Thank God for the modern ACNA in the United States' Anglicanism.
Cromwell gets an update
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Last: 10 mo ago by Rongagin71
And Sapper, no confessionally Dutch Reformed would say that I would be anathema for suggesting that they took one of the options from Calvin's church government proposals in forming a Presbyterian Church government. Presbyterian government simply means elder rule. You have teaching elders who interact with ruling elders. Deacons focus more on service to the church and community. Helps ministers..
And of course, the Dutch Reformed interacted with all the various type of Puritans in the Colonies. The Great Awakening started in the Dutch Reformed congregations and spread to the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, and the Reformed Baptists in the 1740's .
And even today, we confessionally reformed read each other's books. I've read some Herman Bavinck. Bavinck and Berkhof were required reading at Westminster Seminary. All of us Reformed read from the broader Reformed Tradition.
Even some Dutch Reformed accept the Westminster Confession of Faith along with their three forms of unity.
Example found below…The author actually was a teaching elder in a Dutch Reformed Church .
https://opc.org/os.html?article_id=343
There are several instances of Dutch Reformed becoming Presbyterians. The Dean of my seminary grew up Dutch Reformed. And this is also works visa versa.
"The colonial period
Persons of Reformed background were important in shaping and directing the political and religious course of the 13 American colonies. In 1611 Alexander Whitaker, son of a Reformed theologian, began to establish churches in Virginia. Elder William Brewster, in the 1620 Plymouth Colony, used the writings of the English Presbyterian Thomas Cartwright as his guide in church government. A Dutch Reformed Church was organized on Manhattan Island in 1628, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 was a new model Reformed church and commonwealth. In the 17th century Waldensian refugees came to Staten Island, and Huguenots settled in New York and New England. These were followed by Scots-Irish immigrants, who settled throughout the colonies, and by German Reformed refugees from the Palatinate.
The 18th-century Great Awakeningled by Calvinist preachers Jonathan Edwards, Theodore Frelinghuysen, George Whitefield, and Gilbert Tennentencouraged an evangelical Christianity often at odds with establishment attitudes. Hence revival-seasoned clergy learned to fight for the free expression of religion. These evangelicals joined with deists in supporting religious liberty in the constitutional foundation of the United States."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Presbyterian-churches/Reformed-churches-in-Germany
And of course, the Dutch Reformed interacted with all the various type of Puritans in the Colonies. The Great Awakening started in the Dutch Reformed congregations and spread to the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, and the Reformed Baptists in the 1740's .
And even today, we confessionally reformed read each other's books. I've read some Herman Bavinck. Bavinck and Berkhof were required reading at Westminster Seminary. All of us Reformed read from the broader Reformed Tradition.
Even some Dutch Reformed accept the Westminster Confession of Faith along with their three forms of unity.
Example found below…The author actually was a teaching elder in a Dutch Reformed Church .
https://opc.org/os.html?article_id=343
There are several instances of Dutch Reformed becoming Presbyterians. The Dean of my seminary grew up Dutch Reformed. And this is also works visa versa.
"The colonial period
Persons of Reformed background were important in shaping and directing the political and religious course of the 13 American colonies. In 1611 Alexander Whitaker, son of a Reformed theologian, began to establish churches in Virginia. Elder William Brewster, in the 1620 Plymouth Colony, used the writings of the English Presbyterian Thomas Cartwright as his guide in church government. A Dutch Reformed Church was organized on Manhattan Island in 1628, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 was a new model Reformed church and commonwealth. In the 17th century Waldensian refugees came to Staten Island, and Huguenots settled in New York and New England. These were followed by Scots-Irish immigrants, who settled throughout the colonies, and by German Reformed refugees from the Palatinate.
The 18th-century Great Awakeningled by Calvinist preachers Jonathan Edwards, Theodore Frelinghuysen, George Whitefield, and Gilbert Tennentencouraged an evangelical Christianity often at odds with establishment attitudes. Hence revival-seasoned clergy learned to fight for the free expression of religion. These evangelicals joined with deists in supporting religious liberty in the constitutional foundation of the United States."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Presbyterian-churches/Reformed-churches-in-Germany
My dear Sapper, repent and believe in the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved.
Oh Sapper,
Only the British Loyalists called the American War the Presbyterian War or rebellion? Here is evidence to the contrary. No one in parliament, you wrote?
{"There is no good crying about the matter," Horace Walpole told the House of Commons when news of the American Revolution arrived in England. "Cousin America has run off with the Presbyterian parson, and that is the end of it."
The parson Walpole was referring to was John Witherspoon. Witherspoon was the president of the College of New Jersey, which would later become Princeton. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was also a descendant of the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, John Knox.
Presbyterians Made Up Half of the Revolutionary Army, Historian Estimates
Our ignorance of history has sent much about America's origins down the memory hole. "John Calvin," the eminent historian Leopold von Ranke once observed, "was the virtual founder of America." Not long ago, this statement would have seemed uncontroversial, especially amongst historians. Consider the following:
The population of the colonies at the time of the Revolution was about three million. Historian Paul R. Carlson estimates that of that number: "900,000 were of Scotch or Scotch-Irish origin. 600,000 were Puritan English. [O]ver 400,000 were of Dutch, German Reformed, and Huguenot descent. That is to say, two thirds of our Revolutionary forefathers were trained in the school of Calvin."
Presbyterian clergy joined the Revolution in droves. As Carlson observed: "When Cornwallis was driven back to ultimate retreat and surrender at Yorktown, all of the colonels of the Colonial Army but one were Presbyterian elders. It is estimated that more than one half of all the soldiers and officers of the American Army during the Revolution were Presbyterian."
King George III and Others Called it a "Presbyterian War"
One historian noted that many Presbyterian pastors led the Revolution from the pulpit. King George III himself concurred, calling it a "Presbyterian war." Hearing of the American rebel leaders, he exclaimed: "Are they not Presbyterians?"
British historian George Trevelyan stated that "political agitation against the Royal Government had been deliberately planned by Presbyterians." Further, the Revolution "was fostered and abetted by Presbyterians in every colony."
In fact, in 1776 Tory William Jones announced that this "has been a Presbyterian war … and accordingly the first firing against the King's troops [at Lexington Green] was from a Massachuset [sic] meeting house."
A Hessian captain fighting with the British agreed. In 1778, he told a friend "call this war … by whatsoever name you may. Only call it not an American Revolution. It is nothing more nor less than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion."
"Give 'Em Watts, Boys!"
There was one particularly stark example of this. During a five-to-one battle in Springfield, New Jersey, the colonists were getting pushed back. The battle waxed hot. Then, they ran out of wadding paper for their gunpowder. Without wadding paper, they couldn't shoot. Disaster loomed.
Rev. James Caldwell sprang into action. He raced on horseback to the church. There, he grabbed a stack of hymnbooks by Isaac Watts. Racing back, he tossed hymnbooks to the soldiers. "Give 'em Watts, boys!" he roared as they ripped out the pages. "Put Watts into 'em!" With Watts' hymns, the Redcoats were beaten back. The Battle of Springfield was won on June 23, 1780.
To Worship in Freedom
Famous American historian George Bancroft summed it up this way:
The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was a natural outgrowth of the principles which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Presbyterians of Ulster.
Calvin, wrote Bancroft, was "the father of America." Bancroft was not a Calvinist, but he was a historian. "He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty," he stated. He pointed to the Presbyterian synod in Philadelphia in 1775. The synod publicly called for a break from England and urged prayer for the Congress. Bancroft credits the Presbyterians with making the first move towards independence.
This shouldn't be surprising. Colonial America had been convulsed by Great Awakenings under George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards and others. These took place just prior to the Revolution. Many Presbyterians had fled to America to worship in freedom. As such, as they had little love for the British crown. They believed in liberty under a sovereign God. They were fiercely independent. And the American Republic was their gift to the world.
American Democracy Was Born of Christianity
The Second American Revolution is being waged by a different sort of people. Those purging history from our streets are already coming for the Founders. John Witherspoon's statue in Washington, D.C. has been left alone but that's because they don't know who he is. They do not believe in liberty and individual responsibility under God. Most do not believe in God. They believe in collective responsibility, not individual responsibility. Comparisons have been made between the rioters and the Patriots. It is only being made by the staggeringly ignorant.
