Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about what happened to kingdom Christians during the American Revolution. After terrorists killed thousands of Americans in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Towers in 2001, the U.S. government responded in various ways in an effort to prevent future terrorist attacks. Among these responses were increased surveillance of telephone calls and using a method of interrogation known as waterboarding.
Now defenders of waterboarding called it a harsh interrogation method. Critics call it torture. And because of these responses that the government made after 9/11, many American citizens raised the issue. Should Americans defend their liberties by suspending some of those very liberties in order to stop terrorists? Now, I have no desire to jump into that political issue.
However, I couldn't help but thinking as people were raising that objection, I guess most Americans don't realize that that is exactly how the 13 colonies got their independence in the first place. They took away from much of the population the very liberties that they said they were fighting for. For example, during the American Revolution, at least in the colonies, there was not freedom of speech or freedom of the press.
If you spoke out against the war, or if you expressed the opinion that you thought Britain was in the right, not the colonies, you were apt to be beaten up by a mob, your business destroyed, and perhaps your house burned down. In fact, after 1776, in some colonies, you would be arrested for saying that, and your house and your property would be confiscated from you by the government.
Even freedom of religion was greatly abridged, and that's what we're going to be talking about tonight, the plight of kingdom Christians during the American Revolution. By the term kingdom Christian, I'm referring to Christians who were committed to living by the laws of God's kingdom, particularly the laws set forth in the Sermon on the Mount. This includes Jesus ' commandments to love our enemies, to pay back Caesar's things to Caesar, to turn the other cheek, and not to take oaths.
Now for over a century, the American colonies had been the place where kingdom Christians fled in order to escape religious persecution, and to find a place where they could live freely by the teachings of Jesus Christ. Among the kingdom Christians who came to the colonies, there were the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Moravians, the Amish, the brethren, and a group called the Schwenkfelders. All of those groups are still around today, although the Schwenkfelders are a fairly small group in our time.
To be sure, not all the colonies welcomed these kingdom Christians. Massachusetts certainly did not. So as you probably remember from school history, the colony to which most of these kingdom Christians came was Pennsylvania. Now, some went to Rhode Island and some went to other colonies, but the largest concentration of kingdom Christians, people like the Quakers and Moravians and Brethren and Amish, were here in Pennsylvania. It's where I live.
So tonight, we're going to be focusing almost entirely on the kingdom Christians in Pennsylvania. Because if they were treated badly here, well, they got it even worse in the other colonies. So let's briefly look at the history of Pennsylvania. We're going to start by examining the original charter, which was issued by King Charles II to William Penn in 1681. Now, I'm not going to bore you by reading the entire charter.
If you'd like to read the entire text of the charter, it along with the text of all of the other documents I'll be quoting from tonight are posted on my publisher's website. It's at scrollpublishing.com. You can go to scrollpublishing.com/store slash documents. Now, these documents are free to look at and to download. Or you can just do a Google search on the internet, put in scroll, publishing two words, and then documents. And then you'll be able to find that page.
With that in mind, here are some of the key provisions of the original charter to Pennsylvania. First of all, it grants the territory of Pennsylvania to William Penn, but specifically reserves the sovereignty over Pennsylvania to the king. It also grants Sir William Penn and his successors the power to make laws for the inhabitants of Pennsylvania to set up their own legislature there so long as the laws are in harmony with the laws of England.
And to that end, every law that would be passed in Pennsylvania, they were required to send a copy of the law to the English government where it would be reviewed. And if the English government found that it was inconsistent with the laws of England or the sovereignty of the king, then they had the power to declare it null and void. Now, I'm not aware of any law that was ever declared null and void by the English government, but it had that power.
Furthermore, the inhabitants of Pennsylvania were given the right to appeal any judgment from the courts of Pennsylvania to the king. So again, it was clear from the very beginning that the ultimate sovereignty over the territory of Pennsylvania was in the King of England and in the government of England. The charter grants the future inhabitants of the colony, the right to ship their belongings there to import other goods and to export items from Pennsylvania to England.
