Article XXIII — Of the Rulers of the United States of America

The Text

Article XXIII is the strangest article in a strange document, because it is the one John Wesley did not write — and the one whose existence flatly contradicts his own political convictions. It confesses that the elected officers of the United States “are the rulers of the United States of America… according to the… Constitution,” and that the nation is “a sovereign and independent nation, and ought not to be subject to any foreign jurisdiction.” Where the Thirty-Nine had Article XXXVII, “Of the Civil Magistrates,” opening with the Royal Supremacy (“The King’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm”), the Christmas Conference of 1784 put this. The article is not a deletion but a replacement, and it is the most visible political seam in the entire corpus: a church, in its constitutional standards, exchanging a king for a republic.

Translation Notes

“as the delegates of the people.” The decisive phrase, and pure 1784: authority described as delegated by the people, not descending from a crown by divine right. This is a different political theology from the Thirty-Nine’s Royal Supremacy — popular sovereignty, not monarchical headship — written into a church’s doctrinal standard.

“a sovereign and independent nation… not subject to any foreign jurisdiction.” “Foreign jurisdiction” carries a double charge: no British crown (the new political reality) and, echoing the replaced Article XXXVII’s anti-papal clause, no Roman jurisdiction. The article quietly keeps the old article’s independence point while transposing its object.

The replaced Article XXXVII. The most important note is again a seam, not a word. Wesley’s Articles deleted much; here the church did something it did nowhere else — it substituted. That makes Article XXIII the clearest proof of the document’s nature: a situated, edited, even amendable text, not a timeless oracle. It is also the one Article the church has since re-amended to track the actual constitutional order — uniquely time-bound by design.

Historical Context

The irony is the heart of this article and must be stated plainly. John Wesley was a high Tory and an opponent of American independence. His Calm Address to Our American Colonies (1775, substantially following Samuel Johnson) argued against the colonists’ claims; his Calm Address to the Inhabitants of England defended the crown; his political instinct was order, monarchy, and submission to “the powers that be.” Wesley did not write Article XXIII and would not have. The American preachers at the Christmas Conference, December 1784, wrote it — because the church Wesley was constituting now existed in a republic that had just defeated the king he defended, and the Royal Supremacy article was an impossibility on American soil.

This is why Article XXIII is so instructive about the whole document. The Articles are Wesley’s abridgment in twenty-four places; in this one place the American church exercised, on its own authority, exactly the freedom Article XXII grants — to “ordain, change, or abolish” what is not against God’s Word, for its own situation. The founder’s politics and the church’s constitution diverge here, openly, in the text. ¶104 records a further layer: the 1939 Uniting Conference added “Of the Duty of Christians to the Civil Authority” to interpret Article XXIII for Methodists in other nations — the article’s particularity required a supplement to make it portable ([[articles-of-religion/article-27-of-the-duty-of-christians-to-the-civil-authority]]).

Lines of Interpretation

The disputed question: what is the theological status of an article about a particular nation’s polity in a confession of faith?

Reformed

Tradition: the lesser magistrate; covenantal political theology; Romans 13

The Reformed tradition has a developed theology of civil authority — ordained by God, exercised through magistrates, resistant to tyranny via “lesser magistrates.” Article XXIII’s “delegates of the people” fits the Reformed/republican lineage better than the Thirty-Nine’s Royal Supremacy did.

Strengths

• Supplies a real political theology for an article that states bare fact
• The “delegated authority” frame has Reformed-covenantal depth

Weaknesses

• The article itself articulates almost no theology; importing the Reformed system over-reads it
• “Lesser magistrate” resistance theory is not in the text and sits oddly with the deference Wesley elsewhere taught

Anglican

Tradition: the replaced Royal Supremacy; establishment

The Anglican lens shows what was lost and changed: the Thirty-Nine bound church and crown; Article XXIII presupposes disestablishment — a church with no sovereign as its earthly head. This is a genuinely different ecclesial-political settlement.

Strengths

• Names the magnitude of the change honestly — not a tweak but a new church-state relation
• Explains why the substitution, not mere deletion, was necessary

Weaknesses

• Can read the change as loss rather than as the appropriate disestablished freedom
• The English frame must be set aside, not just adjusted, for the American article to make sense

Anabaptist

Tradition: the church distinct from the nation

The believers’-church tradition is most alert to the danger of Article XXIII: a confession of faith that names and blesses a particular nation risks fusing church and country. Its caution is exactly what the 1939 supplement and modern readings try to address.

Strengths

• Rightly flags the risk of civil religion latent in a national article
• Keeps the church’s identity prior to and distinct from the polity

Weaknesses

• The article is descriptive (these are the rulers) more than doxological; the fusion danger is real but not the article’s intent
• Total separation underplays the legitimate Christian duty toward lawful authority (Romans 13) the article assumes

Modern / Ecumenical

Tradition: the global church; the 1939 supplement

For a now-worldwide United Methodist Church, an article about one nation’s rulers is plainly parochial; the 1939 “Of the Duty of Christians to the Civil Authority” globalizes its principle — obedience to lawful authority wherever one lives.

