RELIGION WAS CENTRAL TO the outbreak and course of the Revolu- tionary War. It was not quite a religious war, though a religious war raged within it as colonists drew battle lines with a cross as well as a sword. Overall, though there were significant exceptions, religious controversies burned brightest of all among the proponents of independence. Rebellious sentiment clustered within dissenting Protestant churches that resented London’s increasingly interventionist manner of ruling the colonies, especially on questions of territorial expansion, taxation, and religious authority. Most crucially, faith lay at the heart of the ideals and interests that would give shape to a new American style of foreign relations. The clashes that resulted from the long push for independence convinced the new Americans that they, and they alone, were destined to spread the blessings of Protestant liberty far beyond their own borders.
Ironically, the Peace of Paris in 1763 triggered strife between colonists and Britain even as it brought an end to the Seven Years’ War. Defeat in the war stimulated a great awakening of sorts among several Indian tribes of the Great Lakes region. Led by a Delaware prophet named Neolin, the Indian religious revival spread an empowering message that the Great Spirit had bequeathed the land to the Indians and that the Europeans had stolen it from them. In turn, Neolin’s revival helped fuel Pontiac’s Rebellion, a widespread revolt that caught the British authorities and colonial settlers completely off-guard. Aided by the element of surprise and driven on by their own visions of divine glory, Pontiac and his followers captured several British forts along the Great Lakes and killed over two thousand colonists.1
Rather than launch a new major war against a broad alliance of Indians, British authorities issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which drew a sharp red line on the map of British North America all the way down the spine of the Appalachian mountains from Maine to Georgia’s southern border with Florida, beyond which colonial settlement was prohibited. But while the Proclamation Line appeased the Indians, it infuriated the American colonists, who coveted the vast expanses of “unused” arable land beyond the mountains. Echoing a long line of thought descending from Samuel Purchas and the Puritans, Charles-Jeffrey Smith, a Long Island evangelist, spoke for many in looking forward to “that glorious Day … when the Wilderness shall blossom as a Rose, & the Tawny Inhabitants thereof bow to the Scepter of King Jesus.” Rebellion, mostly in the backcountry, was not long in coming, and it assumed a religious tone that mirrored socioeconomic divisions: rough-edged, New Light, frontier Presbyterianism fighting for its liberties against the domineering, genteel Anglicanism of royal colonial officials. In one gruesome episode in Pennsylvania in 1763, a largely Presbyterian mob going by the name of the Paxton Boys murdered dozens of Indians in the name, as one Thomas Barton put it, of “our pure Protestant faith, our equitable Laws, and our sacred Liberties.” They then marched from the interior to Philadelphia, where they planned to protest the imposition of new taxes and prohibition on settling new land by killing off the hundreds of Indians who had fled and sought refuge in the city. Only the opposition of Quakers and Moravians, and the timely intervention of Benjamin Franklin, averted an even greater massacre. A similar revolt erupted in the Carolina backcountry, where the Regulator movement pitted colonial Presbyterians against governing Anglicans.2
At the same time, the Church of England exacerbated colonial fears by launching a new campaign to convert the Indians to Christ through its missionary arm, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). To many colonists, especially the large numbers of Presbyterians, Baptists, and Congregationalists who wanted to move inland from New England, Pennsylvania, and the South, the SPG was simply out to entrench the property holdings of the Church of England at their expense. Samuel Adams, James Otis, and John Hancock, three Bostonians who would lead the charge for independence, began their resistance to British authority by forming a committee in 1762 to promote Congregationalist missionaries to compete with those of the dreaded SPG. Even more outrageous were the SPG’s efforts, officially encouraged, to convert souls to Anglicanism among the colonists—including those who already belonged to other Protestant denominations, and including in places where few if any Indians lived, such as Boston and Cambridge. In its pretensions to dominate territory, faith, and identity, the Church of England was fast beginning to replace the Vatican in the minds of colonists as the ultimate source of arbitrary government. The so-called “Bishops Plot,” when the Church announced it would send bishops to America for the first time in colonial history, fanned these flames even higher.3
