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New York streets were crowded with joyous throngs of cheering people pushing and shoving, trying to get a glimpse of the hero of the hour -- General George Washington. On that December day, 1783, long lines of soldiers stood at rigid attention, the winter sunlight glittering on polished buttons and cold steel. Strong winds sweeping up the Hudson whipped the flags and put the sting of freshness and vigor into the gathered crowd.

A great roar arose from the throng as Washington appeared on the steps, saluted his men, and briskly strode to the landing where a boat waited for him. Then as cannons blazed, guns boomed, and church bells resounded, the victorious leader took his departure. The revolution was an accomplished fact. Peace and victory went hand in hand -- a new nation was born, independent of the British Empire.

Effects of independence were evident in all the states. Men walked with heads held high -- they were now truly free men. But free men faced a mighty task of replacing English control with a government that would express the principles for which they had fought. They could no longer depend on Europe for guidance and strength. Gone were the ties with the Old World. How were they to bring order and peace among the thirteen independent and self-ruling states? What was to happen to the many Churches?

Nobody had a simple answer, but all men realized that something new had to be created. The various colonies had learned to work and to fight together against the English. They then banded together in a confederation of states, each retaining its independence but all cooperating on a few matters of general interest.

Just as the states had to find a new way of working together so all the Churches, no longer dependent on their European mother Churches, had to discover new methods of living and working in America. One year after the end of the war, over fifty Methodist ministers, the followers of John Wesley, met in Baltimore, December, 1784, to take action.

Still dependent upon the Anglican Church for sacraments, they felt that the time had come to go beyond the status of a mere society or club within the Church of England. The preachers were determined to form an organization independent of the Anglican Church. With no disrespect to their founder, they saw the necessity of developing a new Church in a new nation so that the gospel might be brought to all. One question uppermost in the minds of all was their relation to John Wesley. This was one of the chief topics of conversation among the preachers.

John Wesley had asserted his rights as a presbyter to ordain men for a, ministry in America, thereby denying the necessity of ordination by bishops alone. As a result he was denounced by the Church of England as an unfaithful priest. He sent Thomas Coke to America as a superintendent, or "bishop," with instructions on founding a new Church and with directions as to worship and general practice. Wesley was willing to launch a new American Church, but it was to be under his spiritual control.

While American Methodists held Wesley in great esteem and respect, they did not feel it necessary to follow all his instructions. Some they ignored, others they modified, and a few they followed. Wesley had appointed Francis Asbury co-superintendent with Coke, but Asbury felt that the American Methodists should elect their new leaders. The American brethren agreed with him, so he and Coke were elected to their office of superintendent. After election to office Asbury allowed himself to be set apart for the office of "bishop." He saw that if the Methodist Church was to grow in a new nation, it must control itself and not be subservient to its founder, John Wesley.

So a new Church was born at the same time as a new nation -- the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Confederation of American states, both independent of English domination. This new Church had bishops acting as superintendents, so it was called the Methodist Episcopal Church. It met in a series of local annual conferences and in a great triennial general conference. It worked out a series of strict rules on discipline, adopted a confession of faith, and provided for preachers who traveled from point to point serving many congregations -- the famous circuit riders. The Methodist Episcopal Church was organized and ready to move with the people as they went west. At this time it was one of the smallest Churches in America, but within a few decades it was to be one of the largest.

The Congregational Church was the largest and most influential Church at this point in American history. It had no institutional ties with England and possessed no central agency to give itself national representation. In face of the threat of Anglican bishops, the Congregationalists drew closer to the Presbyterians, with whom they felt a theological affinity. Out of this was to come a mutual plan of mission activity to cover the nation. The Baptists, of the same size as the Presbyterians, were in much the same position as the Congregationalists. They had no important institutional ties with England, and they vigorously opposed any national or central organization.

Meanwhile things were happening in other American Churches. Six months before Washington’s departure from New York and before the Methodists’ Baltimore Christmas conference, an Anglican priest from Connecticut quietly sailed for England. The New England Anglicans were determined to have a bishop at any cost because they felt the Church could not do its work without bishops. In the winter of 1784, Samuel Seabury was consecrated bishop by three Scottish Anglican bishops because the English bishops refused to ordain him on the grounds that he could not take the necessary oath of loyalty to the crown.

But what of the rest of the Anglican Church in America? Its great strength was to be found in Pennsylvania, New York, and in the South, and these men distrusted their New England brethren because of their English sympathies during the war.

In 1782 the entire American Episcopal Church was stirred by an article from the pen of Dr. William White, of Philadelphia. He offered a plan to form a national Episcopal Church that did not necessarily require bishops. His drive for a nation-wide Church was ably backed by another famous patriot and Anglican priest, Dr. William Smith, friend of Benjamin Franklin and former head of the College of Philadelphia.

In accordance with White’s plan, a general convention was held in Philadelphia in 1785. There a constitution and name were settled upon -- the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. Out of this meeting came the selection of candidates for bishops, and by 1787 White and another man had been consecrated in England as bishops.

Two years later at Philadelphia, a great convention was held which healed the breach between the New England clergy and the other Episcopal clergymen. Again, the impact of the Revolution was noticeable. Laymen were active as voting delegates in all conventions. The second largest colonial Church was ready to act with the new nation.

The fresh vigor pulsating through the nation could not be channeled by a loose confederation of states; something stronger was needed to guide the energy in a creative direction. The Churches were no exception to this rule. The Methodist and Episcopal Churches quickly founded organizations capable of national extension. No longer would they be dependent upon the mother Churches of Europe. Advice they would take and influence they would accept, but direct interference was no longer to be tolerated. This was the general pattern among the Churches -- a turning point had been reached in American Protestantism.

The Presbyterians were no exception in this movement. One of the outstanding pro-Revolution Churches, they stood high in prestige and were rapidly growing in numbers. By 1780 it was evident that their organization, centering in a Joint Synod and ten presbyteries, was not sufficient.

Unlike their Scottish brethren, who developed an organization from the top down, the American Presbyterians, like the American government, was built from the bottom up. By 1788 they had approved the formation of a General Assembly to be composed of ministerial and ruling elders elected annually by the presbyteries. First had come the presbyteries, then the synods, and finally had come the national General Assembly. Simultaneously, the Presbyterians gave their followers a worship service, a catechism, and a confession of faith. They too stood ready to move with the American people, possessing a strong organization implemented by worship and doctrine.

What happened among two of the largest American Churches was closely paralleled by the smaller foreign-language American Churches. For some time the Lutherans under the leadership of the Mühlenberg family retained a fraternal and spiritual relationship to German Lutheranism. Cut off from Europe and dependent on themselves, they gradually adopted the English language and strengthened their own synodical organization. Each new wave of German immigrants increased both their problems and opportunities. They were, however, a Church independent of Europe. The Dutch Reformed and German Reformed, both dependent on the Church in Holland for funds and leadership, broke away from such ties and formed independent Churches. Everywhere the new spirit of freedom asserted itself.

The organization and independence of the Churches in the new confederation, though of great importance, was of far less consequence than another development in American Christianity. Slowly but steadily the Churches had been moving in a direction which some disliked, which others preferred, but which none could prevent -- the establishment of religious liberty.

In Puritan New England the Congregational churches were convinced that the Church played such an important part in the life of the community that the State should uphold and support it by law and with money. Six other states felt that way about the Church of England.

How could the Church make its full impact upon all of society unless it was part of that society by law? Men argued bitterly over the vexing question. The Puritans said that the holy commonwealth could truly be holy only if the State were based on God’s will as revealed in the Bible. It was the Church that provided the moral power to make the commonwealth holy. It conveyed God’s love and judgment to men and so made them instruments of his will.

So it was that all but four of the thirteen colonies had some one Church, such as the Puritan or Anglican, which was the only official Church. Such an "established" Church was supported by taxes levied by the State on everybody who lived in the community. Baptists living in Massachusetts paid taxes to keep up the Congregational churches.

Meanwhile a series of forces converged to bring about the greatest turning point in the history of American Christianity. No nation in the history of the world had ever established complete religious liberty, in which no one religion was publicly supported by taxes and where all religions were fully equal before the law of the land.

Pennsylvania stood as a beacon, a symbol of a group of colonies in America. This group was known as the Middle colonies. Situated between New England and the South, they became the seed-bed of the American ideal of religious liberty.

From the very beginning William Penn had determined to establish "a free colony for all mankind that will come hither."

He forthrightly stated: "I abhor two principles in religion and pity them that own them. . . . The first is obedience to authority without conviction; and the other is destroying them that differ from me for God’s sake."

Penn was determined that nobody should be forced to pay taxes to support a Church in which he did not believe, and he saw to it that the "Great Law" of Pennsylvania, adopted in 1682, guarded against such an unfair practice.

The law stated that no man or woman shall " at any time be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place, or ministry whatever, contrary to his, or to her, mind, but shall freely and fully enjoy his, or her, Christian liberty, in that respect, without any interruption or reflection."

Penn advocated this position on principle. He believed, as did all good Quakers, that true belief could not be enforced by law or constraint but could come only through God’s gracious spirit. The consequence of his stand was that all religious groups found freedom in Pennsylvania.

Philadelphia became a center, not only of the Quakers, who founded the city, but also of the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Baptists. Out on the frontier, in the mountains and wilderness, hardy German Lutherans and Reformed as well as the militant Scotch-Irish Presbyterians were to be found. When the Roman Catholics were driven out of Maryland by the Protestants, the priests and some of the laity fled to Pennsylvania, where they found shelter.

Almost every Church of consequence found room to settle in the Quaker state. Relatively unknown and somewhat unusual groups such as the peaceful Mennonites, the hard-working Moravians, the very peculiar semimonastic Ephrata community, and the German Baptists, called Dunkers, all established settlements in Pennsylvania. All were non-English speaking; most used German.

Under such conditions the principle for which Penn stood was strengthened and deepened. He too hoped to build a community dedicated to the will of God, but he was sure it could be done in a way different from the establishment and support of only one Church. He was convinced that all Christian groups living and working together in harmony, though disagreeing at many points, could actually erect a state dedicated to God’s will.

Pennsylvania flourished. Some of Penn’s ideals were not realized, particularly the belief that no force should be used against one’s enemies. The Scotch-Irish and the Germans on the frontier had to face the threat of the Indians and the encroachment of the French; hence, they used arms not only in defending themselves but in enlarging their holdings.

Though Penn’s ideal of a peaceful commonwealth renouncing all war was not possible, his ideal of many types of Christians living and working together within one state was a pronounced success. Pennsylvania’s green valleys bloomed; the rich, fertile soil produced abundant crops. Its great metropolis, Philadelphia, became the largest city in the colonies and was soon the economic center of the British American colonies.

Thus, Pennsylvania demonstrated what Rhode Island had earlier proved, that a sound, peaceful, and prosperous, as well as God-fearing, colony could be built on the basis of religious liberty.

What happened in Pennsylvania was paralleled in the other Middle-colony states. New Jersey and Delaware also contributed to the ideal of religious liberty. Both were somewhat under the control of their larger neighbors, New York and Pennsylvania, but they finally established themselves as independent colonies. Just as in Pennsylvania, many types of Christians flocked to Delaware and New Jersey. Swedish, Dutch, German, and English people brought with them the Anglican, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Quaker, and Roman Catholic faiths. Even some Puritans settled in those states. Together, all proved the principle so important in the development first of toleration and then of religious liberty -- where no single Church has a fairly substantial majority of the people it cannot hope to have a Church supported by law. This the Middle colonies learned by experience.

In New York the situation was at first different, but finally here also was established the principle of religious toleration. Settled first by the Dutch and then captured by the English, the Churches of these two people, the Dutch Reformed and the Anglican, held a privileged position in the colony. They were supported by public funds, and the Anglican Church was the State Church in six counties.

The large influx of people not interested either in Christianity or in the established Anglican Church made necessary a system of toleration. That is, though the Anglican Church was supported by the New York colonial government, it could not control the wishes of a great majority of people who were either indifferent to or openly hostile to the Anglican religion. Some toleration was absolutely necessary. But this did not come automatically.

In the fall of 1706 a Virginia Presbyterian, Francis Makemie, had stood before Governor Cornbury of New York. He had been invited to preach by New York Presbyterians as he traveled through the city on his way home. Could a minister of the gospel deny the request of fellow Christians? Certainly not! He had preached; so he stood accused of preaching to Presbyterians in a city where the Church of England was the official religion.

The governor demanded that he post money to assure his intent never to repeat his offense. This Makemie refused to do. Off to jail he went for six weeks until he was finally released on bail. At his trial, his lawyers argued that he had every right to preach in New York without first gaining the permission of the governor. The Anglican Church was not the official Church of the whole province.

His case ended with the plea that the State of New York was composed mostly of "foreigners and dissenters; and persecution would not only tend to the disuniting us all in interest and affection, but depopulate and weaken our strength." Why frighten away all such possible colonists by the threat of persecution? Let the gospel be preached by and to all these groups so long as it was done in good order. Francis Makemie was acquitted.

The Church of England remained the official religion in several counties, but it could not control the religious life of New York. Like all the other Middle colonies, New York found that no one religious group could control the religious life of the province.

The example and experience of the Middle colonies was not the only positive factor driving American Christians to seek yet more light on the perplexing problem of the relation between Christianity and the State.

Revivalism, coming out of the Great Awakening, tended to bypass the usual way of relating Church to State. It was not interested primarily in the State support of the Churches, it was interested only in the soul’s relation to God. Was a man saved? Had he been deeply moved by his sin? Had he undergone the experience of the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ? As a result, was he living a pious or godly personal life?

All this was in a different direction from the sedate Church-State establishments. Revivalists also forsook the genuine theological interests of Jonathan Edwards. They were not concerned primarily with doctrines but with experience and proper living. Not interested in speculation or in institutions, they were suspicious of the clergy, who were constantly talking about true doctrine or about the Church as a visible institution to be supported by the State.

Thus the revivalists were usually opposed by some Presbyterians, the Anglicans, and most Congregationalists. The latter two groups felt it was necessary to expound true doctrine and to be of influence on society through the State support of the Church. Only in this way, they argued, would the full impact of the Church be possible. So they insisted on the State’s suppressing all false forms of the Christian religion and on the recognition and support of their own beliefs.

Naturally the revivalists opposed this point of view. They contended only for the godly life which was born of the conversion experience. True life, not true doctrine, was basic. Thus they stood against any attempted control of religious life and experience by a minority of Christian believers.

Meanwhile, another movement developed in America which also worked against the favoring of any one Church. This movement was strong among a group of leading Americans which included Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. They were not opposed to Christianity, but they felt that there were only a few truths in it that were essential for men.

Franklin said: "I never doubted . . . the existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and govern’d it by his providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter. These I esteem’d the essentials of every religion; and, being to be found in all the religions we had in our country, I respected them all, tho’ with different degrees of respect, as I found them more or less mix’d with other articles, without any tendency to inspire, promote, or conform morality, serv’d principally to divide us, and make us unfriendly to one another."

This type of belief was called deism. It was not interested in specific Christian beliefs or in speculation about Christian truth. It was interested in the moral principles of the Churches. Deists felt that Jesus was the greatest teacher who had ever lived, and that he taught in a clear fashion the moral laws on which the universe operated. There was no possibility of his being the Christ, or the Son of God, or of being a savior or redeemer of man. His function was to proclaim and make clear the laws which governed life.

Thomas Jefferson felt the same as Franklin and a number of others. To the extent that various Churches helped people to discover and follow the moral law, the deists respected them. To the extent that they insisted on the discussion of Christian beliefs about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the sacraments, or the Church, these various Churches disagreed with each other and so produced disunity. This the deists rejected.

Jefferson attempted to find the heart of the Bible in the teachings of Jesus and compiled a book on the subject entitled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. If only all the Churches would stress the simple basic principles to be found in Jesus’ teachings, which are also found in all great religions, then all dissensions would disappear.

The deists were opposed to the clergy of a State Church which tried to enforce its belief on all people. All religions held the central few truths, but these were not what the law enforced. Rather, a State Church demanded obedience to an entire body of doctrines which were not essential for religion; thus, the deists opposed that position and advocated freedom of the conscience. They were friendly toward all Churches that emphasized the teachings of Jesus but suspicious of all that spoke of the divinity of Jesus the Christ, the redeemer of mankind.

The mild deists such as Franklin and Jefferson were in agreement with the Christian revivalists on many things. Both wanted to destroy State-established Church relations as contrary to true religion. Both were suspicious of clergymen who controlled politics. Both emphasized that religion was not concerned with doctrine but with right living as outlined in Jesus’ teachings. For the deist this was a very personal thing based on the reason of each man and the law of the universe. For the revivalist also religion was a very personal thing arising only out of a personal conversion from sin to righteousness through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus the first victories for religious liberty were won in those states where revival Christians combined with mild deists to overthrow the entrenched clergy. Pennsylvania and Rhode Island no longer stood alone.

At the time of the Revolution, Virginia was undergoing "an intense internal struggle for religious liberty." Almost since the beginnings of Virginia the Church of England was supported by land given by the State and by taxes collected from all the people. The Baptists and Presbyterians, as well as other Church groups, objected to the State support of the Anglicans.

Of all Churches, the Baptists were most faithful in their protest. They wanted no State support for any Church. During the war they sent a petition to the Virginia Government stating that "at a time when this colony, with others, is contending for the civil rights of mankind, against the enslaving schemes of a powerful enemy . . . the strictest unanimity is necessary among ourselves."

They asked that they "be allowed to worship God in their own way, without interruption, that they be permitted to maintain their own ministers, and name others, that they be married, buried, and the like, without paying the clergy of other denominations."

Up and down Virginia went the Baptist ministers gathering names in petitions pleading for religious liberty, for exemption from laws favoring the Anglican Church or any Church. They had to be reckoned with as they were a growing Church employing revival methods, and common people heard them gladly.

Meanwhile the Virginia Presbyterians were not inactive. In the years immediately before the war, their great leader, Samuel Davies, had led the fight to gain at least toleration for all Churches dissenting from the State establishment. Now, some Presbyterians favored support by taxation for all the religious groups in Virginia. But the Hanover Presbytery was opposed to such a plan and argued for complete religious liberty.

The Virginia debate raged with heat and intensity. Patrick Henry favored some kind of support by taxation for all religious groups. Washington was uncertain. Jefferson and James Madison joined with the dissenting forces to lead the fight against establishment.