American democracy was born of Christianity. Without that lifeblood sustaining the Republic, she is living on borrowed time. It is significant that the French Revolution has gained popularity amongst the rioters. These people seek no continuity with the past. They do not recognize God's sovereignty. And they do not know their own history.
On Independence Day, it is more important to fight them tooth and nail than ever. The soul of America is at stake.}
https://thebridgehead.ca/2020/07/06/the-american-revolution-was-a-presbyterian-revolt/
Only the British Loyalists called the American War the Presbyterian War or rebellion? Here is evidence to the contrary. No one in parliament, you wrote?
{"There is no good crying about the matter," Horace Walpole told the House of Commons when news of the American Revolution arrived in England. "Cousin America has run off with the Presbyterian parson, and that is the end of it."
The parson Walpole was referring to was John Witherspoon. Witherspoon was the president of the College of New Jersey, which would later become Princeton. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was also a descendant of the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, John Knox.
Presbyterians Made Up Half of the Revolutionary Army, Historian Estimates
Our ignorance of history has sent much about America's origins down the memory hole. "John Calvin," the eminent historian Leopold von Ranke once observed, "was the virtual founder of America." Not long ago, this statement would have seemed uncontroversial, especially amongst historians. Consider the following:
The population of the colonies at the time of the Revolution was about three million. Historian Paul R. Carlson estimates that of that number: "900,000 were of Scotch or Scotch-Irish origin. 600,000 were Puritan English. [O]ver 400,000 were of Dutch, German Reformed, and Huguenot descent. That is to say, two thirds of our Revolutionary forefathers were trained in the school of Calvin."
Presbyterian clergy joined the Revolution in droves. As Carlson observed: "When Cornwallis was driven back to ultimate retreat and surrender at Yorktown, all of the colonels of the Colonial Army but one were Presbyterian elders. It is estimated that more than one half of all the soldiers and officers of the American Army during the Revolution were Presbyterian."
King George III and Others Called it a "Presbyterian War"
One historian noted that many Presbyterian pastors led the Revolution from the pulpit. King George III himself concurred, calling it a "Presbyterian war." Hearing of the American rebel leaders, he exclaimed: "Are they not Presbyterians?"
British historian George Trevelyan stated that "political agitation against the Royal Government had been deliberately planned by Presbyterians." Further, the Revolution "was fostered and abetted by Presbyterians in every colony."
In fact, in 1776 Tory William Jones announced that this "has been a Presbyterian war … and accordingly the first firing against the King's troops [at Lexington Green] was from a Massachuset [sic] meeting house."
A Hessian captain fighting with the British agreed. In 1778, he told a friend "call this war … by whatsoever name you may. Only call it not an American Revolution. It is nothing more nor less than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion."
"Give 'Em Watts, Boys!"
There was one particularly stark example of this. During a five-to-one battle in Springfield, New Jersey, the colonists were getting pushed back. The battle waxed hot. Then, they ran out of wadding paper for their gunpowder. Without wadding paper, they couldn't shoot. Disaster loomed.
Rev. James Caldwell sprang into action. He raced on horseback to the church. There, he grabbed a stack of hymnbooks by Isaac Watts. Racing back, he tossed hymnbooks to the soldiers. "Give 'em Watts, boys!" he roared as they ripped out the pages. "Put Watts into 'em!" With Watts' hymns, the Redcoats were beaten back. The Battle of Springfield was won on June 23, 1780.
To Worship in Freedom
Famous American historian George Bancroft summed it up this way:
The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was a natural outgrowth of the principles which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Presbyterians of Ulster.
Calvin, wrote Bancroft, was "the father of America." Bancroft was not a Calvinist, but he was a historian. "He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty," he stated. He pointed to the Presbyterian synod in Philadelphia in 1775. The synod publicly called for a break from England and urged prayer for the Congress. Bancroft credits the Presbyterians with making the first move towards independence.
This shouldn't be surprising. Colonial America had been convulsed by Great Awakenings under George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards and others. These took place just prior to the Revolution. Many Presbyterians had fled to America to worship in freedom. As such, as they had little love for the British crown. They believed in liberty under a sovereign God. They were fiercely independent. And the American Republic was their gift to the world.
American Democracy Was Born of Christianity
The Second American Revolution is being waged by a different sort of people. Those purging history from our streets are already coming for the Founders. John Witherspoon's statue in Washington, D.C. has been left alone but that's because they don't know who he is. They do not believe in liberty and individual responsibility under God. Most do not believe in God. They believe in collective responsibility, not individual responsibility. Comparisons have been made between the rioters and the Patriots. It is only being made by the staggeringly ignorant.
American democracy was born of Christianity. Without that lifeblood sustaining the Republic, she is living on borrowed time. It is significant that the French Revolution has gained popularity amongst the rioters. These people seek no continuity with the past. They do not recognize God's sovereignty. And they do not know their own history.
On Independence Day, it is more important to fight them tooth and nail than ever. The soul of America is at stake.}
https://thebridgehead.ca/2020/07/06/the-american-revolution-was-a-presbyterian-revolt/
Oh Sapper,
Partisan? Provides 24 sources at the bottom of the article.
"Though the events transpired almost a quarter of a millenium ago, the shelves down at the local Barnes & Noble bookstore routinely continue to display freshly researched, written, and published histories of the American Revolution, the founding fathers, and the genesis of the United States.(1) Yet there remains an element of the American founding era that is routinely underrepresented in these volumesthe role of religion. It is a factor of the Revolution that many historians minimize. The revolution, they maintain, was essentially secular in nature.
But "No understanding of the eighteenth century is possible" warned Carl Bridenbaugh, "if we unconsciously omit, or consciously jam out, the religious theme just because our own milieu is secular."(2) Yet, as Kevin Phillips remarked, "Historians and commentators in the late twentieth-century United States have shrunk from emphasizing religion in their explanations of seventeenth and eighteenth century affairs."(3) Phillips argued that this is a gross error insofar as "any serious investigation of the patterns of rebellion and loyalty during the 1775-1783 fighting in the United States leads to religion."(4)
No one recognized this better than the foes of the American revolutionaries. Ambrose Serle, secretary to British General Howe in New York City, wrote to the British Secretary of State in 1776 telling him that the American Revolution was ultimately a religious war. (5) Serle's insights are perhaps worthy of special consideration given his privileged vantage point. In light of his intelligence, education, broad perspective, and eyewitness status, Serle's observations compel historians to incorporate his perspective into a comprehensive understanding of the conflict. Serle's biographer, Edward Tatum, Jr., who wrote the introduction to Serle's Diary put it in these terms:
Serle was no ordinary observer but one whose training and philosophy gave point to his opinions and coherence to his judgments. In addition, his unique position as a civilian in intimate association with Lord Howe afforded him an unusual opportunity to see more than one aspect of a complicated situation.(6)
Given Serle's erudition, his observations cannot be summarily dismissed. Serle argued for a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the revolution beneath the secular facade. He boldly asserted that the revolution could not be sustained in America if it were not for the Presbyterian ministers who bred it.(7) He lamented the fact that almost every minister in America doubled as a politician. Most significantly, he echoed a chant by loyalists throughout America, namely, that at the bottom of the conflict was the Presbyterians' desire to gain "the Establishment of their own Party."(8) In other words, he claimed that the war was fueled by the Presbyterians' desire to establish their religion as the official church of the new American government.