The Stamp Act, introduced without consultation in 1765 to make the colonists pay for an expensive global war from which they had singularly benefited, further heightened the transatlantic argument over the nature of liberty. The Stamp Act confirmed what the colonists had already suspected: London was the new Rome. By acting in such an arbitrary, unrepresentative manner, the British government had shown itself to be as fond of tyranny and as contemptuous of liberty as was the Catholic Church. And as they did during the Bishops Plot, the clergy took the lead in shaping opposition to the Stamp Act. New England’s ministers attacked the Stamp Act with a righteous fury they had previously saved for Catholic priests and Indian warriors. Typical was an August 1765 sermon by Jonathan Mayhew, scourge of Anglicanism, that touched off a wave of mob violence in Boston resulting in the destruction of Deputy Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s home. And the clergy did more than simply preach. In Boston, the Reverends Charles Chauncy and Samuel Cooper played important, clandestine roles in setting up the Sons of Liberty; in Lyme, Connecticut, Reverend Stephen Johnson did the same. This connection to the clergy explains the Sons of Liberty’s millennial rhetoric, based on John’s visions in the Book of Revelation, that the Stamp Act had been imposed upon the colonists by “monsters in the shape of men, who under a pretence of governing and protecting mankind, have enslaved them.”4
Yet another eminent clergyman, none other than George Whitefield, offered his services to the anti–Stamp Act resistance. Through a mutual friend, Whitefield corresponded with Sam Adams, the driving force behind the Sons of Liberty; both men, it turned out, believed in the inseparability of political and religious liberty, and both were eager to apply Whitefield’s reputation and skills to the defense of colonial liberties. Now living in England, the aging Whitefield had retained his affection for the American colonies that had once made him among the most famous men in the Atlantic world. Despite his British nationality and Anglican faith, Whitefield did not hesitate to link the arbitrary power of Catholicism that he had long warned about with the imperious authority of Parliament and the Church of England. Neither did Adams, who argued that the “Religion and public liberty of a People are intimately connected … and therefore rise and fall together.” On a more tactical level, Adams also wanted to take advantage of Whitefield’s contacts in Britain to advance the American case. And though the “Great Itinerant” would have disapproved of the use of violence, in an important way Adams was in fact following in Whitefield’s footsteps. Before Whitefield and the Great Awakening, large outdoor rallies had been rare in colonial America. Through the 1740s, Whitefield pioneered and perfected the art of holding a mass revival, down to its publicity and organization, and it was this skill that Adams emulated. According to the historian Gary Nash, this approach, combined with Adams’s fiery rhetoric and extremist tactics and the unusual degree of clerical consensus supporting the Patriot cause in Boston, enabled Adams “to turn the resistance movement into a kind of religious crusade.”5
It was against this backdrop of unwanted bishops and unwarranted taxes that a young Boston lawyer, John Adams, wrote his first revolutionary tract. The rather ungainly titled Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, published in six serialized parts in Boston newspapers between May and October 1765, laid out the historical drama of the English struggle for freedom against the “Lust of Tyrants” and “Arbitrary Government.” In a drama that unfolded across the centuries, Adams argued that it was eventually “this great struggle, that peopled America.” The Puritans guarded their religious liberty zealously, but it “was not religion alone, as is commonly supposed,” that made them choose exile over conformity but “a love of universal Liberty … Tyranny in every form, shape, and appearance was their disdain, and abhorrence.” The looming specter of the Bishops Plot, and its threat to both civil and religious liberty, is not difficult to detect. Adams warned Americans about the “Confederacy between the two Systems of Tyrany”—church and state, especially working in tandem—that would see government officials “contribute every Thing in their Power to maintain the Ascendancy of the Priesthood” and the clergy “employ that ascendancy over the Consciences of the People, in impressing on their Minds a blind, implicit obedience to civil Magistracy.” It was up to the leaders of the colony, the lawyers and educators especially, to lead the charge against tyranny. And, Adams declared, the colonial clergy had a special role to play as well: “Let the pulpit resound with the doctrines and sentiments of religious liberty. Let us hear the danger of thraldom to our consciences, from ignorance, extream poverty and dependance, in short from civil and political slavery … God almighty has promulgated from heaven, liberty, peace, and good-will to man!” Adams, we shall see, went on to become one of the founders of American diplomacy, and he would use these ideas of civil and religious liberty when forging a new doctrine of U.S. foreign policy.6
