin to see that I shall soon have enfused some of that spirit which I thank Heaven ever attends me when under difficulties…. I trust in the protection of the Almighty, in the justness of the cause, the uprightness of my own intentions.”33 Black explains that George “took his role and God-given responsibilities as Supreme Governor of the Church very seriously.”34 He was devout, was known for his personal piety, and thought that his god intervened in this world, so he governed according to what he saw as his god’s will.35
In theory, the divine right of kings was abandoned in England when the Glorious Revolution (1688–89) dethroned the Stuarts. James Wilson—Scottish émigré, founding father, and one of the original six Supreme Court justices—said as much in the Pennsylvania ratifying convention: “Is the executive power of Great Britain founded on representation? This is not pretended. Before the [Glorious] revolution, many of the kings claimed to reign by divine right, and others by hereditary right.”36 Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Algernon Sidney had all penned devastating critiques of the divine right, but the idea was still embraced in many quarters. As Becker notes, “In that day kings were commonly claiming to rule by divine right, and according to this notion there could be no ‘right’ of rebellion.”37 The more religious a monarch, the more likely he would be to think a god had assigned him his rightful place as ruler.
The idea that all people are created equal is not a religious idea; the idea that some people are special or chosen is one that various religious groups have embraced throughout history. The entire Hebrew Bible is about the chosen people. Religion promotes elitism, not equality. So too, the divine right of kings elevated one individual or family over an entire nation. In the Declaration, Jefferson wrote that when a government becomes despotic, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” But, despite the Christian nationalists’ arguments to the contrary, self-government and revolution against tyranny are not principles derived from Christianity or the bible.
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE is an anti-Christian document with snippets of religious-sounding language as window dressing. If Jefferson and the other revolutionaries had been devout Christians, they never would have rebelled, the Declaration would never have been written, and America’s political relationship to the United Kingdom today would resemble Canada’s. The Christian bible stands directly opposed to the Declaration’s central ideas, including that it is “the Right of the People to alter or to abolish [their government], and to institute a new Government.”
Paul’s letter to the Romans demonstrates this opposition:
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.38
Paul claims that governments are instituted for men by god and that rebelling against the government is rebellion against his god. Paul continues, and again he is explicit:
For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.39
Paul could not have been clearer. Rulers, like King George III, must be obeyed as a matter of conscience. The colonies would have nothing to fear so long as they obeyed their ruler. With such threats, it is a wonder that the divine right of kings was ever overturned. If the ruler is not obeyed—if the people revolt—then they will be killed.
Such passages are not outliers; there are more in both the Christian and Hebrew bibles. In the Christian bible we learn that the biblical god must be obeyed first and earthly rulers second: “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”40 But that god is also telling followers to obey earthly rulers. The Hebrew bible says, “By me [God] kings reign, and rulers decree what is just; by me rulers rule, and nobles, all who govern rightly.”41
This theology is alive and well in Christian nationalism. In what one journalist labeled “a stunning expression of Christian nationalism,” President Donald Trump’s closest evangelical advisor, Paula White, reiterated these passages to diffuse the constant and justified criticism that Trump is vulgar and undignified: “They say about our president, ‘Well, he is not presidential.’ Thank goodness…he is not a polished politician. In other words, he is authentically—whether people like it or not—has been raised up by God. Because God says that He raises up and places all people in places of authority. It is God who raises up a king. It is God that sets one down. When you fight against the plan of God, you are fighting against the hand of God.”42
White’s words and these bible verses exhibit a servility entirely foreign to the Declaration of Independence, which embodies contrary ideas. The political philosophy on which the Declaration is based says people have a “duty to throw off” absolutist governments. Altering the government is at once a “necessity,” a “duty,” and a “right.” Jefferson says that it is “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another” and speaks of “the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.” Rights, necessities, and duties, not obedience, sin, and submission.
John Adams put it with his customary bluntness in Article 7 of the Massachusetts Constitution’s Declaration of Rights: “The people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same.”43 Not a god, but the people alone.
Enemies of colonial independence relied on the divine authority of governments. John Lind, an English barrister, refuted the Declaration in a 1776 pamphlet. Lind pointed out that the Declaration does not, indeed cannot, rely on “any law of God”:
What difference these acute legislators suppose between laws of Nature, and of Nature’s God, is more than I can take upon me to determine, or even to guess. If to what they now demand they were entitled by any law of God, they had only to produce that law, and all controversy was at an end. Instead of this, what do they produce? What they call self-evident truths, ‘All men’ they tell us, ‘are created equal.’44
Jefferson could not rely on any law of god because the laws of god opposed the principles he relied on.
Robert Boucher was an Anglican minister and a Maryland loyalist who moved to England before independence. Like Paula White, he relied on the bible
to support the divine right of kings, writing that it is “the uniform doctrine of the Scriptures, that it is under the deputation and authority of God alone that kings reign…far from deriving their authority from any supposed consent or suffrage of men, they receive their commission from Heaven; they receive it from God, the source…of all power.”45 And he relied on the bible to argue against American independence. Declaring independence was against his god’s law because “Obedience to government is every man’s duty” though “it is particularly incumbent on Christians, because…it is enjoined by the positive commands of God; and therefore, when Christians are disobedient to human ordinances, they are also disobedient to God.”46 No matter how repressive the government, Boucher argued, “it is our duty not to disturb and destroy the peace of the community, by becoming refractory and rebellious subjects, and resisting the ordinances of God.”47 According to Boucher, the bible never even discusses government except to say that it must be obeyed, not rebelled against: “The only circumstance relative to government, for which the Scriptures seem to be particularly solicitous, is in inculcating obedience to lawful governors.”48
The bible undercut the American cause.
The Declaration does not require blind obedience; the bible and the biblical god do. God takes away everything Job has—he kills his children, bankrupts him, sets his skin afire with boils. Job bears this train of abuse by continuing to worship god. This is precisely the opposite of what the Declaration demands: “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off…” For the founders, King George III was akin to the biblical god in this situation, abusing the colonies and expecting blind obedience in return.
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