American Enterprise Institute

Religion and the American Revolution

Religion and Republicanism in the American Revolution Notes

  1. DuPont Syle, ed., Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies (March 22, 1775) (Leach, Shewell & Sanborn, 1895), 23–24.
  2. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Bantam Dell, 2000), 2:355.
  3. See Jordan Taylor, “Circulation, Subscription, and Circumscription: The Pennsylvania Journal and Newspaper Readership in Revolutionary Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 146, no. 2 (2022): 144, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/861289; Joseph M. Adelman, Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763–1789 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), 33 (circulation), 143 (number of newspapers each year between 1760 and 1790), 172 (weekly publication). On pamphlets, see Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Belknap Press, 1992), 1–4; and Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 141–42.
  4. See Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (Oxford University Press, 2011), 3, 3n4. For a collection of sermons, see John Wingate Thornton, ed., The Pulpit of the American Revolution (Gould and Lincoln, 1860).
  5. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism. For a sampling, see Ellis Sandoz, ed., Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730–1805 (Liberty Fund, 1998).
  6. Rom. 13:1 (AV); and Acts 4:19 (AV).
  7. Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (Yale University Press, 2005).
  8. English Quakers popularized this term in the 17th century. See Ambrose Rigge, To All the Hireling Priests in England (Thomas Simmons, 1659).
  9. Archibald Alexander, Sermons of the Log College (Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1997), 81.
  10. Syle, ed., Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies, 24.
  11. See Nancy L. Rhoden, Revolutionary Anglicanism: The Colonial Church of England Clergy During the American Revolution (Macmillan, 1999), 18–26; Edwin Scott Gaustad, Historical Atlas of Religion in America (Harper & Row, 1976), 1–10; and Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (Yale University Press, 1972).
  12. Syle, ed., Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies.
  13. Milton Viorst, ed., The Great Documents of Western Civilization (Barnes and Noble, 1965), 97–98.
  14. Henry Gee and William John Hardy, eds., Documents Illustrative of English Church History (Macmillan, 1896), 442–58.
  15. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1:348.
  16. William Gordon, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the United States of America, Including an Account of the Late War; and of the Thirteen Colonies, from Their Origin to That Period. (Charles Dilly and James Buckland, 1788), 1:273–74, quoted in Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, xii.
  17. William Barlow, The Summe and Substance of the Conference: Which It Pleased His Excellent Majestie to Have with the Lords, Bishops, and Other of His Clergie at Hampton Court, January 14, 1603 (1604) (Bye and Law, 1804), 62.
  18. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism.
  19. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1:349.
  20. Gerald E. Frug, City Making: Building Communities Without Building Walls (Princeton University Press, 2001), 36–38.
  21. Alexander Hamilton et al., The Federalist Papers, ed. Lawrence Goldman (Oxford University Press, 2008), 192.
  22. Gospel Coalition, “Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1571),” https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/publication-online/thirty-nine-articles/.
  23. C. H. Davis, The English Church Canons of 1604 (H. Sweet, 1869), 12.
  24. The Book of Common Prayer as revised in 1661 was the version in use at the time of the Revolution. See, for instance, Charles W. Shields, ed., The Book of Common Prayer: As Amended by the Westminster Divines, A.D. 1661 (James S. Claxton Publishers, 1867).
  25. William Stevens Perry, The American Prayer-Book Revisions of 1785 and 1789 (Edward Borcherdt, 1893), 3.
  26. Proceedings of the Conventions of the Province of Maryland, Held at the City of Annapolis, in 1774, 1775 & 1776. (James Lucas & E. K. Deaver and Jonas Green, 1836), 78:156.
  27. Thomas Bradbury Chandler, “A Friendly Address to All Reasonable Americans, on the Subject of Our Political Confusions: In Which the Necessary Consequences of Violently Opposing the King’s Troops, and of a General Non-Importation Are Fairly Stated,” in The American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate, ed. Gordon S. Wood (Library of America, 2015), 2:309–10.
  28. John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Christian Classics Ethereal Library, n.d.), 3:695–708, 4:1213–40.
  29. Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton University Press, 1950), 1:677–79.
  30. Galatians 5:1 (AV).
  31. Jonathan Mayhew, A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers, eds. Sarah Morgan Smith et al. (D. Fowle and D. Gookin, 1750).
  32. John Witte Jr., The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 85.
  33. Harry S. Stout, “Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 34, no. 4 (1977): 519–41, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2936181; and Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (Yale University Press, 1989).
  34. Rhoden, Revolutionary Anglicanism, 89.
  35. Joseph Galloway, Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion (G. Wilkie, 1780), 54.
  36. Douglass Adair and John A. Schutz, eds., Peter Oliver’s Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View (Stanford University Press, 1961), 41.
  37. Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), 173. See also King George III, July 1, 1774, quoted by Thomas Hutchinson, Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, P. O. Hutchinson, ed. (Houghton, Mifflin, 1884; AMS Reprint, 1973), 1:168; and Benjamin Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Barbara B. Oberg (Yale University Press, 1990), 28:461–62.
  38. Johnson, A History of the American People, 172. Johnson does not explain why Virginia might be the exception, but it is noteworthy that in Virginia, the Anglican Church was most deeply dependent on local vestries. These represented the landed gentry, who had economic as well as ideological reasons for wanting independence.
  39. William G. McLoughlin, New England Dissent, 1630–1833: The Baptists and the Separation of Church and State (Harvard University Press, 1971), 1:560.
  40. Syles, ed., Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies.
  41. David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 (Liberty Fund, 1983), 4:146.