The Truth About Pastoral Influence in the American Revolution

We have been so conditioned these days to think that churches and pastors should have nothing to do with politics. In our day, we have ignored the incredibly important role played by the clergy in the American Revolution—in particular, the Puritan ministers of New England. For more than a century, they articulated principles of governance and of Christian resistance to tyrannical government. Alice M. Baldwin wrote a classic book on this in 1928 (which was updated in 1958), The New England Clergy and the American Revolution.

Baldwin (1879-1960), a Duke professor, writes, “Men of the time asserted that the dissenting clergy and especially the Puritan clergy of New England were among the chief agitators of the Revolution and, after it began, among the most zealous and successful in keeping it alive.”

She adds, “The author believes that here can be traced a direct line of descent from seventeenth-century philosophy to the doctrines underlying the American Revolution and the making of written constitution.”

Pastors Were Learned Scholars and Leaders

The New England ministers of the 1700s were generally the leaders in their colonies. They were graduates of Harvard and Yale—institutions founded by the Puritans for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.

During the American Revolution, sometimes the ministers were derisively called “The Black Robed Regiment” by the British because of the color of their pulpit robes.

There never was an official “black robed regiment,” but the moniker pointed to the powerful influence of these ministers, many of whom were Presbyterians or Congregationalists in New England colonies.

Consider a few examples of influential ministers, two Congregationalist and two Presbyterian, during the American War for Independence.

• Jonathan Edwards was the minister at Northampton Church in Massachusetts. He was a very humble man. Ironically, he preached often about the love of God, Edwards is best known for his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Under his preaching, the Great Awakening began. Edwards wrote, “In the spring and summer following, anno 1735, the town seemed to be full of the presence of God; it never was so full of love, nor of joy, and yet so full of distress, as it was then.” When he speaks of distress, he is talking about the anxiety an unbeliever feels who becomes convicted by his sin. This often causes them to see their need for Christ. The great work God started in Massachusetts under Jonathan Edwards was then spread up and down the Atlantic Coast by the Calvinist preacher from England, George Whitefield.
• One of the earliest voices for American independence was Rev. Jonathan Mayhew of West Church, Boston. Paul Revere liked to attend Mayhew’s church. Mayhew died in 1766, long before the conflict really heated up. After the unjust Stamp Act went into effect in 1765, Rev. Mayhew denounced the king from the pulpit. His text was Romans chapter 13 written by the Apostle Paul. Mayhew preached,

Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not entitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of any thing here [in Romans 13] laid down by the inspired apostle [Paul]….The king is as much bound by his oath not to infringe the legal rights of the people, as the people are bound to yield subjection to him. From whence it follows that as soon as the prince sets himself above the law, he loses the king in the tyrant. He does, to all intents and purposes, un-king himself.

This is reminiscent of a phrase from the Huguenots, that is, French Calvinists, from a century before. “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” This was a phrase Thomas Jefferson liked to use on a personal seal. It is also reminiscent of what Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, speaking of King George III: “A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

• John Witherspoon was a Presbyterian minister in Scotland. He was recruited by American founding father Dr. Benjamin Rush to come and serve as the president of the College of New Jersey—the school we know today as Princeton. Witherspoon served in the Second Continental Congress, which gave us and approved the Declaration of Independence.

Witherspoon helped galvanize American independence to the point that in England, Horace Walpole declared to the Parliament: “Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson.” He was referring to Witherspoon as the minister in question. Presbyterians had a lot to do with the American Revolution—so much so that by the time of the surrender at Yorktown in October 1781, every one of the colonels in the colonial army (except for one) was a Presbyterian elder.

• James Caldwell was a Presbyterian minister in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. Dan Fisher, author of the book, Bringing Back the Black Robe Regiment, describes what happened to Caldwell after a British soldier shot his wife in their home through an open window. Fisher made this remark in the Providence Forum film, “The Road to Independence”:

James Caldwell finds out about it, actually eulogizes her, and then, he’s off to Springfield, New Jersey, because they’re engaging the British there and the men that he’s working with and helping to lead are in Springfield. When he gets there, they’re in a mess, because they’ve run out of wadding for their muskets. And, of course, those old flintlock muskets, they’re like the ones here behind me, you had to have wadding to make those things usable on the battlefield to hold the shot tight down in the barrel. So, he rides over to the First Presbyterian Church of Springfield, gathers up hymnbooks that are filled with hymns written by Isaac Watts, a famous hymnwriter of that day, goes back to his men, throws out the hymnbooks, telling them to tear the pages out and use the pages for wadding. So, as they are shoving Isaac Watts hymns down the muzzles of their muskets, firing away at the British, James Caldwell, the Presbyterian preacher, is standing there yelling, “Give ‘em Watts, boys. Put Watts into ‘em.” And so, it just kind of gives you an idea of the flair of these men and the great passion with which they stood for their liberties.

There are many other examples that can be cited, including Congregationalist ministers of New England. No wonder author Franklin P. Cole, author of They Preached Liberty, opined: “There is probably no group of men in history, living in a particular area at a given time, who can speak as forcibly on the subject of liberty as the Congregational ministers of New England between 1750 and 1785.”