Religion helped fuel the American Revolution, according a special Library of Congress “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic” article (available on the Internet).
Records state that many settlers, wanting to practice their faith freely, fled Europe to live in 17th century America.
The New England colonies — New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland — were conceived “as plantations of religion,” the Library of Congress (LOC) report states. Some settlers came for secular reasons, but a majority “left Europe to worship God in the way they believed to be correct.” They supported leaders’ efforts to create a “holy experiment” or a “city on a hill” — an image former President Ronald Reagan alluded to.
Virginia and some other colonies, planned as commercial ventures, reaped support from many entrepreneurs who considered themselves “militant Protestants” working for church successes.
The religious persecution that drove settlers from Europe to North American colonies “sprang from the conviction, held by Protestants and Catholics alike, that uniformity of religion must exist in any given society. This conviction rested on the belief that there was one true religion and that it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, in the interest of saving the souls of its citizens.”
John Ogilvie, a Jesuit, was hanged by a Scottish court in Glasgow on March 10, 1615. England renounced religious persecution in 1689, but persecution persisted on the European continent.
The Catholic ruler of Salzburg, Austria, on Oct. 31, 1731, expelled as many as 20,000 Lutherans from his principality. Given eight days to leave their homes, many refugees froze to death, but some reached London and sailed to Georgia in North America.
Puritans, English Protestants who wanted to cleanse the Church of England of Roman Catholic residue, began immigrating to America as early as 1630.
“Religion played a major role in the American Revolution by offering a moral sanction for opposition to the British — an assurance to the average American that revolution was justified in the sight of God,” says the LOC report.
One scholar observed, “By turning colonial resistance into a righteous cause, and by crying the message to all ranks in all parts of the colonies, ministers did the work of secular radicalism and did it better.”
Some ministers served as American Revolution military chaplains. Some served as “penmen for committees of correspondence, as members of legislatures…Some even took up arms, leading Continental troops in battle.” Many Revolution era ministers argued that war against Britain was “approved by God.”
Clergyman Peter Muhlenberg, a Lutheran turned Anglican, concluded a January 1776 sermon to his congregation in Woodstock, Va. and threw off his clerical robes to reveal the uniform of a Virginia militia officer.
James Caldwell, a Presbyterian chaplain serving at the battle of Springfield, New Jersey, on June 23, 1780, reportedly dashed into a nearby Presbyterian church when his company ran out of wadding for their firearms, scooped up Watts hymnals, gave them to the troops and shouted, “Put Watts into them, boys!”
Perhaps Caldwell’s instructions reflect church-state interaction during the American Revolution.
Steve Crain may be reached at crain207@earthlink.net.