In 1784, when it appeared that toleration for all groups but not genuine religious liberty would triumph, James Madison wrote the famous Memorial and Remonstrance on the Religious Rights of Man. In it he said:

"Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The religion, then, of every man, must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. The right is in its nature an unalienable right."

As a result of the combined efforts of the dissenting Churches and the mild deists such as Jefferson and Madison, full religious liberty was established by law in Virginia in 1785.

The very, words of the act were taken from an earlier proposal of Thomas Jefferson. It stated:

The precedent was set! A State had thrown off public taxes and support for a Church. Henceforth all Churches were equal before Virginia law. The State had no right to interfere with religious practices so long as they did not advocate immorality or treason. The Churches could expect no financial support from the State. What started as a principle in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania developed into a necessity in Virginia, and rapidly in the other states as well. Nevertheless, these states demonstrated their friendliness for the Christian religion through the payment of chaplains’ salaries and through the granting of tax exemption to religious institutions.

In the spring of 1787 an important convention met in Philadelphia. People gathered outside the doors of the convention hall as the delegates assembled. The crowd broke and made way for George Washington and James Madison from Virginia. A short time later Benjamin Franklin made his appearance.

The crowd buzzed in an excited manner. Nobody except the delegates was allowed inside. What was going to happen? Since 1781 the states had worked together under the Articles of Confederation. So many problems arose that the states were in a dangerous crisis. How could the government be improved so as to overcome their major problems? For this reason the Philadelphia convention was called.

In September, when the convention finished its work, the states were confronted, not with a few changes in the Articles, but with an entirely new Constitution for a Federal republic, a truly national government. Early in 1789 the required nine states had ratified the new Constitution, and George Washington was elected first President. The United States of America had been born.

Among the articles of the new Constitution and the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights were the following statements on religion:

Thus religious liberty was established for the national government by law. Many were dissatisfied with such an arrangement. Some states felt the necessity for a religious test for national public office. Again, the dissenting Churches led by the Baptists co-operated with the politicians to overcome the opposition.

In 1788, Massachusetts called a convention to debate the acceptance of the new Constitution. The Congregational Church was established by law in that state and was convinced that only the combined efforts of Government and Church, both supported by public laws, could produce a peaceful and godly commonwealth.

In answer to the objection against the lack of religious test for an officeholder under the new Constitution, Isaac Backus, outstanding Baptist minister, gave a stirring speech. In it he said:

Mr. Backus won his point. For years he had fought against unfair taxes levied by the State on all people to pay for Congregational churches and ministers. He could not defeat the system in Massachusetts, but he could see it prevented under the national Government. The state voted to accept the new Constitution, with its provision of religious liberty. It took almost another fifty years for Massachusetts to declare religious liberty within its boundaries, but the first irrevocable step was taken in 1788 at the urging of Isaac Backus, the Baptist minister.

So the great turning point both for the nation and the Church had been reached. Driven by necessity and by the truth derived from the Baptist and Quaker interpretation of God’s Word, the nation and Churches had decided for religious liberty.

This was utterly new in the history of Christianity. It raised a host of questions. How would the Churches survive? Where would money come from? Would not Christianity be greatly weakened, if not wiped out? How could the Churches relate their message of judgment and redemption to the State and society? What of the problem of religious instruction in the face of State indifference or perhaps hostility?

Indeed the Churches had searched God’s Word and will in history and had found a blazing new light. Henceforth they had to depend only on the sword of the spirit. If the nation was to be made holy, it could be done only by persuasion. Thus the Church faced at once its greatest threat and its greatest opportunity. Religious liberty brought many problems as well as many blessings.

The year 1740 found the colonies in a state of fear and yet confidence. Life was still not easy. Indian attacks were a constant menace, and the Roman Catholic French and Spanish forged an iron ring to the north, south, and west. How could the ever-increasing numbers of people move beyond the eastern seaboard if enemies held the territory all around them?

Canada was in the hands of the French. Their fur traders and trappers traveled down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, pushed into western Pennsylvania, northern Ohio, and northern New York. They were small in numbers but strong in heart. With the French trappers went French Jesuit priests. These men were out to win the savages for Christ. Sacrificing European comforts and customs, the Jesuits went among Indian tribes and shared their way of life in an attempt to improve that life.

Within a half century the Jesuits had lost many martyred priests but had succeeded in winning a number of converts, and, more important for France, they also had won the friendship of a large number of the Indians. Not interested in forming permanent settlements, they did not appear to be such a threat to the Indian way of life. The French planned to use Indians in driving the English off the frontier and in confining the colonists to the seaboard.

Another threat to the English was the Spanish settlement to the south. Spain was a strong Roman Catholic power, eager to expand from Florida northward and westward to Georgia and the Carolinas. Constant raids and warfare marked the relations of the southern English colonies and their hostile neighbors. Little wonder that the English hated and feared these other groups in America. Not only were they French and Spanish; they were also Roman Catholics. For over one hundred years after the Reformation, the Catholics and Protestants had fought bloody battles in an attempt to crush each other. The hatred and suspicion born of the warfare was still very much alive.

From time to time the rivalry and hatred of the enemies broke loose into all-out war. Longest and most bitter of these struggles was the famous French and Indian War throughout the 1750’s. During the early years of fighting the French and their Indian allies had the best of the struggle.

English frontier settlements were wiped out. Fire, torture, and tomahawks drove them back. The Indian allies of the French were encouraged to undertake raids against the helpless, scattered families in the backwoods. No mercy was shown, for it was a fight to the death. For the Indians it meant preserving their land under French protection. For the English colonists it meant the right to move west to new land, the conquest of the French threat, and the defeat of a Roman Catholic power.

The English were not without their Indian allies, because the strongest of all the eastern tribes, the Iroquois, fought on their side. However, the English could not use the Indians to full advantage because white leadership meant little to them. Jesuit priests accompanied the Indian tribes from French territory on their raids and in their battles. This was done in order to control the savages. Protestant colonists claimed it was done to incite them to greater cruelty and atrocities. Whether the priests were responsible or not, they were present at several of the bloodiest massacres of the war.

The clergy of the colony rallied the people to the side of freedom and justice. They abhorred the Roman Catholic French as infidels who would bring slavery to the people of America just as they had enslaved the French Protestants on galley ships. Where was freedom in France or in New France?

Jonathan Mayhew exhorted his Boston parishioners: "Do I behold these territories of freedom, become the prey of arbitrary power? . . . Do I see the slaves of King Louis with their Indian allies, dispossessing the freeborn subjects of King George, of the inheritance received from their forefathers, and purchased by them at the expense of their ease, their treasure, their blood! . . . Do I see a Protestant, there, stealing a look at his Bible, and being taken in the fact, punished like a felon! . . . Do I see all liberty, property, religion, happiness, changed into slavery, poverty, superstition, wretchedness!"

"And are we willing to give up our civil Rights and Privileges, and become subjected to Tyranny and arbitrary Government? And are we willing to give up our Religion? O! for God’s sake, let us think of our Danger, and labor to prevent our Ruin. Your All lays at Stake" -- so cried another preacher to a group of soldiers.

Thus the clergy preached about the privileges and freedom of the English colonists as contrasted with the government of the French king. They raised troops, fought in battles, and served as chaplains. Above all, they kept alive a certain tradition in the people, a heritage which stressed freedom to worship God and good government under decent laws.

After a long struggle, in 1763 the English emerged triumphant. They stripped the French of Canada, took over all the land to the Mississippi River, and drove the Spanish out of Florida. The New World was open to English expansion, and the threat of Roman Catholicism was removed. All the colonies rejoiced, for it was now possible to settle down and reap the sweet fruits of victory.

But there was a price to pay for the victory, and when the time of reckoning came it produced even greater dissension between the motherland and the colonies. The British had won the victory and had gained a world-wide empire; but now the question emerged as to who should pay the bills for the protection and security of the empire.

For years there had been tensions between the colonists and the motherland. England determined to use its colonies to build up its own wealth and security; consequently, it passed a number of laws carefully regulating colonial economic life so that England stood to benefit. Over the years England had passed laws regulating the commerce and taxes of its colonies. At times no objection was raised, but at other times protests were loud and vigorous.

Now, faced by a huge debt from the recent French and Indian War, the British determined simultaneously to make a peaceful settlement with the Indians, to keep a large army intact in order to preserve peace, to pay off past debts, and to handle future expenses by a series of colonial taxes. So they put into effect a tax on molasses, a basic colonial commodity, and passed the infamous Stamp Act, which placed a tax on all newspapers and legal documents. These taxes were to furnish the money to pay off the war debts.

Once again the New England Puritan preachers awakened to this new threat to their liberties. This was not the first time clergy and colonists had challenged the actions of the British parliament. Was not the very founding of Massachusetts based on a charter that granted certain privileges and liberties to the people? Friction was long-standing and grievances had come down through the years. No sooner were the French defeated than the English turned their backs on the charters and proceeded to rule as they wished. So argued some of the colonists.

The English argued that the king in parliament has every right to tax English subjects in order to pay the cost of maintaining peace and prosperity. Taxes were to be relatively small in that they were to be levied on only a few basic items.

Against this the colonists asserted that Englishmen could not be taxed without having the opportunity of consenting to that tax. Their colonial charters guaranteed that right. But the British and their sympathizers replied that the charters gave no such independence from parliamentary control, and to flout legal parliamentary actions was to go against the powers that were ordained by God to rule England under law and custom. So the arguments raged throughout the colonies. Particularly in New England voices were raised on both sides. And what were the ministers doing? Did they apply the same arguments against the British king and parliament that they used against the French? They did, but with greater effectiveness because they were arguing as Englishmen with Englishmen.

They contended that their commonwealth was founded on a compact that was drawn up between their fathers and the king. This sacred contract formed the fundamental law of the land whereby their relations with England were to be determined. It embodied the rights of all freeborn Englishmen to liberty and property. So long as both parties observed the rights and duties of this compact there would be peace, harmony, justice, and security. But when one party to a compact or covenant breaks the fundamental agreements of the compact, he not only violates the terms of contract, but he also violates the laws of God which are embodied in that compact. That is what parliament did! Under the guidance of the clergy and a group of radical agitators, bands of men were established, and they adopted the name "Sons of Liberty." They wrote and spoke against the Stamp Act. People were enrolled in a great protest boycott against all British imports. Home spinning and weaving was encouraged. Meanwhile British merchants suffered such a severe loss of trade that they forced parliament to abolish the Stamp Act.

At this news the pulpits resounded with glad tidings. Tyranny had been defeated! The founding fathers had been vindicated. Sermons were preached recounting the dreams and actions of the first Puritan settlers so as to teach the people the heritage which they possessed. The repeal of the evil act became an act of deliverance from slavery.

Meanwhile another danger had been growing in the New England and Middle colonies. For several years a group of New England Anglicans were busily engaged in an attempt to bring bishops to America. Such a move required an act of parliament, so it raised anew the question of parliament’s rights over the colonies. Furthermore, it re-created the specter of lord bishops as the right arm of the crown ready to undercut the people’s liberties. The descendants of the Puritans could not forget their fathers’ persecution at the hands of bishops such as Laud.

The Church of England had no intention of introducing bishops as a means of political control. It was purely a religious matter intended to deal with specific shortcomings in Church organization. Only bishops could ordain, confirm, and exercise discipline through ecclesiastical courts; therefore they were desperately needed in America. The past history of Puritan colonists prevented them from understanding the Anglicans’ need.

The S.P.G. was active in New England, winning converts, establishing churches, and pleading for bishops. During the Stamp Act agitation these men proved loyal to England and opposed all actions intended to overthrow the tax. Therefore, the New England Congregational clergy felt that asking for bishops was all part of a great plot to deliver the Puritan colonies back into the hands of king and bishops.

The same pastors who fought the Stamp Act battled against the introduction of bishops. Again, the center of opposition was New England Congregationalism and Middle colony Presbyterianism, two of the largest Churches. These two groups held a series of joint meetings to develop a strategy. Articles were written in newspapers, pamphlets were turned out by hundreds, and eloquent sermons were delivered from pulpits. All the arguments boiled down to two major points. Bishops were but another form of tyranny -- spiritual tyranny -- and, as such, they perverted the gospel by their hunger for power and pomp. Furthermore, spiritual tyranny was but another step in the direction of political tyranny. Loss of religious liberties meant a loss of political liberties.

So important was the agitation over bishops that it turned the attention of the entire population to the questions of parliamentary rights and fundamental liberties. Even the great patriot John Adams admitted that it caught the attention of the common people and made them aware of the basic questions.

Event piled upon event, building up to a grand climax. Undaunted by the rejection of the Stamp Act, the British parliament instituted a new series of economic restrictions. The colonists could not determine where the pinch was greatest, on their pocketbooks or on their political liberties. To aid in the enforcement of these laws, British troops were housed in Boston homes. This was the end!

In March, 1770, a thrill of horror passed through the colonies when British regulars fired on a crowd gathered in Boston commons, killing five and wounding others. Excitement from that had hardly died down when, in 1773, there occurred an act that led to the revolution. In order to save the East India Company from bankruptcy and in order to reassert its authority to tax, parliament dispatched a vast quantity of tea to the colonies. It was to be sold cheaply but with the abhorred tax included. Merchants and laborers were aroused.

Late one night a mob of Bostonians disguised as Indians converged on the piers, boarded the boats loaded with tea, and dumped the cargo into the sea. This was the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773. Other ports followed with even greater violence, and in one case ship and cargo were burned.

The governor was furious, and the English people and parliament did not take lightly the insult of the "Boston Tea Party." A series of strict regulations were passed which placed Boston and Massachusetts directly under royal control. The commander in chief of British troops in Boston, General Gage, was appointed governor.

As regulations grew in severity, the Puritan clergy rallied the people, and revolutionary agitators such as Samuel Adams cried for action. In 1774 another blunder of the British strengthened Puritan suspicions that a concerted effort was under way to repeal the religious and political liberties of the colonies. The so-called Quebec Act again raised the heated issue of Roman Catholicism. The territory of Quebec was extended southward to the Ohio River and westward to the Mississippi River. In this vast Quebec territory, not English common law, but French civil law was to prevail. Also, the British pledged themselves to support Roman Catholicism in that territory in the same way that the French had done.

Suddenly all these actions appeared as part of one great plot that would culminate in the triumph of Roman Catholicism. Did not the support of the Catholics and the agitation for bishops prove it? So the clergy attacked the Quebec Act as a danger to religious and civil liberty, the frontiersmen attacked it as a sellout of their territory, and the merchants and land speculators agreed. The entire nation was aroused.

In April, 1775, hostilities broke out with the battles of Lexington and Concord. The die was cast! The colonies were in open rebellion against the constituted authorities. What would the Churches and the clergy do? Which side would they back, or could they remain neutral? Did they have the right to take any side?

It was clear from the past actions of the Puritan clergy in times of crisis that they would have a good deal to say. For years they had preached about the fundamental rights of men, that governments were the result of a compact, that disloyalty to the compact or its laws called for adjustment, and that all people were responsible to the laws of God.

One pastor wrote his reaction to Lexington and Concord in a newspaper article, saying: "King George the Third, adieu! No man shall cry unto you for protection. . . . Your breach of covenant; your violation of faith; . . . have dissolved our allegiance to your crown and government.

"O my dear New England, hear thou the alarm of war! The call of heaven is to arms! to arms! Behold what all New England must expect to feel, if we don’t cut off and make a final end of those British sons of violence, and of every base Tory among us. . . .

"We are, my brethren, in a good cause; and if God be for us, we need not fear what man can do. . . .

"O Thou righteous Judge of all the earth, awake for our help. Amen and Amen."

To the south, Virginia girded itself for battle under the guidance of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the stinging words of Patrick Henry: "If we wish to be free; if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending; if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged . . . we must fight! I repeat it, sire, we must fight! An appeal to arms, and to the God of hosts, is all that is left us.

" . . . The gentlemen may cry, ‘Peace, peace!’ but there is no peace. The war has actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that the gentlemen wish?. . . Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

The appeals to God were not mere camouflage, nor were they simply a justification for the immediate action to be taken. For many years ministers in America had preached on the grounds of obedience and rebellion. They were not satisfied that subjects should obey any and all orders from a Government. On the contrary, they insisted that government was based on law superior to itself and that it had its origin in the consent of the people. When that law was disobeyed or when the people’s consent was ignored, then the Government committed treason and was to be punished by the people.

One minister clearly expressed these views to a local company of artillerymen when he said: "Whoever makes an alteration in the established constitution, whether he be a subject or a ruler, is guilty of treason. Treason of the worst kind: treason against the State. . . . That we may, and ought, to resist, and even make war against those rulers who leap the bounds prescribed them by the constitution, and attempt to oppress and enslave the subjects, is a principle on which alone the great revolutions which have taken place in our nation can be justified."

He went on to argue that all great Protestant divines stood for this principle and he quoted Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, and Zwingli. Thus it was that long periods of preparation paid off. The New England ministers were among the first to enunciate the doctrines that became the basis of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence.

Not all ministers agreed in this. A vast majority of the Congregationalists and almost all the Presbyterians, under the leadership of John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, were in favor of the colonial cause. A small number of these clergymen, however, remained Tories, faithful to the king. As always, there was a vast body, probably the majority, of clergy who were conservative moderates. Only slowly were they won to the Revolution.

It was among the Anglicans that the largest numbers of loyalists were found. Especially the S.P.G. men in New England were king’s men. Many of them fled with the British armies and served as chaplains. Others showed their courage by facing rifle fire as they preached from their pulpits.

In the South, the Anglican churchmen were almost entirely for the Revolutionary cause. These were the men who opposed the introduction of bishops as an encroachment on the rights of the local vestries. They agreed with the New England Puritans in upholding the liberties and property of the colonists. Almost two thirds of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were from the Anglican Church; hence, there was a great cleavage in their ranks.

The Lutherans, Baptists, Reformed, and other groups proved faithful to the cause of independence. All gave unsparingly of their time and men, and chaplains were furnished from all groups. The handful of Roman Catholics of Maryland and Pennsylvania also proved faithful to the Revolutionary cause. No one group can be singled out for special acclaim. Perhaps, of all groups, the New England Congregationalists did most, because of their years of preaching about the covenant and about a government responsible to the people.

