A religiously pluralistic colonial people could never unite against an empire with a state-mandated faith, could it?

Thomas Paine thought it could, and while not advocating for a religious society, he deployed explicitly Christian reasoning when he called for independence in Common Sense, the wildly popular pamphlet Paine published in 1776.

Nobody was likely to make Congregationalists, Baptists, Anglicans, Quakers, Catholics, and revivalists agree on religious doctrine, or clerical authority, or even religious tolerance. But after years of perceived abuse by British policy, they could agree on one thing:

God was the only king they needed in America.