In 1775, Edmund Burke spoke of the colonists who settled in American as being not only Englishmen, but "Protestants...of that kind which is most adverse to all implicit subjection of mind and opinion." Unlike many of his countrymen, he understood that "certain theological convictions had definite political implications." Before the eighteenth century had closed, the truthfulness of that observation would be confirmed by a bloody war of Revolution.

The Predisposition Against Rebellion

In the Old Testament, God was all considered to be the real ruler of the nation of Israel even when an earthy king sat on her throne. This view was largely appropriated by Calvinism. If God is all omniscient (all knowing), and all omnipotent (all-powerful), then it follows that a king or government is in power only because God wills it to be. Therefore it follows that anyone rebelling against an established government was in fact rebelling against God's will. The right to rebel existed only if the government failed to act in keeping with the will of the Divine Sovereign. Only if "obedience to man" would result in "disobedience to God" could an act of rebellion be justified.

As trouble brewed between the American colonies and England, these Calvinist notions proved to be a troubling inheritance for the great grandsons and daughters of the original Puritan settlers. For such people, the idea of resistance to, or rebellion against the English crown was a hard sell. One of the first to try to convince Americans of the need for resistance was Jonathan Mayhew. He argued that a nation only need be abused by a prince before it rebels. Such abuse, he contended, was a violation of will of God.

In essence, Mayhew put forward an argument advanced by Puritans to justify the English Civil War they had waged against Charles I. Puritans had challenged the traditional notion of the Divine Right of Kings with the revolutionary idea that the voice of people is the same thing as the voice of God. (1604) Mayhew simply dusted off this older idea, and applied it to the American context.

The Impact of the Awakening

By itself, Mayhew's argument would not have been enough to overcome the opposition that existed to acts of rebellion. But the Great Awakening had also helped to undermine this inherited predisposition against resistance to England. One of the major consequences of the Great Awakening was that religion had become more externalized. Although it is ironical that the Awakening sought to internalize religious experience, as it spread up and down the Eastern seaboard a striking tendency emerged in which people began to wear one's religion on one's sleeve.

The leadership of the Patriot Cause--Ethan Allen Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington, made use of this fact. Although they personally were not religious, they gave the appearance of faith in order to claim leadership in the righteous cause to over-throw the crown. (Of course there are no modern parallels to this phenomenon, a point I want to come back to in a moment)

While the externalization of religion after the Awakening provided some valuable cover for the men such as Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington, support for Revolution was strongest among the evangelical denominations that had benefitted most from the Revival. John Wesley, founder of Methodism, told members of the Methodist societies in American that they should not get involved in the effort to overthrow British rule. This encyclical by Wesley was called "A Calm Address...". American Methodists quickly replied to Wesley, labeling their response "A Cool Reply to a Calm Address," telling him in essence to mind his own business;

The Role Played by the Church of England

It is perhaps striking that members of the Church of England tended to side with the Tory side. Although 2/3 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Anglican, dissenters--Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians--tended to side with the rebellion in mass. As one English commentator of the day noted, support for the Rebellion came from "Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and smugglers." These dissenting groups believed that the effort to extend the establishment of the Church of England and the steps being taken to assert royal authority over the political realm to be part and parcel of the same cloth. Indeed, the importance of this ecclesiastical issue as a precipitating factor in the American Revolution has been largely overlooked.

With the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Anglican fortunes had undergone a marked transformation in the new world. Orthodox clergy (non-Puritan) were sent to the new world to insure the proper "administration of God's Word and Sacraments" and to teach the "principles of pure religion." This meant that Anglican missionaries were sent into Puritan areas of New England as well as areas where Baptists, Quakers, Lutherans, or Presbyterians predominated to convert these religious dissenters to the established church. Jonathan Edwards described the feelings that resulted from such efforts when he complained about the "uncharitable and unchristian spirit...intimidating that our ministry is no ministry, not having had episcopal ordination," and insisting that other "churches are no churches of Christ, and that our people are to be looked upon as strangers to the commonwealth of Israel." This ill-feeling was further exacerbated by the efforts to gain control (steal?) Harvard and Yale, and the active effort to arrest not Anglican preachers, and to thwart the establishment of evangelical schools.

Concern that the Church of England was seeking to dominate life in the colonies was exacerbated by the effort to create an Anglican Episcopate in America. Bishops were seen as being part and parcel of an effort to subvert American liberties. When Anglican missionaries suggested that the posting of a Bishop in America would help bind the colonies more closely to England, the inference was that members of dissenting churches were disloyal. The result was widespread anger toward the Church of England, and an attendant decline in its support. Many Church of England priests were forced to return home.

Public ill-will toward the Church of England was not limited to Anglicans. Methodists who were formally part of the Church of England were also deeply affected. Of the circuit riders sent to American by John Wesley, only Francis Asbury stayed.

This fear of Episcopacy, and the anger that resulted from Anglican efforts to impose a bishop on America, according to John Adams, was "as much as any other cause to arouse the attention not only of the inquiring mind, but the common people and urge them to close thinking on the constitutional authority of parliament over the colonies."