Adams’s dissent reflected another, related fear of Anglican bishops, one that went to the heart of the ideas, just then emerging, about liberty and republicanism that would drive the colonists’ revolutionary fervor and shape their subsequent political union. Drawing upon two different (and not necessarily compatible) traditions of political thought on republicanism—classical and Renaissance on one hand, more recent liberal on the other—Patriot leaders believed that a republic could only succeed if it was led by enlightened rulers whose authority stemmed from the consent of the governed. But this begged the question: how would one tell if leaders were properly enlightened? The answer, which Patriot thinkers again drew from the political thought of ages past, was virtue: leaders needed to be virtuous, free from corruption, and attuned to the needs and desires of the people. And, a consensus felt, one of the best sources of virtue was Christianity in general, and Protestantism in particular. A leader who lacked virtue—and to the colonists, it was obvious this applied to Anglican clergy and British officials—was inherently corrupt, selfish, and aggressive, and an obvious danger to the peace.7
IN 1774, AS the colonies approached an open break with the mother country, Thomas Bradbury Chandler, a prominent Anglican minister from New Jersey, issued a “friendly” plea to “all reasonable Americans.” Citing a verse from Romans 13, in which Paul declared that even the tyrannical rule of Roman Emperor Nero deserved compliance and respect, Chandler argued that the colonists “are bound, by the laws of Heaven and Earth, not to behave undutifully.” Independence would not guarantee liberty but unleash chaos and tyranny. “The bands of society would be dissolved, the harmony of the world confounded, and the order of nature subverted,” Chandler warned, “if reverence, respect, and obedience might be refused to those whom the constitution has vested with the highest authority.” British Anglicanism, it seemed, was not especially well suited to American republicanism.8
As Chandler’s plea illustrates, not everyone agreed that God Almighty smiled upon the cause of independence. Many colonists—estimates range between a fifth and a third—remained loyal to British rule. Many of these Loyalists fled the American colonies, moving north to Canada, south to other British colonies in the Caribbean, or back to Great Britain itself. Some were royal tax collectors or port and customs authorities; others were officials in the imperial bureaucracy. But naturally, a large percentage of Loyalists were Anglicans who had not only pledged allegiance to King George III but had also sworn an oath of fealty to the Church of England. Many Anglican Loyalists joined other Tory refugees on their flight into exile, forever changing the religious, cultural, and political complexion of Canada as well as America. But many others remained—under the threat of harassment, torture, and even death—to argue the British case to their fellow Americans. Yet few Patriots felt they could trust the elitist pretensions of the Church of England and its Loyalist adherents. Anglicans, it was said, “prefer basking in the sunshine of British royalty and court favour, to the simple practice of the pure religion of their forefathers.”9
Patriots might be suspicious, but loyalty was a matter of conscience to Anglican Tories, and a matter of faith. Not only had they sworn an oath to King and Crown, they also fervently believed that monarchical government was the best way of ordering society. They feared chaos and disorder, and in the Sons of Liberty they saw the sovereignty of the people as little more than the tyranny of mob violence. Much of this view was socially conditioned, the product of habits, traditions, and a cherished history of providing for prosperity and good government. But much of it was also based in the Anglican reading of scripture. Most ministers in the Church of England believed that monarchical rule was preferable to republicanism because the Bible commanded submission to authority. They envisioned society in almost feudalistic terms, as an organic whole that prospered and suffered together regardless of an individual’s wealth or social standing. They had a communalistic view of society that was incompatible with the individualistic republicanism of Patriot ideology. Anarchy was the only substitute for deference to rulers; of the two, Anglicans strongly preferred the stability assured by deference.10
Methodism, soon to be America’s largest Protestant denomination but still a new, unnamed outgrowth of reformed Anglicanism in 1775, also stood fast with the mother church and country. In England, John Wesley, John Fletcher, and other Methodist leaders spoke out against revolution and appealed for imperial unity. Wesley mocked the Patriots’ melodramatic and purely metaphorical claims of being “enslaved” by British “tyranny” by pointing out the awkward fact that the colonists, including several Patriot leaders, owned actual African slaves. Wesley also observed that even as an Englishman, living in England, he too was denied the vote and was thus being taxed without representation. In Virginia, where revivalistic Methodism exploded in popularity just as the Revolution was breaking out, early Methodists heeded their founder’s call. Some could not bear to break with the Church of England; others were pacifists who refused to countenance the use of force. However, Methodist Loyalists were still a small fraction of the overall population and did not make much of an impact on the course of revolution, and most of their leaders, mainly English missionaries, returned to Britain or moved to Canada when it was clear that war was coming.11