However, the inhabitants of Pennsylvania in importing and exporting had to follow the navigation acts that applied to all Englishmen, and they had to pay any customs duties and tariffs, the same as any other English person would have to. So those were the key provisions of the charter, which again, you can read the entire document on the Scroll Publishing website.
But it's very clear from reading it that the settlers in Pennsylvania had absolutely no legal or moral grounds to object to the tariffs and duties that England imposed on tea and other items, the very issues that led to the American Revolution. That was settled before the very first settler even came to Pennsylvania. We talked about this in one of the earlier messages, the Navigation Acts, which were passed by the Puritans under William Cromwell.
And the reason for that was to help make Britain the dominant power in commerce over the oceans of the world. And the English could not transport things to other countries without first paying customs and duties on that. The colonists in America had no special provisions put on them any harsher than what applied to all English citizens. And again, this was written specifically into the charter, just so there would be no misunderstanding.
William Penn, if you don't like these provisions, then you don't have to accept this charter. As you may know, the King of England owed a debt to William Penn. It was actually a debt carried over from William Penn's father. And the king was giving William Penn the territory of Pennsylvania in return for canceling that debt. Now, William Penn didn't have to cancel the debt. He could have said, " I don't like your terms. Go ahead and pay me the cash. I don't want Pennsylvania. " This was not forced upon him.
It's something that he actually wanted and desired in order to create it to be a safe haven for the Quakers. He was a Quaker and for other Christians who wanted to live by the Sermon on the Mount. In 1701, William Penn issued what was called the Charter of Privileges that would apply to all of the people who settled in his province of Pennsylvania. And it was very advanced for that time.
It says this, " Because no people can be truly happy, although under the greatest enjoyment of civil liberties, if abridged of the freedom of their consciences as to their religious profession and worship, I do hereby grant and declare that no person inhabiting this province or territory who shall confess and acknowledge one almighty God, the creator, upholder, and ruler of the world, and profess himself or themselves obliged to live quietly under the civil government, shall be in any case molested or prejudiced in
his or their person or estate because of his conscientious persuasion or practice, nor be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry contrary to his or their mind, or to do or suffer any other act or thing contrary to their religious persuasion.
And no act, law, or ordinance whatsoever shall at any time hereafter be made or done to alter, change, or diminish the form or effect of this charter, or of any part or clause of it, contrary to the true intent and meaning thereof, without the consent of the governor for the time being, and six parts of seven of the assembly that meets. But because the happiness of mankind depends so much upon the enjoying of liberty of their consciences.
I do hereby solemnly declare promise and grant for me, my heirs and assigns that the first article of this charter relating to liberty of conscience and every part and clause therein shall be kept and remain without any alteration inviolably forever. So the charter of privileges could only be changed with the consent of the governor and six-sevenths of the legislature.
But that first clause in the charter, I didn't read you the whole charter, I just read the first clause and then the ending that couldn't ever be changed forever. So people coming to Pennsylvania came with that solemn declaration and promise this was their right. With that in mind, William Penn actively recruited kingdom Christians in Germany, Switzerland, and other European countries to come and settle in his colony of Pennsylvania.
These were Christians like the Mennonites, the Amish, the Moravians, and the brethren. These people had suffered persecution for so many years. Finally, they were going to be able to escape centuries of persecution and live like normal people to be able to follow their own conscience just the way that Lutherans were able to follow theirs in Germany, and Catholics were in Italy and Spain, and Calvinists were able to in Geneva and other parts of Switzerland.
Now, these people who had been persecuted for so long, who had been shut out of the Reformation, now they were going to be able to live their lives peacefully. Now because William Penn truly believed in freedom of religion, in freedom of conscience, he opened his colony up to everyone. The only requirement was that you did believe in one almighty God. Now, I don't think atheists were necessarily banned from living in Pennsylvania. They were banned from holding a public office, however.