One group that temporarily suffered as much as the Anglicans were the Methodists. John Wesley, their great English leader, wrote a series of pamphlets in which he pleaded for nonresistance on the part of the Methodists and condemned the Revolution. As a result Methodists were in bad repute, and a number of their leaders had to go into hiding. Fortunately, Francis Asbury, greatest of the preachers sent over by Wesley, remained in America and favored the colonial cause. All the American-born ministers were for the Revolution. But the stand of Wesley and his preachers tended to identify the movement with the British cause.

Some Christians refused to fight on either side as they believed that all war was wrong. As a consequence they were misused by both sides. The Quakers and the Moravians especially suffered greatly on this account during the Revolution. One of the most regrettable incidents of the entire war was the unprovoked slaughter of a large number of pacifistic Moravian Indians in Ohio. This dark blot rests on the American armies, though the British also misused Christian Indians.

So the Church working through the churches faced the question of revolution and came to the conclusion that there was a point where people might and should rebel against their Government. Governments were ordained of God, but they were ordained in such a way that they were responsible to God and to the people over whom they ruled. Government did not exist for itself and did not determine its own ends. It existed to fulfill certain laws of God, and when it failed to do this faithfully, it could be called to task by the people.

It was not easy for the Church to reach such a decision. Some of its members disagreed. But all agreed that in time of distress, war, and destruction, the Church had to offer succor and redemption; so it performed its acts of mercy and love in ministering to the sick and dying. The Church was carrying on a full ministry to man, both in his personal relation to God and in his relationship to his fellow men in society.

October 29, 1727, Was a quiet, crisp New England night. The bright moonlight shimmered on the trees and grass, casting eerie shadows and lighting dark recesses. Suddenly the stillness was broken by faint rumbling which grew in intensity. The earth began to shake and tremble. Women screamed, babies were awakened, men fell to their knees and prayed.

Had God come to destroy faithless New England? Just six years ago he had visited them with a terrible plague of smallpox, in which several hundred people died. Men wondered if this was not the divine wrath poured out against New England’s sins.

The earthquake spread more terror than damage. For a short time people repented of their coldness of heart, but this did not last. People no longer had the commitment of the founding fathers. They could become halfhearted church members through the Halfway Covenant. It was not unusual to find a whole New England community baptized and holding some relation to the Church. Many were invited to the Lord’s Supper in the hope that they would be converted to the Lord.

The early Puritans were familiar with the spiritual temperament which fluctuated like a barometer with each change in the weather. Their answer had always been strict discipline of those in the congregation and a renewed appeal to the covenant and to conversion. Discipline, covenant, and conversion -- these formed the arsenal with which John Cotton, and later Increase Mather, fought deadness of heart.

Like all good Puritans they stressed God’s initiative and man’s heartfelt response. God had taken the initial step in providing through his covenants an offer of salvation to man. His Word, his sacraments, and his Holy Spirit brought men to realize their election. Men had to feel their sin, their worthlessness, and God’s forgiveness.

This experience, which might be sudden or gradual, took place within the means ordained by God. So men were urged to hear God’s Word, to obey his commands, and to avail themselves of his grace. If they were of the elect, those chosen by God, they would respond in utter trust. This was conversion. The result was a new life lived in the fellowship of the saints under the strict control of the Church.

Successful periods of conversion grew infrequent. It was difficult to reach these self-satisfied New Englanders. They would respond when disease struck or when the Indians became restless, but no great outpouring of the Spirit was noticed during the first thirty years of the eighteenth century. Large numbers of unconverted men, those who had never experienced the depth of their dependence on God, were communicants in the churches. Morality was at a low stage.

In December, 1734, Jonathan Edwards preached a series of sermons that struck home in a marvelous way. His first sermon was on "Justification by Faith." In it he denied every attempt of man to base his security on his own power or choice. Either salvation was from God or it was not possible.

As his series of sermons progressed, men and women began to groan and cry out during the service. Their consciences were stricken with their unworthiness. Edwards did not leave a single loophole. God’s way with man was grounded in the very nature of things, for he was the creator and sustainer of all things. Reason and conscience both pointed to the justice of his treatment of men.

Little wonder people cried out in fear. Either they were damned eternally or they were saved. They could be saved only by God and in his way. But they had not followed his way or heeded his will as revealed in Christ Jesus! Were they all, then, damned? Apparently so -- unless they repented from their sins and turned from their evil ways. Only God could lead them to this point. They had best listen closely to God’s demands and offer.

People crowded to Edwards for advice. Hundreds were converted. A little child of four years experienced the forgiving grace of God. Jonathan Edwards was no fool, but one of the greatest intellects America has produced. He carefully guided those souls seeking comfort. He rooted out all false conversions based simply on imagination and emotions.

Soon the news of the Great Awakening spread from Northampton, Massachusetts, to other communities. Revivals spread throughout New England, sporadic and unconnected.

There had been an earlier renewal in New Jersey, but it was unconnected with that of Edwards. A German preacher, Theodore J. Frelinghuysen, had ministered among the Dutch Reformed in the 1720’s. Unlike Edwards, who always delivered a restrained, carefully reasoned sermon, Frelinghuysen was eloquent and passionate. He condemned the external, formal piety of his listeners and demanded an inward conversion of the heart which would produce the good life. So a revival spread among the Dutch Reformed and produced a cleavage in their ranks.

The Great Awakening took hold among the Presbyterians as well. Rev. William Tennent, Sr., developed a school for pastors in a log cabin at Neshaminy, Pennsylvania. Out of this "Log College" came a series of young men who preached conversion sermons in a winning way. One of the leaders in promoting the revival was Tennent’s son, Gilbert. Under the direction of the Log College men, numerous sinners were brought to a renewed commitment to God. New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania were the early centers of this Presbyterian awakening.

The man who bound the separate revival movements into a great unified effort was a young Anglican preacher, George Whitefield, who arrived in 1739. He toured the colonies, drawing vast throngs as he spoke in all the Protestant denominations or in great public gatherings. A close friend of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, he remained within the Anglican Church and promoted its evangelical wing.

One day in Philadelphia, 1739, thousands of people crowded around the courthouse steps to hear the great evangelist from England. A portly young man in his early twenties strode up the steps, turned, faced the crowd with upraised arms, and launched into his sermon. With great effectiveness he portrayed the fallen, helpless condition of man, the unspeakable love of God, the judgment of man’s reason and conscience convicting him of his failure, and God’s gracious redemption in Christ. Hundreds were in tears. Others groaned as their hearts were moved. But George Whitefield kept them well in hand.

So persuasive was George Whitefield that even Benjamin Franklin emptied his pockets in answer to an appeal for money to establish an orphanage in Georgia. He urged his friends never to go to hear Whitefield with money in their pockets. This was a high tribute from penny-wise Franklin. All Whitefield’s energies were thrown into the orphanage appeal and the Great Awakening. Everywhere he went crowds gathered from near and far. Farmers left their work and hurried to the cities. Merchants closed their shops. Once a court was postponed.

Whitefield traveled through the colonies from one end to the other. He bound together the many local revivals and made of them one great movement which swept the country. Jonathan Edwards welcomed him. The Tennents opened their churches and hearts to him. His fervent sermons, preached without manuscript, dramatically painted the picture of man’s damnation and God’s redemption. This was not essentially new to New England Puritans. There was newness, however, in the freshness and vividness with which it was said, and also in the lack of the old Puritan doctrinal exposition.

Whitefield returned to England in 1740, but he was to make five additional evangelistic tours in America. He died while on a preaching tour in 1770, and was buried under the pulpit of the Presbyterian church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Under his inspiration the first colony-wide movement took place. The Great Awakening united the colonies in one great movement.

The extension of the movement was not all for the best. It did help to unify the various Protestant groups, and to produce a common point of view. Whitefield preached in pulpits of all the major denominations. But discord as well as unity was a product of the Great Awakening. Even the common theological point of view, which cut across denominational lines, was opposed by some.

One of the first indications of disharmony was in the Presbyterian Church. For quite some time the Scotch-Irish ministers, called the "Old Side" group, had been opposed to the New England trained and Log College "New Side" Presbyterians. The Old Side said that the New Side men were not true Presbyterians, since their beliefs were not correct, and the revivals were proof of their incorrectness. The emphasis on the converted man and the method of conversion distorted good Presbyterian doctrine.

In 1740, Gilbert Tennent preached a sermon on "The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry." In it he attacked those who did not emphasize the necessity of a regenerated or holy life for the ministry. "Our Lord will not make men ministers till they follow him."

But this was contrary to the Old Side orthodox view, which stressed the strict adherence to a confession of faith and argued that the presbytery, and ultimately a synod, determines the fitness of a man for the ministry on the basis of his education and doctrinal beliefs, and an external call from a congregation. But the ministry is not just another profession, argued the revivalist; it is the result of the call of God. No institution can make a man a true minister of the gospel if that man is not converted by God.

A bitter battle followed, in which the Old Side accused the revivalistic New Side of invading parishes by traveling around to preach. The revivalists retorted that the Old Side would not allow the people to hear converted pastors. So fierce was the battle that the pro-revival New Brunswick Presbytery was put out of the synod in 1741. The split remained in the Presbyterian Church until 1758. Thus disunity and dissension were also products of the Great Awakening. The Presbyterians were left with an Old Side party, opposed to revivals, and a New Side party, in favor of revivals.

In March, 1743, men were busy rushing around New London, Connecticut, knocking on doors to invite people to a special meeting. Rev. James Davenport, famous Congregational revivalist, was in town. The previous year he had traveled through New England imitating the procedures of Whitefield, but his spirit was utterly different from that of Whitefield. He would gain the right to use a pastor’s pulpit and then denounce that pastor before his congregation as an unconverted man. As he preached, his voice would grow in shrillness until it reached a vibrating singsong. Often he would close his eyes and rock back and forth as if in a trance. This was the worst side of the revival.

"Come to the wharf this afternoon and see the Lord’s will done," was the word spread through New London, Connecticut, on March 6. Mr. Davenport was holding a special service, and people were urged to bring all worldly possessions that they idolized. A great fire was to be lighted.

As a woman threw rings and a silver necklace to the flames, she cried out that they were the devil’s toys. Another flung a beautiful gown and a rich cloak onto the smoldering pile. All around men and women were chanting, singing, and praying. Mr. Davenport was pacing about, exhorting his followers to sacrifice their idolatrous love for worldly things. Suits, velvet breeches, wigs, hoods, and books -- from the pens of "unconverted " pastors -- were added to the bonfire. And into that fire went the last shreds of the spirit of unity that still bound together those opposing and those upholding revivals.

The hitherto restrained opposition now broke forth. One group of Congregational pastors produced a Testimony opposing the revivals and deploring their results. A far larger group responded by publishing a Testimony of their own, which deplored irregular practices of men such as Davenport, admitted some excesses, but upheld revivals and the Great Awakening as a gift from God.

The seat of opposition was in and around Boston under the able direction of Rev. Charles Chauncy. In 1743 he published Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England. It contained a collection of all the extravagances of the revival. Though Chauncy admitted that some good came from the Awakening, he argued, on the basis of the extreme cases, that the evil far outweighed the good.

Chauncy upheld respectability, sobriety, and reason in the Christian life. These were sufficient, for they were the best evidence that one was in a state of salvation or on the road to being saved. He was strongly suspicious of any display of the emotions in religion. After all, religion was a sensible thing and the last thing it should produce was emotional disturbance.

Chauncy was speaking for one side of Puritanism. He was the spokesman for the shrewd Yankee businessman. Puritanism had always held to the moral uprightness and reasonableness of the Christian, and by 1740 this had produced the hardheaded, respectable, rather cold and calculating merchant. His religion was a reflection of his state, and Chauncy was, in reality, defending this position.

There was another side of Puritanism which the successful Yankee businessmen and their pastors had outgrown -- the deeply stirring piety that trembled before a holy God and drove men to acts of love and mercy. Jonathan Edwards replied to Chauncy in a series of writings and reminded him that religion involved the whole man, emotions and reason.

The man in Christ, moved by the Spirit of God, has a profoundly emotional experience. Why not? Is not religion related to the very heart of man -- his will? What he wills, that he will do. But what determines what he wills? Custom? Reason? Yes, all these things. But above all, it is his whole past life, all his desires, that which he wants most of all! Only when God’s Spirit shows man the true aim of his desires and grants him a new heart and will, only then can man turn to God.

So, argued Edwards, we must expect the Spirit of God to work through such channels as the revivals. Granted the excesses, they must be overcome and guarded against, but the work must go on. The Great Awakening was a good thing misused by a few men. It should not be thrown out because of that misuse!

Jonathan Edwards not only defended the place of emotion in religion, but went far beyond and questioned what Chauncy meant by reason and a good moral life. He was convinced that Chauncy held a very shallow view of reason and morality. So he plunged deeply into a discussion of the meaning of all reality -- of the whole universe. He was one of the greatest thinkers America has ever produced. His defense of the revivals and of emotion in religion rested on a broad argument which included God and the nature of reality itself.

Chauncy never answered him. The revivalists, safe behind the defense of Edwards, went on their way, forgetting that Edwards said that religion deals with both the heart and the mind of man -- with the total man. The rejection of Edwards and the resulting divorce between reason and religion was a rejection of the spirit of earlier Puritanism. This had dire consequences for the future of American Christianity. On the other hand, Chauncy and his followers went their separate way, stressing cold, hard morality, apart from a warm piety. This was to culminate in Unitarianism.

Agitation over the revivals spread among the Baptists as well. The older Rhode Island Baptists, stressing the free will of man and standing for an educated ministry, were to be found mostly in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. They were comparatively few in number. Generally speaking, they were suspicious of the excesses of the Great Awakening.

As a result of the revivals a large number of churches were founded outside the officially recognized State-established congregations. This was particularly true in New England. These Separatists would allow preaching only by a converted ministry, and demanded that a congregation be composed only of known saints.

This was where the Baptists won new followers. What was more sensible than to limit membership only to those who as adults consciously professed their faith and were baptized? Thus a large number of Separatist congregations cut themselves off from the State-supported Congregational churches and became Baptists.

All these were revivalistic Baptist churches. They were strongly resented and opposed by the older or regular Baptists, but the future was in the hands of the Separatist group. They had to fight vigorously in New England in behalf of Roger Williams’ famous principle of separation of Church and State. Their greatest leader and organizer in the campaign was Rev. Isaac Backus, a former New England Separatist turned Baptist.

But the very opposition and dissension produced by the Great Awakening became responsible for a new life in the churches. It led to a rapid growth of the Presbyterians and the Baptists, and it led to the introduction of a new religious group, the Methodists. All was not loss!

The New England Separatist Baptists turned to the South and found a fruitful field of activity. A number of these men had come under Whitefield’s influence. Converted, they moved away from infant baptism to the necessity for adult baptism as a mark of professing faith. These men were drawn mostly from the lower classes, and they disdained education as a hindrance to the Spirit. They upheld the absolute independence of the local congregation, and they took pride in their preachers who were common laborers like the rest of the folks.

In the South, as in New England, the Baptists were persecuted by the State authorities. They were accused of disturbing the peace and of keeping people from working by turning their attention to revivals. In a way they did disturb the peace by their highly emotional and dramatic preaching, but really not enough to merit persecution on the part of the State. The real rub was that they were Baptists who held incorrect beliefs and refused to support the established Church, be it Anglican or Congregational.

Persecution and suppression only produced more Baptists and gave them the mantle of martyrs. They had a phenomenal growth in the Carolinas and in Virginia. This was the first step in the direction of Baptist predominance in the South which exists even today. It also marked them as one of the great religious groups in America.

Meanwhile the Presbyterians were having some success in the South, though largely in Virginia. Log College men visited that state and soon had large numbers attending the services. In 1748, Rev. Samuel Davies settled in Virginia and became the center of the movement. The Old Side Presbyterians sided with the established Anglican Church and attacked the New Side Presbyterians. But the revivalists won both the respect of the magistrates and the hearts of the people. They increased while their opponents decreased. It was not until 1758 that the two groups reunited.

Another fruit of the Great Awakening was the beginning of Methodism in the South, especially in Virginia. John Wesley, a close friend of Whitefield, was probably the greatest single figure in the revival of religion which swept England starting in 1740. He organized his followers into closely knit, well-disciplined groups which existed as special societies within the Church of England. Pressure was always present to break with the Anglican Church and to form a separate Methodist Church. Wesley would not hear of it.

In the 1760’s Methodist missionaries and laymen were active in New York; however, their work was marked by only average success. The real heart of American Methodism, small though it was, was to be found in the South, and it benefited from the Great Awakening.

A young Anglican pastor, Devereux Jarratt, was converted in the Presbyterian revivals, and he continued to preach revival sermons. His work, in turn, converted a number of men who later became active, often leaders, in the Methodist movement. Jarratt was strenuously opposed by many of his fellow Anglican pastors and was accused of being "a fanatic Presbyterian."

During the 1770’s he came in contact with Wesley’s men and immediately recognized them as brethren in Christ. Here were men in the Anglican Church who felt as he did. Praise God, they would perform a mighty work! Under the joint efforts of Jarratt and traveling Methodist lay preachers much of southern Virginia, and some of North Carolina, was covered by Methodist circuits. Although Jarratt refused to join them when they broke from the Anglican Church, his work was responsible for the sound and extensive activities of the Methodists in the South. But even with this activity the Methodists remained as a group within the Anglican Church, and far smaller in numbers than the three great Churches -- the Congregationalists, the Anglicans, and the Presbyterians. Even the Baptists were much larger.

In 1742, Henry Melchior Mühlenberg, a Lutheran pastor, arrived in Pennsylvania. He was trained in the famous Pietist university, Halle. The German Pietists also stressed the necessity of a conversion experience and, consequently, a strict moral life. By this time there were a number of Lutheran congregations in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Most of the Swedish Lutherans on the Delaware had been absorbed into the Anglican Church. But the others held firm, hoping for pastors. They would not use untrained men and were suspicious of the revivals.

One year previous to Mühlenberg’s arrival, Count von Zinzendorf came to America. He was the great leader of the Moravians, who were German Lutherans and Bohemian Pietists. Zinzendorf hoped to form a great united Protestant Church in which each Church would retain its individuality but unite on common essentials. He was working with a number of Lutheran churches in Pennsylvania when Mühlenberg arrived.

Mühlenberg decided at once that the greatest need of the Lutheran congregations was not for some vague union of all Protestants but for adequate pastoral care by devoted ministers. Fakes and quacks had succeeded in gaining control of the churches on the frontier because nobody was there to check their credentials.

