Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / Evangelical Christians represented a growing and influential subset of American Protestantism in the northern colonies of British America at the time of the War for Independence. Almost a century later, when southern states chose to secede from the Union, evangelical Christianity embodied the most vital expression of American religion, having been widely spread across the nation by decades of revivals. Central to their faith was a commitment to the authority of the Bible in every area of life, including political life. The New Testament seemed to command Christians to obey civil authorities. So, why did northern evangelicals overwhelmingly support the rebellion against English rule, but later criticize southern Christians for rebelling against the Union? Or why, on the other hand, were both of these actions not equally rebellious against civil authority? This dissertation argues that northern evangelical Christians employed Romans 13:1-7 between 1763 and 1863 as a political text either to resist or to promote submission to civil authority in pursuit of an America whose greatness as a democratic republic would be defined primarily by its religious character as an evangelical Protestant Christian nation. The chronological scope of this project spans the century between the end of French and Indian or Seven Years War (1763)—a crucial turning point in Colonial America’s sense of identity in relation to Great Britain—and President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (1863)—a crucial turning point in America’s sense of identity over the issue of slavery. Thus, the work explores the debate over American identity during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from a prominent religious perspective in light of changing understandings of the concept of submission to civil authority. The author views Romans 13:1-7 as a pivotal New Testament text informing evangelical Christian political theory in America between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Convictions forged by northern evangelicals in the colonial era regarding America’s status as “chosen” by God, and their attempts to construct a Christian democratic republic on this basis in the nineteenth century drove conscientious adherents of biblical authority to debate and periodically reassess the meaning of these verses in the American context. In this way, evangelicals contributed to the development of a concept that historians would later call “American exceptionalism.” Northern evangelicals, in particular, hoped to define America’s uniqueness by the degree to which those in civil authority reflected and reinforced Protestant Christian values and wedded these to American democratic republican identity. So long as the United States government fostered the attainment of their religious ideal for the nation, northern evangelicals promoted virtually absolute submission to civil authority on the basis of the command, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers,” found in Romans 13:1. But when they perceived the state to threaten their goal of a national Christian identity, highly qualified explanations of Romans 13:1 prevailed in northern evangelical pulpits and publications.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / In England, 1532‐1649 was an era during which questions about obedience to rulers dominated ethical discussions. Most English people also respected biblical authority for governing certain behaviors. Obedience was central to the monarchy’s survival and the Bible was central to reformation of an English Church laden with medieval accretions. St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 13:1‐7 was the most important biblical passage for understanding the Christian’s relationship to civil authority during this period, and interpreters had such high regard for biblical authority that the backing of this passage was crucial to the acceptance of any political theory that involved ideas about obedience or disobedience. Though eisegesis was not out of the question as a technique among these interpreters, societal and political circumstances motivated most exegetes to examine the text more closely than they might have if St. Paul’s meaning had been irrelevant. These conditions led to creative handling of the text that permitted the exegetes to continue to submit to biblical authority while advocating their varied opinions on obedience to civil authority. Some interpreters moved outside the constraints of traditional views of monarchy and obedience to develop a theory that God mediated his call to rulers through those who elected them. Acceptance of this theory finally brought about rejection of divine right monarchy, as symbolized by the execution of Charles I in 1649. By too quickly concluding that these English expositors merely sought biblical justification for their views after the fact, scholars have failed to appreciate how Romans 13 positively shaped Reformation views of the Christian’s relationship to the state. As the title suggests, this study will examine the discernable shift from seeing Romans 13:1‐7 as a text that commands non‐resistance to rulers to one that not only permits disobedience, but requires it. Thus, Romans 13 is not simply an influential political text, but stands as the most important political text of the period under consideration. This dissertation supplies a needed analysis of representative exegesis of Romans 13:1‐7 during this critical period of English history and considers the influence of these expositions on the development of republian ideals.