The same assessment may be made of Charles Inglis' perspective. He had a front row seat to the entire revolution. He, too, was highly educated and erudite. He had close contacts with a large number of loyalists in the know. If anyone was a principal mouthpiece for the opinions of loyalists, Inglis was. And what did he say? "It is absolutely certain, that on the part of many, the present is a Religious War."(9) Another such Tory during the war stated, "the American controversy is closely connected with Christianity in general, and with Protestantism in particular; and that, of consequence, it is of religious as well as of a civil nature."(10)
The important fact that King George III and his deputies on both sides of the Atlantic alleged that the colonial rebellion was a religious endeavor is no longer widely publicized. A number of scholars have casually mentioned this phenomenon in passing. Kevin Phillips, in his 1998 study of the American Revolution, twice noted: "King George III and other highly placed Britons called the colonists' rebellion a 'Presbyterian War.'"(11) Historians of yesteryear were a bit more attentive to this feature. According to William H. Nelson, the belief that most of the American revolutionaries were "congregational or presbyterian republicans," or at least of Calvinistic temperament "was held by almost all the Tories whose opinions survive." (12) According to the celebrated British historian of the American Revolution, George Trevelyan, in the early days of the revolution, loyalists alleged that "political agitation against the Royal Government had been deliberately planned by Presbyterians… it was fostered and abetted by Presbyterians in every colony."(13) John C. Miller observed, "To the end, the Churchmen believed that the Revolution was a Presbyterian-Congregationalist plot."(14) These references notwithstanding, historians no longer give much attention to this "Presbyterian plot" interpretation of the revolution. In light of the abundance of evidence, such is an irresponsible oversight.
The large building in the center of this 1775 engraving by Amos Doolittle is the Meetinghouse on Lexington green. Whereas Anglicans referred to their structures as "churches," Presbyterians rejected that notion, saying that the people are the "church" and the building is but a "meetinghouse." Source: New York Public Library
The large building in this 1775 Doolittle engraving is the Meetinghouse (church) on Lexington Green. In 1776 Tory William Jones said, "This has been a Presbyterian war… and accordingly the first firing against the King's troops was from a Massachuset meeting house." Source: New York Public Library.
A Hessian captain, fighting on behalf of the British, told a friend in Germany in 1778, "call this war, dearest friend, by whatsoever name you may, only call it not an American Revolution, it is nothing more nor less than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion." (15) Andrew Hammond, British commander of the HMS Roebuck, arrived in America just after the Declaration of Independence had been signed by the members of the Continental Congress. At that juncture, Hammond conveyed the perspective of the Anglicans, "It is the Presbyterians that have brought about this revolt, and aim at getting the government of America into their hands."(16) Isaac Atkinson, a Maryland loyalist, expressed his opinion of the revolution, that "it was a religious dispute and a Presbyterian scheme." (17) Thomas Smith, a supporter of the crown in Pennsylvania he held the view "that the whole was nothing but a scheme of a parcel of hot-headed Presbyterians." (18)
King George III was advised by William Jones in 1776, "this has been a Presbyterian war from the beginning… and accordingly the first firing against the King's troops was from a Massachuset (sic)meeting house." (19) Did the king agree with Jones? The evidence is overwhelming that he did.
From the beginning of the conflict, George III was convinced that the leading New England rebels were Presbyterians. This is proven by a remark he made to Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson in 1774. When discussing the nature of the American dissident leadership with his representative from Massachusetts, the king exclaimed, "are they not Presbyterians?" (20) The king had every reason to suspect so. A letter published in a London newspaper only a month earlier came from a royalist in New York:
Believe me, the Presbyterians have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures, and they always do and ever will act against Government, from that restless and turbulent anti-monarchical spirit which has always distinguished them every where. (21)
The king maintained this sentiment throughout the war. In 1779 Benjamin Franklin, a rather reliable source of diplomatic intelligence, stated that George III hated the American Revolutionaries because the king perceived that they were "whigs and Presbyterians."(22)
Royal sentiments in this regard permeate the documentary record. Jones was not the only source who communicated this opinion to the king. We know that the British Secretary of State, Lord Dartmouth, who certainly had the king's ear, was also urged by an intelligence agent in America to understand that "Presbyterianism is at the bottom" of the war.(23)The provisional governor of Rhode Island, Nicholas Cooke, was told that the revolution was a Presbyterian war, and the royal governor of Rhode Island believed it.(24)
Were these Tories who considered the revolution a religious plot entirely sober in these reflections? Clearly not. They, too, were participants, embroiled in the fanaticism of the conflict. Their tendency to suspect that a Presbyterian minister was hiding behind every tree, secretly orchestrating the revolution from beginning to end, is Macarthyesque indeed. But the other extreme to which historians have gone is just as spurious. Religious and denominational dynamics were vitally central to the revolt. Historians have failed to state this as clearly as it deserves. The allegation that the American Revolution was a Presbyterian Rebellion is an important one to understand if we are to have a truly comprehensive understanding of what happened and why.
In short, the American Revolution did have a "holy war" dynamic to it that pitted Anglicans against dissenters (who were generally referred to as Presbyterians), and in the minds of the loyalists, the war was fundamentally, at bottom, a Presbyterian rebellion. It is, without question, an accurate assessment of how King George III and his advocates perceived the American war. Whether that perception was entirely accurate may be another question, but the very fact that it was how they viewed it is an important dynamic that should not be overlooked as we chronicle America's nativity narrative."
(1) Joseph Ellis, Walter Isaacson, David McCullough, Ron Chernow, and David Hackett Fischer have all recently published best sellers on this foundational era of American history.
(2) Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689-1775, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), xi.
(3) Kevin Phillips, The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 16.
(4) Phillips, Cousins' Wars, xxi.
(5) Benjamin F. Stevens, ed., Ambrose Serle to Lord Dartmouth, November 8, 1776 in B. F. Stevens' Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America 1773-1783, with Descriptions, Editorial Notes, Collations, References and Translations, vol. 24 (reprint Wilmington, DE: Mellifont Press, 1970) 2045.
(6) Edward Tatum, "Introduction," The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe; 1776-1778, Edward Tatum, ed. (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1940), ix.
(7) The best scholarly treatment of this sentiment as a whole is Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (New York: F. Ungar Pub. Co., 1958).
(8) The word "Presbyterian" was used in this context to include almost all Christians who dissented from Roman and Anglican ecclesiastical systems; see Richard Gardiner, The Presbyterian Rebellion (Ph.D. diss., Marquette University, 2005).
(9) Charles Inglis?, The Letters of Papinian: In Which the Conduct, Present State and Prospects, of the American Congress, Are Examined (New-York: Printed by Hugh Gaine, at the Bible and Crown in Hanover-Square, 1779), no. 5, 78; in Early American Imprints, 16311.
(10) John Fletcher, The Works of John Fletcher, 4 vols. (Salem, Ohio: Schmul Publishers, 1974), Vol. 4, 439. On the floor of Parliament, Sir Edmund Burke also gave an extensive account of how the Americans' Protestantism motivated the war. Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. 6 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854-56), 1:464-71. John Adams concurred, saying that the religious element of the conflict was "a fact a certain as any in the history of North America." Adams to Jedediah Morse, December 2, 1815. Works of John Adams, X:185.
(11) Kevin Phillips, The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-America (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 92, 177. Other scholars who have mentioned that King George III blamed the Presbyterians for the war include Henry Ippel, "British Sermons and the American Revolution," Journal of Religious History (1982), Vol. 12, 193; James Graham Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962), 305; The Journal of Presbyterian History 54, no. 1 (1976); David Calhoun, Princeton Seminary (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994), Vol. 1, 15; H.M.J. Klein, ed., Lancaster County, Pennsylvania: A History (New York and Chicago: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1924), Vol. 1, 86; Paul Johnson, "God and the Americans," Gilder Lehrman Institute Lectures in American History, Oct. 1999; John A. Mackay, "Witherspoon of Paisley and Princeton," Theology Today, January 1962, Vol. 18, No. 4.
(12) William H. Nelson, The American Tory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 51.
(13) Sir George Otto Trevelyan, The American Revolution (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1915; New Edition), Vol. III:311-312.
(14) John C. Miller, Origins of the American Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1943), 186.
(15) Capt. Johann Heinrichs to the Counsellor of the Court, January 18, 1778: "Extracts from the Letter Book of Captain Johann Heinrichs of the Hessian Jager Corps, 1778-1780," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 22 (1898), 137.
(16) A.S. Hammond, August 5, 1776, Hammond Papers, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
(17) Peter Force, American Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. III:1584.
