Jonathan Mayhew
Mayhew is the hinge of this movement, and the sermon that makes him one is short. He took Romans 13, the passage every argument for obedience rested on, and showed that the apostle's own reasons for obeying a ruler become reasons for resisting one who has turned on the people he was set up to serve. He preached it in Boston on 30 January 1750, the anniversary fast for the execution of Charles I, which was not a coincidence and was not received as one. What the library holds after him is the same argument getting easier to make: Langdon preaching it to a Provincial Congress as settled doctrine in 1775, and the Declaration the year after. What the Formation Library holds is where it went next, in its note on the Letter from Birmingham Jail, which says King applied the resistance theology of Mayhew to the civil rights situation of 1963.
What this library holds
A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers
January 30, 1750 | Jonathan Mayhew
The sermon that read Romans 13 against itself, arguing that the apostle's own reasons for obedience become reasons for resistance when a ruler turns on the people he was set up to serve.
Where this sits
Grammar, 1741 to 1775. The pulpit builds the argument. A century of preaching supplies the terms the political case would later be made in.
- Before: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards.
- After: The Mediatorial Kingdom and Glories of Jesus Christ, Samuel Davies.
What to read about Jonathan Mayhew
- Four. The Preachers and the Revolution, 7 books in The Formation Library.
- Eight. The Fire for Our Time, 4 books in The Formation Library.