Chapter 29: Persecuting Those Who Trusted in God. On September 11, 2001, terrorists killed thousands of Americans through their attacks on the World Trade Towers. The U.S. government responded in various ways in an effort to prevent future attacks. Among those responses were increased surveillance of telephone calls and using an interrogation method known as waterboarding. Defenders of waterboarding call it a harsh interrogation method. Critics call it torture.
Many Americans voiced the opinion that America shouldn't defend its liberties by suspending some of those very liberties to stop terrorists. I have no desire to jump into that political fray. Nevertheless, at the time, I couldn't help but think, "I guess most Americans don't realize that this is exactly how the Thirteen Colonies got their independence in the first place." During the war, the revolutionists took away from the people the very liberties they said they were fighting for.
For instance, during the American Revolution, the revolutionists denied both freedom of speech and freedom of the press to those who didn't support the revolution. If someone spoke out against the war or expressed the opinion that Britain was in the right, he was apt to be beaten up by a mob, have his business destroyed, and perhaps his house burned down.
In fact, after 1776, in most colonies, a person who spoke out against the revolution was arrested, and the revolutionary government confiscated his house and property. Even freedom of religion was greatly abridged. Earlier, I described the non-resistant Kingdom Christians who moved to Pennsylvania to escape religious persecution, such as Quakers, Mennonites, and Amish. The story of what happened to those Kingdom Christians in Pennsylvania during the war is one of the darker sides of the revolution.
On the eve of the revolution. On the eve of the revolution, the Kingdom Christians in Pennsylvania, many with a Swiss or Germanic background, were generally content with the British government. Like everyone else, they preferred not to have any extra taxes, but life in Pennsylvania was paradise compared with what they had experienced in Switzerland, Germany, and other European countries. Furthermore, as committed Christians, their yes meant yes, and that was that (Matthew 5:37).
They had signed a solemn declaration of loyalty to the King of England, and they were not about to go back on their word. Sadly, Quakers and other Kingdom Christians paid dearly for William Penn's Christian generosity and kindness. He had charitably permitted people such as the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Anglicans to settle in Pennsylvania. Yet on the eve of the American Revolution, these groups illegally took over the Pennsylvania government.
First of all, committees of correspondence, committees of observation, and committees of safety sprang up all across the colony, seemingly out of nowhere. These extra-legal bodies made all sorts of rules that citizens of Pennsylvania had to follow. If citizens didn't obey these new "laws," they faced severe consequences, such as being beaten up, tarred and feathered, or even hanged. These revolutionary committees essentially became the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Pennsylvania government.
However, they had not been elected by the general population of Pennsylvania, nor were they accountable to them. These extra-judicial bodies ignored the lawful governor, John Penn, and they usurped his powers. They also totally disregarded the Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania Assembly. The militants formed a new legislature of their own and took complete control of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania's First Conscription.
One of the first things the new legislature did was to pass a draft law entitled "The Act to Regulate the Militia of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania." It required all white males between the ages of 18 and 53 years to serve two months of militia duty each year on a rotating basis. The only exemption allowed was for men physically unable to serve. Refusal to turn out for military exercises resulted in a fine of five shillings a day for each day missed.
For 60 days, that came to a total of 300 shillings, or 25 British pounds. In today's currency, that would amount to nearly $4,000 a year. To put yourself in their shoes, imagine that many of the people in the state where you live decided to secede from the United States. Assume that the reasons why these people wanted to secede are because they believe taxes are too high and that the federal government in Washington, D.C., has wrongfully usurped various powers that the Constitution reserves to the states.
Now let's suppose that even though you are sympathetic to their complaints, you have no desire to support a rebellion against the United States. But before long, the militants illegally take over the state legislature and governorship and pass a state law conscripting all males into the secessionist army. How would you feel if you are a loyal American? You probably would feel no differently than did the Kingdom Christians in Pennsylvania. What rights had the British taken away from the Mennonites and Amish? None.
