Woodcut of Washington at prayer (Wikimedia Commons).

American colonists struggled to make sense of the events leading up to the war with Britain. Escalating encroachments were resisted by the colonists, whose sometimes-violent actions provoked further crackdowns. The cycle intensified throughout the late 1760s and into the new decade, spawning boycotts, riots, and worse, including the Boston Massacre in March 1770.

If historians today have a hard time explaining those events with all the necessary nuance and care, despite the benefits of time, perspective, and access to reams of relevant facts and details, then imagine the impossibility of doing so in the thick of things, when presumption and fear and recrimination spread faster than truth or prudence could manage.

In this challenging time, colonists sought clarity through the lens of faith. As largely Christian people, they framed their struggles in terms of their religion, looking to the Bible for patterns, types, and stories that could explain their predicament.

To see this in action, you need only look at a woman’s needlework.

A stitch in time

Following the Boston Massacre, Faith Trumbull, wife of patriotic Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull and mother of famed portraitist John Trumbull, stitched an elaborate scene to explain the shocking event.

'The Hanging of Absalom' by Faith Robinson Trumbull (Library of Congress).

The embroidery depicted the death of Absalom. As the story goes, King David of Israel is met with an insurrection led by his son, Absalom, who is killed by David’s rogue commander, Joab. In the needlework, Joab is wearing a red coat. The point was clear enough: The grievance may be legitimate — King David/George is depicted as aloof and playing a harp — but care is needed; rebellion may end up backfiring. How to communicate a deeply important truth about breaking events? With Bible stories, of course.

And it wasn’t just needlework. When Paul Revere wanted to explain the colonists’ cause, he reached for a biblical allusion as well — telling his British cousin that England wanted to make the Americans “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” a reference to the ninth chapter of Joshua.

Open the index of a collection like American Political Writing During the Founding Era, edited by Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz. “God” is referenced well over a hundred times, “Jesus” at least half as many times. Biblical figures and books like “Job,” “Isaiah,” “Ezra,” and “Judah” are all mentioned. “Peter” and “Paul” both score more than a dozen references apiece. And this is just one isolated sample; others abound.

Genuine belief

Scholars may say that the Revolutionary generation appealed to religion because they could justify their rebellion in terms of it, that they could find firm moral, even theological, footing while overthrowing the government. No doubt, that was certainly an outcome. But I think the more basic reason is that they simply believed it. They read, heard, prayed, and contemplated the words of the Bible. They identified with its stories and doctrines.

Trumbull stitched the scene with Absalom because she was familiar with the story — directly or indirectly — and found application with it. Revere went back to Joshua because he knew it. Ditto for the pamphleteers, orators, newspaper writers, and others of the time.

They brought the Bible to bear on the moment because they believed it, because it was part of their cultural inheritance, and because they found it relevant and applicable. It was the same during the Civil War, the Progressive Era, and the Civil Rights Movement.

It’s the same today.

A more generous read

When Tea Partiers on the right or social-justice advocates on the left make shows of their faith and wax biblical about policies, the natural impulse of many seems to be to dismiss it as hypocritical or manipulative, somehow self-serving or false, and maybe — if you’re really cynical — all of the above.

Putting disagreements with the particular policies aside, a more generous and thoughtful read of the picture might lead observers to realize that these people bring the Bible to bear on the moment because they believe it, because it is part of their cultural inheritance, and because they find it relevant and applicable.

Given our long history — one in which every generation, from the Pilgrims to Palin, has characterized their times and struggles in such terms — it shouldn’t be so difficult to accept.

A slightly altered version of this article was published November 19, 2010, under the title “Tea, Politics, and Faith” at FoxNews.com.

1813 portrait of Paul Revere by Gilbert Stuart (Wikimedia Commons).

I don’t think there is any better representative here than the goldsmith and express rider Paul Revere, the “blue-collar” revolutionary. Instead of references to Lord Coke and John Locke, in this 1 July 1782 letter to his British cousin John Rivoire, Revere references the book of Joshua and Aesop’s fables, but the takeaway is the same (I’ve left his idiosyncratic spelling and grammar untouched):

You say “we have entered into a war with Brittain against all laws human & divine.” You do not use all the candour which I am sure you are master of, else you have not looked into the merits of the quarrel. They covenanted with the first settlers of this country, that we should enjoy “all the Libertys of free natural born subjects of Great Britain.” They were not contented to have all the benefit of our trade, in short to have all our earnings, but they wanted to make us hewers of wood, & drawers of water. Their Parliament have declared “that they have a right to tax us & Legislate for us, in all cases whatsoever”—now certainly if they have a right to take one shilling from us without our consent, they have a right to all we possess; for it is the birthright of an Englishman, not to be taxed without the consent of himself, or Representative. . . .

You say “You will suppose for one moment that there is faults on both sides; that is, England & America are both in fault.” The supposition is intirely groundless, the fault is wholly on the side of England, America took every method in her power by petitioning &c. to remain subject to Brittain; but Brittain (I mean the British King & Ministers) did not want Colonies of free men they wanted Colonies of Slaves. Like the fable of the Woman & Hen, by grasping at too much they will lose all.

I ran across this letter in my research for The Revolutionary Paul Revere and included it in The Portable Patriot, the collection of foundational documents I co-edited with my colleague Kristen Parrish. The hewers and drawers reference is an allusion to Joshua 9:27: “And Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation . . . .” Popularly used, the reference meant someone forced or enslaved to do menial tasks for the benefit of another. The “Woman & Hen” is of course from Aesop, about someone who tries getting two eggs from her hen instead of one and ends up with none at all, a spot-on description of what happened between Britain and America when the former began pushing for new taxes on the latter without counting the cost.

I think it’s useful to be reminded that the Revolution was not fought or even led only by the elevated in colonial society. Middle-class men like Revere knew the grievances as well as arguments and expressed them in language of their own. They had a vital role to play in the struggle for American Independence. They also stand as reminders of the continuing need in our own time for people at every level to be aware of the threats to our political liberty.

Jonathan Mayhew, Wikimedia Commons.

Paul Revere was more than a decade his junior, but they became friends in Revere’s later teens. Mayhew married the daughter of Revere’s landlord. Paul’s family was mostly Puritan. His dad was a Huguenot refugee (hence his French surname), and Dad took his doctrine pretty seriously—certainly Trinitarian, definitely Calvinist. In fact when Revere was caught sneaking sermons at Mayhew’s church, Dad gave Paul a whipping to discourage his consumption of heretical preaching.

Mayhew was also an ardent and celebrated defender of liberty in the colonies. He opposed the Stamp Act and resisted imposition of anything that smacked of British officialdom—including Anglican bishops. He was a Congregationalist and fought a very pitched public battle against the establishment of the episcopate in America.

So against that backdrop, read the following from Charles Akers’ bio of Mayhew (my comments in brackets). It turns out that Mayhew’s grandson

entered the Anglican priesthood in 1817 [Mayhew died in 1766] and returned briefly to Boston in 1834 as rector of Trinity Episcopal Church [in granddad’s old stomping grounds]. With all his grandfather’s temerity [he was famously strident] the grandson proclaimed that “there cannot be a church without a bishop.” By the time of his death in 1854, Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, perhaps America’s most distinguished Episcopalian, had become Bishop of New York.

And I bet he recited the Athanasian Creed as often as his grandfather complained about it.

You just never know how things are going to shake out, do you?