Similarly, in pre-Revolutionary America, when Britain was seen as the “parent country” (Paine 4), Thomas Paine used religious rhetoric in an attempt to awaken in the Americans the value of independence. Advocating the needlessness of United American colonies to show allegiance to the British, Paine alludes to the lack of divine sanction in the England and America’s “King and subject” relationship which was never “the design of heaven” (Paine 5). Rather, he presents an alternative vision of the Almighty for Americans revealing America as a place where “the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted” (Paine __), drawing the morally right act of him encouraging American citizens to claim for independence. Paine’s art of persuasion