Northwood University Professor Examines the Protestant Roots of American Constitutionalism
Northwood University professor explores how centuries of Protestant political thought shaped the American understanding of lawful resistance, limited government and independence.
As the United States marks 250 years of independence, Northwood University Professor Dr. Glenn A. Moots is encouraging Americans to look beyond the familiar names and phrases associated with the nation’s founding — and consider the deeper intellectual tradition that helped make the American Revolution possible.
In a new essay published by American Reformer, Moots examines how Protestant political thinkers contributed to the development of constitutionalism, the rule of law and theories of lawful resistance that influenced America’s founding generation.
Titled “Protestant Constitutionalism and American Independence,” the essay challenges the tendency to treat the Declaration of Independence as the product of entirely new or abstract ideas. Thomas Jefferson himself described the Declaration as an “expression of the American mind,” Moots notes, rather than a work founded on original principles.
That American mind was shaped by a long tradition.
Moots traces one of Jefferson’s most memorable images — the rejection of the idea that some people are born with saddles on their backs while others are born “booted and spurred” to ride them — to Richard Rumbold, a 17th-century English Protestant and constitutionalist.
But the connection extends far beyond one borrowed metaphor.
The essay explores how Protestant thinkers developed arguments concerning the limits of political authority, the obligations of rulers, the rule of law and the circumstances under which resistance to tyranny could be justified. Rather than viewing revolution as an inherently lawless act, these thinkers sought to distinguish legitimate constitutional resistance from violence driven by passion, expediency or unrestricted popular will.
Moots also turns to John Adams, who identified the Protestant Reformation, the English conflicts of the 17th century and the Glorious Revolution as important periods in the development of the political principles that eventually shaped American constitutionalism.
Those traditions helped establish an understanding of government in which rulers and citizens alike remain subject to law — and in which resistance can serve to preserve a constitutional order when those entrusted with power violate its legitimate limits.
Moots does not argue that Protestantism originated constitutional government or the rule of law. Instead, he explains that religious and political conflict during and after the Reformation sharpened longstanding questions about authority, rights, liberty and lawful resistance.
His essay offers a timely reminder that American independence was not simply a rejection of authority. It grew from a richer understanding of authority properly exercised, power legally restrained and freedom sustained through a just constitutional order.
As Northwood commemorates America’s semiquincentennial through its Freedom Lights the Future initiative, contributions such as Moots’ essay deepen the national conversation about the intellectual, religious and political traditions behind the American experiment.
Read “Protestant Constitutionalism and American Independence” at American Reformer.