(18) "Minutes of the Committee of Safety of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1774-1776," from the original in the library of General William Watts Hart Davis, Doylestown, Pennsylvania; entry for August 21, 1775, in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 15 (1891), 266.
(19) William Jones, "An Address to the British Government on a Subject of Present Concern, 1776," The Theological, Philosophical and Miscellaneous Works of the Rev. William Jones, 12 vols. (London, 1801), Vol. 12, 356.
(20) King George III, July 1, 1774, quoted by Thomas Hutchinson, Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, P.O. Hutchinson, ed. (Boston: Houghton & Mifflin, 1884; AMS Reprint, 1973), Vol. 1, 168.
(21) Peter Force, ed., "Extract of a Letter to a Gentleman in London, from New York, May 31, 1774" American Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. 1, 301.
(22) Papers of Benjamin Franklin 28:461-462
(23) Benjamin F. Stevens, ed., Ambrose Serle to the Earl of Dartmouth, April 25, 1777, in B.F. Stevens' Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America 1773-1783 (Wilmington: Mellifont Press, 1970), 2057.
(24) James Manning, quoted by Ezra Stiles, The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, Franklin Dexter, ed. Vol. 2, 23; see also Joseph Wanton, quoted by Ambrose Serle, Monday, February 2, 1778, American Journal of Ambrose Serle, 277.
https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/09/presbyterian-rebellion/#google_vignette
Partisan? Provides 24 sources at the bottom of the article.
"Though the events transpired almost a quarter of a millenium ago, the shelves down at the local Barnes & Noble bookstore routinely continue to display freshly researched, written, and published histories of the American Revolution, the founding fathers, and the genesis of the United States.(1) Yet there remains an element of the American founding era that is routinely underrepresented in these volumesthe role of religion. It is a factor of the Revolution that many historians minimize. The revolution, they maintain, was essentially secular in nature.
But "No understanding of the eighteenth century is possible" warned Carl Bridenbaugh, "if we unconsciously omit, or consciously jam out, the religious theme just because our own milieu is secular."(2) Yet, as Kevin Phillips remarked, "Historians and commentators in the late twentieth-century United States have shrunk from emphasizing religion in their explanations of seventeenth and eighteenth century affairs."(3) Phillips argued that this is a gross error insofar as "any serious investigation of the patterns of rebellion and loyalty during the 1775-1783 fighting in the United States leads to religion."(4)
No one recognized this better than the foes of the American revolutionaries. Ambrose Serle, secretary to British General Howe in New York City, wrote to the British Secretary of State in 1776 telling him that the American Revolution was ultimately a religious war. (5) Serle's insights are perhaps worthy of special consideration given his privileged vantage point. In light of his intelligence, education, broad perspective, and eyewitness status, Serle's observations compel historians to incorporate his perspective into a comprehensive understanding of the conflict. Serle's biographer, Edward Tatum, Jr., who wrote the introduction to Serle's Diary put it in these terms:
Serle was no ordinary observer but one whose training and philosophy gave point to his opinions and coherence to his judgments. In addition, his unique position as a civilian in intimate association with Lord Howe afforded him an unusual opportunity to see more than one aspect of a complicated situation.(6)
Given Serle's erudition, his observations cannot be summarily dismissed. Serle argued for a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the revolution beneath the secular facade. He boldly asserted that the revolution could not be sustained in America if it were not for the Presbyterian ministers who bred it.(7) He lamented the fact that almost every minister in America doubled as a politician. Most significantly, he echoed a chant by loyalists throughout America, namely, that at the bottom of the conflict was the Presbyterians' desire to gain "the Establishment of their own Party."(8) In other words, he claimed that the war was fueled by the Presbyterians' desire to establish their religion as the official church of the new American government.
The same assessment may be made of Charles Inglis' perspective. He had a front row seat to the entire revolution. He, too, was highly educated and erudite. He had close contacts with a large number of loyalists in the know. If anyone was a principal mouthpiece for the opinions of loyalists, Inglis was. And what did he say? "It is absolutely certain, that on the part of many, the present is a Religious War."(9) Another such Tory during the war stated, "the American controversy is closely connected with Christianity in general, and with Protestantism in particular; and that, of consequence, it is of religious as well as of a civil nature."(10)
The important fact that King George III and his deputies on both sides of the Atlantic alleged that the colonial rebellion was a religious endeavor is no longer widely publicized. A number of scholars have casually mentioned this phenomenon in passing. Kevin Phillips, in his 1998 study of the American Revolution, twice noted: "King George III and other highly placed Britons called the colonists' rebellion a 'Presbyterian War.'"(11) Historians of yesteryear were a bit more attentive to this feature. According to William H. Nelson, the belief that most of the American revolutionaries were "congregational or presbyterian republicans," or at least of Calvinistic temperament "was held by almost all the Tories whose opinions survive." (12) According to the celebrated British historian of the American Revolution, George Trevelyan, in the early days of the revolution, loyalists alleged that "political agitation against the Royal Government had been deliberately planned by Presbyterians… it was fostered and abetted by Presbyterians in every colony."(13) John C. Miller observed, "To the end, the Churchmen believed that the Revolution was a Presbyterian-Congregationalist plot."(14) These references notwithstanding, historians no longer give much attention to this "Presbyterian plot" interpretation of the revolution. In light of the abundance of evidence, such is an irresponsible oversight.
The large building in the center of this 1775 engraving by Amos Doolittle is the Meetinghouse on Lexington green. Whereas Anglicans referred to their structures as "churches," Presbyterians rejected that notion, saying that the people are the "church" and the building is but a "meetinghouse." Source: New York Public Library
The large building in this 1775 Doolittle engraving is the Meetinghouse (church) on Lexington Green. In 1776 Tory William Jones said, "This has been a Presbyterian war… and accordingly the first firing against the King's troops was from a Massachuset meeting house." Source: New York Public Library.
A Hessian captain, fighting on behalf of the British, told a friend in Germany in 1778, "call this war, dearest friend, by whatsoever name you may, only call it not an American Revolution, it is nothing more nor less than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion." (15) Andrew Hammond, British commander of the HMS Roebuck, arrived in America just after the Declaration of Independence had been signed by the members of the Continental Congress. At that juncture, Hammond conveyed the perspective of the Anglicans, "It is the Presbyterians that have brought about this revolt, and aim at getting the government of America into their hands."(16) Isaac Atkinson, a Maryland loyalist, expressed his opinion of the revolution, that "it was a religious dispute and a Presbyterian scheme." (17) Thomas Smith, a supporter of the crown in Pennsylvania he held the view "that the whole was nothing but a scheme of a parcel of hot-headed Presbyterians." (18)
King George III was advised by William Jones in 1776, "this has been a Presbyterian war from the beginning… and accordingly the first firing against the King's troops was from a Massachuset (sic)meeting house." (19) Did the king agree with Jones? The evidence is overwhelming that he did.
From the beginning of the conflict, George III was convinced that the leading New England rebels were Presbyterians. This is proven by a remark he made to Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson in 1774. When discussing the nature of the American dissident leadership with his representative from Massachusetts, the king exclaimed, "are they not Presbyterians?" (20) The king had every reason to suspect so. A letter published in a London newspaper only a month earlier came from a royalist in New York:
Believe me, the Presbyterians have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures, and they always do and ever will act against Government, from that restless and turbulent anti-monarchical spirit which has always distinguished them every where. (21)
The king maintained this sentiment throughout the war. In 1779 Benjamin Franklin, a rather reliable source of diplomatic intelligence, stated that George III hated the American Revolutionaries because the king perceived that they were "whigs and Presbyterians."(22)
Royal sentiments in this regard permeate the documentary record. Jones was not the only source who communicated this opinion to the king. We know that the British Secretary of State, Lord Dartmouth, who certainly had the king's ear, was also urged by an intelligence agent in America to understand that "Presbyterianism is at the bottom" of the war.(23)The provisional governor of Rhode Island, Nicholas Cooke, was told that the revolution was a Presbyterian war, and the royal governor of Rhode Island believed it.(24)
Were these Tories who considered the revolution a religious plot entirely sober in these reflections? Clearly not. They, too, were participants, embroiled in the fanaticism of the conflict. Their tendency to suspect that a Presbyterian minister was hiding behind every tree, secretly orchestrating the revolution from beginning to end, is Macarthyesque indeed. But the other extreme to which historians have gone is just as spurious. Religious and denominational dynamics were vitally central to the revolt. Historians have failed to state this as clearly as it deserves. The allegation that the American Revolution was a Presbyterian Rebellion is an important one to understand if we are to have a truly comprehensive understanding of what happened and why.
