This year marks the 250th anniversary of the publication of “Common Sense,” a slender pamphlet whose physical modesty concealed a civilizational provocation. On a winter day in 1776, an obscure British immigrant named Thomas Paine released a text that redirected the political trajectory of an entire people. Within three months, approximately 120,000 copies circulated among a population that barely exceeded three million, making “Common Sense” the most widely distributed political work in American history up to that point. But the pamphlet accomplished something rarer than circulation: It unified taverns and congress halls, artisans and landowners, street corners and legislative chambers within a single moral argument concerning authority, legitimacy, and the purpose of government.

Paine’s achievement rested upon accessibility joined with moral urgency. His prose rejected aristocratic ornamentation and instead adopted the cadence of pulpit exhortation and public address. Consequently, his political claims carried theological weight even when expressed in civic language. Paine understood that political authority in the 18th century relied heavily on sacred metaphor, especially monarchy’s claim to paternal legitimacy. Thus, he dismantled that metaphor with deliberate severity. His rebuke struck with biblical force: “Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their own families.” The sentence carried power precisely because it echoed a scriptural intuition about stewardship, order, and moral accountability.

Paine’s insistence that independence constitutes a natural right revealed a worldview already shaped by Judeo-Christian anthropology. Human beings, imbued with dignity and moral agency, possess an inherent capacity for self-government. Accordingly, Paine moved beyond grievance toward first principles. He urged his readers to “lay hold of the present opportunity; to begin government at the right end.” In doing so, he rejected monarchy’s claim to sacral inevitability and replaced it with a vision of law as the true sovereign. When Paine declared, “For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other,” he articulated a profoundly biblical intuition that authority stands beneath transcendent moral order.

This intuition did not arise in a vacuum. The reality of elected and representative government belongs to a Judeo-Christian inheritance that long predates the American founding. Scripture presents governance as a delegated trust. In Exodus 18, Moses receives counsel from Jethro to appoint “able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness” to judge lesser matters, thereby distributing authority through representative mediation. That structure preserved unity while respecting human limitation, a pattern that anticipates later republican arrangements. Authority flowed downward from God, through covenant, and outward among the people.

Similarly, Deuteronomy 1 describes Moses’ appointing leaders “from each of your tribes” to judge disputes, grounding governance in communal consent and moral qualification. These leaders arose from among the people rather than through foreign imposition, reinforcing the principle that legitimate authority emerges within covenantal bonds. Even Israel’s request for a king in Deuteronomy 17 came with strict limitations. The king must be chosen “from among your brethren,” must write for himself a copy of the law, and must read it all the days of his life. Scripture thus presents kingship as conditional stewardship.

Genesis 1:26-28 stands at the root of this vision, in which mankind receives dominion as image-bearers of God. This dominion confers responsibility over and above unfettered license to do as one wills. Human governance therefore participates in divine order while remaining accountable to it. Consequently, political authority requires moral citizens capable of self-restraint and virtue. Without such formation, liberty decays into coercion or disorder, a lesson repeatedly confirmed throughout history.

Further, Isaiah 33:22 presents God as “our judge,” “our lawgiver,” and “our king,” a triadic description that later thinkers recognized as a conceptual foundation for separated powers. While Scripture never outlines a constitution, it does articulate an anthropology and moral architecture from which such structures logically emerge. Power divided under law reflects humility before transcendent authority. Power concentrated within one will invites corruption.

These biblical convictions profoundly shaped the American founding generation. John Adams expressed this influence with clarity when he wrote, “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.” He then added, “I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

Here, Paine occupies a complex position. His later skepticism toward institutional Christianity often obscures his earlier reliance on biblical categories. Nevertheless, “Common Sense” repeatedly invokes divine law, providence, and moral accountability. Paine understood that political legitimacy requires more than procedural consent. It requires alignment with moral truth accessible to common conscience. His critique of monarchy resonated because it echoes biblical warnings against unchecked power. His rhetorical challenge remains striking: “But where, say some, is the King of America?” His answer followed without hesitation: “I’ll tell you, Friend, he reigns above.” Paine then offered one of the most theologically loaded political statements of the founding era when he proposed that America place its charter “on the divine law, the Word of God,” so that the world might know that “in America the law is king.”

This Judeo-Christian inheritance extended beyond Protestant political theory into the institutional life of the Catholic Church. The Church, founded by Jesus Christ, developed early forms of elected and representative governance long before modern democracies emerged. Early Christian communities elected bishops with participation from clergy and laity, reflecting communal discernment under apostolic authority. Over time, these practices matured in response to pastoral need and political pressure.

By the 11th century, papal elections underwent formal reform under Pope Nicholas II, who restricted elections to cardinal electors to protect ecclesial freedom from imperial interference. Later, Pope Gregory XV instituted secret ballots and supermajority requirements, ensuring elections governed by conscience that overrides coercion. These reforms reflected a theological conviction that authority requires restraint, accountability, and procedural integrity.

When the American founders debated independence, they drew on a civilizational memory shaped by Scripture and Church alike. Paine’s genius lay in translating this inheritance into language accessible to ordinary citizens without diluting its moral seriousness. He reminded colonists that “a government of our own is our natural right,” and he warned that resistance to independence meant “opening a door to eternal tyranny, by keeping vacant the seat of government.”

Elected and representative government emerges neither as Enlightenment novelty nor as secular improvisation. Instead, it reflects centuries of moral reasoning about authority, responsibility, and human nature. Societies tend to forget these origins while demanding the fruits they produce. Liberty without virtue remains fragile, and law without moral grounding devolves into administration.

This year, therefore, marks more than a publishing anniversary. It marks a moment when Judeo-Christian political wisdom found renewed civic expression, reminding history that self-government endures only where conscience remains formed.