Three Questions for Jeff Sessions

What’s your view of the American Revolution? Were the rebellious colonists justified in resisting George III’s lawful authority? Yes or no?

You undoubtedly know that many of the leading American revolutionaries—figures like James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Dickinson, James Wilson, Stephen Hopkins, and John Witherspoon—took their Bibles very seriously. They argued that Romans 13:1-5—the passage you cite—along with its echo in I Peter 2:13-14—have only to do with respecting the general authority of government and not with blind submission to the dictates of a particular ruler. On Romans 13 specifically, I particularly urge you to read Rev. Jonathan Mayhew’s famous sermon of 1750 (often called the “opening gun” of the American Revolution), in which Mayhew concludes that “resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”