In short, the American Revolution did have a "holy war" dynamic to it that pitted Anglicans against dissenters (who were generally referred to as Presbyterians), and in the minds of the loyalists, the war was fundamentally, at bottom, a Presbyterian rebellion. It is, without question, an accurate assessment of how King George III and his advocates perceived the American war. Whether that perception was entirely accurate may be another question, but the very fact that it was how they viewed it is an important dynamic that should not be overlooked as we chronicle America's nativity narrative."
(1) Joseph Ellis, Walter Isaacson, David McCullough, Ron Chernow, and David Hackett Fischer have all recently published best sellers on this foundational era of American history.
(2) Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689-1775, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), xi.
(3) Kevin Phillips, The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 16.
(4) Phillips, Cousins' Wars, xxi.
(5) Benjamin F. Stevens, ed., Ambrose Serle to Lord Dartmouth, November 8, 1776 in B. F. Stevens' Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America 1773-1783, with Descriptions, Editorial Notes, Collations, References and Translations, vol. 24 (reprint Wilmington, DE: Mellifont Press, 1970) 2045.
(6) Edward Tatum, "Introduction," The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe; 1776-1778, Edward Tatum, ed. (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1940), ix.
(7) The best scholarly treatment of this sentiment as a whole is Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (New York: F. Ungar Pub. Co., 1958).
(8) The word "Presbyterian" was used in this context to include almost all Christians who dissented from Roman and Anglican ecclesiastical systems; see Richard Gardiner, The Presbyterian Rebellion (Ph.D. diss., Marquette University, 2005).
(9) Charles Inglis?, The Letters of Papinian: In Which the Conduct, Present State and Prospects, of the American Congress, Are Examined (New-York: Printed by Hugh Gaine, at the Bible and Crown in Hanover-Square, 1779), no. 5, 78; in Early American Imprints, 16311.
(10) John Fletcher, The Works of John Fletcher, 4 vols. (Salem, Ohio: Schmul Publishers, 1974), Vol. 4, 439. On the floor of Parliament, Sir Edmund Burke also gave an extensive account of how the Americans' Protestantism motivated the war. Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. 6 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854-56), 1:464-71. John Adams concurred, saying that the religious element of the conflict was "a fact a certain as any in the history of North America." Adams to Jedediah Morse, December 2, 1815. Works of John Adams, X:185.
(11) Kevin Phillips, The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-America (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 92, 177. Other scholars who have mentioned that King George III blamed the Presbyterians for the war include Henry Ippel, "British Sermons and the American Revolution," Journal of Religious History (1982), Vol. 12, 193; James Graham Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962), 305; The Journal of Presbyterian History 54, no. 1 (1976); David Calhoun, Princeton Seminary (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994), Vol. 1, 15; H.M.J. Klein, ed., Lancaster County, Pennsylvania: A History (New York and Chicago: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1924), Vol. 1, 86; Paul Johnson, "God and the Americans," Gilder Lehrman Institute Lectures in American History, Oct. 1999; John A. Mackay, "Witherspoon of Paisley and Princeton," Theology Today, January 1962, Vol. 18, No. 4.
(12) William H. Nelson, The American Tory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 51.
(13) Sir George Otto Trevelyan, The American Revolution (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1915; New Edition), Vol. III:311-312.
(14) John C. Miller, Origins of the American Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1943), 186.
(15) Capt. Johann Heinrichs to the Counsellor of the Court, January 18, 1778: "Extracts from the Letter Book of Captain Johann Heinrichs of the Hessian Jager Corps, 1778-1780," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 22 (1898), 137.
(16) A.S. Hammond, August 5, 1776, Hammond Papers, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
(17) Peter Force, American Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. III:1584.
(18) "Minutes of the Committee of Safety of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1774-1776," from the original in the library of General William Watts Hart Davis, Doylestown, Pennsylvania; entry for August 21, 1775, in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 15 (1891), 266.
(19) William Jones, "An Address to the British Government on a Subject of Present Concern, 1776," The Theological, Philosophical and Miscellaneous Works of the Rev. William Jones, 12 vols. (London, 1801), Vol. 12, 356.
(20) King George III, July 1, 1774, quoted by Thomas Hutchinson, Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, P.O. Hutchinson, ed. (Boston: Houghton & Mifflin, 1884; AMS Reprint, 1973), Vol. 1, 168.
(21) Peter Force, ed., "Extract of a Letter to a Gentleman in London, from New York, May 31, 1774" American Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. 1, 301.
(22) Papers of Benjamin Franklin 28:461-462
(23) Benjamin F. Stevens, ed., Ambrose Serle to the Earl of Dartmouth, April 25, 1777, in B.F. Stevens' Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America 1773-1783 (Wilmington: Mellifont Press, 1970), 2057.
(24) James Manning, quoted by Ezra Stiles, The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, Franklin Dexter, ed. Vol. 2, 23; see also Joseph Wanton, quoted by Ambrose Serle, Monday, February 2, 1778, American Journal of Ambrose Serle, 277.
https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/09/presbyterian-rebellion/#google_vignette
Keep posting all you want. I'm not going to start posting the literature here when you're clearly interested in a narrative rather than the history. It was not called a "Presbyterian Rebellion." The best you can do for primary sources are decontextualized quotes, a couple of off hand examples, and some folks critical of Calvinism who conflate all Calvinists as "Presbyterians." Post away. I don't care.
The Confessionally Reformed are largely one voice.
Read the article through. For both Congressionalists and Presbyterians were the main advocates for the American War. It's just that the Presbyterians won out and burned with more fervor to have a better Republican form of government in our American Constitution.
You said Presbyterians were not Puritans. False. No academic humility demonstrated by you…as usual.
You exaggerate the differences between the Reformed and I have demonstrated that you have no earthly idea about what you are talking about, so to speak.
And you also happen to bring up some skirmishes between Protestants and Catholics before the Catholics massacred Protestants. For their allies in Cromwell and folks came to Northern Ireland in order to save them. It was a just war.
Should I bring up how Jews in Israel killed Arabs and sent them fleeing into Gaza and Jordan? And how Hamas recently massacred innocent Jews in Israel? How you don't see a parallel is beyond me.
Read the article through. For both Congressionalists and Presbyterians were the main advocates for the American War. It's just that the Presbyterians won out and burned with more fervor to have a better Republican form of government in our American Constitution.
You said Presbyterians were not Puritans. False. No academic humility demonstrated by you…as usual.
You exaggerate the differences between the Reformed and I have demonstrated that you have no earthly idea about what you are talking about, so to speak.
And you also happen to bring up some skirmishes between Protestants and Catholics before the Catholics massacred Protestants. For their allies in Cromwell and folks came to Northern Ireland in order to save them. It was a just war.
Should I bring up how Jews in Israel killed Arabs and sent them fleeing into Gaza and Jordan? And how Hamas recently massacred innocent Jews in Israel? How you don't see a parallel is beyond me.
"…Lord Cornwallis was persuaded to look more northward for salvation instead of this "nest of Presbyterian hornets" in which he found himself."
https://sciway3.net/clark/revolutionarywar/1780-Huck_noframes.html
https://sciway3.net/clark/revolutionarywar/1780-Huck_noframes.html
I've read through all the British newspaper clips that I could locate for now. And they are all favorable to fighting the Colonists. Probably not a good idea for journalists to bring up the Presbyterian and Reformed aspect to the war, since there were English Presbyterians and Scottish Presbyterians fighting for the King's military.