While Methodist pacifism was often augmented by residual loyalty to the Church of England, the motives of the peace churches—most prominently the Society of Friends, or Quakers, but also various German Pietist sects, such as the Moravians—were not so mixed. Both groups were concentrated mostly in Pennsylvania, but Quakers could be found throughout the colonies, especially in the South. Some Quakers were indeed motivated by loyalty to the Crown, and many of the Germans harbored vestigial gratitude to the British for sheltering them from the persecutions of the Old World. Many other Quakers defied their coreligionists and openly supported the Patriots (and were expelled from the Society for doing so); some, such as General Nathanael Greene, even took up arms against the British. But for most Quakers, pacifism rather than politics established their firm neutrality. Grounding their pacifism in scripture, especially the New Testament, they argued that no political end could ever be justified or achieved through violent means. Like the Anglicans and Methodists, Quakers also adhered to the Bible’s injunction that Christians had a duty to respect and obey civil authority. Most colonial governments tolerated pacifism by respecting it as a form of conscientious objection. But tolerance extended only as far as actual military service, and so most colonial governments also demanded that pacifists compensate by paying a tax that would go toward military service. Quakers refused to abide by such an obvious breach of their Christian pacifist creed, and many served prison time for their stand. Other pacifist sects, such as the Mennonites, Schwenkfelders, and Dunkers, were extremely pious, grateful to the British, and thus even more consistently strident in their pacifist witness. But their small numbers were confined to a few isolated pockets of Pennsylvania and Delaware and did not pose any threat to either the Patriots or the British.12
Perhaps the most interesting case is that of the Moravians, a German sect who had arrived from Saxony in the 1730s and quickly adapted to colonial American life better than any other religious refugees from middle Europe. The Moravians embraced an early form of capitalism and prospered as a result. As we saw during the Seven Years’ War, they also were willing to compromise their pacifism and bear arms in the name of self-defense. Many sympathized with the Patriots’ Whig ideology and calls for liberty from British oppression. Yet their pacifism remained strong nonetheless, and many Moravians were reluctant to break openly with the British. Ambivalence aside, the examples of the Anglicans, Quakers, Methodists, and Moravians illustrate just how divisive the forces of revolution could be. American devotion did not always lead to American Revolution.13
FAITH MAY HAVE acted as a powerful motivator to people on both sides of the conflict, but on balance it favored the Patriots. While most but not all Anglicans, Quakers, and Moravians opposed violent rebellion against British rule, other denominations threw their weight behind the Patriot cause. Most enthusiastic were the dissenting denominations—such as Presbyterianism and Congregationalism—and their spin-offs, such as Unitarianism—that for a decade had already been providing much of the ideological and moral propulsion of the anti-British insurgency. Baptists, be they Separatists or moderates, also by and large favored independence as a means to stimulate a revival and achieve their own religious liberty through it. Many things united these denominations, but three in particular stand out: in religion, their hostility to ecclesiastical hierarchy and liturgical artifice (other than their own, of course); in politics, their libertarian outlook; and in both, their sturdy antiauthoritarianism and localism, grounded in the belief that sovereignty should come from the people rather than distant rulers. In both faith and life, then, they preferred autonomy to external control.14
Yet even within these confines, religion did not decide whether a colonist supported or opposed the Revolution. Every denomination suffered a schism between Patriots and Loyalists. Presbyterians and Congregationalists were overwhelmingly Patriotic, but in the Carolina and New England backcountries rural folk harbored lingering distrust of the elite merchants and urbanites who were pushing hardest for independence. Similarly, Baptists had endured harsh treatment for dissenting from the established (and fiercely Patriotic) Congregational churches in Connecticut and Massachusetts. And although Anglicans were by and large Loyalists behind the Crown and Church of England, many of them supported the Revolutionary cause, especially in the South. Indeed, if Anglicans had united as one behind the king, the Revolution would have been deprived of the services of George Washington and Patrick Henry.15