In a heroic manner Mühlenberg set out to bind together the scattered Lutheran congregations, to give them adequate pastoral care, to preach, administer the sacraments, and to work out a common worship service. Under his leadership the first Lutheran synod, called the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, was founded in 1748.

Though Mühlenberg himself was not a revivalist, he was sympathetic to the piety of the revivalists and opened his pulpit to Whitefield. In turn he preached in German and Dutch Reformed churches and in Anglican churches. He represented the warm, personal religion of German Pietism, coupled with a strong orthodox Lutheranism which insisted on adherence to the historically formulated Lutheran doctrines. Theology was not to be ignored in favor of the emotions. This was to become a distinctive mark of Lutheranism in American Protestantism. The major problems of the Lutheran Church were those of an educated ministry and the use of a strange language, and they were to plague Lutherans for some time.

The German Reformed, like the Lutherans, had difficulty in obtaining an educated ministry. For practical reasons they co-operated with and received support from the Dutch Reformed Church of Holland. In 1746, Rev. Michael Schlatter arrived. He played the role of a Mühlenberg for the German Reformed. As did his friend in the Lutheran Church, he took a mediating position between two extreme parties -- the Pietists and the strict Confessional orthodox.

Not only did the Great Awakening account for the new status of the Presbyterians and Baptists and the arrival of the Methodists; it also resulted in a new way to reach the many unchurched. How were the thousands of indifferent people outside the Church to be brought within? At this time America had fewer church members than did any other so-called Christian nation. Revival preaching, use of the Word, sacraments, and pastoral ministry, and strict congregational discipline was the answer.

The people were ripe for a revival. Living on the frontier, their lives always in danger from Indian attacks, struggling against nature for a living, accustomed to the raw, untamed life, these people were prepared for revivalistic religion which touched the emotions. Those in the cities were just as prepared for a resurgence of the emotional side in religion.

A great ingathering of souls resulted. It is estimated that between 40,000 and 50,000 people joined the Church in New England alone. This was the pattern in the other sections. Through the revivals the Churches reached out and touched more people than at any previous time in America. Here was a method of bringing the people to God. It took for granted that men were separated from God and that they had to be born anew.

The results were astounding. A new life pulsated through the Churches. Grasped by the love of God in Christ, men poured out this love to their fellow men. As members in the great Kingdom of God, they sought to express its meaning in life around them.

Indian missions took on a new appearance. Once more young men volunteered their life’s work with the natives. Young David Brainerd poured out his zeal and energy in their behalf until he died a burned-out man in the home of Jonathan Edwards.

Eleazar Wheelock had such success that he hoped to open a college for Indians. One of the converts, Samson Occom, made a great impression in England and helped to raise funds for the institution. In 1769, Dartmouth College, named in honor of Lord Dartmouth, who helped to raise funds in England, was founded by Wheelock for the specific purpose of training Indians. Even Jonathan Edwards spent a long period of his life laboring among the Indians at the Stockbridge mission in western Massachusetts while he was producing some of his greatest theological treatises.

This new life in the Churches resulted in the establishment of a number of colleges and other institutions. Whitefield’s famous orphanage in Georgia became an inspiration for a number of similar homes for children. Out of a charitable school and academy in Pennsylvania, 1755, there emerged the University of Pennsylvania. Likewise schools such as the Anglicans’ King’s College (Columbia), 1754, and the Baptists’ College of Rhode Island (Brown), 1769, gained support from the fresh energy of the Churches.

One of America’s great universities came directly out of the Great Awakening. It was the continuation of William Tennent’s Log College as the College of New Jersey, 1746. This Presbyterian college later became Princeton University. A whole series of "Log Colleges" sprang up, and some proved to be permanent colleges. Thus the revivals produced a new spirit manifesting itself in missions and education.

One of the finest fruits of the Great Awakening was the increased opposition to slavery. Ever since the introduction of Negro slaves into Virginia in 1619, many Christians had been uneasy about the buying and selling of their fellow human beings. Others had defended it.

To the Biblical statement that in Christ "there is neither Greek nor Jew, . . . bond nor free" the reply was made that this pertains only to man’s soul, not to his external bodily condition. Slavery exists because of sin.

Students of Jonathan Edwards believed that Christian love must be shown to mankind in general. It cannot be stopped by a small limited application. Negroes and Indians were part of the great human race and should, therefore, be objects of love as much as any other being. In the 1770’s, Samuel Hopkins, one of these students. took a stand against slavery.

The real opposition to slavery, however, was carried on independently of the revivals but benefited from the atmosphere of the revivals. Anthony Benezet and John Woolman, both Quakers, devoted their lives and talents to opposing traffic in human bodies. Woolman, in particular, gave all his time and devotion to the concern of traveling around to various Quaker meetings and speaking his mind against slavery. He had a sensitive, highly spiritual personality, which on one occasion led Indians to grasp what he was saying though they could not comprehend the language he used.

The Great Awakening had changed the American religious scene. New groups forged to the front in importance. All groups had to decide for or against revivals. A new kind of leadership replaced the older leaders, and the fresh vital life pouring through the Churches expressed itself in colleges, orphanages, Indian missions, and antislavery feeling.

But most important of all was a subtle shift in emphasis. Formerly the Puritans had emphasized God’s covenant -- what he had done. This was found in Scripture and in doctrine, and a correct understanding of both was essential. This was taught and made real in the Church. But revivalism tended to stress, not so much what God had done, but how man had responded. Earlier revivalists such as Edwards and Whitefield did not make this error, but later men did.

This led to several new developments in American Christianity. So much stress was laid on the response of the believer to the love of God in Christ that there was a danger of overemphasizing man’s emotional states. The real concern was with how he felt. Did he feel guilty? Did he show this guilt so that all could see it? Was his conversion experience convincing? Did it have the proper marks? How man felt and reacted became more important than what God in Christ had done for man.

Again, the converted man came under the rule of God, the reign of Christ in God’s Kingdom. This brought him a new will, a new heart, a new knowledge of God’s will. Each man had to experience this individually and personally. Having experienced conversion, he would show it in his actions, so his actions became all-important. How was he living? Did he show God’s will in action? The really important thing was not what man believed but what he did. So the emphasis was placed on man’s activity, with less and less regard for doctrine, theology, or the Church as the chosen instrument of God.

Finally, a new shift was evident in the different way men recognized religious activities. Formerly all the Churches granted that the Church was responsible for all life -- personal and social. But now, the later revivalists saw God at work primarily in the conversion experience and in the resulting life of Christian good works. The conversion experience and its fruits were from God. But what of the rest of life? What of knowledge, of government, of economics? Did not the Church have some responsibility for these? Yes, but only through converted men can God’s will be shown in those areas. God is related only to the saved individuals. The world is essentially in sin and so is evil. Therefore only converted men really know and do what is right. Both the place of the Church and the importance of worldly activity suffered at the hands of revivalism.

What, then, happens to the Church’s mission and message to the whole of life? The Puritans knew that God’s will could never be done perfectly, but they also knew that some actions are closer to his will than others, regardless of a man’s being converted or unconverted. One could find God’s will and action in many places besides the conversion experience. One of the fruits of the Great Awakening was a surrender of the Church’s mission and message as related to the intellectual, political, and economic life of man. No longer was the old Puritan ideal of a holy commonwealth completely dedicated to God the primary goal of New England. Interest was now shifted to God’s reign in man’s heart. Meanwhile, while many remained unconverted, one could not hope for a holy commonwealth.

There was nothing spectacular or unusual in the arrival of Roger Williams and his wife at Boston in February, 1631. One more Puritan minister was warmly welcomed, and he was immediately offered the post of " teacher" in the Boston church. Within a short time Williams left Boston and in the span of a few years found himself in such complete disagreement with the Massachusetts colony that he was exiled. What happened that the colony founded as the holy experiment for the Puritan brethren soon became suspicious and intolerant of many of the brethren?

Roger Williams expressed his initial disagreement with the Massachusetts Bay Puritans over the point of recognizing the Anglican Church. He refused the position at Boston because that church recognized the Anglican as a true but corrupt Church and allowed its members while in England to commune in Anglican churches. Williams was a strict Separatist, desiring no relations whatsoever with what he considered the totally corrupt Church of England. An additional disagreement with the Massachusetts group was over the rights of the magistrates to punish those who broke the Sabbath. This was later to become the crucial point of debate between the leaders of the Bay system of Church-State relations and Williams, the forerunner of the American system of separation of Church and State.

Neither Williams nor Massachusetts was happy in the other’s company, so he proceeded to the Separatist Puritans in Plymouth, the Pilgrims, where he became assistant to the minister. There he argued the Separatist position with such zeal that even the Pilgrims were somewhat uneasy, since they wished to retain peaceful relations with their strong Massachusetts neighbors and with the homeland. Only a handful of followers and a number of Indians, whose languages and customs he learned, were appreciative of his work.

Within two years Williams returned to the Bay colony in an unofficial capacity in the Salem church. There he found a minister and congregation sympathetic to his views and determined to retain their independence over against the Massachusetts authorities and the other congregations. He also encountered the old suspicion of the officials and the ministers. Massachusetts was in no mood to tolerate critics of the holy experiment. They were in danger of losing their charter to the crown, and pressure was constant from opponents in England. In order to defend themselves against the impending threats, they armed their colonists and required a special oath of promised support from all residents. The holy experiment had to be protected at all costs.

Once more Williams protested against the acts of the magistrates and refused the oath on the grounds that it was sacrilegious, a taking of God’s name in vain by Christians and nonbelievers alike in order to keep the magistrates in power. This the officials could not tolerate. In 1635, Williams was summoned before the highest tribunal of the colony -- the General Court -- composed of the governor, the deputy governor, the assistants, the representative deputies of the freemen, and the Bay ministers who were invited to attend.

In addition to the above views, which supposedly attacked the authority of the magistrate, Williams, while at Plymouth, had also criticized the very charter itself. He maintained that the Indians alone owned the land and that the king had no right to grant it through a charter. If this were true, it was an attack on both the powers of the king and the rights of the colony, and it was criticism repeated at the very time when the colonists were trying to hold their charter.

Roger Williams was not silenced at this trial. He continued his attack on the colony until he was once again ordered before the magistrates in October of that year and sentenced to be banished from the colony. But the execution of the sentence was delayed because of his ill-health, until the authorities heard of his continued preaching. Then they determined to ship him back to England, and, learning about this, Williams fled from Salem in a violent snowstorm in January, 1636.

Not knowing where to go, he stumbled through the wilderness until he was saved by a band of Indians whose friendship he had won while in Plymouth. He had always been kind to the natives, and in this his greatest time of need they did not fail him. In the spring he settled in what is now Rhode Island and named his settlement "Providence." There he put into practice those beliefs he had taught in Salem.

Soon he came to doubt the validity of infant baptism on the ground that it was unscriptural, and that a child could not consciously accept in faith the baptismal covenant. Though he later repudiated this Baptist position, he became known as the founder of the first Baptist church in Rhode Island. Soon other Baptist churches developed in that state.

Roger Williams represented the first real break in the New England holy experiment. At a later date he engaged in a spirited controversy with John Cotton on the right of the magistrate to coerce a man into the truth. The Puritans argued that the object of their experiment was to establish a Scriptural form of government, both civil and churchly. This included the right of the magistrates to make and enforce such laws as would develop and uphold a Christian community.

The magistrates were called "nursing fathers" of the churches. They investigated the fitness of the clergy, gave advice on disputes between churches, determined where new ministers should be located, and upheld the moral law of the community. The ministers, on the other hand, preached election sermons each time new magistrates were to be selected. In the sermon they attempted to bring to bear the Word of God as it applied to current problems. Many times they gave advice to the magistrates. Thus, minister and magistrate served to check each other, both were responsible to the church members, and ultimately all were under God’s will as revealed in Scripture. God’s will was to be made to prevail in the public life of the nation as well as in the personal lives of the citizens.

Roger Williams had no argument with making God’s will supreme in public as well as in private life. He disputed the method used by the Puritans. You cannot force the conscience of any man. You cannot make laws of faith. John Cotton contended that they were not forcing any man’s conscience. But when a man sees the truth, his conscience tells him to follow it, and if he refuses, then the State has the right to compel that man to listen to his conscience. The laws of Massachusetts were not intended to suppress the conscience but to aid it by making hardheaded men obey it.

All this was rejected by Williams. He argued that there are two areas in life, both ruled by God but in different ways. In one, the area of natural life, of society, and of government, man lives according to the laws and customs of that life. In the other, the area of grace, man lives only by the direct call from God. You cannot force the second area by laws in the first. But, also, you cannot leave God out of the first. The insights of the gospel are carried into all of life voluntarily, indirectly, never perfectly, but always under the judgment of God. The State cannot interfere with the Church, and the Church cannot make laws for the State.

Little wonder that Roger Williams was rejected by the Bay Puritans He undercut their whole program. If his criticisms were true, then the colony didn’t even own its own land, and the crown of England was without power in America. What would the English critics say when they heard this? Furthermore, if the magistrates had no power to enforce forms of worship and to prevent insidious beliefs from arising, how then could a holy commonwealth, pleasing to God, be established? Roger Williams’ beliefs were felt to be dangerous to the welfare of the State both from the spiritual and from the temporal point of view. His view of the relations between the powers of the State and the religious beliefs of the citizens was the forerunner of the American ideal of the separation of Church and State; hence his great importance.

The exile of Roger Williams did not mark the end but the beginning of troubles in the holy commonwealth. Further unrest and dissatisfaction were seen in the reaction to Mistress Anne Hutchinson, one of the outstanding women in Boston. A gifted woman with powers of persuasion, she was convinced that all the ministers of the Bay, except her pastor, John Cotton, preached more on good works than on grace.

This the ministers and magistrates could not tolerate, and it became a point of contention when an entire group adopted that point of view. In November, 1637, after her friends had been defeated, several exiled, Mistress Hutchinson was brought to trial for disparaging the ministers and for holding meetings in her home in order to criticize the clergy. The court found it exceedingly difficult to trap her, and it was only in reply to the question of her theological certainty that she gave her opponents an opportunity.

She replied that she was certain in the same way that Abraham was positive he should not sacrifice his own son -- by an immediate revelation. To this the deputy governor replied, "Howl an immediate revelation."

Governor Winthrop summed up the feelings of the court when he said, "Now the mercy of God by a providence hath answered our desires and made her to lay open herself and the ground of all these disturbances to be by revelations, for we receive no such."

Anne Hutchinson was banished and fled to Rhode Island. The magistrates had to dispose of her because, from their point of view, she had denied the whole basis of Church and commonwealth. She had attacked the theology of the ministers, and by emphasizing the personal operation of the Holy Spirit in revealing the truth of Scripture, or truth apart from Scripture, she was denying the very foundation of the holy experiment -- that of Scripture as interpreted by the ministers in the midst of the congregations. This would destroy all obedience to law, both private and public, and replace it with individual fancy. So they argued.

Meanwhile the colony was giving other indications of growing pains. Some of the members were dissatisfied with the strict control of the magistrates, and they wished better land. So a large number of them moved to Connecticut with their minister, Thomas Hooker. Though they were willing for all good citizens to have a hand in electing those who were responsible for government, they too insisted that only church members could be in actual positions of authority. So, in spite of their dissatisfaction with the Massachusetts arrangements, their system of government was not radically different.

In the 1640’s internal difficulties of Massachusetts were further complicated by events in England. Parliament and King Charles I were at war. The Anglican Church was pulled down, and a coalition of Presbyterians and Congregationalists, the latter called Independents ruled supreme. Both groups looked suspiciously at Massachusetts.

The English Independents practiced toleration of all Christian groups except the Anglicans and Roman Catholics; thus, they were astonished at the intolerance of Massachusetts. The Presbyterians could not understand why the American Puritans would not admit good Presbyterians to full communion and to the privilege of voting. It is true that Presbyterians held a different idea concerning the right of synods or Church assemblies to legislate for local churches and to ordain or examine ministerial candidates. But the theology of the two groups was essentially the same.

In 1646 a remonstrance was presented to the magistrates at Boston by a group of dissatisfied men. Among them was Dr. Robert Child, a Presbyterian. It asked that all Englishmen be given their essential rights and freedom apart from any religious requirement. Furthermore, it asked that all members of the Church of England be allowed to commune in the Massachusetts churches. This was a bombshell exploded among the magistrates.

As Dr. Child prepared to sail for England, the authorities burst into his cabin and declared him under arrest. A careful search of his belongings revealed a petition addressed to the House of Commons. It asked for an investigation of the Massachusetts Government, the appointment of a royal governor to guarantee the freedom of Englishmen, and the legal recognition of Presbyterianism. Dr. Child was rushed from shipboard to jail and later, with his fellow petitioners, was heavily fined. He subsequently returned to England.

As a result of the repeated attacks on the holy experiment, an attempt was made to strengthen the government and to pacify the unrest of the dissatisfied. In 1648, Laws and Liberties, embodying the laws of the colony, was published. Now every man knew exactly his responsibilities and his rights. Some of the discontent was pacified by the extension of certain local privileges to non-Church members, but the central control of the colony remained unchanged.

Criticisms from England had to be met. In face of Presbyterian opposition, the magistrates invited the Puritans’ churches to a meeting where theological issues were to be discussed. The final formulation of the consensus was known as the Cambridge Platform, 1648. This was American Puritanism’s first confession of faith concerning doctrine and Church government.

They silenced English Presbyterian and Independent criticism by the adoption of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which was the product of a group of English Puritan divines called together by the House of Commons, 1643-1649. By its adoption, the American Puritans upheld the same beliefs as did their English brethren.

Both held that God, not man, decides who will be saved. He picks his elect. In his time before Christ, God gave man a set of Commandments to obey, and he gave certain men the grace to live in his laws. This was the old covenant, or the covenant of works.

But God did not forget his people. He sent his only Son, Jesus the Christ, who perfectly fulfilled and revealed God’s will and exhibited how he felt toward man. He created the Church, the sacraments, and preaching. Whoever received grace to repent his sins and to trust unreservedly in God as seen in Christ was saved. Through preaching, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, and through membership in the Church, he came under the new dispensation of God -- the new covenant or the covenant of grace.

Thus the Puritan believed that God was holy, mighty, fearful in wrath, but also loving and forgiving. He had graciously bound himself in his covenant. Men could depend upon this. Hence the importance of men’s coming to church, hearing his Word, and reverently partaking of the sacraments.

