Romans 13: 1-7  Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God's servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.  Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath, but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

This text seems so straightforward: whatever the governing authorities command is to be obeyed just because “those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”  Most specifically, the text clearly says that one is to pay taxes to those authorities.  As we might expect, careful exegesis raises questions about how to understand Paul’s command to the fledgling congregation in Rome. In addition, the clear evidence that Paul was martyred under the emperor Nero ought make us wonder how his death at the hands of the authorities relates to this text.  I set aside such exegesis and such wonderings for now in order to lift up how John Woolman and his friend John Churchman dealt with this text as they were led to resist the payment of taxes used for war.

In his Journal, Chapter V (Moulton edition), Woolman talks at length about his struggle with the question of paying taxes to the authorities when such taxes will be used in large part for war. He describes the steps he took when it became clear to him that he along with others were rightly led to not only petition the governing authorities for relief from paying such taxes, but also to refuse payment when relief was denied.  How did they get to that position? How did they work with this text from Romans?