"After the Revolution, Thomas Jones, an embittered loyalist exile, identified the culprits he deemed responsible for the rebellion in New York: the Whig "triumvirate" of Presbyterians-William Livingston, William Smith, and John Morin Scott. Jones averred that in the Inde- pendent Reflector (1752-53) and Watch Tower (1754-55), which they authored, "the established Church was abused, Monarchy derided, Episcopacy reprobated, and republicanism held up, as the best exist- ing form of government." The three wrote "with a rancor, a malevo- lence, and an acrimony, not to be equaled but by the descendants of those presbyterian and republican fanatics, whose ancestors had in the preceding century brought their Sovereign to the block, subverted the best constitution in the world, and upon its ruins erected presby-terianism, republicanism, and hypocrisy."2
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27644552
Anglican clergy were split on the issue of independence in the colonies. Many of them gave up the pulpit. The Book of Common. Prayer had to be altered and they did so and prayed for Congress instead of the British Monarch.
Presbyterians also altered the Westminster Confession of Faith to show allegiance to the Congress and not the monarchy.
Lutherans also pitched in..
Methodist also had to separate from being in communion with the Church of England.
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel03.html
And flashback to the glorious revolution or English Civil War…
King Charles tried to shut down the printing press.
"But that prohibition had collapsed by 1641, when Charles lost control of Parliament. The many Presbyterian-owned printing presses immediately started churning out an estimated twenty different newsbooks, most with a pro-Parliament and anti-Royalist bias. Even Charles now realised he had no alternative. He'd have to do the same and swallow his I-only-talk-to-God principles."
https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/the-english-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-journalism/
This is exactly what you are doing with academia, professor.
"After the Revolution, Thomas Jones, an embittered loyalist exile, identified the culprits he deemed responsible for the rebellion in New York: the Whig "triumvirate" of Presbyterians-William Livingston, William Smith, and John Morin Scott. Jones averred that in the Inde- pendent Reflector (1752-53) and Watch Tower (1754-55), which they authored, "the established Church was abused, Monarchy derided, Episcopacy reprobated, and republicanism held up, as the best exist- ing form of government." The three wrote "with a rancor, a malevo- lence, and an acrimony, not to be equaled but by the descendants of those presbyterian and republican fanatics, whose ancestors had in the preceding century brought their Sovereign to the block, subverted the best constitution in the world, and upon its ruins erected presby-terianism, republicanism, and hypocrisy."2
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27644552
Anglican clergy were split on the issue of independence in the colonies. Many of them gave up the pulpit. The Book of Common. Prayer had to be altered and they did so and prayed for Congress instead of the British Monarch.
Presbyterians also altered the Westminster Confession of Faith to show allegiance to the Congress and not the monarchy.
Lutherans also pitched in..
Methodist also had to separate from being in communion with the Church of England.
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel03.html
And flashback to the glorious revolution or English Civil War…
King Charles tried to shut down the printing press.
"But that prohibition had collapsed by 1641, when Charles lost control of Parliament. The many Presbyterian-owned printing presses immediately started churning out an estimated twenty different newsbooks, most with a pro-Parliament and anti-Royalist bias. Even Charles now realised he had no alternative. He'd have to do the same and swallow his I-only-talk-to-God principles."
https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/the-english-civil-war-and-the-rise-of-journalism/
This is exactly what you are doing with academia, professor.
'With this background we shall not be surprised to find that the Presbyterians took a very prominent part in the American Revolution. Our own historian Bancroft says: "The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was the natural outgrowth of the principles which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Presbyterians of Ulster." So intense, universal, and aggressive were the Presbyterians in their zeal for liberty that the war was spoken of in England as "The Presbyterian Rebellion." An ardent colonial supporter of King George III wrote home: "I fix all the blame for these extraordinary proceedings upon the Presbyterians. They have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures. They always do and ever will act against government from that restless and turbulent anti-monarchial spirit which has always distinguished them everywhere."2 When the news of "these extraordinary proceedings" reached England, Prime Minister Horace Walpole said in Parliament, "Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson" (John Witherspoon, president of Princeton, signer of Declaration of Independence).'
'As one historian puts it, "When Cornwallis was driven back to ultimate retreat and surrender at Yorktown, all of the colonels of the Colonial Army but one were Presbyterian elders. It is estimated that more than one half of all the soldiers and officers of the American Army during the Revolution were Presbyterian." (Carlson, p. 16)'
https://www.donsweeting.com/those-blasted-presbyterians-reflections-on-independence-day/
https://www.donsweeting.com/those-blasted-presbyterians-reflections-on-independence-day/
I'm going to need more evidence of that than a third-hand cite by a Presbyterian minister of somebody named "Paul Carlson".TheGreatEscape said:
'As one historian puts it, "When Cornwallis was driven back to ultimate retreat and surrender at Yorktown, all of the colonels of the Colonial Army but one were Presbyterian elders. It is estimated that more than one half of all the soldiers and officers of the American Army during the Revolution were Presbyterian." (Carlson, p. 16)'
https://www.donsweeting.com/those-blasted-presbyterians-reflections-on-independence-day/
I am highly skeptical of the accuracy of that quote.
And what is your point about trying to make the American Revolution a Presbyterian Revolution anyway? So what?
Jabin said:I'm going to need more evidence of that than a third-hand cite by a Presbyterian minister of somebody named "Paul Carlson".TheGreatEscape said:
'As one historian puts it, "When Cornwallis was driven back to ultimate retreat and surrender at Yorktown, all of the colonels of the Colonial Army but one were Presbyterian elders. It is estimated that more than one half of all the soldiers and officers of the American Army during the Revolution were Presbyterian." (Carlson, p. 16)'
https://www.donsweeting.com/those-blasted-presbyterians-reflections-on-independence-day/
I am highly skeptical of the accuracy of that quote.
And what is your point about trying to make the American Revolution a Presbyterian Revolution anyway? So what?
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA603245.pdf
His book is cited in the link above.
Also see Morrison, John Witherspoon and the founding of the American Republic, page 2,6 & 7.
So what? It's who we are and how we got here.
OK, so what? Who is he? What's the evidence in support of his assertion? Why are you citing secondary, if not tertiary, sources?Quote:
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA603245.pdf
His book is cited in the link above.
ETA: Where is Carlson cited in that work? The pdf will not allow me to search for it. For what proposition is it cited? Why does that give it authority?
My reason for my skepticism of your claims is that very few of the political leaders of the Revolution were "Presbyterian". Even fewer leaders, including military leaders, from the South were Presbyterian; most would likely have been Anglican, from a "Cavalier" background and would have been very, very opposed to Presbyterianism.
I found Dr. Carlson:
Paul Robins Carlson (born December 10, 1928), American Presbyterian minister, author | World Biographical Encyclopedia (prabook.com)
He's not a historian. His PhD is in education. The work cited is "Our Presbyterian Heritage". In other words, you are citing Presbyterian propaganda, which itself relies on Presbyterian propaganda, to support your claim that the Revolution was a Presbyterian Revolution.
Do you have any verifiable facts at all to support your claim?
And, again, what exactly is the point of your claim?
Paul Robins Carlson (born December 10, 1928), American Presbyterian minister, author | World Biographical Encyclopedia (prabook.com)
He's not a historian. His PhD is in education. The work cited is "Our Presbyterian Heritage". In other words, you are citing Presbyterian propaganda, which itself relies on Presbyterian propaganda, to support your claim that the Revolution was a Presbyterian Revolution.
Do you have any verifiable facts at all to support your claim?
And, again, what exactly is the point of your claim?
Just saw this that you added to your post as an edit:
It is not "who we are". Presbyterianism has had little impact on America for 200 years or more, even if your claims about the Revolution are true. Dispensationalism and Wesleyanism have had much greater impacts.Quote:
So what? It's who we are and how we got here.
https://archive.org/stream/jstor-20085789/20085789_djvu.txt
Primary source
Captain Heinrich was apart of the Catholic regiment Hessians serving the British crown.
Primary source
Captain Heinrich was apart of the Catholic regiment Hessians serving the British crown.
Jabin said:
Just saw this that you added to your post as an edit:It is not "who we are". Presbyterianism has had little impact on America for 200 years or more, even if your claims about the Revolution are true. Dispensationalism and Wesleyanism have had much greater impacts.Quote:
So what? It's who we are and how we got here.