Still, many more Anglicans supported the Patriots than Presbyterians and Congregationalists supported the British. Despite exceptions, then, in general the cause of independence enjoyed a preponderance of religious backing. Though they are a crude measurement, these denominational generalizations largely held. And within them, the clergy served an extremely important function. During the divisive upheaval of the Revolutionary era, religion acted as a critical social bond. Unity, even consensus, was hard to find in any colony, but on the whole religious support for independence was a vital piece of the puzzle of a developing “American” worldview and way of warfare. This was the clergy’s message. Though they did no fighting, they were a vital resource. Unlike any other cohort or profession in society—certainly not the bulk of the Patriot leadership—the clergy could command a vast, captive audience on a weekly basis (and sometimes more often). While the Patriot leaders drew on support from the cities and the aristocratic rural gentry, the clergy’s audience cut across almost all forms of identity: the backcountry as well as the coast, villages and farms as well as cities, poor as well as rich. Even though some churches remained silent—most notably the Lutherans of backcountry Pennsylvania—in general, support for the Patriots drew on nearly all Protestant denominations, too, including among Anglicans.16
Above all, the clergy were trusted as interpreters of events, both spiritual and earthly, theological and political. This was an awesome responsibility that in wartime carried tremendous social and political power. Wars are inherently destructive and divisive events, even when they go well. Even the most consensual wars in American history have not been as free of tensions or factions as people care to recall after victory, and the Revolutionary War, one of the most divisive in American history, was certainly no different. The Patriots had set themselves an incredibly difficult undertaking, and victory was uncertain until very late in the war. Military stalemate and a collapsing economy caused many to question whether their goal was worth the sacrifice. Though a war-weary people remained committed to the cause, often morale dipped and confidence plummeted during the war’s precarious moments. The clergy’s widely respected role as interpreters of the day’s movements, people, and events enabled them to maintain support for the Patriots at moments when the excessively rational or frightened might have abandoned the cause.17
Perhaps most important, the clergy also functioned as political advocates during the Revolution. Thus they not only recruited people and maintained their overall morale, they also argued the Patriot case and mobilized popular opinion behind it. Loyalists and royal officials complained bitterly of the powerful “black regiment” of pro-Patriot clergy who manipulated gullible colonists into supporting independence. “It is your G–d damned Religion of this Country that ruins the Country,” a British officer shrieked at a Patriot minister. “Damn your Religion.” Ambrose Serle, aide to a British officer, relayed a similarly frustrated message to the Earl of Dartmouth: “Your Lordship can scarcely conceive, what Fury the Discourses of some mad Preachers have created in this Country.” Combining covenant theology with the Whig liberalism of John Locke, the “black regiment” absolved the faithful from their obligation to obey king and Parliament since these rulers had imposed despotism upon the colonies. Some joined Reverend Jonathan Edwards Jr., son of the famous theologian and himself a pastor in New Haven, in urging the colonists to take up armed resistance to the British. Against John Wesley’s critique of slavery, Reverend Samuel Hopkins promised that independence would lead to moral uplift, which in turn would sweep away America’s enslavement of blacks as it was demolishing Britain’s enslavement of the colonies.18
Other clergy mobilized colonial women—who comprised 70 percent of all churchgoers—in nonimportation boycotts and home manufacturing drives that were vital to the colonial economy as Patriots attempted to shut down trade with Britain; in turn, these same women became revolutionary leaders within their own households, motivating husbands and sons who might otherwise have been indifferent. Abigail Adams was one such woman: her arguments in favor of revolution had as much to do with her minister father’s preaching as they did her husband’s Whig politics. Continuing their work from the opposition to the Stamp Act and Bishops Plot, America’s “mad Preachers” spread a gospel of religious and political liberty throughout the colonies. By 1770, they were even among the first to call for outright separation from Great Britain. It was an indispensable contribution to the cause of independence.19