The Mennonites and the Amish and the brethren, the Moravians, the Quakers who came to Pennsylvania, they were guaranteed complete religious freedom. But the same was true of others who wanted to come here, like Anglicans, or Roman Catholics, or Jews. And even though Penn didn't really want them, large numbers of Presbyterians from Northern Ireland, who are known as the Scots-Irish, they came to Pennsylvania and settled here as well.
And likewise, there were a number of congregationalists, and like I say, just about any group you could think of. Now, were these people who were from non-Kingdom churches, people like the Presbyterians and the congregationalists. Were they grateful that William Penn graciously opened up Pennsylvania for them to settle here? I mean, Massachusetts didn't do that for people in Massachusetts.
If you didn't belong to the congregationalist church, what people called the Puritans, well, you were banned from even coming to the colony, or if you were there and didn't make any trouble, you still had to pay taxes to support the congregationalist church, even though you weren't a member of it. But that wasn't true in Pennsylvania. But my question, were those people grateful that William Penn opened it up to people that he didn't agree with, who he felt were not practicing authentic Christianity?
No, they were not in the least bit thankful. Seems like they came here with the chip on their shoulders. First of all, they resented the fact that the best farmland in Pennsylvania had already been taken by the kingdom Christians. I mean, that wasn't through any discrimination. It's just that originally the ones who were attracted here were people like the Quakers and Mennonites and Amish. There were plenty of other places that Presbyterians could settle. So the Presbyterians got in on it a little bit late.
And because of the way the land is here in Pennsylvania, it just happened, it wasn't through any scheme or anything, that the best farmland tends to be in the southeastern part of the state, not far from Philadelphia. I mean, Philadelphia was the capital city, and it was the major port there on the eastern seaboard. And then as you move west from Philadelphia to Lancaster County and Lebanon County, the farming is very good there. And so the first settlers got the best land.
As you move westward, you start getting towards the Appalachians here. The stretch of them known as the Allegheny Mountains is part of the Appalachian chain. I live flat dab in the middle of them. And the soil here in central Pennsylvania, you sometimes find very good soil if it has a limestone base, but then you'll find soil that is largely shale. You know, on the land where I live, you just start digging down and you start hitting shale.
It's easy to mine it and a lot of roads and driveways are paved with shale here, but it doesn't make good farmland. And so the Presbyterians, they were very resentful that they got a lot of the farmland that wasn't as good. They also resented the fact that the Quakers controlled the Pennsylvania government. It's sort of ironic. The Presbyterians controlled the government of Scotland and pretty well controlled the local government in Northern Ireland. The Presbyterians there were from Scotland.
They settled in Northern Ireland from Scotland. That's why they're called the Scots-Irish. And their fellow Calvinists, the congregationalists, they controlled the governments in New England. It wasn't like the Quakers were doing anything different than anybody else. But anyway, they resented it. They resented the Quaker position of non-resistance and of dealing fairly with the Indians. William Penn wouldn't let them just go and take land from the Indians.
He wanted to pay the Indians a fair price for any land that was settled on. See, they didn't want to have those restrictions put upon them. So these Presbyterians, they kept pushing westward into the Indian territory, and they had a lot of conflicts with the Indians as a result.
Although the Pennsylvania legislature should have been concerned about the Scots-Irish Presbyterians and their loyalty to the British crown, they were instead concerned about the loyalty of the wave of immigrants who were coming to Pennsylvania from Germany and other continental European countries. So eventually the Pennsylvania legislature began to require immigrants from non-English countries to sign a declaration of allegiance to the King of England. And these settlers were very happy to oblige.
They were truly grateful to the King of England for making it possible for them to settle in English territory and to be granted such unheard of freedoms that they had there in Pennsylvania. And even on the eve of the Revolution, the German settlers, not only people like the Mennonites and Amish, but also Lutherans, they were all quite content with the British government.
