Biblical interpretation and the American Revolution

A recent piece in Christianity Today entitled Preaching Liberty to the Colonists left me thinking. Here are a few of the article's conclusions:

Three overarching patterns emerge from Byrd's study that should trouble Christian readers. First, the influence of political ideology and historical circumstance in shaping the colonists' interpretation of Scripture is striking. Traced to its roots, the colonists' conviction that civil liberty is a God-given right owed more to the Enlightenment than to orthodox Christian teaching, and yet the belief strongly informed how colonists understood the Word of God. Reading the Scripture through the lens of republican ideology, they discovered "a patriotic Bible" perfect for promoting "patriotic zeal."
Second, the readiness with which Christian advocates of independence sanctified violence is disturbing. "Colonial preachers did not shy away from biblical violence," Byrd finds. "They embraced it, almost celebrated it, even in its most graphic forms."
Third, and most ominously, the evidence suggests that the way patriotic ministers portrayed the military conflict with Britain morphed rapidly from merely a "just war"—a war originated for a morally defensible cause and fought according to moral criteria—into a "sacred" or "holy war"—a struggle "executed with divine vengeance upon the minions of Satan." Patriotism and Christianity had become inseparable, almost indistinguishable.

Made me think of (a) modern American politics, (b) the extent to which we're all products of our own time, and (c) "jihad".