Chaplains performed similar functions in the Continental Army. Their ability to sustain morale under arduous conditions and their willingness to supplement the cause of Christ with the cause of America ensured them an important role in the army. In this they needed simply to carry on the work of civilian ministry, as many who volunteered for duty in the Continental Army believed they were serving simultaneously in two armies: Christ’s and America’s. Chaplains constantly stressed these links between religion and nation and proclaimed that patriotism was an integral part of true Christianity. Many if not most of the militiamen and army troops were not professional soldiers and were thus unused to killing. Chaplains helped them overcome this morally disquieting but mandatory task by emphasizing that the Americans fought, in the words of a Baptist chaplain, a “defensive war in a just cause sinless.” They fought for self-protection and fundamental rights, not plunder or unnecessary glory. More immediately, faith provided comfort during grueling overland marches, chronic food shortages, and the miserable conditions of camp. It also enabled chaplains and officers to sustain the inexperienced Continental Army soldiers’ courage in battle against an enemy with experience, expertise, and superior military technology. Soldiers preferred warm, informal sermons to didactic, scholarly treatises, which made evangelical preachers especially popular and effective. George Washington appreciated the chaplains’ contributions to maintaining discipline and morale and, as commander-in-chief of the American forces, made regular chapel services mandatory for both officers and soldiers. In the dark days of September 1777, the Continental Congress expressed a similar appreciation by appropriating scarce funds to purchase twenty thousand Bibles for the army.20
As a military tactician, Washington was good; as a leader of men and reader of human nature, he was great. Despite his own lukewarm, formless faith and aversion to institutional religion, Washington realized that many of his troops required the comforts of religious belief. Faith provided reassurance to the Continental Army’s mostly amateur soldiers, particularly those who were entering battle for the first time in their lives. “If it is my fate to survive this action, I shall; if otherwise, the Lord’s will must be done,” Major John Jones wrote his wife in October 1779. “Every soldier and soldier’s wife should religiously believe in predestination.” When the army’s morale plummeted as it faced seemingly insurmountable odds and suffered through dwindling food and supplies and dreadful weather, many turned to religion. The confessions of a young corporal were typical: “I find God has a Remnant in this Depraved and Degenerated and gloomy time.” Without such inner belief, so common among the American colonists, it is uncertain whether the Americans would have continued to press for what must have seemed like an improbable victory.21
Popular among people, soldiers, and clergy was the use of providential self-confidence and millennial expectation in interpreting the great events that unfolded before them. With varying degrees of radicalism, and with New England leading the way, belief in a Revolutionary millennium flourished throughout colonies. Many shared the conceit that theirs was the era in which the end times, and most joyously Christ’s return to earth, were approaching, and that resistance to British rule was an important sign of the millennium’s unfolding. The millennium was above all a battle between Christ and the Antichrist, between good and evil, and thus provided a worldview in which the struggle against a corrupt, tyrannical British monarch—who was betraying the ancient principles of English liberty, no less—fit particularly well. It was a terrifying vision, to be sure, because it foretold imminent death and destruction. But it was also comforting because it gave the colonists reassurance that theirs was the cause that would ultimately prevail; when the battles had finished, it was they who would remain to build a better society. Even the radicalism of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense—“We have it in our power to begin the world over again”—must be read in light of the end-of-history millennialism that pervaded the Revolutionary era.22
While distinct from millennialism, providentialism provided a similar fillip to the Revolution. Just as earlier generations of American colonists had believed they were being guided and protected by the hand of God, so too did many Patriots act with confidence in the knowledge that they were safely in pursuit of an undeniable destiny. Belief in providence provided colonists with an impressive degree of self-confidence in their otherwise implausible challenge to the world’s mightiest military and economic power because it fostered, in the words of historian Charles Royster, “a unique enthusiasm that encouraged Americans to defy rational calculations of the probability of success.” As both a believer in the supremacy of a heavenly creator and a military commander who needed to maintain the morale of his troops in their fight against the odds, Washington understood this well. During the war, he made several appeals to providence to intervene on America’s behalf. Using his General Orders of May 1778 to celebrate the announcement of the alliance with France, Washington proclaimed: “It having pleased the Almighty ruler of the Universe propitiously to defend the Cause of the United American-States … it becomes us to set apart a day for gratefully acknowledging the divine Goodness & celebrating the important Event which we owe to his benign Interposition.” Or as a number of preachers asked during the war, “If God be with us, who can be against us?” It took a brave soul to answer in the negative. With such innate self-belief, who among the Americans could doubt their ultimate victory? And after victory, who would deny them their mission to the rest of the fallen world?23