Like everyone else, they preferred not to have any extra taxes, but life in Pennsylvania was paradise compared to what they had experienced in Germany and other European countries. They had more freedom here than they had ever dreamed of. Furthermore, when it came to the kingdom Christians, their yes meant yes, and their no meant no, and that was that. They had signed a solemn declaration of loyalty to the King of England as one of the requirements to come to Pennsylvania.
And they were not about to go back on their word. I mean, that was the whole reason why they refused to take oaths, because a Christian's yes should mean yes and his no mean no. So how could they as Christians first sign a declaration of loyalty to the King of England and then turn around and rebel against the king?
Unfortunately, the Quakers and other non-resistant Christians in Pennsylvania paid dearly for the fact that William Penn and his Christian generosity and kindness permitted people like the Presbyterians and congregationalists and Anglicans to all settle in Pennsylvania along with the Quakers and other non-resistant Christians.
And I say they pay dearly because on the eve of the American Revolution, these other religious groups like the Presbyterians joined with people who were not even Christian or who were Deists, they illegally took over the Pennsylvania government. First of all, you had committees of correspondence, committees of observation and committees of safety springing up seemingly out of nowhere.
They made all sorts of rules that citizens of Pennsylvania had to follow or else face severe consequences like being beaten up, tarred and feathered, or even hung. These extralegal committees essentially became the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government. Yet they had not been elected by the people. On top of that, many of the people in Pennsylvania who were not kingdom Christians formed various military associations and militias.
And although these associations were " voluntary, " strong pressure was put on the kingdom Christians in Pennsylvania, such as the Quakers and Mennonites and Moravians, to join these militias. And often they were mistreated when they refused to do so. Well, then the Continental Congress made Philadelphia its headquarters. And it bypassed the Pennsylvania Assembly and essentially became the executive branch and legislature for Pennsylvania for a while.
The elected Pennsylvania Assembly was totally ignored by these other people, and so they eventually adjourned for the rest of the war because their power had been stripped from them. As a result, the revolutionaries then formed a new assembly and they took control of Pennsylvania. And one of the first things they did was to pass a draft law. It was entitled The Act to Regulate the Militia of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
This law required all white men between the ages of 18 and 53 who were physically capable of bearing arms to serve two months of militia duty on a rotating basis. The way it worked, it usually amounted to two months each year. Refusal to turn out for military exercises would result in a fine of five shillings a day for each day missed. So because the Quakers and Mennonites and Amish and Moravian and Schwenkfelders all refused to join the militia.
They were fined, and so they ended up having to bear their share of the expense of the war, whether they wanted the war or not. They were totally happy with the way things were. The last thing they wanted to do was to rebel against the government and perhaps lose some of the freedoms that they had there in Pennsylvania. But even though a person could pay the fine instead of serving in the militia, huge pressure was put on non-resistant Christians to join the militia.
And the logic that the revolutionaries used was that everyone should share the burden equally because everyone is going to benefit equally from the United States obtaining its independence. Of course, the non-resistant kingdom Christians didn't see any benefit that they would receive. And in fact, the truth is, like the loyalists and other groups, they were one of the groups who actually ended up worse because of the American Revolution.
That's because the guarantees that William Penn's Charter of Freedoms had given them were greater than what they enjoy today under the Constitution of the United States. And it's interesting that the revolutionaries used the argument of all should share the burden equally, because that was the same argument that Britain used with regard to the French and Indian War, that it wasn't fair that the British people paid the entire burden of that war and that the colonies should bear at least part of the cost.
They didn't even ask the colonists to bear their fair share, just part of it. And the colonies rose up in arms and yelled, this is taking away our liberty and freedom. We're being oppressed. This is slavery, et cetera. And yet they were doing the very same thing, only a thousand times more so against the non-resistant Christians in Pennsylvania.
