Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may be able to prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12-2. This is resistance and reformation on the fight-laff-feast network. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of America's revolutionary period was that its chief protagonists were not revolutionaries. From Samuel Adams and John Hancock to Patrick Henry and George Washington, the leaders of the American Patriot cause were profoundly conservative. They were loath to indulge in any kind of radicalism that might erupt into violence, rhetorical, political, or martial. They were the faithful sons of colonial gentry. They were devoted to conventional wig principles, the rule of law, nobles oblije, unswerving honor, squirey, superintendents, and the maintenance of corporate order. They believed in a tranquil and settled society, free of the raucous upsets and two modes of agitation, activism, and unrest. They were Christians, not radicals. Their reticence to squabble with the crown was obvious, even to the most casual observer. The Colonials exhausted every recourse to law before they even thought to resort to armed resistance. For more than a decade, they sent innumerable appeals, suits, and petitions to both Parliament and King. Even after American blood had been spilled, they refrained from impulsive insurrection. It took more than the Boston Massacre, more than Lexington and Concord, more than Bunker Hill, more than Tycon, Deroga, to provoke the patriots to commit themselves to forceful secession. Even as late as the summer of 1776, there was no solid consensus among the members of the Continental Congress that such an extreme as full-scale revolt, as John Dickinson dubbed it, was necessary. At the beginning of June, Congress accepted a resolution of Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee, to appoint a committee to draft a declaration of secession from the Dominions of the English King and Parliament. The committee, composed of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston, presented their draft for a debate and a vote. It was defeated twice and sent back to the committee for revision. Finally, on July 4, a newly amended version of that draft was definitely adopted. The war that had been raging now for more than a year had finally driven the patriots to sever the ties of fealty to their motherland. The cautious delegates were at best reluctant revolutionaries. Why then did they take two arms? What could possibly have been able to overcome their native conservatism? Was it their traditionalism, their commitment to those lasting things that transcend the ever-shifting tides of situation and circumstance that finally drove them to resistance and reformation? Indeed it was. They were willing to fight King, Parliament, and Motherland in order to preserve all that King, Parliament, and Motherland had once represented. According to John Adams, it is the duty of all men to protect the integrity of liberty. Whenever the laws of God and the laws of the common inheritance are profflegately violated, justice demands, he argues, a defense of the gracious endowments of providence to mankind, including life, liberty, and property. Patrick Henry asserted that it was only a grave responsibility which the leaders held to God and countrymen that could compel the peace-loving people of America to fight the combined tyranny of economic mercantilism and legislative despotism had ensured that an appeal to arms and the God of hosts was all that was left to the patriots. According to John Hancock, the colonial charters had been subverted or even abrogated. Their citizen shipwrites, according to English common law, had been violated, and their freedom of religious practice and moral witness had been curtailed. Thus, rule of the colonies had become arbitrary and comprecious under such circumstances a holy duty demanded a holy response. The Declaration of Independence was based on the covenant lawsuit sequences from the old Testament prophets and was influenced by Scotland's arborath declaration, Richard Hooker's laws of polity, and Richard Baxter's holy commonwealth. Not surprisingly, it contains some of the most beautiful and enduring political rhetoric ever written. From the opening refrain, the Declaration ringingly affirms the absolute standard upon which the founders hoped that liberty might be established, appealing to the supreme judge of the world for guidance, and relying on his divine providence for wisdom. The framers committed themselves and their posterity to the absolute standard of the laws of nature and of nature's God. The activist government of the crown had become increasingly intrusive, burdensome, and fickle, and thus the possibility of Christian freedom had been thrown into very real jeopardy. The founders merely protested the fashion and fancy of political bureaucratic and systemic innovation that had alienated the Inalienable. Thus, P.J. O'Rourke quipped, there are 27 specific complaints against the British crown set forth in the Declaration of Independence, and to modern ears they still sound reasonable. Reasonable, because they could all too easily be lettled against our present federal government in Washington, the emerging consensus among the American patriots that ideological and political encroachments upon the whole of society could not be any longer ignored. It was confirmed in American pulpits the very conservative colonial pastor certainly did not set out to stir up strife or political tumult at the cost of the proclamation of gospel as Charles Lane of Savannah put it, on the other hand the gospel naturally mitigates against lawless tyranny and whatever form it may take. Said Ebenezer Smith of Lowell. Indeed, as Charles Turner abducts Bury asserted, the scriptures cannot be rightfully expounded without explaining them in a manner friendly to the cause of freedom. Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. It was a favorite pastoral text, as where you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free and take away your exactions from my people, sayeth the Lord God. It was not the enlightenment rhetoric of firebrands like Thomas Payne or Benjamin Rush that drove men from hearth and home to battlefield. It was the certainty that God had called them to an inescapable accountability. It was the conviction that they were covenantally honored bound to uphold the standard of impartial justice and to broadcast the blessings of liberty afar. It was the firm conviction that politics was not to consume the whole of their lives. In the end, the reluctant patriots were forced to arms by a recognition of the fact that resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. And that is the beginning place of resistance and reformation. I'm George Grant on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network for more information and for resources go to GeorgeGrant.net or adoringgod.org.