There was one point which appeared on the surface as a basic difference between the English Presbyterians and the New England Puritans. The Cambridge Platform insisted that the Church existed in its fullness in each local congregation which selected its own ministers and officers for the church. In the hands of the congregation were the keys of discipline. In theory, no presbytery composed of elders and ministers from all the churches of a particular locality could exercise power over any local congregation as to the selection of a pastor, the formulation of doctrine, or the exercise of discipline.

Supposedly, then, no body such as a synod or presbytery had any power over congregations. Such meetings as the synod at Cambridge were only gatherings of congregational representatives to combine their wisdom on particular problems and to offer advice. Though no congregation had to accept this advice, they were to receive the synodical declarations with "reverence and submission."

The fact was that the synod did not produce merely advice; it produced a confession of faith which included even the form of Church government. The synod did not have to insist on the congregations’ accepting the declarations and confessions of the synod. Steps were sure to be taken by the civil magistrates against any individual, church, or minister that deviated from the synod’s declarations or advocated something contrary to the generally accepted beliefs or practices.

The magistrates, after all, were the "nursing fathers" of the Church, and in the face of heresy or anything disruptive of the peace in Church or State, they punished and executed discipline. In practice the Government played the role of a presbytery or a synod in administering rebukes and discipline, which the clergy decided was necessary against such people as Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, or Robert Child.

Strongly fortified by the declaration of the Cambridge Platform, the Puritans turned to a strict control of all opposition within the holy commonwealth. In 1656 a "plague" descended on New England. At least, that was the way the Puritans received the Quakers. Mary Fisher and Ann Austin arrived to spread the teachings of George Fox. They were opposed to all externals in worship, to all sacraments, to all ministerial offices. The important thing was the divine light present in the breast of every human being. When, through the Spirit, one turned to the light within and followed it, he became a child of light, living in peace, fellowship, and unity. True worship then became silence, broken only by the inner witness of the Spirit who compelled the believer to testify to his presence.

Mary Fisher and Ann Austin were promptly put in jail and deported, but soon more Quakers poured in from the safe base of Rhode Island. A series of strict laws were passed by the magistrates. Finally, in 1658, the death penalty was decreed for all Quakers who returned after banishment. Some were beaten unmercifully with whips, others were branded, and three had the right ear cropped.

This was typical treatment for that day. Though the magistrates had no final excuse for such actions, they greatly feared the Quakers. One Sabbath service as the congregation in Newbury listened to the sermon of their pastor, the door burst open and in walked a young woman stark naked. She cried out: "Woe to those who hide from their sins. All are known unto God. All shall be thus revealed openly in the last days."

Other Quakers interrupted meetings and shocked the congregations which could see no symbol of the openness of sin in the lack of clothing. Some Quakers stood up during or after the service, and with their hats still on contradicted the preacher. Little wonder that the authorities feared and detested the Quakers.

In 1659 two men were hanged according to the new laws against the Quakers. The following year Mary Dyer, who had twice returned seeking martyrdom, was hanged until dead. In 1661 the last Puritan execution of a Quaker took place.

Though the Puritans tried to defend themselves by the plea that they were defending the public peace, they were roundly condemned in England and by the Rhode Island Baptists. By the mid-1670’s, Quakers were protected by the English law and could conduct non-religious business in New England.

Not only did the Quakers attack the colony and its holy experiment, but the Baptists did as well. Roger Williams marked only the beginning of Puritan troubles. By the year 1651 a sufficient number of Baptists were located in Massachusetts to merit a visit of fellow Rhode Island Baptists. Three were seized on such a visit to Lynn. Two were heavily fined, and one, refusing either to pay the fine or to let the others pay for him, was given the usual treatment of being whipped.

In 1654 the congregation of Cambridge Church was shocked by a statement from Henry Dunster, the highly respected president of Harvard College. While a baptismal service was in progress, he arose to dispute the practice of infant baptism as un-Biblical and proceeded to take each point from the pastor’s sermon and to answer it with Baptist views. He was silenced, stripped of his Harvard presidency and publicly rebuked.

‘Thus the Quakers and Baptists joined the ranks of those dissatisfied with the Puritan holy experiment. Both stressed the conscience of the individual believer and the consequent inability of the magistrate to control the soul of man. The Puritan argued that if one wished a godly nation as well as godly individuals, one must be willing to keep men in line by laws. The Commonwealth was dedicated to God, and the aim was to make certain that it remained so committed.

While the Puritans were busily engaged in fighting off all open attacks on the holy experiment -- by England, by Roger Williams, by Anne Hutchinson, by dissatisfied planters, by Presbyterians, and by Quakers and Baptists -- a more subtle enemy was striking telling blows against it. Success brought prosperity, and prosperity brought indifference.

The second generation was gradually taking over the leadership of the colony. A new type of growing pain was revealed, and it had permanent destructive consequences. Would these children, who reaped the fruits of their parents’ labors, prove faithful to their parents’ beliefs? The settlements were showing definite signs of economic prosperity. Soon many became more interested in their financial advance than in their spiritual condition. They continued to be good, moral men and women, but somehow the old zeal was cooling; growing pains had dire effects on the heart.

One of the first signs was the small number of people presenting themselves for membership in the churches. Many had been baptized and taken into the Church as children of the saints. Did not God make his covenant between his elect and their children? They, in turn, were expected to make a public profession of their faith and to "own the covenant" when they grew up. But they did not!

This created a difficult problem. As children of the founders, they were in a position of responsibility and authority. But until they were full church members they could not have full rights of citizenship. In a sense, the holy experiment had broken down. There was no real principle of continuity from father to son which had within it both a religious and a political center. Who was to rule the colony if the saints’ children would not own the covenant?

After a good deal of discussion and argument a compromise was reached. It was known as the "Halfway Covenant." Those who were baptized into the Church as children of the saints could retain a halfway connection with the Church simply by promising to live a Christian life and to raise their children in the fear of the Lord and to bring them to baptism.

These halfway members could not have the Lord’s Supper, but they were still under the control of the Church; so they could vote on some of its nonspiritual problems and could keep all their privileges as citizens. Many were not satisfied with this and rigorously opposed it, but the Halfway Covenant triumphed.

In a sense, it was the deathblow to the holy experiment. The early Puritans demanded public proof of deep faith in the Lord Jesus Christ before one could become a church member. Only on this basis could one select those who would be responsible for the government. Henceforth, the only requirement for a minimum connection with the Church and thus for the right of citizenship was a promise to live a moral life. Trust and faith in God were replaced by an effort to live a good life as the test of church membership and political responsibility.

Two questions were never seriously asked. Where does one find the source of strength to live the good life? What happens to a holy commonwealth that is no longer ruled by professing saints? It seems that these deeply religious questions had passed into the background. Membership in the Church appeared to be a political and social necessity. It no longer reached the center of man’s life.

Then a long series of troubles hit New England, and men began to question the source of their difficulties. In 1673 the Pequot Indians went on a rampage. A three-year bloody war followed. Homes were burned, people were slaughtered, towns were destroyed, and hatred against the Indians was fanned anew. Even nature conspired against the Puritans. Terrible fires broke out in Boston and the plague was the worst in years.

In face of such events, the New England Puritans called a special synod in 1679. There, two questions were asked:

"What are the evils which have called the judgment of God upon us?"

"What is to be done to reform these evils?"

The synod agreed that the evils responsible for the recent catastrophes were such things as pride in heart and body, a spiritual falling away, excessive profanity, breakdown of family life, and failure to observe the Sabbath. They insisted that God would be pleased only when the people repented of these sins and turned to him. To aid in this, the synod suggested that congregations exercise closer discipline and that the magistrates also enforce public discipline.

But the synod did not halt the woes of New England, nor did it rejuvenate zeal. A terrible blow was struck in 1684, when Massachusetts lost its charter and was given a royal governor. This man was an Anglican! To make matters worse, he compelled the Puritans to allow him and his followers part-time use of one of their churches. Several times the Puritan service was prolonged while the governor was forced to wait outside before the church was ready for his use. But the Anglicans had gained an entrance into the very heart of Massachusetts. That from which the Puritans had fled was now introduced in Boston by the governor.

To check the loss of zeal in the churches and to assure a common point of view over against growing opposition, an attempt was made to furnish a careful check on the pastors and congregations. According to the Cambridge Platform, synods had no real jurisdiction or authority over local congregations or pastors, but now even the Government was no longer interested in enforcing discipline. Soon ministerial associations sprang up to fill in the gap. Increase Mather, greatest of the second-generation Puritan divines, took part in an English scheme of co-operation between Presbyterians and Congregationalists. This system he proposed on his return to America.

The Massachusetts Proposals, 1705, advocated by Increase Mather and his son Cotton, represented an attempt to exercise discipline on all pastors and churches at some point beyond the local congregation. In order to do this, ministerial associations were to be given power over pastors’ profession of beliefs and life, and a group from each association was to continue between association meetings with power to supervise certain questions within congregations.

John Wise fought these proposals as contrary to New England beliefs and advocated the rights of the local congregations. Though he verbally defended the old New England idea, it is interesting that he defended it more on the basis of reason and human rights than on the basis of Scripture, and this defense of congregational independence later provided arguments for advocates of the revolution against England. However, this theory appeared to overlook the actual power of discipline which was carried on by the civil magistrates in the earlier Congregational system.

Massachusetts churches refused to accept discipline and control over the local congregations. In 1708, however, the Connecticut churches adopted the Saybrook Platform, embodying the check on ministers and the association control over congregations. The churches in every county were formed in consociations. This marked a step closer to the Presbyterians, many of whom were among the New England Puritans. The children of the holy experiment found it impossible to maintain the faith without the recognition of a power beyond the local congregation.

Meanwhile, the Anglican churches in the South were having growing pains of their own. The vestries had grown in importance to such a degree that they were able to select their own successors and so become self-perpetuating. The clergymen were at the mercy either of the vestries or of the governor. There were no bishops and no ecclesiastical courts to regulate discipline. In one way this system left vastly more power in the hands of the local unit than did the New England Puritan congregational system. Parishes were usually of a huge size, often too large to handle, and there was a lack of ministers. How could the Church perform its task?

In 1689 steps were taken to improve the situation. The bishop of London was responsible for the clergy in the colonies. Since he could not be there to function, he determined to delegate his authority to commissaries. These were clergymen residing in the colony who would be commissioned to exercise certain functions of the bishop. The greatest of these commissaries were James Blair of Virginia and Thomas Bray of Maryland. Though both of them did a tremendous job, they could not ordain, confirm, or make final ecclesiastical decisions.

The best answer to the Anglican difficulties was found in the formation of two societies at the turn of the century, the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge founded in i688 (S.P.C.K.), and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.) in 1701. Thomas Bray was instrumental in the founding of both. The former undertook to supply books and printed matter for the churches in the colonies, while the latter sent out missionaries to work with the king’s subjects and with the natives. All such ministers were directly under the supervision of the secretary who exercised a strict discipline over each of them. Even their salaries came from the S.P.G., and they were a closely knit, faithful, hard-working group of men.

Their greatest work was done in New England and in New York. They entered the Puritan stronghold and founded churches in Connecticut and Massachusetts. In 1722, all New England was shocked when six outstanding Puritans, including the president of Yale College, left the faith of their fathers to enter the Anglican Church. The S.P.G. was doubly feared and hated in New England because it continued to agitate for a bishop in America. The Puritans felt this would only reintroduce the prelacy from which they had fled.

The Anglican Church continued to spread. It naturally moved into the other Southern colonies as they were settled. As South and North Carolina drew more people, the Church of England moved in and became the official religion of these colonies, supported by public taxes. This was in spite of the fact that in neither colony were the Anglicans in the majority.

New Amsterdam fell to the English in 1684 and was renamed "New York." Though the English allowed the Dutch Reformed Church to receive public support by taxation, they sought the official establishment of Anglicanism as the religion of the colony. This was accomplished in the late seventeenth century.

Roman Catholicism was having trouble in Maryland. Settlers poured in from Virginia and from New England. An Act of Toleration was passed in 1649, the first in America, guaranteeing freedom of worship for all Christians who professed faith in the triune God. This was based not on principle but on necessity, but even it could not hold off the storm. Repeated attempts by Protestants to take over control of the colony finally succeeded in 1689.

Little wonder the Protestants would not rest. They feared Roman Catholics in their midst and were especially aroused at the presence of Jesuit priests. By 1702 the Anglican Church became the official religion of the colony, although its members were not in the majority.

Thus appeared the strange spectacle of the Anglican Church setting itself up, under the protection of the governors, as the official religion of five colonies. Was this the way to guarantee the Church’s success in carrying out its mission and message? Apparently not. Establishment did not bring the Church success in America. It did not produce a godly, disciplined, hard-working ministry. In fact, it discouraged better men from coming to America. It did not produce a consecrated, disciplined laity. It bred indifference, discontent, and even contempt. The Anglican Church did not do its best work because of its establishment in America but in spite of it!

Meanwhile another type of "holy experiment" was taking place in Roger Williams’ Rhode Island and in the Quaker William Penn’s Pennsylvania. Both welcomed all Christians to their colonies and offered to all colonists complete toleration. Williams violently disagreed with the Quakers, charging them with replacing God’s revelation in Scripture with their own fancy spun out of the "light within." But he would not use the "sword of steel" against the Quakers or other religious groups. As a result, Rhode Island became first their refuge and then their stronghold.

After a visit from George Fox, 1672, the Quakers in America began to expand their work already under way in New England, in New York, and in the South. Their real opportunity came with the establishment of Pennsylvania by William Penn in 1682. Earlier, Penn and fellow Quakers had promoted a colony in what is now New Jersey, but that was only a prelude of what was to come.

Penn believed that the colony could be ruled by himself in conjunction with a free assembly. He deplored force, war, or any type of coercion. His colony was to be built on toleration, persuasion, and moral integrity. When Roman Catholics were persecuted in Maryland, they fled to Pennsylvania and made it their headquarters. The Indians found in Penn one of their most faithful white friends.

Come to Pennsylvania where you can have land, a home, a wife, a family! Come to where you can worship God freely according to your own conscience. There you will serve in no army. You have no money? Your way can be paid. In a short time you will be free to work for yourself!

These were thrilling words to thousands of war-weary Germans and dissatisfied Scotch-Irish. Soon immigrants were flowing into Pennsylvania in a mighty stream. Philadelphia rapidly became the largest city in the colonies. Englishmen, Quakers, Baptists, and Anglicans settled in and around Philadelphia. German Lutherans, Mennonites, and Reformed moved into the heart of the colony and settled on rich farm land. Large numbers of sturdy Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, weary of the contradictory policies of the crown, left Ulster, Ireland, for the frontier of Pennsylvania.

Thus the Protestant Church came with the Churches of all these peoples. The German and Scotch-Irish were barely beginning to arrive. They did not come in large numbers until after 1710. But at that time the Scotch-Irish came in large waves.

Francis Makemie, one of the great early leaders of Presbyterians, traveled widely in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. He was in close contact with the New England Puritans and found fellowship with many Presbyterians who had come out of New England. In 1706 he and six other clergymen founded the Philadelphia Presbytery. The Scotch-Irish furnished ever-increasing numbers for the Presbyterian Church, but New England still furnished the leadership and the inspiration. The Presbyterians were to develop in strength until at the time of the Revolution they and the Congregationalists formed the two most important Church bodies in the colonies.

Philadelphia soon became a center for Baptists as well as for Quakers, Anglicans, and Presbyterians. A number of these Baptists came from Wales. They were strict followers of John Calvin’s doctrine of God’s determining grace. About the same time that the Presbyterians were founding their first presbytery in Philadelphia d Baptists founded the Philadelphia Association, 1707.

Growing pains were evident in many ways. Instead of one great Church in America, every fresh wave of immigrants brought other Churches, each feeling that it had more light yet to exhibit. By 1700 almost all the major Churches found today in America had representatives in the colonies. In spite of the division into many Churches, the Church was truly at work in America. All groups professed allegiance to the God revealed by their Lord Jesus Christ and sought to express their faith in worship and daily activity. Naturally, that worship and activity varied from group to group, and from year to year.

One of the ways that faith expressed itself was in the continuation of Indian missions. The "heathen" were not to be forgotten. Great difficulties were encountered. Numbers died from white man’s plagues. It was difficult to stay with any group as they wandered about. But most damaging of all was the poor example set by the colonists.

Perhaps the greatest of the Protestant missionaries to the Indians was Rev. John Eliot. Possessing great skill in languages, he mastered an Indian dialect and preached to the natives. In 1661, after fifteen years’ work among them, he published a New Testament in their language. He also translated a number of Puritan tracts for them and gathered them into typical New England communities. In 1660 they formed their first covenanted church and became known as the "Praying Indians."

About the same time the Mayhew family started mission work on the famous island, Martha’s Vineyard. They too gathered Indians into typical Puritan communities, and devoted three generations of work to them.

In 1673 the terrible Indian war, King Philip’s War, broke out and raged for three years. One tenth of the male population of the New England colonies was slain. In their hatred against all Indians, the colonists attacked the "Praying Indians" and others who had been converted. This war practically ended all work among the Indians. Once more the old theory prevailed -- "the only good Indian is a dead Indian."

The outgoing life of the Church was expressed in another important area of life -- education. The Puritans, in particular, were determined that their people should be able to read and write so as to understand the meaning of God’s Word. The Massachusetts Bay colony organized in individual towns grammar schools that were supported by subscription, though the town was to pay for the poor. The congregation within the town usually provided the officers for the school.

Puritans wanted a godly and learned ministry. A large number of the 65 pastors who came during the first decade were educated at Cambridge University. To insure the continuation of such a ministry, a college was opened in 1636. The following year it secured a legacy from John Harvard and so took his name. The college prospered and more than satisfied the desires of its founders. However, it became a bit too liberal for the Mather family and other leading Puritan clergymen. So, in 1701, another college was started in Connecticut. After a donation of books from a merchant, Mr. Elihu Yale, this became known as Yale College.

The Anglicans were not idle. They had wanted a school for the colony and the natives as early as 1620. Their plans never materialized. Under the leadership of James Blair, commissary for Virginia, funds were raised in England. A substantial gift from the sovereigns William and Mary resulted in the charter for the school, and it opened its doors in 1693. Needless to say, it took the names of its greatest benefactors.

Growing pains may have plagued the Church, but it did not forget its responsibility to the total life of its members. It attempted to discipline those who continued to ignore their obligation. It reached out in the field of education as it recognized that knowledge and Christianity are not to be separated but go hand in hand. It attempted to win the natives to Christ. All this was in the face of a lagging zeal and a growing interest in things of the world for their own sake.

