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“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.”
— Epistle to the Romans 13:1

This verse has always divided the Church.

In the years leading to the American Revolutionary War, it sat at the center of a crisis of conscience. God may give all authority, but should submission be blind to corruption? Loyalists saw duty, the patriot saw revolution.

This Scripture produced two convictions. One side saw rebellion as sin. The other saw resistance as obedience to higher moral principles.

Is government over people or people over government? Is authority absolute or accountable?

Discerning God’s will at that time would not have been easy. Yet the writers of the Declaration of Independence understood this new nation could not succeed apart from God and would come at great personal cost.

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

That history built the nation I call home 250 years later. A nation that, at its best, protects life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I’m proudly an American.