Three Further Factors Contributing to the Revolution

1) The Role of the Enlightenment: The Great Awakening forced a deep split within Puritanism between "Old Lights" and "New Lights." The "Old Lights" fell heir to the rational self-discipline of Puritanism, a sentiment that resonated with the temper of the Enlightenment, at the expense of personal spirituality. As a result, their preaching became coldly rational. The Revivalists, on the other hand, fell heir to that aspect of Puritanism that stressed a personal sense of conversion. Freed of the constraints of reason, the Awakening soon brought emotional excess. Without the moderating influence of the other, each drifted to a more extreme position than would have been otherwise possible. The overheated emotionalism of the revival led to a one-sided rationalism.

This emerging rational religion soon was known as Deism. Like the Deism that had emerged a generation or two earlier in Europe, "enlightened" religious figures like Charles Chauncy began to explore the possibility that just as there are basic physical laws that can be arrived at by rational thought, so too, there were basic religious principles that could be discovered by reason. Heavily influenced by Newton's formulation of a science of mechanics, they tended to view the universe is a vast and harmonious machine. Applying this principle to religious and social life, they came to believe that it was possible to find God through a natural religion, and to discover the moral laws of existence through reason, allowing the creation of a well ordered society was possible where people can live in harmony and prosperity.

Because God could be discovered through the investigation of nature, there was no need for a revealed religion or special revelation (Scripture). Such a faith, the Deist believed, was only for the ignorant. A truly learned person would seek God through reason. (See Ben Franklin's Autobiography, p. 395)

Not everyone went all the way to Deism. There also emerged a religious liberalism that took God's existence for granted. They believed that science and reason could reveal an "infinite Architect," and tended to accent the goodness of God. Such Puritan doctrines as election, they argued, were irreconcilable with a truly benevolent God. They emphasized human ability, rejected Original Sin, and insisted that God would never held one responsible for deeds one did not commit.

Implicit in the Deism and Liberalism that took root in the colonies was a rising Anthropology. The fact that man could now read the thoughts of the Creator, thanks to Newton's discovery of the universal laws of nature, suggested a heightened sense of the ability of human beings. This rising anthropology also suggested a lowered Christology. Many believed that God had in some way indwelt Jesus, who had been human, making him divine. This meant that the second person of the Trinity was not equal to that of God, Father. In other words, they resurrected the Arian heresy. Others went still further. There is, they asserted, only one God. Jesus had not been divine, they contended, but was a human being like you and me. He was just a good man who had lived an exemplary life. And because he was human, and person living has within themselves the capacity to go and do likewise. This was in essence, the position of Jonathan Mayhew, who I mentioned earlier. He argued for a unitarian (there is only one God) or monarchial view of God (this God is the Ruler of the Universe) which is somewhat ironic given his opposition to earthly monarchy.

In a real sense, the Declaration of Independence was a religious document. But the religion that infuses it is that of Deism. This is particularly clear in its asserting of inherent rights that can be intuited by human reason. Here is the religion of the Enlightenment with its emphasis on the human ability to shape and order society into a harmonious and prosperous civilization. Likewise, the idea of a compact between the governed and government is little more than a secular version of Calvinist Covenant theology.

Deists were also strikingly pro-American. As heirs to the original millennial vision of America as a city on a hill that would serve as a light to the nations, they took that inheritance and secularized it. Instead of holding--as did the Puritans--that God had raised up this nation to serve the model for a Christian society, they reinterpreted the vision such that America's mission was to bring a new democratic order to a world filled with monarchies. Lyman Beecher, writing in the 19th century, shared this reinterpreted vision vividly when he wrote, "If it had been the design of Heaven to establish a powerful nation in the full enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, where all the energies of man might find full scope and excitement, on purpose to show the world by one great successful experiment of what man is capable...where should such an experiment have been made but in this country...This light of such a hemisphere shall go up to Heaven, it will throw its beams beyond the waves; it will shine into the darkness there, and be comprehended,--it will awaken desire, and hope, and effort, and produce revolutions and overturnings until the world is free."

Ezra Stiles, a New Englander, offered an even better expression of this new interpretation of the errand into the wilderness in 1760: "The right of conscience and private judgement is unalienable; and it is truly the interest of all mankind to unite themselves into one body for the liberty, free exercise, and unmolested enjoyment of this right...And being possessed of the precious jewel of religious liberty, a jewel of inestimable worth, let us prize it highly and esteem it too dear to be parted with on any terms lest we be again entangled with that yoke of bondage which our fathers could not, would not, and God grant that we may never, submit to bear...Let the grand errand into America never be forgotten."

2) The Great Awakening also served to alter the political and social landscape. It inspired increasing sense of egalitarianism by taking the position that everybody's soul is subject to the possibility of redemption. And because the Awakening emphasized a changed life as a sign of salvation, it was possible for each child of God to seek happiness in this life.