Now, whether you're a non-resistant kingdom Christian or not, I'd like to ask you just for a moment to put yourself in the shoes of the non-resistant kingdom Christians in Pennsylvania at the time of the Revolution. Let's just pretend for a moment that a large number of the citizens of your state, whatever state that might happen to be, decide that they don't like the United States income tax.
And so they protest against it and beat up tax collectors and things like that, and then declare their independence from the United States. Now, you might be in a position where you don't like the income tax either. I mean, who of us does, but you don't feel so strongly that you would want to give up your United States citizenship and start over with a new country, whatever that may or may not bring.
Suppose how you would feel then, if your neighbors labeled you as a traitor, as guilty of treason, because you don't want to overthrow the government, who force you to join their rebel army to overthrow the government, or else confiscate part of your property to pay for their war to overthrow the government, even if you are a loyal, perfectly happy American?
Well, that's the exact situation that the loyalists were in that we talked about yesterday, and the kingdom Christians were in, who were primarily in Pennsylvania, but they also were found throughout, I'd say the majority of the other colonies. What rights had the British taken away from the Mennonites? What rights had the Moravians lost? What reason would they have for being dissatisfied with the English government? Pennsylvania granted them all of the religious liberty they could possibly enjoy.
Why would they want to rebel against the lawful government? And how much did all of the talk about liberty mean to them? Who was taking away their rights? It wasn't the government of England. It was their Presbyterian and congregationalist neighbors who were bullying them, threatening them with being beaten or tarred and feathered, who took their horses and their grain, and they were losing a lot of rights that they had enjoyed under British rule as soon as the revolutionary government took over.
Not only that, eventually this new Pennsylvania government passed a law requiring an oath of allegiance. I'm going to read to you the law. It says this, " Therefore 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. And I'm going to read to you the form of the oath.
It says, " I, John Henry, do swear or affirm that I renounce and refuse all allegiance to George III, King of Great Britain, his heirs and successors, and 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. What would happen if you refused to take this oath of allegiance?
Well, the law provided that you couldn't vote or even travel more than a mile from your home. You couldn't buy, sell, or transfer property. You couldn't adopt any children. Well, of course, to the kingdom Christians, this sounded a lot like the Mark of the Beast talked about in Revelation, that unless you gave this oath of allegiance, you couldn't buy or sell.
There was also a provision in the act that if you turned in somebody like your neighbor for not taking this oath, then you would get half of the fine that they had to pay. So this turned everyone into a spy for the revolutionary government. And it was particularly malicious. The ones who passed this law knew that the Quakers and the Mennonites and the Moravians and the Schwenkfelders and the Amish, that they posed no danger to the revolutionaries. They knew they were non-resistant.
And they also knew that the Quakers are the ones who started the colony and that the non-resistant German settlers were among the very first ones to come, that they themselves were actually latecomers. And yet now they were taking away the freedom of the very people who had established Pennsylvania as a haven for Christians who wanted to live by the Sermon on the Mount.
Now, most of these kingdom Christians would have been quite willing to make a declaration that they were going to remain neutral, that they would do nothing to impede the revolutionary forces. But to ask them to renounce and refuse all allegiance to the King of Great Britain, and of course his government. Well, number one, that violated the statement of allegiance that they gave when they came to America, number one.
Number two, they saw it as a direct violation of the teachings in Romans 13, which says, " Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resist the authority resist the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. " Jesus had told us to pay Caesar's things to Caesar. So now they were being forced to violate the clear teaching of Scripture.
And if they refused to violate their consciences, then like I say, they've essentially lost all their freedoms. Imagine being confined to one mile from your home. You can't buy or sell your property. You can't adopt children. Well, this was very similar to the kind of laws that they had fled to America to get away from. Part of this same law provided that all of the guns would be taken away from people who refused to take the oath of allegiance.
So one of the first things that happened was that militiamen would visit your house and take away your guns. Now the Quakers and Mennonites and other non-resistant Christians didn't want guns for protection. They weren't going to use them for that, but they normally depended on hunting for their meat, and so they lost their source of gaining meat. The degree of persecution you received usually depended upon who the local men were who headed up these various revolutionary committees.