Perhaps out west after the Civil War, yeah…
Jabin said:OK, so what? Who is he? What's the evidence in support of his assertion? Why are you citing secondary, if not tertiary, sources?Quote:
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA603245.pdf
His book is cited in the link above.
ETA: Where is Carlson cited in that work? The pdf will not allow me to search for it. For what proposition is it cited? Why does that give it authority?
My reason for my skepticism of your claims is that very few of the political leaders of the Revolution were "Presbyterian". Even fewer leaders, including military leaders, from the South were Presbyterian; most would likely have been Anglican, from a "Cavalier" background and would have been very, very opposed to Presbyterianism.
Well…I'm going to have to find the primary source from which he quotes in his book.
That is a source for which of your assertions?
And, whatever assertion you're citing it for, it is the slimmest of evidence. It is simply the opinion of a contemporary observer. It has the same evidentiary value of me writing to someone and asserting that "everyone on the TexAgs Religion and Philosophy Board is a Roman Catholic". My assertion, if true, needs to be supported with credible data.
And, whatever assertion you're citing it for, it is the slimmest of evidence. It is simply the opinion of a contemporary observer. It has the same evidentiary value of me writing to someone and asserting that "everyone on the TexAgs Religion and Philosophy Board is a Roman Catholic". My assertion, if true, needs to be supported with credible data.
Carlson used Isaac Hunt in his own words at the time of the American war for his primary source.
'My dear Countrymen and Fellow Citizens,
THE time is now come that we must either submit our necks to the yoke of Presbyterian bondage, or exert ourselves with a true British Spirit in behalf of our King and Country. For was it ever known in any part of the world, that such as appear'd in defence of a Government, shou'd be treated with contempt, and look'd upon as ene|mies to it; and that others cou'd recommend themselves by boldly flying in its face and trampling upon its authority. But such is the profound, wise policy of some of our State Physicians, who have been at work be|hind the scenes to encourage one part of the inhabitants to rise up in arms, and attempt to draw blood of the rest; tho' happy for us, they are too rampant, and not easily rid out of their liberties.'
(A looking Glass, for Presbyterians.
Hunt, Isaac c.a. (1742-1809)
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=evans;idno=N07600.0001.001;rgn=div1;view=text;cc=evans;node=N07600.0001.001:3
' If we are to form any judgment of the present members of that society by either their own conduct, or that of their forefathers, we shall find that in the annals both of ancient and modern History, Presbyterianism and Rebellion were twin-sisters, sprung from faction; and their affection for each other has been ever so strong, that a separation of them never cou'd be effected. What King has ever reign'd in Great-Britain, whose Government has not been disturb'd with Presbyterian Rebellions, since ever they were a people? '
(A looking Glass, for Presbyterians.
Hunt, Isaac c.a. (1742-1809)
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=evans;idno=N07600.0001.001;rgn=div1;view=text;cc=evans;node=N07600.0001.001:4
University of Michigan
'My dear Countrymen and Fellow Citizens,
THE time is now come that we must either submit our necks to the yoke of Presbyterian bondage, or exert ourselves with a true British Spirit in behalf of our King and Country. For was it ever known in any part of the world, that such as appear'd in defence of a Government, shou'd be treated with contempt, and look'd upon as ene|mies to it; and that others cou'd recommend themselves by boldly flying in its face and trampling upon its authority. But such is the profound, wise policy of some of our State Physicians, who have been at work be|hind the scenes to encourage one part of the inhabitants to rise up in arms, and attempt to draw blood of the rest; tho' happy for us, they are too rampant, and not easily rid out of their liberties.'
(A looking Glass, for Presbyterians.
Hunt, Isaac c.a. (1742-1809)
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=evans;idno=N07600.0001.001;rgn=div1;view=text;cc=evans;node=N07600.0001.001:3
' If we are to form any judgment of the present members of that society by either their own conduct, or that of their forefathers, we shall find that in the annals both of ancient and modern History, Presbyterianism and Rebellion were twin-sisters, sprung from faction; and their affection for each other has been ever so strong, that a separation of them never cou'd be effected. What King has ever reign'd in Great-Britain, whose Government has not been disturb'd with Presbyterian Rebellions, since ever they were a people? '
(A looking Glass, for Presbyterians.
Hunt, Isaac c.a. (1742-1809)
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=evans;idno=N07600.0001.001;rgn=div1;view=text;cc=evans;node=N07600.0001.001:4
University of Michigan
I've backed up two sources thus far with primary sources (at the time of the event).
"The most prominent in this group was the Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, prominent Scots-Presbyterian, signer of the Declaration, member of Congress, President of Princeton (and also primary agent of the "American philosophy," the basis of the liberal arts in America for over a hundred years), and author of the Introduction to "The Form of the Government and Discipline of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America." One can argue, and I often have, that he was as important to the formation of the republic as his student in theology, JAMES MADISON. "
https://thereformedmind.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/cousin-america-has-run-off-with-a-presbyterian-parson/
https://thereformedmind.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/cousin-america-has-run-off-with-a-presbyterian-parson/
Witherspoon was an important figure, but absolutely on the second or third tier of the founders, and his religious beliefs were not shared by Madison or the vast majority in of those in the Continental Congress.
Contemporaneous is not the same as primary. For example, me writing about something happening today will not be a primary source for future historians looking back at today unless I was a witness to what I was writing about.TheGreatEscape said:
I've backed up two sources thus far with primary sources (at the time of the event).
You haven't provided any evidence at all to support your statement about the percentage of Continental Army colonels that were Presbyterians. That guy who made that statement certainly must have relied upon something? What? Have you even read the secondary source that was quoted by your source?
You ask for discussion, but then you don't discuss. Providing a wall of text that is simply copied and pasted from another website is not the same as discussion.
Prime Minister of England, Horace Walpole, during the Revolutionary War.
"I enclose my bills for Mr. Essex, and will trouble you to send them to him. I again thank you, and trust you will be as friendly free with me, as I have been with you: you know I am a brother monk in every thing but religious and political opinions. I only laugh at the thirty' nine articles: but abhor Calvin as much as I do the Queen of Sweden, for he was as thorough an assassin. Yours ever. Letter 127)"
"I will let you know when I am settled at Strawberry-hill, and can look over your kind collections relating to Mr. Baker. He certainly deserves his place in the Biographia, but I am not surprised that you would not submit to his being instituted and inducted by a Presbyterian (Letter 133, 1777)."
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4919/pg4919-images.html
"I enclose my bills for Mr. Essex, and will trouble you to send them to him. I again thank you, and trust you will be as friendly free with me, as I have been with you: you know I am a brother monk in every thing but religious and political opinions. I only laugh at the thirty' nine articles: but abhor Calvin as much as I do the Queen of Sweden, for he was as thorough an assassin. Yours ever. Letter 127)"
"I will let you know when I am settled at Strawberry-hill, and can look over your kind collections relating to Mr. Baker. He certainly deserves his place in the Biographia, but I am not surprised that you would not submit to his being instituted and inducted by a Presbyterian (Letter 133, 1777)."
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4919/pg4919-images.html
Sapper Redux said:
Witherspoon was an important figure, but absolutely on the second or third tier of the founders, and his religious beliefs were not shared by Madison or the vast majority in of those in the Continental Congress.
Didn't say Madison was. He was some sort of deist/unitarian.
To which I can say had more tethering than you currently do.
Do you recall Rodger Sherman?
Roger Sherman (April 19, 1721 July 23, 1793) was an early American statesman, lawyer, and a Founding Father of the United States. He is the only person to sign all four great state papers of the United States: the Continental Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution.[1][2] He also signed the 1774 Petition to the King.
"…he was a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence."
"With the aide of Oliver Ellsworth, Sherman repeatedly proposed a bicameral compromise where one house had representation proportional to the population, and the other had equal representation for the states.[6] Some scholars have identified Sherman as a pivotal delegate at the Convention because of his role in settling the debate over representation."