A few days before Christmas, 1606, three small ships sailed from London. As they slowly passed down the Thames River toward the great open sea, excitement aboard ran high. These were Englishmen on their way to establish a plantation in America, the first in a long line of men and women who were to seek their fortune and freedom in the New World. Their religion was brought with them as naturally as their provisions of food and clothing. As good Englishmen planting a colony under the name of King James, they brought with them the official religion of England -- that of the Anglican Church, or the Church of England.

What fate lay in store for these 105 men? They were adventuresome, seeking glory and fortune, certain in the conviction that they were acting in behalf of God and the king. Had not the Spanish and the French found fresh strength and resources in the New World? If England was to remain safe and secure, it too must venture forth into unknown rich lands. In 1570, Sir Walter Raleigh had failed to establish an English settlement in America, but this time a large company of men would succeed where a single man failed.

Aboard one ship was Rev. Robert Hunt, clergyman of the Established Church of England. Englishmen were out not only to make their fortune but also to win the savages to Christ. Was it not a shame that only French and Spanish followers of the pope sought to win Indians to Christianity? The precious souls of the natives must be saved from the Catholicism of the pope as well as from their own heathen practices.

So it was that the original instructions for the plantation demanded that the "religion now professed and established within our realm of England" should be regularly practiced by the colonists and spread "as much as they may amongst the savage people" around them. These were the instructions to be followed in the new colony of Jamestown soon to be founded.

One hot summer morning of the following year, the burning Virginia sun beat down on the Jamestown settlement. From under an old sail, stretched between several trees, a reverent voice was lifted in prayer. Jutting from the ground to form three sides were irregular rows of rough posts serving as the walls of the church. Uncut trees, lying where they were felled, provided the pews on which the worshipers sat with bowed heads. Standing behind a length of wood nailed to two trees was the minister, Robert Hunt. So the people gathered each morning and evening to worship according to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The Church of England had come to America.

Jamestown grew slowly and painfully. Within a year, fever, plagues, and Indian attacks had killed almost two thirds of the settlers, but under the leadership of Captain John Smith the little group that remained struggled courageously. Additional ships brought ever greater numbers of men. The charter of the colony was revised, and leadership changed hands as new governors were appointed. But death continued to make the greatest gains. Between the years 1607 and 1624, of the 14,000 who came, about 13,000 died.

The Church stayed with the struggling settlement. After the death of Mr. Hunt, the first pastor, a new chaplain was found. But the most impressive work was done by a later pastor, Alexander Whitaker, "the apostle to Virginia." By the time of his arrival, things had taken a turn for the better. Tobacco was introduced and proved to be the economic salvation of the colony. More settlers arrived, including a number of "marriageable" women who landed in 1619. The same year that beheld the joyous welcome of the women witnessed an event of profound importance -- the first Negro workers were imported.

Whitaker began to extend the work of the Church. He contended that the preacher of the good news of redemption should be located in such a place that he could minister both to the natives and to the Englishmen. So he boldly sailed over fifty miles up the James River and there established his parsonage and took over the farm land given to him by the colony. Nearby was the new settlement of Henrico. Work among the Indians made some progress under Rev. Alexander Whitaker, who was respected and trusted. Most famous of his converts was Pocahontas, daughter of the great chief, Powhatan. She married a planter, John Rolfe, and returned with him to England, where she was living proof of the effectiveness of Christian work among the Indians. Curious men and women crowded around to catch a glimpse of her. She was introduced to King James and his queen and made a fine impression. Unfortunately she died at Gravesend before returning to America. As one observer put it, "At Gravesend she met her end and grave."

In addition to the living example of Pocahontas, the written pleas of Whitaker appeared in England. He cried for more and better pastors for the New World to do the vast amount of work in the Lord’s vineyard. Though his untimely death cut short his career, work among the Indians was not forgotten. It was very slow work and made few converts, but the intention of the ministers and people remained steadfast. In 1619 a college was proposed for the colony, one of the primary purposes being to teach the Indians; and a large grant of land at Henrico was given for its support.

On the surface everything appeared peaceable between the Indians and settlers, but early on Good Friday morning, March, 1622, the quietness of the scattered plantations was rent by bloodcurdling shrieks and savage attacks of the Indians. Within a few hours flames and smoke rolled into the sky as numerous homes and barns were put to the torch. Taken completely unprepared, the settlers were massacred before they knew what had happened. For a number of years they had lived peacefully among the Indians, hoping to convert them by a friendly attitude. Thus, some were killed at the breakfast table after they had finished sharing a meal with the Indians.

The attack was not unprovoked. A favorite of the chief had been slain a few days before. Probably his death was justified, but the Indians had no knowledge of that; so they planned revenge and hoped to drive the white men off their lands. They even borrowed the settlers’ boats to attend a rendezvous at which plans were laid. So sudden and unexpected was the onslaught that 347, almost one third, of the colonists were slain.

Thanks to the faithfulness of a Christian Indian, Jamestown and several of the outlying districts were warned. Men at these places were prepared for the attacks and easily defeated the Indians. But the damage was done. "Why did we not listen to the advice of Master Stockham?" Englishmen cried. "He told us that kindness would never make Christians of the Indians. Only when their priests and chiefs are killed will there be any hope to convert them."

So a new theory developed: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Plans for an Indian school were abandoned, and sincere efforts at Indian missions were to be a thing of the past for some time to come. The massacre of 1622 gave a legitimate excuse to carry out more fully what many men had long hoped to do -- seize the Indians’ land and handle them on the basis of force. Thus the early policy failed, not because too much kindness was used, but because it was used unwisely. Rather than correct the defects of a basically sound policy, the settlers in their sorrow, hate, and greed instituted a new approach of naked force.

Though work among the Indians came to a standstill, clergymen continued to work among the settlers. The bishop of London early accepted the responsibility of finding pastors who were willing to go to the Virginia settlements. The very charter governing Virginia stated that worship was to be according to the usage of the Church of England.

Also, at an early date the minister received his support from the state. Every settlement was required to provide land for the upkeep of the ministers; furthermore, every male over sixteen years of age was assessed in tobacco and corn to help to pay the pastor’s salary. Thus the pastor’s function appeared to be one related to the entire community.

The great difficulty was that the minister was not quite certain of his position. It was true that he had to be certified by a bishop before coming to America. In that way, the Church assured itself that the man was correctly ordained by a bishop, and that he supported the practice and the faith of the English Church. This also protected a new land from unscrupulous frauds.

A basic difficulty arose when clergymen arrived in America. Each local parish soon adopted the practice of electing a group of laymen as a "vestry" to govern the affairs of the congregation. It was their duty, when the church found a minister duly ordained and sent by bishops, to present him officially to the governor, who would then legally install the minister in the parish. Once he was so inducted into the parish, the pastor was secure for life unless he taught incorrect doctrine or became immoral.

The vestries, however, were usually unwilling to present a man to the governor, either because they were not certain of his merit or because they wanted to make certain that they retained a good share of control in local matters. So they simply hired the minister on a year-to-year basis and never presented him for induction.

Thus the ministers easily remained under the control of a small group in each parish -- the vestry. How could the Church through its pastors and people present the full impact of its mission and message? The pastors were never certain of their status, and the vestry was jealous of its control of parish affairs. The governor carried on many functions that normally belonged to the bishops. The governor inducted ministers into office, deprived unworthy pastors of their parishes, suspended others, granted licenses to marry, and probated wills.

The result was that unworthy or lazy men often found their way into these insecure positions. There was a constant struggle for power between the clergy and vestry on one hand and between the vestry, clergy, and governor on the other hand. Many excellent pastors served in these early years, but they worked under great handicaps. In spite of the lack of bishops and Church courts, they did a magnificent job of ministering to the people and the society of the Southern colonies. Often at the mercy of the governor or of the vestries, they continued to preach, to baptize, and faithfully to guide their congregations.

Meanwhile, in England, another group of believers were driven to seek haven in the New World. In 1608, a group of Protestants called the Separatists fled from England and settled in Holland. There they hoped to find freedom to worship as they believed.

"Separatist" was the name given to those people, a type of Puritan, who were dissatisfied with the worship and practice of the Church of England; consequently, they withdrew from the Church and formed their own congregations. They argued that the Church was composed only of people who could be recognized publicly as Christians. There was no room for halfhearted believers. How could the Church of England be a true Church when it claimed that every citizen of the nation was also a member of the Church. Obviously, many of these so-called believers were not really committed to Jesus Christ.

They argued that God, in his goodness, had determined to save mankind, which had rebelled against him. Jesus the Christ was sent among men in order to make known God’s saving will. So the Church was founded, the Bible was given, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper -- the sacraments -- were offered, all that men might respond to God’s call.

That was the way God had chosen to redeem rebellious and sinful mankind, if only they would avail themselves of God’s way. This way was called a covenant or a compact. It was a type of agreement which was concluded not between two equal partners but between one who laid down all the conditions and one who was called upon to accept and fulfill those conditions. The reward was eternal life. Yet even the reward was a gift because God finally determined who would or would not respond to his covenant. They were the "elect" of God, known in the churches as the "saints."

Chances were that all people who found themselves living within God’s covenant and sincerely striving daily after holiness in heart and life were among God’s "elect." If they had responded to the love of God in Christ, had accepted his covenant, then they were driven to profess this faith and to join with others of the "elect" in order to found a congregation.

A local congregation was founded on yet another agreement or covenant. A group of believers confessed their respective experiences of faith to one another and determined to form a congregation as the Bible commanded. All who wished to join first had to give satisfactory proof in public of their living within God’s covenant, and then they were allowed to sign the covenant which bound them together in a church. Thus the Church was composed only of the proved elect, gathered together in congregations that excluded the halfhearted and lukewarm.

This was a direct repudiation of the Church of England, which insisted that nobody could be absolutely certain of the elect or the damned. To be sure, replied the Separatists, one cannot be absolutely certain, but one can easily tell the really convinced Christians from the wicked. A whole nation cannot belong to the Church. One is not physically born into Christ’s Church; one enters only through a spiritual rebirth; and until that happens one is not a full-fledged Christian and so not one of the saints.

Furthermore, these Separatists contended that the Bible provided a blueprint for the form of Church government and for worship, which the Anglicans ignored by continuing to use Romish practices in worship and to uphold bishops as the highest authority in the Church. Those things, the Separatists argued, were not Biblical.

There was no need for bishops who exercised vast powers, both spiritual and temporal, over the local congregations. Every group of converted believers was a complete church in itself. It could select its own pastors and set them aside through ordination for the task of preaching, counseling, and administering the two sacraments. No bishop’s hand was needed here. Also, the Separatists refused to use the vestments of the Anglican clergy because they were continued from Roman Catholicism. The Book of Common Prayer, the Anglican book of worship, contained much that was taken bodily from the Catholic Mass. All this was to be swept away. Worship was to be simple and strictly Scriptural.

In vain did the Anglicans argue that those things not contrary to Scripture were permissible in worship. The Separatists replied that only things commanded in Scripture were allowable. Again, men might argue that of all systems of Church government that by bishops, called episcopal, was most successful, of widest use, and of greatest antiquity. "Non-Scriptural" was the retort.

In face of this, the Separatists refused to worship in the Established Church of England. They called upon true believers to separate themselves from the corrupt Church and to form independent local congregations. English authorities would not permit such deviation from the law of the land; therefore, they sought to force the Separatists into line. Because of such persecution they fled to Holland where they found freedom of worship.

After ten years of Dutch hospitality the small group began to worry about retaining their identity as Englishmen. They also felt that they did not have an opportunity to develop their type of Christianity to its fullest extent. So, when they read Captain John Smith’s account of Virginia and heard from English merchants wondrous tales about America, they considered the possibility of moving.

But how to get to America? These were relatively poor men coming from the lower and lower-middle classes. Moreover, how would their religious beliefs be accepted? Negotiations with the Virginia Company, which owned the land around Jamestown, failed because the king refused to guarantee them liberty of conscience. After investigating several other possibilities, they finally accepted the offer of an English merchant, Thomas Weston, and associates. In order to get their fare paid and to preserve part ownership in the project they went into a voluntary joint stock company. The merchants provided all the equipment and passage and the Separatists provided their bodies and labor; thus, both owned stock jointly in the project. They were not servants or slaves, but partners!

A congregational meeting was held to determine the time and method of departure. It was impossible for the entire group to go at once, so a real problem arose concerning those who should go and those who should remain behind. It was generally agreed that the youngest and strongest members with the fewest personal ties should go ahead and prepare the way. Another problem was the location of their dear old pastor, John Robinson.

After discussion it was decided that if those volunteering should outnumber those remaining behind, then the pastor should accompany the volunteers. If a minority went over, then Mr. Robinson should remain behind and Mr. Brewster, the ruling elder and assistant to the pastor, should go. The majority decided to stay behind, so Mr. Robinson remained in Holland.

On July 21, 1620, the congregation met together for the last time. Their ship, The Speedwell, was ready in the port of Leyden. John Robinson preached a heart-warming farewell sermon and gave stirring advice to those departing. He reminded his congregation that they must follow him no farther than he followed Christ, and he urged them to be open to all truth from the ministry of others who live in Christ.

"Is it not a pity," he said, "that the Churches of the Reformation, starting so gloriously, have stopped short in their reforms? Lutherans stop with what Luther saw. Calvinists cannot be drawn beyond what was revealed and imparted to Calvin. God has not revealed his whole will to these men.

"If Luther and Calvin were living," he cried, "they would be as ready and willing to embrace further light, as that they had received. Search the Scriptures and learn the depth of the covenant God has worked out," he exhorted.

With the prophetic utterance ringing in their ears, "There shall yet be more light," the Pilgrims sailed for England, where, after abandoning the unseaworthy Speedwell, 101 of them crowded aboard the Mayflower and sailed for America.

As the ship approached America, it became evident that there was discontent among some who were not members of the Church. In order to assure a stable government, a majority of the men signed a civil compact, the Mayflower Compact, based on the Separatists’ Church covenant. In it they covenanted and combined themselves into a civil political body with power to pass necessary and just laws. Thus their religious beliefs determined the basis of their political society.

The Pilgrims were landed farther north than they had planned and found themselves on the territory of the Council for New England. But they determined to remain, and they named their settlement "Plymouth," in honor of the last English city in which they had been. At last they were in a land where they could practice their faith to the fullest and live their lives as Englishmen. They were the first Puritans to come to the strange new world; truly they were as strangers and pilgrims, so they were named "the Pilgrims."

The first winter was dreadful. Nearly half the settlers died, and only because of help from the Indians did the others manage to pull through. At the time of the fall harvest in 1621, after a moderately successful summer, they had a grand banquet to praise God and celebrate their successful triumph over the wilderness. This was the origin of our American Thanksgiving Day.

Additional recruits joined them, but their beloved pastor, Mr. Robinson, was taken by death while still in Holland. Spiritual leadership fell on the shoulders of Elder Brewster. He proved an excellent leader, but the group were hampered by his inability to administer the sacraments and to perform marriages. He was not prepared for the ministry and was not called, so the Plymouth Colony got along without the sacraments for four years before an ordained clergyman arrived. He proved to be an Anglican and was rejected. Not until 1629 did they find a satisfactory pastor.

Under the leadership of Governor William Bradford the small group of Pilgrim church members retained control of the government. They argued that the purpose of the colony was to worship God according to his Word. All other things were secondary. The Church must be protected. Though the church members were in the minority, they allowed no religious alternative for the majority of the colonists. The Pilgrims stood secure in their understanding of God’s Word, and it was offered to all on their terms. Any who did not like the Pilgrim practices were free to depart.

Plymouth Colony continued to grow, and soon became a settlement composed of a series of small towns. All were governed by the patents which the Pilgrims and their merchant partners had procured from the king. In 1626 they succeeded in buying out their partners in London, so they gained complete control over the enterprise. The purpose behind this move was to assure the continuation of their Church and faith. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with this.

As more settlers poured in, the Separatists held firm. Their Church stood open to all who could confess a satisfactory faith before the believers and would publicly own the covenant. But such people were few; thus, within a few years the Separatists were in a minority. They seemed satisfied with the light they had found years before.

Back in England a much larger and more powerful group were beginning to stir anxiously and to cast longing glances toward a new world of freedom. They too were Puritans, but, unlike the Pilgrims, they did not come from the poorer classes but were largely gentlemen holding estates of land and preachers who held university posts or great pulpits.

In most respects they believed exactly as did the Pilgrims. They were shocked at the vestments and worship service in the English Church. "Romish!" they cried. They deplored the inclusion of the whole nation in the Church regardless of the evil in many people’s lives. Only membership in God’s covenant and active participation in a local congregation marked one as a Christian.

But, in one important respect these upper-class Puritans differed from the Pilgrims. They did not want to separate from the Anglican Church, for in spite of all its corruption they thought it a true Christian Church. The Puritan aim was not to cut themselves off but to change the Church by remaining in it. This they tried to do by constant agitation in the English Government, by the appointment of so-called Puritan "lecturers" who would preach their views each Sunday afternoon, and by constantly protesting against the worship of the English Church.

Several times the powerful Puritan party was almost successful. When James I ascended the throne in 1603, he threatened to chase them out of England. It was an empty threat. But when his son, Charles I, became king, 1625, he selected as his right-hand man William Laud, bishop of London. It was Laud’s intention to enforce the use of the English Prayer Book and to strengthen the rule of the bishops over the local clergy. This he hoped would produce one great, unified, well-ordered Church throughout England. In order to accomplish his goal, Laud used every measure of power available to him.

Under increasing pressure from Laud’s new policy, the Puritans felt that they had little opportunity of changing the English Church, so they looked about for a chance to escape. They would find a way to purify God’s Church; they would not be denied! Being men of some wealth, they bought enough stock in a company that possessed land in America to gain control of it. Within a short time they sent John Endicott with a group of Puritans to settle on some of this land. It was named "Salem," Massachusetts.

But the Puritans were not satisfied -- they were only members in a commercial company which had a claim to land in America. How could they safely establish a purified Church on that insecure basis? Before they could take such a risk they had to be sure of two things. First, they had to be certain that they controlled the company so they would not be outvoted on any matter that pertained to their Church. Secondly, they had to have control of the new Government which they intended to establish in the New World.

