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Excerpt From Chapter I
Whose Kingdom, Whose Fight?
The waters of Boston Harbor were still, sharp with winter air. The crowd moved in quiet order, boarding the three ships laden with tea: the Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver. Onshore, a large gathering watched in hushed solidarity as colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians tossed chest after chest into the dark water. The harbor was so calm that the crates floated for a moment before slipping beneath the surface. No blood was shed. No other cargo was touched. The ships were left unharmed. When the work was done, the men even cleaned up after themselves.
The colonial church was divided. Many pastors viewed British taxation as a violation of God-given liberty, drawing from Exodus and the story of Moses confronting Pharaoh. Jonathan Mayhew famously declared that “resistance to tyrants is obedience to God,” while John Witherspoon preached that liberty was a sacred trust and that civil government must be held accountable to divine justice. For these leaders, the Boston Tea Party and broader acts of resistance were not merely political—they were moral imperatives.
Other ministers, however, urged submission to authority and warned against violent rebellion. Anglicans loyal to the Church of England viewed the Boston Tea Party as lawless and un-Christian. Some were forced to flee the colonies; others faced persecution during the Revolution. Quakers condemned both the unjust taxation and the destruction of property, remaining steadfast in their commitment to nonviolence. Moravian missionaries, concerned for their gospel witness, feared that rebellion would bring unnecessary suffering and compromise their mission.
While colonial pulpits rang with calls for liberty, the Church of England viewed the colonists’ actions as rebellion against God-ordained authority. Sermons delivered from London pulpits emphasized Romans 13, underscoring submission to the king as a divine command. Some clergy went so far as to denounce the Boston Tea Party as “sacrilege against the Crown,” equating it with sedition. Still, a few dissenting voices—particularly among Methodists and Baptists expressed sympathy for the colonists’ grievances, though they stopped short of endorsing rebellion.
To grapple with the legitimacy of secession and the morality of war, we must return not only to our founding, but to the Scriptures that shaped it. Let us compare the Rule of Nero to that of King George III…
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