In some areas, the law wasn't strictly enforced. In other ones, it was enforced even more zealously than was intended. As a result, a number of Mennonites and Quakers ended up in jail. Some families had all of their possessions taken and auctioned off for others. A number of Quakers were arrested and carted off to Virginia, and a number of them died from the mistreatment they received on the way there. One Mennonite man was thrown into jail, and then the revolutionaries went to his house.
He had a pregnant wife and a number of children, and they took all the possessions, not even leaving her a bed to sleep on. And it was made particularly difficult because the ministers of other churches who chose to ignore Jesus ' plain teachings, they were preaching from their pulpits how the war was a holy cause and something that anyone who wanted to honor God should participate in. For example, one of the Presbyterian ministers in Lancaster County, he preached a sermon saying that Jesus didn't forbid war.
He made the usual arguments of why loving your enemy doesn't mean you can't kill him. And he stirred up people by reminding them of the Boston massacre, of course, which was a piece of propaganda from the beginning. It wasn't a massacre. He said the choice was to either fight or submit tamely to the galling yoke of perpetual slavery. " End quote. He announced that, " All the angels of heaven are on our side, for we have truth and justice on our side.
" Well, that was the very thing they didn't have on their side was truth. No one was gonna make them into slaves. They were calling paying taxes to the lawful government. They were labeling it as slavery. Well, of course, as soon as they won their independence, the new government had to tax them. They didn't win any freedom from taxes.
Another man argued, he said, quote, " Consider the mounting prospect of seeing Americans like the wretched inhabitants of India, stripped of their freedom, robbed of their property, degraded beneath the brutes, and left to starve amid plenty at the will of their lordly masters. " That wasn't even remotely what England had been doing to the colonists. The colonists enjoyed more freedom and were generally able to own more property than were their counterparts in England.
As I've mentioned before, the wave of immigration were not colonists who wanted to get back to England so they could have it so good there with the rest of the English. No was the other way around. It was English and others who wanted to come over to America where things were so good and where they could buy land cheaply and live much better than they could in England.
One of the best books about the treatment of non-resistant kingdom Christians during the Revolutionary War is entitled 'Twas Seeding Time, written by John L. Ruth. If you want to learn more about kingdom Christians during the American Revolution, I highly recommend this book to you. In fact, I'd like to read to you just a few excerpts from it.
He writes, " Lutheran Pastor Muhlenberg wrote, " In the current atmosphere of suspicion, small, narrow, and short-sighted fellows now come out of the cracks where they have hidden in the current atmosphere of suspicion, the basest man can ruin an innocent acquaintance whom he does not like. All that is necessary is that he point with his finger and whisper in someone's ear, " That man is a rebel, " or " This man is a Tory.
" And revenge and ruin will follow without impartial investigation, judgment, and legal procedure. It's interesting that they were labeling people who did not revolt against England as rebels. Continues in such short trials, moreover, the stronger man is usually right and the weaker must pay the costs. The book continues that this pastor was not exaggerating, was abundantly proven in the summer of 1778, in the sad experience of the Mennonite congregation at Saucon, several miles south of Bethlehem.
Their troubles arose when the stringent new rules of the Second Test Act were applied by the local militia officers who had been appointed agents for the forfeiting of estates by persons tainted with treason. In times like these, to use Pastor Muhlenberg's words, envious persons and enemies who at other times would be secret rise up as accusers and vent their petty rage because they never had a chance to do it before.
A number of such persons flourished at and soon after the withdrawal of the British from Philadelphia when attention could be diverted to punishing those who had cooperated with or in some cases actively aided the British cause. In the quest for revenge on such people, suspicions sometimes ranked as proof, and the innocent were occasionally victimized. One elderly Quaker Miller from Upper Merion Township was hanged, despite a petition signed by 4, 000 people, as was a farmer from Hatfield Township.