A strange thing occurred in the spring of 1629. Somehow, the Puritans managed to get Charles I to grant them a charter for a new company, the Massachusetts Bay Company. This gave them the power of state to rule and govern all the king’s subjects residing within the limits of the colony which they were to establish. On the basis of the charter they hoped to try a holy experiment -- to found a Church and a State based on God’s revealed Word.

Under the leadership of John Winthrop, the Puritans determined to make positive and unbreakable their control over the company and the charter. Unless they could protect themselves from all interferences from the crown and from their non-Church partners in the company, they could not freely go ahead with the holy experiment.

Late in the summer of 1629, Winthrop and his fellow Puritans persuaded all those not intending to sail for America to sell their stock in the Massachusetts Bay Company and to withdraw from it. Thus, there were to be no men left behind who might form an opposition group to the experiment in America.

When a great fleet of eleven vessels sailed, March, 1630, John Winthrop’s boat, the Arabella, had a precious cargo aboard -- the charter! This was the final step, and it was utterly new. Never before had a company set out for the New World carrying the king’s charter with them. The Puritans felt that with the charter in their own hands it could not easily be seized by the Government, and revoked for some technical reason. Furthermore, there would be no opportunity for the company’s English business representatives to surrender the charter at the first sign of trouble.

The charter was the symbol of the Puritans’ new-found freedom. It was to be their constitution which prevented England from interfering with their Church and State. Based on it, the holy experiment was to go forward. Safe and secure in their rights, they poured vast numbers of talented and gifted people into the Massachusetts Bay area. In ten years over 20,000 men and women fled from England to their Puritan colony. Among them were 65 ministers of such high caliber and educational attainment as John Cotton, John Wilson, Roger Williams, Thomas Hooker, John Davenport, and Richard Mather.

They did not cut themselves off from English culture and the Anglican Church. Rather, they carried the best of English educational ideas and books with them. They hoped to transform and purify the English Church and State, to create a holy Church and nation dedicated to the will of God.

Before leaving for Salem, Pastor Francis Higginson had said: "We will not say, as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving England, ‘Farewell, Babylon!’ . . . but, . . . ‘Farewell, the Church of God in England!’ . . . We do not go to New England as separatists from the Church of England; though we cannot but separate from the corruptions of it."

John Winthrop joined in a declaration which called the Established Church of England "our dear Mother" and referred to the Puritans as "members of the same Body." What the Puritans really wanted was a chance to establish a Church free from all corruptions. They never separated from it in England though they criticized it severely. In America they would rebuild it.

The churches they formed at Salem, Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, and Watertown looked suspiciously like the Separatists’ churches of Plymouth. It was to be expected, for the Puritans argued that that was what the true Church of England ought to be. Within definite limits, each local church was independent and sufficient to itself. It was run on a democratic basis. That is, all who became members through a public profession of their faith and adopted the covenant were eligible to discuss and vote on all important problems of the church. From time to time councils of churches could be called for mutual advice and unified support, and their decisions were rigidly enforced by the civil magistrates as fathers in the Church.

Furthermore, the covenant of grace given to mankind through Christ Jesus held the same place in Puritan belief as in Pilgrim. It formed the basis of the believer’s faith and also of that of the local congregation. All those who had an experience of God’s saving grace and adopted his covenant made an agreement or a covenant with each other to form a local church based on God’s will as revealed in the Bible. The purpose of the church made up only of God’s chosen ones was to worship him, to spread his Word, and to strengthen each other’s faith.

This local congregation elected and installed its own officers, often with the help of officers from neighboring churches. The officers were a pastor, a teacher, a ruling elder, and deacons. The pastor had oversight of the spiritual welfare of the people and also preached. The teacher preached and instructed children and adults in the fundamentals of the faith. The ruling elder performed many functions of an assistant pastor, though he could not administer the sacraments. Deacons took care of the finances and other material affairs of the congregation and saw to it that the widows, children, poor, and helpless were cared for.

The basic reason why the Puritans came to America was to reform completely the Church of England and to found a pure Church after God’s design. To be sure, they wanted to improve their economic standards, but in these early years religion usually triumphed in a clash with profits. The way the Puritans used their charter was a good illustration of that. It was really a charter for a business enterprise, but to them was a charter giving freedom to establish a pure Church and a godly commonwealth.

So they started the holy experiment. God had shown man what he wanted in a Church and in a State. Did not God give man Scripture and reason as guides? What did God want? He demanded a Church of his chosen people faithfully converted to his true worship and carrying out his true will. And, God wanted a nation striving to live after holiness, righteousness, and justice. There could be a Christian nation as well as a Christian individual. God would settle for no less; his covenant demanded that much!

How was this ideal to be attained? The Puritan answer was at once simple and profound -- the rule of the saints. The elect of God who formed the Church would also rule the nation; thus, the will of God would be done in private and in public Christian lives. Just as all problems in the Church were to be decided by all the believers searching and discussing Scripture, so in the State. The saints governed!

The only effective opposition to the holy experiment could come from two sources, the king or non-Church members. The Puritans rejected all attempts at English Governmental interference by appealing to their charter. The real danger lay in the requirement of their charter to elect freemen, who would have the right of participating in the election of the governor, deputy governor, and other magistrates. Thus, freemen had to be created, and the original requirements for freemen were only those of position and wealth.

In 1631 the Puritans took the only step possible to guarantee the success of their ideal. They worked out an oath that upheld the charter and religious view of the Puritans, and added a new requirement for freemen. Henceforth, only church members could become freemen or voting citizens. In this way the Puritans guaranteed that those men who held the real power of the State would be favorable to the religious experiment. As Governor John Winthrop put it, "we are bound to keep off whatsoever appears to tend to our ruin or damage."

The holy experiment progressed at a rapid rate. As a steady stream of people poured in, settlements sprang up in the Massachusetts Bay area, pushed inland and south to Connecticut. Ten or twelve growing communities were founded within a decade. In all these settlements the local church was the backbone of the community, and through its freemen the final authority in all matters civil.

The Puritans, unlike the Pilgrims, demanded a learned ministry and recognized all knowledge as a gift from God. Within six years after landing, the Puritans established a college, the first in America, in order "to advance learning and to perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust." They named it after a patron, John Harvard, minister of the church in Charlestown.

The Puritans and Pilgrims did not forget their work with the Indians. The charters of both groups professed the desire to win the natives to knowledge and obedience of the only true God. The seal of the Massachusetts Bay colony pictured an Indian uttering the cry of the Macedonians to Paul, "Come over, and help us!" This work was carried on entirely by individuals on a personal basis. Though it never reached large proportions during the first ten years, it was, nevertheless, real. It was but one more example of the Church reaching out its arms with the good news of redemption.

So another great Church planted deep roots in America. It soon spread to absorb the Pilgrim group and with it laid the foundation of American Congregationalism. A great and powerful Church, rich in the fruits of the Spirit, dedicated to God’s will in every aspect of life, it sought through its holy experiment to develop a nation and a Church that would guide people according to God’s holy laws.

Early in 1634, a strange thing happened. A boat docked in what is now Maryland, bringing 2 Jesuit priests and 16 Catholic families, along with some 200 other people. Soon word spread through. neighboring colonies: "Roman Catholics have arrived!"

All the Protestants in the colonies hated and feared the Roman Catholics. It was against Rome and its corruptions that Puritans and Anglicans had protested. Terrible wars had raged between Protestants and Roman Catholics during the previous century. Coupled with the deep religious difference was patriotic fervor. Spain and France, the two great Catholic powers, had explored America long before the English, Dutch, or Swedes. At the very time when Virginia was settled, Spanish Catholicism was reaching its golden era in Florida, and the French were pushing along the St. Lawrence waterway and through the Great Lakes region. There was bound to be fear, hatred, and warfare between the two religious groups.

Thus, the coming of the Roman Catholics to Maryland placed the problem right in the midst of the Protestant colonies. Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic English nobleman, had been given a huge tract of land just north of Virginia, and the king had granted him absolute control over the area. Baltimore hoped to make it a place of refuge for Roman Catholics.

His son Cecil, anxious to make it a paying venture, laid plans to colonize the vast domain. He recognized that he could not find enough Catholics to settle the territory and make it a financial success. Furthermore, Cecil understood that it would be impossible to erect a Catholic colony between Anglican Virginia and the rapidly expanding Puritan New England. Thus, in order to entice Protestant laborers to the colony and in order to provide a safe haven for Catholics, he determined to pursue a policy of toleration toward all Christians who believed in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. His plan was doomed to failure from two sides. The Jesuits were dissatisfied with their position and that of the Roman Church in the colony, and the Protestants were very uncomfortable with a neighboring colony which tolerated Roman Catholics.

Meanwhile, in the heart of the Atlantic seaboard another drama was unfolding. Between New England and the South the Middle colonies began to develop. These were to grow into such great colonies as New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Jersey. They were to be the home of no one great Church, such as the Puritan, the Anglican, or the Roman, but they were to become the center of many Christian groups living together peacefully -- the Dutch Reformed, the Lutheran, the Quaker, the Baptist, and the Presbyterian.

It was to be some time before all these Churches arrived on the scene, but in the earliest days, in the 1620’s, the Dutch succeeded in establishing friendly relations with the Indians. Trading posts were developed on what is now Manhattan, and at several other places such as Albany, and near Philadelphia.

Trade brought settlers to the Dutch colony. In 1626, Peter Minuit was appointed governor by the Dutch trading company that held the land under a Dutch charter, and also through purchase from the Indians. He brought two deacons to visit the sick. But it was not until several years later that a Dutch Reformed pastor arrived. Dutch, German, and Scandinavian Lutherans were in the colony from the beginning, but they were allowed no freedom to worship in public. These Dutchmen were strict adherents of John Calvin and they would brook no opposition.

Unlike the Puritans and even the Virginia Anglicans, these Dutch Reformed did not provide an adequate house of worship for over twenty years. Their first church was the upper floor of a horse barn. Niggardly in their own provision for worship, they would allow no others on Manhattan to provide for any other public worship services. Also, they made little provision for work among the Indians. The Church was there, but it was unable to perform its full function as long as it remained under the governor’s control.

Lutherans first carried on independent worship in a settlement of the Swedes on the Delaware River. Three Swedish Lutheran pastors were busily at work when the Dutch captured these settlements in 1656. After the Dutch triumph, only one Lutheran pastor was allowed to remain.

Thus the early years witnessed the planting of the Christian Church in America. The Church came in many ways, using many languages. It came with the Anglicans, with the Puritans, with the Dutch Reformed, and with the Swedish Lutherans. To this day there is no one Christian group that embraces all the American people. It is strange, because each group thought that it was establishing its form of Christianity as the true and final form for the New World. This was not to be.

The great lesson these various groups had to learn in America was that the Christian Church brought its message of God’s judgment and redemption in Christ through all Christian groups which faithfully attempted to carry that message and live under it. By 1646, 18 languages could be heard along the Hudson River alone. The gospel was preached in all tongues. The Christian Church was there preaching to the individuals, attempting to shape their lives and the life of their society. It was part and parcel of the life of each colony. It ministered to every side of life. It was seeking yet more light from God’s Word for a new people and a new land.

There is, at present, no satisfactory history of Protestantism n America written for introductory seminary survey courses, for college students, or for adult laymen untrained in the technicalities of theology and history. This book is written for just such students and for adult laymen. It seeks to provide them with a concise yet comprehensive account of Protestant Christianity in America. The narrative style has been employed in an attempt to convey some of the excitement and drama which is its history.

That history is embodied in the past and present of many Churches. Because of this, some scholars insist that it is impossible to write the history of any movement called Protestantism in America. There are only the particular histories of many different Churches. This book rejects such a view and insists that it is possible to tell the story of Protestant Christianity in America. Nevertheless, the difficulty is real, and partially accounts for the fact that only ten such histories have been written in the past three hundred years, and of these, four have been written since the 1920’s.

It is not easy to characterize Protestantism in America, but two characteristics seem to mark it. One is a constant free experimentation and search for a fuller manifestation of God’s truth and will, and the other is a sustained effort to avoid going beyond the truth and light already known in the Bible and codified in certain basic beliefs and confessions. Thus Protestantism in America can be characterized in terms of a full, free experimentation and an enduring Biblicism.

In a statement which proved to be prophetic, Rev. John Robinson warned his Pilgrim congregation on the eve of their departure for the New World that "the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy Word."

Here are the two basic elements: the necessity of searching for yet more truth and light, and the centrality of the Bible. Protestants in America faced both the opportunity and the necessity of relating the past histories of various Churches to new conditions in order to make the gospel relevant. Thus, as they helped to shape national life, they were shaped by it and as a result took on certain common characteristics. In their search for more truth and light they had to confront such common questions as religious liberty, democracy, large numbers of unchurched peoples, vast expanses of land, the constant influx of immigrant peoples, and even such a reality as the presence of a large number of Protestant Churches within any given local community. Their surroundings tended to enhance and drive them toward a positive similarity in spirit and in organization in spite of their diverse backgrounds and beliefs. All these Churches were stamped with an indelible mark; they were a part of a greater movement -- Protestant Christianity in America.

The result was that all the Protestant Churches in America exhibited a certain spirit and embodied certain practices which made them closer to each other than to their European counterparts. All American Protestants have accepted religious freedom, and though none of the Churches have worked out the full implications of such a stand, it definitely sets them apart from European Churches in practice and in belief. Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican exhibit an activism in organization and practice that is utterly foreign to their sister European Churches.

Thus, in spite of all the differences which exist between Protestant Churches in America -- and these are profound -- they are bound together in a single movement which gives them a certain character not to be found in their European brethren. In some cases they possess a Biblicism and orthodoxy that far outstrips anything to be found in their sister European Churches, either in intensity or extent. In other cases, they exhibit a certain willingness for free experimentation in belief and/or practice, which likewise is not present in their European counterparts. Protestantism in America is not, then, radically different from its European counterpart. Nevertheless, in America it is a much more cohesive movement which possesses a more definite set of common characteristics.

Nobody can write in this area without acknowledging a debt to the writings of Professor William Warren Sweet. In the author’s case, the debt also extends to the classroom. The entire manuscript was read by my colleague, Professor James Hastings Nichols, whose many comments and insights proved extremely helpful. But above all, grateful acknowledgment is made to Professor Sidney B. Mead, teacher and colleague, who in classroom, in discussion, and in critical comment on the manuscript encouraged the author in his work, gave him invaluable help on questions of fact, and confronted him with a stimulating and challenging interpretation of Christianity in America.

Foreword to Revised Edition

This book was originally written to fulfill a specific need in American Church history and in American cultural history. Its use has been so extensive among college students and in introductory courses at the seminary level that numerous reprintings were required. Since so many exciting and unusual things have happened to Protestantism in America during the 1950’s and 1960’s, moreover, it has appeared imperative that a revision of the text be undertaken. The Vatican Council alone would have been sufficient reason to revise and to note a new stage for the history of Protestantism in America. It is hoped that this revision, bringing the text up to date in the mid-1960’s, will enable the book to retain its usefulness for students seeking to understand the nature and role of Protestantism in American life and in the history of the Christian Church. A new section of "Suggestions for Further Reading" has been provided as an aid to both students and their teachers.

(Robert N. Bellah is Ford Professor of sociology and Comparative Studies at the University of California at Berkeley as well as Vice-Chairman of the Center of Japanese and Korean Studies there.)

There is a sense in which the American Revolution and the American civil religion are the same thing. When I use the term "civil religion" I am pointing to that revolution in the minds of men that John Adams argued was the real Revolution in America. That was the revolution that culminated in the Declaration of Independence, even though the Revolutionary War had scarcely begun.

It is that Revolutionary faith -- what Lincoln called "our ancient faith" -- that I have called the American civil religion, or at least its normative core. In order that there be no ambiguity about what I mean I would like to cite briefly the Declaration of Independence, and also the Gettysburg Address which represents a rededication to and renewal of that primary text:

And from the Gettysburg Address the opening and the closing statements:

It is that abstract faith, those abstract propositions to which we are dedicated, that is the heart and soul of the civil religion; but we can, of course, never forget the historical circumstances in which those words originated -- a revolutionary war of independence and a war to decide whether this nation would be slave or free. While there are many other embellishments, symbols, traditions, and interpretations that have become more or less securely part of the American civil religion, I think we already have before us the fundamental form of its faith. The words are so familiar that they have become for many almost empty of meaning. But their meaning has never been more critical for testing the condition of the political society in which we live.

In defining the American civil religion there was a certain ambiguity in my original article’ that I would now like to clear up. In that article I pointed to those classic documents that unmistakably define the special character of the American faith, the documents from which I have just quoted. But in taking the term "civil religion" from Rousseau’s Social Contract I was also bringing in a much more general concept, common in America in the eighteenth century but by no means specifically American. Therefore I think it might be useful to distinguish between two different types of civil religion, both operative in America and distinguishable perhaps more in the minds of the analyst than in the consciousness of the people. These two types I would like to call special civil religion, that which I have just defined, and general civil religion, which I would now like to describe.

It is the essence of general civil religion that it is religion in general, the lowest common denominator of church religions. Though religion in general and lowest common denominator religion were attacked in the fifties as a modern perversion of traditional religion by neo-orthodox critics and those like Will Herberg who were influenced by them, actually such general religion has a long and honorable history in Christendom. It is what was called natural religion. And natural religion was generally agreed for many centuries to be an indispensable prerequisite for government. Roger Williams, for example, for all his insistence on the separation of church and state, believed that such general religion was essential for what he called "government and order in families, towns, etc." Such general religion is, he believed, "written in the hearts of all mankind, yea, even in pagans," and consists in belief in God, in the afterlife, and in divine punishments.² Benjamin Franklin for all his differences from Roger Williams believed essentially the same thing, as indicated in the quotation from his autobiography in my original article on civil religion. Elsewhere Franklin emphasized the importance of general religion when he wrote, "If men are so wicked as we now see them with religion, what would they be without it?"³

But the classic expression of general civil religion is surely to be found in George Washington’s Farewell Address:

And a little later in the address he asks, "Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue?"⁵

It is these statements, I believe, that foreshadow the famous and much criticized remark of Dwight David Eisenhower, "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith -- and I don’t care what it is."⁶ Being charitable to Eisenhower I think we may doubt that he didn’t care at all: he meant he didn’t care which of the conventional. American religious faiths it was because all of them have the requisite minimal features of general civil religion. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, a man on the opposite side of the political fence from Eisenhower, said much the same thing in a 1952 Supreme Court decision when he wrote, "We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being."⁷

We should not assume, however, that all Americans from the seventeenth century on have been quite so inclusive with respect to general civil religion. Williams, Franklin, and Washington were willing to accept Catholics and Jews along with Protestants, and Williams was ready to include Muslims as well. Indeed some of the noblest sentiments of inclusion in the common fellowship in our history are to be found in the letters and addresses of Washington to religious organizations. Particularly remarkable are his sentiments of strong acceptance and support of groups that have sometimes been considered marginal by many Americans:

Roman Catholics, for example, or Quakers. But the high point in these letters and addresses is certainly the Address to the Hebrew Congregation of New Port on August 17, 1790, well known to Jewish Americans but not so familiar to many of us:

But it was a long and slow process before Catholics and Jews were fully included in our civil consensus. Mark De Wolf Howe and William McLoughlin have argued that there was a de facto Protestant establishment in the early years of the Republic, that this establishment was broadened to include Catholics late in the nineteenth century and that only in the twentieth has America transcended the notion that it is a Christian nation. In any case the idea that religion is the basis of public morality, and so the indispensable underpinning of a republican political order, is a constant theme from Washington’s Farewell Address to the present. This fundamental function of general civil religion could be carried out by churches that remained indifferent to the special civil religion embodied in such documents as the Declaration of Independence and bound up with the history of the American nation, but most American religious groups have been able to affirm both general and special civil religion as well as their own doctrinal peculiarities. In this fusion Protestant denominations have been joined by Catholics and Jews almost to the present.