The traveling itinerants who spread the revival, also served to break down barriers. They carried news from one colony to the next, and helped people develop a sense of shared common interests. The revivals themselves created common experiences of salvation and a common vocabulary of faith to describe these works of the Spirit. When the Awakening had reached its zenith, 4/5 of Americans shared a common understanding of the Christian life and faith.

Religion and Revolution

Because the War enjoyed the support of much of the religious community (the only exceptions were the pacifist groups like the Quakers and Moravians and a segment of the Church of England) it was used by the political leadership to spread the word of Revolution. Unlike most other institutions of the time, the churches could reach remote communities, and had the means in place to educate the populace as to the issues in dispute between the colonies and the mother country.

Jefferson was typical of those in leadership who used the churches to his own ends. A leading American intellectual, and a Deist who shared a great fondness for Voltaire (the philosopher of the Enlightenment), Jefferson loathed all forms of Christian orthodoxy. But he also recognized that the churches could be used in the struggle with England, and he sought to use them for this purpose.

Jefferson, for instance, is closely identified with the idea of freedom of religion, a concept that won him much support from Baptists and other dissenting groups. These Christians believed in religious freedom as a fundamental theological principle, and suffered much for their position. But for Jefferson, religious freedom was grounded in the values of the Enlightenment. One exercised one's religion according to the dictates of one's conscience, that is to say, Jefferson accorded human reason a higher authority than revelation.

That was not the only way that he choose to downplay revealed religion. Indeed, he was so bold as to edit his own version of the Bible. Jefferson believed that Jesus had been a great teacher with a superior ethic, who had been painted as something he wasn't by the church: a god. And so, he deleted anything in the Bible that had a supernatural component. Jefferson spoke of his effort to week the ethical from the supernatural as searching for "diamonds in a dung-hill."

Not surprisingly, Jefferson accepted religion as an ethical guide, but had little faith in theology or dogma. That is not to suggest, however, that he wanted his religious views known. Far from it. He did not want his religious published for fear of the public reaction, and published such works as the "Jefferson Bible" posthumously. Here again he refused to do anything that might undermine orthodox religion. That is because--while it was unreasonable, and unattractive to "right" thinking people, it did serve the positive social good of helping to insure morality among the masses.

Nor was Jefferson alone in thinking as he did. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Ethan Allen, and Thomas Paine all held similar views.

(For a collection of Jefferson's writings on religion, click here.)

The Growth of A Civil Religion

For the churches, there were consequences to this mixing religion and revolution. One of the most important was the advent of a civil religion. Just as a common understanding of the Christian faith served to unite a diversity of religious denominations in a shared evangelical world view, another general religion took firm root during the period of the American Revolution. This new faith was not pluralistic. It was as Winthrop Hudson puts it: a "religion of the republic" with it's own beliefs, myths, and symbols; it's own ceremonies, and rituals; it's own days of remembrance and thanksgiving." (We might even say it has it's own temples. If you have ever been to the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, you may have noted how they seem to be modeled after ancient temples.)

Throughout the colonial period, many Americans shared the belief that God had a special role for England to play in the cosmic drama that would mark the end of time. With the coming of the Revolution, it came to be generally accepted that England had forfeited her place in God's plan for the nations, and that the colonists were destined to become God's new chosen people, and that God had fashioned events in such a way to make the new United States the instrument of blessing for humankind. Deist or Evangelical, all Americans came to believe that the new nation came into being for "the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind over the earth." America would be the new chosen people, the promised land.

While images are biblical, and recall the imagery used by the Puritans to explain why they were settling in a new world, the civil religion reinterpreted them. No longer was the United States pictured as a Christian Commonwealth where an ideal Christian society would be nurtured. In this new interpretation of America's mission, the United States was seen as "a light to the nations" for the emancipation of mankind from the contagion of oppression and ignorance. In this new faith, the nation would be a "asylum for the oppressed," drawing to herself the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free." Not only would the nation be an example to the world, the nation would take on a servant image as one called to liberate the captive and the oppressed. The new nation believed itself called to actively banish ignorance, superstition, poverty, and disease in the far corners of the world, even if the inhabitants of these foreign lands did not welcome such paternalistic efforts on their behalf.

Civil religion, then, became public religion. That is to say, it is a religion not based on revelation to a few, but a one readily available to all through natural reason. This contrasts with church religion which is private, intensely personal, and based on revelation. As Hudson puts it, "one concerns itself with the nation and its mission; the other with individuals and their redemption."

Unfortunately, Americans have not always been able to distinguish these two religions. In one, the nation plays the redemptive role, in the other, God's son. In one, salvation is equated with freedom from oppression and ignorance. In the other, salvation is freedom from one's sin. In one, we are called upon to play God. In the other, God takes on human form. And yet, to this day, Americans continue to confuse the two. At any given church worship service, one finds the American flag (a sacred symbol of the civil religion) prominently displayed.

Someone wise once said, "a person cannot serve two masters; one cannot worship God and mammon." And yet American Christianity has often tried to do precisely that. We call it honoring God and Country.