Religion And The American Revolution

For most of the eighteenth century, British protestantism was driven neither by the primacy of denominations nor by fundamental discord between them. Instead, it thrived as part of a complex transatlantic system that bound religious institutions to imperial politics. As Katherine Carte argues, British imperial protestantism proved remarkably effective in advancing both the interests of empire and the cause of religion until the war for American independence disrupted it. That Revolution forced a reassessment of the role of religion in public life on both sides of the Atlantic. Religious communities struggled to reorganize within and across new national borders. Religious leaders recalibrated their relationships to government. If these shifts were more pronounced in the United States than in Britain, the loss of a shared system nonetheless mattered to both nations. Sweeping and explicitly transatlantic, Religion and the American Revolution demonstrates that if religion helped set the terms through which Anglo-Americans encountered the imperial crisis and the violence of war, it likewise set the terms through which both nations could imagine the possibilities of a new world.

A "thought-provoking, meticulously researched" testament to evangelical Christians' crucial contribution to American independence and a timely appeal for the same spiritual vitality today (Washington Times). At the dawn of the Revolutionary War, America was already a nation of diverse faiths-the First Great Awakening and Enlightenment concepts such as deism and atheism had endowed the colonists with varying and often opposed religious beliefs. Despite their differences, however, Americans found common ground against British tyranny and formed an alliance that would power the American Revolution. In God of Liberty, historian Thomas S. Kidd offers the first comprehensive account of religion's role during this transformative period and how it gave form to our nation and sustained it through its tumultuous birth -- and how it can be a force within our country during times of transition today.

Exploring the richness of American thought and experience in the mid-eighteenth century, Alan Heimert develops the intellectual and cultural significance of the religious divisions and debates engendered by one of the most critical episodes in American intellectual history, the Great Awakening of the 1740's. The author's concern throughout is to discover what were the essential issues in a dispute that was not so much a controversy between theologians as a vital competition for the ideological allegiance of the American people. This is not a standard history of any one area of ideas. Mr. Heimert's sources include nearly everything published in America from 1735. His study, in its range and conception, is an original contribution to an understanding of the relationship between colonial religious thought and the evolution of American history.

Winner of an Award of Merit in the Christianity Today Book Awards, History/Biography category On January 17, 1776, one week after Thomas Paine published his incendiary pamphlet Common Sense, Connecticut minister Samuel Sherwood preached an equally patriotic sermon. God Almighty, with all the powers of heaven, are on our side, Sherwood said, voicing a sacred justification for war that Americans would invoke repeatedly throughout the struggle for independence. In Sacred Scripture, Sacred War, James Byrd offers the first comprehensive analysis of how American revolutionaries defended their patriotic convictions through scripture. Byrd shows that the Bible was a key text of the American Revolution. Indeed, many colonists saw the Bible as primarily a book about war. They viewed God as not merely sanctioning violence but actively participating in combat, playing a decisive role on the battlefield. When war came, preachers and patriots alike turned to scripture not only for solace but for exhortations to fight. Such scripture helped amateur soldiers overcome their natural aversion to killing, conferred on those who died for the Revolution the halo of martyrdom, and gave Americans a sense of the divine providence of their cause. Many histories of the Revolution have noted the connection between religion and war, but Sacred Scripture, Sacred War is the first to provide a detailed analysis of specific biblical texts and how they were used, especially in making the patriotic case for war. Combing through more than 500 wartime sources, which include more than 17,000 biblical citations, Byrd shows precisely how the Bible shaped American war, and how war in turn shaped Americans' view of the Bible. Brilliantly researched and cogently argued, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War sheds new light on the American Revolution.

