When Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence this July 4th — its 250th anniversary — many will recite its famous lines without knowing the centuries of debate that produced them. But behind those words lies a question that consumed Christians for more than a hundred years: Is it ever right to rebel against your government — or is rebellion a sin? Dr. John Barrett, professor of political science and chair of the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, set out to change that. As the driving force behind a new LeTourneau-produced documentary, he sifts through the centuries to uncover the theological wrestling match that made July 4th possible.
As Dr. Barrett explains, the story begins with the Protestant Reformation.
When Martin Luther defied the pope, he reopened an old question about whether defying spiritual authority might permit defying political authority, too. Across Europe and Britain, the answer was contested in pulpits and on battlefields — by the Scottish theologians John Knox and Samuel Rutherford, who argued that Christians owed no obedience to an ungodly king, and later by Robert Filmer, who insisted monarchs ruled by divine right, and John Locke, who countered that authority belongs to all people equally and that government governs only by consent.
Those arguments crossed the Atlantic with Puritan and Anglican settlers and resurfaced a generation later as colonists weighed taxes, authority, and rebellion. Patriots echoed their Puritan forebears; Loyalists — including Benjamin Franklin's own son — warned that rebellion was sin. The Declaration, Barrett explains, is the culmination of that long debate, its logic drawn straight from Locke.
"It's really the product of over a century of debate within the church," Barrett says in the film — a backstory he believes is essential to understanding the document, and our politics today.
The project, filmed at St. Luke’s Methodist Church in Kilgore, Texas, reflects LeTourneau's conviction that no education is complete without understanding each subject in the context of the Christian faith.
With Dr. Barrett’s guidance, rediscover the argument behind America's founding — and the faith that helped shape it.
