Sacred Liberty | The Bible & America 250

In 1782, Robert Aitken decided to roll the dice. The Philadelphia printer had emigrated from Scotland just over a decade earlier. When the war began, he became a printer to the Continental Congress. With trade between Britain and the colonies severed, Aitken spotted a risky opportunity. For centuries, Britain had allowed only a small number of British printers to produce Bibles in English, meaning that English-speaking colonists had to import their Bibles. In 1782, after years of planning, Aitken defied Britain by publishing the first English-language Bible on American soil. Congress would even recommend it. Aitken’s Bible became a milestone in American history and would come to be remembered as the “Bible of the Revolution.”

Figure 1: Title page of the Aitken Bible. Image © Museum of the Bible, 2026. All rights reserved.

The “Aitken Bible” symbolizes in some ways the Bible’s close relationship with America’s founding. There might have been a shortage of new Bibles during the war, but the Bible’s impact on American life was hardly in short supply, influencing everything from worship, to art, to politics. It helped define ideas about liberty and just government. Politicians, civil leaders, and everyday people quoted from it and argued over its meaning. For some, the Bible would be essential to democracy and the very meaning of the new nation. Understanding this relationship, then, means better understanding both Robert Aitken’s world and our world today.

In celebration of America’s 250th anniversary this year, Museum of the Bible is exploring different stories that shed light on this relationship in a special exhibition titled, Sacred Liberty. Below are just a few of the stories you can discover more deeply in this free exhibition.

Aitken’s Bible was born out of a highly biblically literate society. By the mid-eighteenth century, the Bible was the most widely known book in the American colonies. Virtually all British colonists were familiar on some level with its stories and language, regardless of church affiliation, education, or class. People heard it preached on Sundays and encountered it in the public square through newspapers and popular debate. Families studied the Bible in their homes, while officials drew from it in the halls of power. The thirteen colonies might have been divided by geography and history, but the Bible provided colonists with a shared vocabulary when discussing the weighty issues of government, natural rights, political authority, and protest.

Tensions mounted between colonists and Britain after the French and Indian War (1754–1763), as parliament issued a series of acts imposing taxes on the American colonies. Prominent voices on both sides of the debate both turned to the Bible for guidance, sometimes reaching for the very same passage, although reading it very differently. Perhaps no passage proved more contested than Romans 13, in which the Apostle Paul instructs Christians to submit to governing authorities, declaring that “there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” For some, the meaning was clear. Rebellion against the king was rebellion against God himself. Others argued that Paul’s words described a ruler who governed justly and that a tyrant forfeited any divine mandate to rule. Resistance to tyranny, in other words, was not defiance of God. It was obedience.

Some ministers proved to be effective and articulate voices of protest, using sermons to apply biblical passages to political issues of the day. In 1750, Jonathan Mayhew (1730–1766), pastor of Boston’s West Church and an early outspoken supporter of colonial rights, preached what would become a landmark sermon on Romans 13, arguing that Christians had not only the right but the duty to resist abusive rulers. “When once magistrates act contrary to their office . . . ,” he wrote, “they immediately cease to be the ordinance and ministers of God; and no more deserve that glorious character than common pirates and highwaymen.” A published version of his sermon became one of the most widely read pamphlets of the era. While he did not live to see the Revolution, contemporaries still recognized his significance for the American cause. John Adams later claimed to have read Mayhew’s sermon “till the Substance of it was incorporated into my Nature and indelibly engraved on my Memory.”

Figure 4: Title page of Jonathan Mayhew’s sermon, “Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers.” Image © Museum of the Bible, 2026. All rights reserved.