Whether America was founded as a Christian nation or as a secular republic is one of the most fiercely debated questions in American history. Historians Matthew Harris and Thomas Kidd offer an authoritative examination of the essential documents needed to understand this debate. The texts included in this volume - writings and speeches from both well-known and obscure early American thinkers - show that religion played a prominent yet fractious role in the era of the American Revolution. In their personal beliefs, the Founders ranged from profound skeptics like Thomas Paine to traditional Christians like Patrick Henry. Nevertheless, most of the Founding Fathers rallied around certain crucial religious principles, including the idea that people were "created" equal, the belief that religious freedom required the disestablishment of state-backed denominations, the necessity of virtue in a republic, and the role of Providence in guiding the affairs of nations. Harris and Kidd show that through the struggles of war and the framing of the Constitution, Americans sought to reconcile their dedication to religious vitality with their commitment to religious freedom.

How did the United States, founded as colonies with explicitly religious aspirations, come to be the first modern state whose commitment to the separation of church and state was reflected in its constitution? Frank Lambert explains why this happened, offering in the process a synthesis of American history from the first British arrivals through Thomas Jefferson's controversial presidency. Lambert recognizes that two sets of spiritual fathers defined the place of religion in early America: what Lambert calls the Planting Fathers, who brought Old World ideas and dreams of building a "City upon a Hill," and the Founding Fathers, who determined the constitutional arrangement of religion in the new republic. While the former proselytized the "one true faith," the latter emphasized religious freedom over religious purity. Lambert locates this shift in the mid-eighteenth century. In the wake of evangelical revival, immigration by new dissenters, and population expansion, there emerged a marketplace of religion characterized by sectarian competition, pluralism, and widened choice. During the American Revolution, dissenters found sympathetic lawmakers who favored separating church and state, and the free marketplace of religion gained legal status as the Founders began the daunting task of uniting thirteen disparate colonies. To avoid discord in an increasingly pluralistic and contentious society, the Founders left the religious arena free of government intervention save for the guarantee of free exercise for all. Religious people and groups were also free to seek political influence, ensuring that religion's place in America would always be a contested one, but never a state-regulated one. An engaging and highly readable account of early American history, this book shows how religious freedom came to be recognized not merely as toleration of dissent but as a natural right to be enjoyed by all Americans.

Religion in a Revolutionary Age explores the rich variety and enormous complexity of religious experience in early America. Eleven essays address two broad themes: the role of religion in the Revolutionary upheaval itself and the influence of religion on the shaping of America's governing institutions. This broad focus both expands our understanding of the eighteenth century and carries implications for contemporary society. The two opening essays present contrasting assessments of religious experience in the British North American colonies. Jon Butler maintains that coercive authority was the foundation of all religious expression in the colonies, pointing to the importance of church-state relations and the institutional strength, sophistication, and authority of religious denominations. Patricia U. Bonomi contends that most of the colonists were Dissenters and thus at odds with traditional English values, both religiously and politically. The following four essays study the religious experiences of women, blacks, workers, and evangelicals in Revolutionary America. Elaine Forman Crane explores the religious motivations and actions of women and their consequent impact on the political process. Sylvia R. Frey discusses the formative periods of African-American Christianity in the South. Ronald Schultz evaluates the role of religion among Philadelphia's working class in the years after the Revolution. And Robert M. Calhoon studies evangelicalism in the South, particularly its impact on Revolutionary politics, its attempt to reconcile republicanism and Christianity, its congregational discipline, and its sermons. Several contributors then examine the relationship between religion and the political culture of the new nation. Stephen A. Marini analyzes the influence of religion on politics by focusing on the delegates to the state conventions called to ratify the new federal Constitution. Approaching the issue of religion and politics in the Revolutionary era from a different perspective, Edwin S. Gaustad outlines the provisions regulating religion in the state constitutions, the federal Constitution, and the Northwest Ordinance. M. L. Bradbury discusses the creation of structures of governance by three denominations - Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Baptists - in the decades of the Revolutionary era and after. Paul K. Conkin's essay explores implications of the fact that the American Revolution was not paralleled by a religious revolution. In the final essay, Ruth H. Bloch reexamines the debate over Revolutionary ideology that currently rages in American Revolutionary historiography. She looks at the relative influence of community-centered civic humanism and individualistic classical liberalism and their impact on the cultural life of Revolutionary America - particularly the areas of religious and family issues.