Namaste Pattimax, A Happy Fourth to you as well. (duly noting that many of the posters in this forum are from those oppressionists that we whipped mightally back to their side of the pond.)
from wiki
According to Michael Novak, a historian specializing in the role of religion among the supporters of the American Revolution, it was from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, that most Patriots absorbed the beliefs and values that motivated them to rebel against Britain. Through weekly Bible study and Sunday sermons, they adopted and interpreted in a uniquely American manner "the essential outlook of the Hebrews: that the Creator gave humans a special place among all other creatures, and made them free, and endowed them with incomparable responsibility and dignity.
This sequence of related concepts - that time had a beginning and is measured for progress (or decline) by God's standards; that everything in the world is intelligible, and to inquire, invent, and discover is an impulse of faith as well as reason; that the Creator endowed us with liberty and inviolable dignity, while the Divine Judge shows concern for the weak and the humble; that life is time of duty and trial—all these are the background that make sense of the Declaration of Independence....Without this metaphysical background, the founding generation of Americans would have had little heart for the War of Independence. ...that their seemingly unlawful rebellion actually fulfilled the will of God."
[11]
Dissenting (i.e. Protestant, non-
Church of England) churches of the day were the “school of democracy”
[12] Congregationalists,
Baptists and
Presbyterians based their principles and willingness to rebel against tyrants on their reading of the Hebrew Bible. The stories that influenced them most were Genesis, which taught all men were created equal, Exodus, which taught Pharaoh must be defied, and Judges, which taught there is no divine right of kings.
[13]
"The God Who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time," wrote
Thomas Jefferson, summarizing the core Biblical world view, that liberty is a God-given right,the basis for moral responsibility.
[14]
Influential leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, Samuel and John Adams, were raised as
Puritans, reading the Geneva Bible which had marginal notes throughout what they called the "
Old Testament", which preached against kings as tyrants, church hierarchy, or obeying wicked laws.
[15] James Madison stayed an extra year at College of New Jersey (now
Princeton University)to study Hebrew and Scriptures under the famous pro-democratic Presbyterian theologian, President Witherspoon.
[16] Witherspoon, one of the most educated men in America, was the most influential academic in American history, according to Michael Novak.
[17] HIs sermons linking the American Revolution to the teachings of the Hebrew Bible influenced an entire generation. At Princeton, he taught twelve members of the Continental Congress, five delegates to the Constitutional Convention, and scores of officers in the Continental Army.
President
John Witherspoon was widely influential through his published sermons.
[18] His most famous sermon, about the Israelites rebelling against Pharaoh, was distributed to 500 Presbyterian churches seven weeks before the Declaration of Independence.
[19] Throughout the colonies, the majority of ministers preached Revolutionary themes in their sermons, while others, especially Church of England members, supported the King.
[20] Dissenting Protestant congregations (
Puritan,
Congregationalist,
Baptist, and
Presbyterian) preached Revolutionary themes in their sermons, and organized their congregations as the basic unit of Revolutionary War politics. Religious motivation for Independence, unlike Enlightenment thinking, was not limited to an intellectual elite. It included rich and poor, men and women, frontiersmen and townsmen, farmers and merchants.
[21]
The classical authors read in the Enlightenment period taught an abstract ideal of republican government that included hierarchical social orders of king, aristocracy and commoners. It was widely believed that English liberties relied on the balance of power between these three social orders, maintaining the hierarchal deference to the privileged class.
[22] “Puritanism … and the epidemic evangelism of the mid-eighteenth century, had created challenges to the traditional notions of social stratification” by preaching that the Bible taught all men are equal,that the true value of a man lies in his moral behavior, not his class, and that all men can be saved.
[23] Benjamin Franklin became an enthusiastic supporter of one of America’s great evangelical ministers,
George Whitefield, “the most popular of the
Great Awakening’s roving preachers.”
[24] Franklin printed Whitefield’s sermons on the front page of his Gazette. He arranged to publish all of Whitefield’s sermons and journals. Half of Franklin’s publications in 1739-41 were of Whitefield, and helped the success of the evangelical movement in America, and the spread of evangelicals radical teachings on equality, which undermined Enlightenment support for the notion that elite social classes should have a privileged position of political power.
[25]
In 1776, after the Revolution had started, Tom Paine's pamphlet,
Common Sense was published and became a best-seller, often read aloud in taverns, contributing significantly in maintaining popular support for the revolution,advocacy for separation from Great Britain, and recruitment for the Continental Army.
? Say, like Martin Luther King Day 