The growing Patriot movement drew on more biblical sources than Paul’s letters. The account of Israel’s escape from Egyptian bondage proved to be especially influential. Colonists cast themselves as a “new Israel” fleeing Egypt and condemned King George III as a modern Pharoah. This was not just powerful rhetoric. It was a framework for making sense of their situation, offering a familiar vocabulary of deliverance, oppression, covenant, and providence that guided how some colonists imagined and debated political questions. When pastor Jonas Clarke preached about the “shedding of innocent blood” in commemoration of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, he was not only memorializing fallen neighbors. God’s message, he wrote, “is the same as unto his people of old, when under Egyptian yoke, they were caused to serve with cruel bondage—‘I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them.’” Clarke was placing the fallen Americans within a story stretching from Sinai to Boston.

As conflict between Patriots and Loyalists intensified into outright rebellion, both rank-and-file colonists and leading public figures drew inspiration and courage from the Bible. On the night of December 16, 1773, a group of patriots gathered in the Boston home of carpenter Nathaniel Bradlee, in preparation to march to Griffin’s Wharf and dump 342 chests of British tea into the harbor. His sister, Sarah Bradlee Fulton, later called the “Mother of the Boston Tea Party,” helped shelter the men when authorities came searching. We do not know many of the details about what went on in the Bradlee home that night, but one of the only things to survive is Nathaniel Bradlee’s Bible. He and his friends were willing to risk everything for a cause they believed was just. It is possible they read from this Bible and prayed before walking out the door and into the history books.

America’s political founders were all familiar with the stories and teachings of the Bible. Many had attended schools and colleges where the Bible was part of the curriculum in some form, which usually included biblical languages, philosophy, and theology. Some even required students to translate the New Testament or other ancient writings to demonstrate their mastery of Greek before admission. This familiarity helped shape how founders such as John Hancock (Harvard), Alexander Hamilton (Columbia), Thomas Jefferson (William & Mary), and others thought about government and better equipped them to communicate with a Bible-literate public.

Samuel Adams, the Boston firebrand, and Elias Boudinot, the first president of the Continental Congress, both found guidance through daily Bible study.

Figure 7: Title page of Elias Boudinot’s Bible, with his signature. Image © Museum of the Bible, 2026. All rights reserved.

Figure 8: Reading aids in Boudinot’s Bible. Image © Museum of the Bible, 2026. All rights reserved.

James Madison, remembered as the “Father of the Constitution,” believed biblical teachings about sin supported the idea of a government with checks and balances to restrain corruption. Benjamin Franklin, the renowned statesman and political thinker, might have known the biblical text better than any other founder, despite being skeptical of some of its passages. When asked in 1776 to join a committee tasked with designing the Great Seal of the United States, Franklin proposed an image depicting the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, comparing the American struggle against tyranny to the Israelites escaping Egyptian bondage. Ultimately, his idea lost to the familiar eagle we see today.

Robert Aitken’s Bible arrived less than a year before the war concluded. It would indeed prove to be a dangerous venture, but not for the reasons one might initially expect. Even with Congress’ recommendation, sales were slow and he never recouped his expenses. He spent the next several years in debt, struggling to maintain his business. While the Aitken Bible was a commercial failure, it signaled the start of a new era of Bible production and translation in America that would soon reach a global scale. By the end of the 1700s, American presses had produced hundreds of editions of new Bibles.

The Revolution did not diminish the Bible’s influence in America. In many ways, it amplified it. As the founders passed the torch to a new generation, religious freedom nurtured biblical engagement by giving Americans space to explore and express their faith. Through books and newspapers, music and memorials, the Bible’s words and ideas shaped how Americans remembered their revolutionary past in ways passed down to today. These same words and ideas also inspired hope for the nation’s future and meaning of the American experiment. For some, the Bible would be vital to cultivating the civic morality that was necessary for democracy and the survival of the young nation.

America would indeed be put to the test. The Bible would continue to shape ideas about freedom and equality, sometimes in clashing ways.

Visit Museum of the Bible’s special exhibition Sacred Liberty, opening July 3 for free, to explore the Bible’s role in the nation’s founding and learn more about how it has shaped American life.

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Learn more about the Bible’s role in American history through the museum’s Bible & America 250 exhibits and events.

Published June 25, 2026