Before the latter one was executed, several of his Mennonite neighbors with a number of Welsh Quakers signed a fruitless petition for his pardon, citing the plight of his wife and several small children. Many confiscations of property and real estate took place as officials eager to settle old scores and collect a percentage of the price brought by sheriff's auctions did their work.
On the day before the British departure from Philadelphia, a dozen Mennonite men were hailed into court at Easton by two Justices of the Peace, one of whom was Squire Frederick Limbach. And they requested the men to prove their colors by taking the test oath. All but one of the men were married, and most were farmers, with one blacksmith, Henry Gessinger, among them.
In their community with the apparent allowance of their bishop, Jacob Meyer, they had paid both taxes and fines to the new government, furnished horses and teams for the Continental Service whenever it was demanded. And occasionally they had gone along with their teams as drivers. But on the test oath, they were as unyielding as they were about taking up arms, as it was contrary to their principles, in any case, whatever.
Though they were informed of the requirements of the new law, they insisted that they were not able yet to get over their religious scruples. Taking the test appeared to them like joining our hands to the military service, end quote. Continuing on in the book, the Northampton County Magistrates felt not the slightest sympathy for a position they were trying to eradicate in their district.
To their astonishment, the Mennonite farmers heard themselves sentenced to be banished from the state within 30 days with all their personal property except their real estate to be confiscated and sold by the sheriff. Their former peaceful behavior, the pregnancy of several of their wives, and their lack of ill will toward the new government, were all dismissed as irrelevant factors. It remained difficult for the Mennonites to believe that the militia officers appointed to the task would actually carry it out.
But on June 24th, two men arrived on the farms of Abraham Gessinger and Henry and Peter Sell to take an inventory. It was already a dark day for the Mennonite community when an eclipse of the sun occurred in fitting symbolism of their gloom. Over the next few days, the other farms were visited, and their animals, tools, house furniture, and utensils cataloged. Even the iron stoves, though bolted to the floor, went into the account. Only the uncut hay and standing grain in the fields were left out of the inventory.
In alarm, the convicted men appealed on July 4th, 1778, directly to the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. They protested in all humility that their sentence had been pronounced for no other reason than their obeying their religious scruples against the Test Act, and they asked the council to rectify the magistrate's error, which arose they suggested from a misreading of the law.
With their appeal, went a statement signed by 12 neighbors of the Mennonite families, describing the accused man as having an unblemished reputation for uprightness and integrity, and blaming their present blindness to their own essential interests on an unhappy bias in their education, rather than their disloyalty. While their congregation hoped anxiously for clemency from the higher authorities, other people were feeling equal heat from the Test Act.
Christopher Sauer Jr., whose son had been printing for the British, and now had actually left with them and was trying to agitate the German populace against the revolutionary cause, had only been back at his Germantown home for a month when two colonels came and asked whether he had taken out the new special bail with the Supreme Court. He replied that he had been unaware of any law requiring this. They then asked whether he had taken the test oath. " No, " replied the printer. " Why not?
Were you so attached to the king? " The accusers asked. " No, " Christopher explained. " It was not the attachment to the king. You have in your act that they who do not take the oath shall not have a right to buy or sell. " This was so close to the prediction in the Book of Revelation of the evil mark of the beast that Christian Sauer said he could not take that oath while it stood on that condition. But you went to the English to Philadelphia, said Colonel Smith accusingly. Sauer answered, " Do you know why?
" " No, " the Colonel replied, " And I don't want to know. " At this point, the officers informed Christopher Sauer that the purpose of their call was to take inventory of his property prior to confiscating it for selling it at auction. One of them stood guard to keep the old printer from removing anything while the other one went for an appraiser. They listed his medicines, the use of which only he understood, his bed, and even a barrel of rice. Finally, he asked if he could keep his spectacles, which was granted.