Why would they be dissatisfied with the British government? They were profoundly thankful to the British government for allowing them to settle in Pennsylvania even though they were from Switzerland, Germany, and other European countries. They were deeply grateful for being granted total freedom of religion, so why would they want to rebel against Britain? Oath of Allegiance. In contrast, the revolutionists were taking away the civil rights of these Kingdom Christians and imposing heavy fines on them.
The revolutionists even seized the guns of these peaceful Christians, who used their guns only for hunting. Not only that, but before long, the new revolutionary government enacted a law requiring all white males to make an oath of allegiance to the independent Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
The law read as follows: "It is enacted that all white male inhabitants of the state above the age of 18 years take and subscribe before some justice of the peace an oath in the following form: I do swear or affirm that I renounce and refuse all allegiance to George III, King of Great Britain, his heirs and successors, that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a free and independent state, and that I will not at any time do or cause to be done any matter or thing that
will be prejudicial or injurious to the freedom and independence thereof, as declared by Congress, and also that I will discover and make known to some justice of the peace of said state all treason or traitorous conspiracies which I now know or hereafter shall know to be formed against this or any of the United States of America." The Kingdom Christians who refused to take the prescribed oath suddenly found themselves treated as unwelcome aliens.
Even though this had been their colony, they couldn't vote, travel more than a mile from their homes, buy, sell, or transfer property, execute wills, or adopt children. The law encouraged the residents of Pennsylvania to spy on their neighbors and report anyone they suspected of not having taken the oath. To promote this, the law provided that half of the fines paid by violators would go to the person who turned them in. Persecution of Kingdom Christians.
Numerous Kingdom Christian men were thrown into jail when they refused to take the oath for conscience' sake. Typically, all of their possessions, including farm animals, were inventoried, confiscated, and sold at auctions. The proceeds went to the wartime Pennsylvania government. Some families were left with nothing but their standing crops. Others fared even worse. One elderly Quaker man was hanged.
Two Mennonite women, Eve Yoder and Esther Bachman, wrote a letter to the Pennsylvania legislature pleading for relief for the families of Kingdom Christians. They wrote, "For some of them, all their provisions were taken and not even a morsel of bread left for their children." They described how the cast-iron stoves bolted to the floors of their homes were taken from these peaceful Christians.
They wrote that as a result, they are deprived of every means of keeping their children warm in the approaching winter, especially at night, being obliged to sleep on the floor without any beds. In Germantown, the revolutionary authorities arrested a brethren bishop, Christopher Sauer, Jr., for refusing to take the required oath. In his church sermons, he had preached against Christians participating in war. The authorities cut off his long beard, stripped him, and forced him into a tattered army uniform.
Later, they seized his print shop and confiscated all his property. In the Reading area of Pennsylvania, revolutionary officials seized Amish farms and imprisoned all but one or two of the family heads. The authorities even sentenced these men to be shot, although the executions were never carried out. Many of the young men among the Amish and Mennonites fled their homes and escaped to the sparsely populated southwest frontier of Pennsylvania.
Here, they lived in exile and constant danger from the Indians and the colonial militias until the war finally ended. In Berks and Chester counties in eastern Pennsylvania, Mennonite farmers would often awake in the morning to discover that all of their fence rails and much of their livestock had been taken during the night by the militia or Continental soldiers.
At the Ephrata Cloister, where a community of Kingdom Christians lived, the army seized a wagonload of unbound pages of the Martyr's Mirror to use as paper wadding for their rifles. Somehow, the revolutionists never saw the inconsistency of their behavior. They were fighting under the banner of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Yet before the war, when had Britain ever deprived the colonists of their lives or liberty?
And if a three-penny tax on tea prevents you from being happy, all I can say is that you've got real problems. In contrast, the revolutionists had deprived a number of peaceful Kingdom Christians of their very lives. They had divested thousands more of the ordinary liberties of buying and selling, making wills, voting, or even traveling more than a mile from their homes. Finally, they had confiscated most of the property of thousands of others and imprisoned fathers and husbands, leaving their families to suffer.
Thankfully, when the war was over, the Pennsylvania government returned some of the property taken from its non-resistant citizens during the war. These Christians quickly forgave the wrongs they had endured, and they were able to return to their normal lives. But for others, the end of the war only brought further misery and injustice.