The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

In theory, the divine right of kings was abandoned in England when the Glorious Revolution (1688–89) dethroned the Stuarts. James Wilson—Scottish émigré, founding father, and one of the original six Supreme Court justices—said as much in the Pennsylvania ratifying convention: “Is the executive power of Great Britain founded on representation? This is not pretended. Before the [Glorious] revolution, many of the kings claimed to reign by divine right, and others by hereditary right.”36 Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Algernon Sidney had all penned devastating critiques of the divine right, but the idea was still embraced in many quarters. As Becker notes, “In that day kings were commonly claiming to rule by divine right, and according to this notion there could be no ‘right’ of rebellion.”37 The more religious a monarch, the more likely he would be to think a god had assigned him his rightful place as ruler.