In spite of his frantic efforts to get the auction stopped by appeals to other authorities, he was sold out to the bare walls, and his house was rented out and later sold. Now returning to the Mennonites in Saucon, he continues, " By the end of August, time had run out for the Saucon Mennonites, and no relief had been granted by the state government. " Sheriff John Siegfried supervised a public venue in which the movable goods of George Bachman were sold to the highest bidder.
Members and relatives of the Bachmann family managed to buy 26 of 56 lots of their own goods, including the clock for 75 pounds, and all the furniture except one bed, the spinning wheel, and some hogs and sheep, but none of the cows or horses. On the same day, a larger sale was held disposing of the goods of Casper Yoder. Here, the only Mennonite buyer was John Bear, who got the Bible. The pacifist hater, Squire Limbach, was on hand and bought himself a hand screw.
So it went for the next 10 days until 40,000 pounds worth of farm and household goods had been sold for the support of the war and the punishment of " traitors. " At one of the sales, Sheriff Siegfried himself bought the large Bible, a chair, two beds, books, and a handscrew. Three other parcels of books were sold from the same house, Jacob Yoder's.
Doubtless among them was the Ausbund, an American reprint of the Amish hymnbook containing hymns and accounts of jailings, confiscations, and executions suffered by the ancestors of these peaceful farmers. A list of the Yoder's worldly goods passing into the hands of their neighbors evokes the flavor of their life. A churn, spinning wheel, walnut table, scythe, sickles, chisels, curry comb, augers, cow chains, axe, saw, plows, hay forks, a clock and two stoves.
Finally, on September 3rd, the corner cupboard of the Abraham yoders, the large spinning wheel, and looking glass of Christian Young, and the cattle of both farms mixed together by the carelessness of the drivers were auctioned off with Henry Geisinger's blacksmith tools, and the law protecting Pennsylvania from traitors had taken its course. Now, in addition to the unfurnished houses and the clothes on their backs, all that the families of the jailed men owned was the standing hay and grain in their fields.
That concludes the excerpt from 'Twas Seeding Time. And so it was that the peaceful Christians who had come to Pennsylvania to find religious liberty ended up losing their liberty in most of their possessions because of persecution during the Revolutionary War. And yet the revolutionaries never saw the irony in that while they were proclaiming that they were fighting for freedom, that they were taking away the freedom of innocent people.
What happened in Pennsylvania to non-resistant kingdom Christians provides us with an important historical lesson. It demonstrates why it's impossible to have a Christian nation. After all, William Penn did everything right. He not only acquired title to Pennsylvania from the King of England, but he also turned around and purchased the same land from the Indian tribes, at least as to the portion of Pennsylvania in which he brought settlers. And he had good relations with the Indians.
He provided for complete freedom of religion. And he depended on God alone for the defense of Pennsylvania. But what happened? Well, as we've seen, the Presbyterians, congregationalists, and Anglicans took over the government when the Quaker dominated legislature tried to remain neutral and non-resistant during the Revolution. And then those same men who took over the government persecuted and punished the Quakers and other non-resistant Christians who had founded Pennsylvania.
Now you might say, well, Penn should have allowed only non-resistant Christians to settle in Pennsylvania. He shouldn't have allowed the Presbyterians and others to come in. Well, perhaps, but then of course you wouldn't really have had freedom of religion either. Furthermore, do you really think the other colonies would have allowed Pennsylvania to remain neutral during the Revolution? If they had, the British Army and the loyalists fleeing from the other colonies would have made Pennsylvania their headquarters.
And I don't think the Continental Army would have allowed that. Rather, I feel quite certain they would have invaded Pennsylvania at the very beginning of the revolution before the fleet of British troops arrived, and then they would have put it under martial law. So either way, the non-resistant Christians would have lost control of Pennsylvania. The lesson we can learn from this is to remember that Jesus had no political or governmental power in this world, nor did his apostles and his first followers.
And if we walk in his footsteps, we're not going to have any of that kind of power either.