Strengths

• Honest that a U.S.-specific article cannot be a universal confession
• The supplement converts a parochial article into a portable principle

Weaknesses

• The supplement is itself non-constitutional (1939, legislative) — a patch on a patch
• “Obey the powers that be” globalized needs the prophetic limit (nothing against God’s Word) or it sacralizes any regime

Wesleyan Voice

The Wesleyan voice here is, uniquely, the voice of a contradiction the church chose to live with, and that is the lesson. Wesley’s own political theology was order and submission: in the Calm Address tracts he opposed American independence and defended the crown; his instinct toward “the powers that be” was obedience (the very text the 1939 supplement, [[articles-of-religion/article-27-of-the-duty-of-christians-to-the-civil-authority]], would quote). Yet the church he constituted placed in its constitutional standards an article that confesses precisely the American sovereignty he had argued against. The Wesleyan datum is not a teaching of Wesley’s; it is the spectacle of a church exercising, under Article XXII, the freedom to be situated in its own time and place even against its founder’s politics.

That is exactly why Article XXIII belongs in this commentary read as the corpus has read every seam — the Athanasian struck, the slave clause added, “London” become “Europe.” Each seam says: this is a living, edited, situated text, handled by a church in history, not a monument. Article XXIII is the most dramatic instance because here the church edited against the grain of its own founder. The Wesleyan reception, then, is not “Wesley taught American democracy” (he did not) but the deeper Wesleyan point his whole abridgment embodies: doctrinal standards are received and edited under Scripture for edification, and a church may, by common authority, order its confession to its actual situation — even when that means the founder’s king is gone and the founder’s politics with him.

The prophetic limit is the necessary Wesleyan addendum, supplied by the rest of the document. Article XXIII names rulers as lawful; it does not sacralize them. The General Rules’ first rule — “do no harm… especially that which is most generally practiced” ([[general-rules/the-catalog-of-harms]]) — and the deleted-slave- clause history are the standing reminder that a church which names its nation’s rulers must also, on its own constitution, judge its nation’s “most generally practiced” evils. Article XXIII without the General Rules’ prophetic edge is civil religion; held with it, it is honest citizenship under a higher rule.

Hymnody

There is, fittingly, almost no Wesleyan hymnody of nation; the tradition’s political hymnody is eschatological, not patriotic — “Rejoice, the Lord is King!”, “Lo! he comes with clouds descending” — the rule sung is Christ’s, not Caesar’s or Congress’s. That near-silence is itself the right gloss on Article XXIII: the church acknowledges the lawful rulers in its standards and reserves its songs for the King who is coming. Where national hymns enter Methodist use, the tradition’s instinct (and the General Rules’ prophetic clause) is to keep them subordinate to the doxology, never to confuse the delegated rulers of a sovereign nation with the Sovereign.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

The first pastoral use is honesty about the seam. Article XXIII is the perfect teaching text for what this whole document is: not a timeless oracle but a confession a church edited, replaced, and re-amended in history — even against its founder’s own politics. Preached so, it inoculates a congregation against both biblicist- literalist treatment of the Articles and the assumption that changing a standard is faithlessness. The church has always handled this text; Article XXIII proves it in the open.

The second use is the prophetic limit against civil religion. The article names lawful rulers; it does not bless every act of the state. Pastorally, Article XXIII must always be preached with the General Rules’ “do no harm, especially that which is most generally practiced” and the memory of the slavery clause: a church that names its nation in its constitution is the more bound, not less, to judge that nation by the gospel. The article is honest citizenship; it is not a flag in the chancel.

The third use is global humility. For a worldwide church, this U.S.-specific article and its 1939 supplement teach that no nation’s order is the gospel’s order. The pastoral application — especially where Methodists live under very different governments — is the supplement’s principle held under Scripture’s limit: honor lawful authority, obey for conscience’ sake, and never beyond “nothing… against God’s Word.”

Further Reading

• Romans 13:1–7; 1 Peter 2:13–17; Acts 5:29 (“we ought to obey God rather than men”) — the authority and its limit
• Thirty-Nine Articles, Article XXXVII (1571, “Of the Civil Magistrates,” the Royal Supremacy) — the replaced article
• John Wesley, A Calm Address to Our American Colonies (1775); A Calm Address to the Inhabitants of England; Thoughts Concerning the Origin of Power — the founder’s Tory politics, against which the church wrote this article
• The minutes of the Christmas Conference (December 1784) — the article’s actual authors
• The 1939 supplement that globalizes it: [[articles-of-religion/article-27-of-the-duty-of-christians-to-the-civil-authority]]
• The freedom that authorized the replacement: [[articles-of-religion/article-22-of-the-rites-and-ceremonies-of-churches]]
• The prophetic limit on naming one’s nation: [[general-rules/the-catalog-of-harms]]