Rodger Sherman was a devout Reformed Congregationalist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Sherman
On Oliver Ellsworth…
"He was a strict Calvinist who claimed that, as a young man, he had personally experienced his election by God for salvation. His entire personal and public life was ordered by a rigorous Calvinism founded upon a belief in absolute predestination."
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oliver-Ellsworth
You keep conflating Congregationalist and Presbyterian. While they were very close in theology, those differences in church governance were no small matter and classifying them in the same bucket would have had both sides screaming for your head. There's a reason Pennsylvania rather than New England became the first major site of Ulster Scot migration. There was an attempt to settle in NH in 1713 that resulted in huge tensions between the Puritans and the Presbyterians.
Source for that? For when we studied the Puritans, we read both Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Dr. Ferguson is a John Owen scholar and Owen was a Congregationalist.
The English Presbyterians, Reformed Anglicans, Reformed Baptists, and Scottish Presbyterians all fought with Cromwell and the Congregationalists to overthrow Romanism and its foreign influence during the English Civil War or Glorious Revolution.
These of the Reformed were not allowed to hold office and were being imprisoned. The Refomed also weren't allowed to bear arms, but the Catholics were arming themselves.
All of the Puritans discussed and read each other's
works. This was even going on in 19th Century England when Charles Haden Spurgeon (Refomed Baptist) read from his grandfather's Puritan library.
You absolutely have no idea what you are taking about.
There we support for a unity in diversity. And when they had to split apart they did. But they are all kindred spirits and we Reformed have kept that tradition.
We Reformed are closer than Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans.
And I guess you missed the picture of the text of how Congregationalist may sit under a Presbyterian minister and visa versa.
Oh and did I mention that I attended a real confessional Princeton Seminary tradition? We know these things.
We Reformed in the Colonies also had support from William Wilberforce at the end in Parliament during the Revolutionary War. We Reformed stick together.
Oh and I was reading about how the Dutch were flexing their muscles and Prime Minister Walpole was concerned that Britain was going to have to go to war against the Dutch Reformed in the Netherlands as well.
I read all of PM Walpoles letters. He changed his sentiment towards the religious reasons of the Colonies and was vehemently disgusted with the atheism in the French Revolution in 1789-1790.
I'm having fun.
The English Presbyterians, Reformed Anglicans, Reformed Baptists, and Scottish Presbyterians all fought with Cromwell and the Congregationalists to overthrow Romanism and its foreign influence during the English Civil War or Glorious Revolution.
These of the Reformed were not allowed to hold office and were being imprisoned. The Refomed also weren't allowed to bear arms, but the Catholics were arming themselves.
All of the Puritans discussed and read each other's
works. This was even going on in 19th Century England when Charles Haden Spurgeon (Refomed Baptist) read from his grandfather's Puritan library.
You absolutely have no idea what you are taking about.
There we support for a unity in diversity. And when they had to split apart they did. But they are all kindred spirits and we Reformed have kept that tradition.
We Reformed are closer than Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans.
And I guess you missed the picture of the text of how Congregationalist may sit under a Presbyterian minister and visa versa.
Oh and did I mention that I attended a real confessional Princeton Seminary tradition? We know these things.
We Reformed in the Colonies also had support from William Wilberforce at the end in Parliament during the Revolutionary War. We Reformed stick together.
Oh and I was reading about how the Dutch were flexing their muscles and Prime Minister Walpole was concerned that Britain was going to have to go to war against the Dutch Reformed in the Netherlands as well.
I read all of PM Walpoles letters. He changed his sentiment towards the religious reasons of the Colonies and was vehemently disgusted with the atheism in the French Revolution in 1789-1790.
I'm having fun.
" Still, he (Rodger Sherman) did win an enumeration of Congress's powers in lieu of Madison's proposal for a general grant of legislative authority and the reduction of the threshold for congressional override of a presidential veto from a three-fourths to a two-thirds vote. His fingerprints are on several other provisions as well."
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2013/08/roger-sherman-constitutional-calvinist.html
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2013/08/roger-sherman-constitutional-calvinist.html
For our great appreciated Roman Catholic allies.
'Roger Williams insisted that the "Garden of Christianity" was safe from the corruption of the "Wilderness of the World" only if governments could be held at bay and Christian consciences allowed to flourish. This evangelical principle (adopted readily, as Brad Birzer has shown, by American Catholics like Daniel Carroll) was the foundation of the American consensus on religious liberty. The purpose of the separation of church and state was not to protect citizens from narrow-minded Christians, but to protect true religion from corrupt and powerful governments.'
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2012/03/willson-john-witherspoon-church-constitutions.html
'Roger Williams insisted that the "Garden of Christianity" was safe from the corruption of the "Wilderness of the World" only if governments could be held at bay and Christian consciences allowed to flourish. This evangelical principle (adopted readily, as Brad Birzer has shown, by American Catholics like Daniel Carroll) was the foundation of the American consensus on religious liberty. The purpose of the separation of church and state was not to protect citizens from narrow-minded Christians, but to protect true religion from corrupt and powerful governments.'
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2012/03/willson-john-witherspoon-church-constitutions.html
Jabin said:I'm going to need more evidence of that than a third-hand cite by a Presbyterian minister of somebody named "Paul Carlson".TheGreatEscape said:
'As one historian puts it, "When Cornwallis was driven back to ultimate retreat and surrender at Yorktown, all of the colonels of the Colonial Army but one were Presbyterian elders. It is estimated that more than one half of all the soldiers and officers of the American Army during the Revolution were Presbyterian." (Carlson, p. 16)'
https://www.donsweeting.com/those-blasted-presbyterians-reflections-on-independence-day/
I am highly skeptical of the accuracy of that quote.
And what is your point about trying to make the American Revolution a Presbyterian Revolution anyway? So what?
It's found on page 151 of "They Seek a Country" edited by Slosser.
https://www.logcollegepress.com/blog/2018/7/19/they-seek-a-country
You can find it here. Published in New York, Macmillan Company, 1955…Macmillan ought to be academic enough to publish it, no?
Page 151
Government schools never mention this one in class.
https://americainclass.org/sources/makingrevolution/crisis/text8/outbreakofwar.pdf
https://americainclass.org/sources/makingrevolution/crisis/text8/outbreakofwar.pdf
Huh?
That's just a blog entry reviewing/summarizing a book. It says nothing about the percentage of Colonels in the Continental Army who were supposedly Presbyterians.
I'm through replying to you. You just throw crap at the wall and call it "scholarly". It's not scholarly, responsive, or even particularly interesting.
That's just a blog entry reviewing/summarizing a book. It says nothing about the percentage of Colonels in the Continental Army who were supposedly Presbyterians.
I'm through replying to you. You just throw crap at the wall and call it "scholarly". It's not scholarly, responsive, or even particularly interesting.
Hold on…I'll hunt around
Well…this is what the church historian claims.
"It is estimated that of the 3,000,000 Americans at the time of the American Revolution, 900,000 were of Scotch or Scotch-Irish origin, 600,000 were Puritan English, and 400,000 were German or Dutch Reformed. In addition to this the Episcopalians had a Calvinistic confession in their Thirty-nine Articles; and many French Huguenots also had come to this western world. Thus we see that about two-thirds of the colonial population had been trained in the school of Calvin."
[18] Hist. U. S., I., p. 463.
[19] Presbyterians and the Revolution, p. 49.
I doubt the Presbyterians are lying.
And I can't log in but the Carnegie Institute has some studies.
Here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3711102
Well…this is what the church historian claims.
"It is estimated that of the 3,000,000 Americans at the time of the American Revolution, 900,000 were of Scotch or Scotch-Irish origin, 600,000 were Puritan English, and 400,000 were German or Dutch Reformed. In addition to this the Episcopalians had a Calvinistic confession in their Thirty-nine Articles; and many French Huguenots also had come to this western world. Thus we see that about two-thirds of the colonial population had been trained in the school of Calvin."
[18] Hist. U. S., I., p. 463.
[19] Presbyterians and the Revolution, p. 49.
I doubt the Presbyterians are lying.
And I can't log in but the Carnegie Institute has some studies.
Here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3711102
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