The founding fathers believed that religion and morality were the essential basis for that virtue which Washington said Providence always connects with the felicity of a nation. But how hopeful were they that virtue, the very principle of a republic, would survive in America? Our founding fathers, children of the eighteenth century though they might be, were not callow optimists. Washington in his Farewell Address wrote that he dared not hope that his counsels could "prevent our Nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the Destiny of Nations."⁹

What that course was Franklin made clear in his speech on the very last day of the Constitutional Convention, September 17, 1787:

These sentiments are amplified in an earlier letter written in 1775 to Joseph Priestly:

And Jefferson parallels Washington and Franklin in his "Notes on Virginia," 1781:

If we ask what virtue and corruption meant to the founding fathers the answer is clear from the quotations I have just cited and from many more I could have cited. Franklin described it as "zeal for the public good." Jefferson put it a little differently when he described virtue as "a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses." ¹³ Corruption is the opposite of "zeal for the public good." It is exclusive concern for one’s own good, for, in Franklin’s words, "thousands per annum." For Jefferson, corruption consists in forgetting oneself "in the sole faculty of making money."

If we can see the connection between general civil religion and virtue defined as concern for the common good, we can begin to see the connections between general civil religion and special civil religion, for special civil religion defines the norms in terms of which the common good is conceived. Perhaps the central norm in the American civil religion is expressed in that great phrase of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: "All men are created equal." But it is widely asserted that the founding fathers were hypocrites, that Jefferson didn’t really mean it. I recently heard it said on a television discussion that since Jefferson believed in slavery he meant "all men are created equal" to apply only to whites; nor was that view contradicted by any member of the distinguished panel. Silly adulation of the George Washington and the cherry tree variety is certainly to be abhorred, but silly debunking is no improvement. As a matter of fact Jefferson never believed in slavery, always argued that it was wrong, consistently tried to limit and contain it so that it could eventually be suppressed, and -- what anyone talking on the subject of the Declaration of Independence should know -- condemned it utterly in his own draft of that document. One of the charges against the king of England that was unfortunately struck out by Congress read in Jefferson’s original words:

In his Summary View of the Rights of British America of 1774 Jefferson had called for the "abolition of domestic slavery" and the eventual "enfranchisement of the slaves we have."¹⁵ In his "Notes on Virginia" of 1781 Jefferson foresaw a future "total emancipation" but was not insensitive to the irony of a people fighting for its own freedom keeping another in subjection. He placed the issue of slavery in the light that Abraham Lincoln would always see it when he wrote in 1781:

Jefferson, unlike Lincoln, did not often resort to biblical language, but the injustice of slavery called it forth in him. One cannot but see those words as a foreshadowing of Lincoln’s great Second Inaugural Address:

There is, then, a biting edge to the civil religion. Not just general civil religion, but virtue. Not just virtue, but concern for the common good. Not just the common good defined in any self-serving way, but the common good under great objective norms: equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.

The American civil religion could not guarantee the instant fulfillment of its precepts. No religion has ever been able so to guarantee. Do all Christians love their neighbors as themselves? The world, as Christians have long known and as the founding fathers certainly knew, is a wicked place. Compromise with existing evil is necessary for survival. But religions have a way of going beyond necessary compromise and tacitly condoning or even supporting evil when it could be effectively opposed. I would not deny that the civil religion has been used to condone evil, any more than I would deny that Christians have used their religion to condone evil. And yet the fundamental tenets of the civil religion have continued to work among us. How different our history would have been if the Declaration of Independence had read, "All white people are created equal and all black people are created slaves by nature."

I have concentrated on slavery because it has occasioned the deepest moral and political trauma in our history. A tragic civil war was required to abolish it, and its effects are still far from eradicated today. But slavery is only an image, an emblem, an example of the more general problem: how to actualize on this earth the great religious and moral insights that have been given to us.

I have spoken so far as though the tenets of the civil religion are self-evident, as though they need no interpretation, as though the only problem is their implementation. Actually that is far from the case. Conflict, explicit or implicit, over the deeper meaning of the civil religion has been endemic from the beginning. The conflict over the meaning of the civil religion, over the very meaning of American, has never been more severe than it is today,¹⁷ and how we as a people make the great decisions that lie ahead may depend on how we resolve that conflict of meaning.

To put it -- for the sake of argument -- a bit too simply: there have been behind the civil religion from the beginning two great structures of interpretation, the one I shall call biblical, the other utilitarian. The biblical interpretation stands, above all, under the archetype of the covenant, but it is also consonant with the classical theory of natural law as derived from ancient philosophy and handed down by the church fathers. The utilitarian interpretation stands, above all, under the archetype of the social contract and is consonant with the modern theory of natural rights as derived from John Locke. The meaning of every key term in the civil religion -- certainly liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but also equality and even life -- differs in those two perspectives.¹⁸

As an expression of the biblical archetype that stands behind the civil religion let me turn to that great initial sermon of John Winthrop, "A Model of Christian Charity," delivered on board ship before the landing in Massachusetts in 1630. This sermon was designed to sketch the religious and ethical foundation of the new society the colonists were to build:

Only a little further in the sermon he adds:

In Winthrop, then, there is a great tension between the situation of fallen men, whose disobedience to God rends them also from each other so that they love themselves alone, and the truly Christian community where all are one body in mutual love and concern. The whole Puritan project was an effort to overcome the failings of fallen or natural man and create a holy community, based on love. In an effort to actualize the biblical commandments Winthrop and his friends sought to create a holy commonwealth in England, and if not there then in America. The moral and religious fervor at the root of that effort was the source of much that is good in American society ever since, but we must not forget its dark side: the moral crusade, the holy war, what Paul Tillich called the sin of religion, to confuse one’s own will with the will of God. And Winthrop, for all his moderation and humanity, did display that dark side as when several times he turned persecutor and drove religious dissidents from the Bay Colony.

Partly in reaction against the Puritans the great founders of modern philosophy in England, Hobbes and Locke, created a position that was in a sense the dialectical opposite of that of the Puritans. Disturbed by sectarian fanaticism, finding the Puritan goal utopian and finally destructive because, they thought, unrealistic about human nature, they drastically lowered the moral demand, abandoned the principles of Christian politics, and started with natural man, the fallen man of Winthrop, the man who loves himself alone. Thus when, over fifty years after Winthrop’s sermon, John Locke discusses the purpose or the end of government he finds it to be not love, as Winthrop would have said, nor justice, as Aristotle would have said, but:

Or again:

Now one can read the great tenets of the civil religion in either of the two perspectives -- as Winthrop would have read them, or as Locke would have read them. Is equality a condition for the fulfillment of our humanity in covenant with God or is it a condition for the competitive struggle to attain our own interests? Is freedom almost identical with virtue -- the freedom to fulfill lovingly our obligations to God and our fellow men -- or is it the right to do whatever we please so long as we do not harm our fellow men too flagrantly? Is the pursuit of happiness the realization of our true humanity in love of Being and all beings, as Jonathan Edwards²³ would have put it or is it, as Locke would contend, the pursuit of those things -- notably wealth and power -- which are means to future happiness, in Leo Strauss s words, "The joyless quest for joy"?²⁴ Does life mean biological survival in our animal functions or does it mean the good life in which our spiritual nature and our animal nature are both fulfilled?

It would simplify matters if Christians had consistently followed what I am calling the biblical interpretation of our civil religion, and deists and rationalists had followed the utilitarian interpretation. Such was not, however, the case. Not only have Christians been on both sides of the fence but we can find the same cleavage in the Enlightenment thought of the founding fathers. The stress on virtue that we have already noticed -- Jefferson’s "love of others," Franklin’s "zeal for the public good" -- is very close to the biblical archetype, while the stress on self-interest that is also common among the founding fathers suggests the powerful influence of the utilitarian archetype.

I would argue that it is the idea of virtue that was the organizing center of that initial Revolution in the minds of men that I have identified with the civil religion, the very spirit of the Declaration of Independence. Although in Jefferson the utilitarian side is never absent, the idea of virtue is never eclipsed by the idea of interest. Others of the founding fathers were less constant. Adams’s great enthusiasm for virtue during the Revolutionary War turned to skepticism and a reliance on interest in the following decade.²⁵ Hamilton was never more than mildly intoxicated with the idea of virtue and rapidly became the greatest theorist of the interest-conception of the Republic.²⁶ Though most in the founding generation kept some balance between the two sides, there was a perceptible swing toward interest by the end of the 1780s. Indeed, if we can say that virtue is the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, then interest is the principle of the Constitution. Between the two documents there is a great lowering of the moral sights. Madison, who was very much himself of two minds on the subject of virtue and interest, nonetheless gave the clearest exposition of the interest-doctrine in the 51st Federalist:

There were several references to God in the Declaration but none in the Constitution. The Constitution was a document of compromise, as it had to be. Powerful interests had to be taken into account, even when they violated the spirit of the Declaration. It was therefore a document of potential tragedy, as Madison, its chief architect, well knew when he wondered how well it resolved or failed to resolve the problem of slavery. Franklin’s words spoken on the last day of the Constitutional Convention and quoted above express the somewhat somber mood. Jefferson’s words already quoted, that the "shackles not knocked off" would lead to a "convulsion," proved prophetic, for the shackles of slavery were not knocked off and the seeds of the Civil War were sown from the moment the Constitution was ratified.

I do not mean to say that I think the Constitution was a counterrevolutionary document or that it marked a Thermi-dorean reaction. It is itself one of the greatest political documents ever produced, one that has stood up incredibly well through nearly two hundred years of enormous social change. But if we can see it as the body of which the Declaration of Independence is the soul then we must see that it was a very imperfect body from the beginning. Almost the first act of the new government was to amend it ten times. It was not until the great Civil War amendments that slavery was finally abolished and the promise of "equal protection of the laws" was made -- a promise that has not yet been kept. It was not until the twentieth century that the equality the Declaration promised to all human beings -- for that is what "men" meant in the fundamental phrase -- began to be fully extended to females as well as males. And the Constitution will undoubtedly have to be changed again in the future if it is to reflect more adequately the truth of its soul. Yet the Constitution was not a betrayal of the Declaration but the inevitable compromise that was necessary if the Declaration was to be incarnated at all.

Thus we have it -- virtue and interest, covenant and utilitarianism -- the American civil religion has always ranged between those heights and those depths. I would not deny it. Generations of believing Christians have seen it in its highest light, though often on Monday morning in the counting house they have seen it at its lowest. Some of our greatest leaders, Jefferson and Lincoln included, though profoundly influenced by modern philosophy, have risen to a biblical level of insight in our times of need. On the other hand Christianity has been profoundly infected with the utilitarian spirit, the primary stress on property and wealth. Since the middle of the nineteenth century we have seen the rise of the gospel of work, the gospel of wealth, the gospel of success. By 1901 Episcopal Bishop William Lawrence could say, "Godliness is in league with riches."²⁸ And with the idea that the godly are rich and the rich are godly the idea of a covenant based on love was just about gone.

My original article on civil religion was written in 1965 and published in 1967 in an issue of Daedalus on "Religion in America." Looking back now it seems that the article and the widespread response it evoked reflected some kind of break in the line of American identity. Civil religion came to consciousness just when it was ceasing to exist, or when its existence had become questionable. Nor was it only civil religion that was affected by the upheaval of the sixties. Sydney Ahlstrom in his Religious History of the American People speaks of the end of the "Puritan Era,"²⁹ by which I think he means the Protestant hegemony of American culture. But indeed all religious traditions in America were called in question in that decade and are still in doubt. The legitimacy and authority of all our institutions, political, economic, educational, even familial, as well as religious, has never been shakier. We are, then, not only in an economic depression but in a political and religious one as well. This profound loss of confidence in our institutions and our traditional identities is even more serious than the economic troubles that seem to plague us chronically in recent years.

It is a situation of hope as well as danger. The coming-apart of unholy alliances, such as that between utilitarianism and biblical religion, could lead to some new imaginative visions, some alternatives to the ever-increasing dominance of governmental and corporate bureaucracy into which we have fallen. Only the biblical religions, I venture to think, can provide the energy and vision for a new turn in American history, perhaps a new understanding of covenant, which may be necessary not only to save ourselves but to keep us from destroying the rest of the world. Such a revitalization of biblical religion in America would find, I believe, an ally rather than an enemy in the highest aspect of the civil tradition.

Alas, we have no Jefferson or Lincoln today to educate us and rededicate us to our Revolutionary ideals. Or if we do, I have not yet discerned him or her. But that is no reason to despair. Our greatest leaders have always been exemplars and teachers, not dictators who did what the people could not do. If there are no great teachers, we must teach ourselves.

But if we let our heritage slip from our hands, if we do not understand what we are, then Lincoln’s great words about us, words we find it hard to understand in these closing years of the twentieth century -- that we are "the last best hope of earth" -- will in the end be nothing but a mockery, a sarcastic epithet for a fallen republic.

End Notes:

1. Robert N. Bellah, "Civil Religion in America," Daedalus, Winter 1967. Reprinted in Robert N. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York: Harper and Row, 1970)

2. Roger Williams to Daniel Abbot, January 15, 1681, in Edmund S. Morgan, ed., Puritan Political Ideas (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1965), p. 224.

3. Ralph Ketcham, ed., The Political Thought of Benjamin Franklin (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1965), p. 144.

4. Saxe Cummins, ed., The Basic Writings of George Washington (New York: Random House, 1948), p. 637.

5. Ibid., p.638.

6. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in Will Herbert, Protestant-Catholic-Jew (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., l955), p.97

7. Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.s. 306 (1952), 312-313. Cited in Mark De-Wolfe Howe, The Garden and the Wilderness: Religion and Government in American Constitutional History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 13

8. George Washington, in Paul F. Boller, Jr., George Washington and Religion (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963), p. 186.

9. Cummins, Basic Writings of George Washington, p. 642.

10. Ketcham, Political Thought of Benjamin Franklin, p. 401.

11. Ibid., p. 288.

12. Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia," Query 17, in Saul K. Padover, ed., The Com~plete Je/jerson (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1943), p. 676.

13. Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814, cited in John R. Howe, Jr., The Changing Political Thought of John Adams (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966) p.31.

14. Padover, The Complete Jefferson, p. 32.

15. Ibid., p. 14

16. Notes on Virginia, Query 18, in Padover, The Complete Jefferson p. 677.

17. On February 10, 1976, James Kilpatrick, former speechwriter for a former president, declared in a column published in the San Francisco Chronicle that the phrase "all men are created equal" is a "palpable falsehood." In an Associated Press dispatch of September 13, 1975, it was reported that Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller had declared that the "Judaeo-Christian heritage" is at odds with "free enterprise" and that too much charity may destroy the country. "One of the problems in this country is that we have the Judeo-Christian heritage of wanting to help those in need," the Vice President is quoted as saying.

18. A more developed treatment of these contrasts will he found in Robert N. Bellah, The Broken Covenants American Civil Religion in Time of Trial (New York: Seabury Press. 1975)

19. Morgan, Puritan Political Ideas, pp. 84-86.

20. Ibid., p. 86.

21. John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, paragraph 124.

22. John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1950), p. 17.

23. Jonathan Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue, (Ann Arbor The University of Michigan Press, 1960).

24. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953) p. 251.

25. See Howe, The Garden and the Wilderness, chaps. 2 through 6.

26. See Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government, (Stanford: University Press, 1970) chap. 2.

27. The Federalist (New York: Modern Library, 1937), p. 158.

28. William Lawrence, in Ralph Gabriel, The Course of American Democratic Thought (New York: The Ronald Press, 1956), p. 158.

29. Sidney B. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972) , chap. 63.

(Sidney E. Mead is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History and the School of Religion at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. This chapter was originally presented , in slightly different form, as one of the Jefferson memorial Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, California.)

As I conceive the study of religion in American history, the basic interpretative motif is experience. This means that one tries to account for those peculiarities of a particular institution that give it its distinctive character by noting the experiences of that institution that are unique to it as compared with the commonly shared experiences of the community of which it is a part.

That Christianity has assumed a distinctive shape in the United States seems obvious.¹ The peculiarities that make it distinctive are the result of the necessity in a relatively brief time to accommodate² the old Christianity to a strange new environment in which social and geographical space, and social and political revolution were most prominent.

But it was the experience of the religion of Christendom with religious feudalism defended by civil authority that required revolutionary intellectual and institutional adjustments. By pluralism I mean here a multiplicity of organized religious groups in the commonwealth. Each species of the genus Christian achieves distinctive identity and reason for independent being by its peculiar emphasis on one or more of the doctrines shared by all. In the strange chorus of the Christian denominations in the United States they all sing the same song but with different tunes.

The internalization of religion in the eighteenth century, with consequent separation of "salvation" from responsibility for the instituted structures of society, enabled Christians to accept pluralism and religious freedom without feeling a necessity to come to terms with it theologically. They were not inclined to look this gift horse in the mouth. Had they done so they might have discovered that it was a Trojan horse in the Christian citadel. Christians should have learned to be wary of gifts bearing Greeks.

In our pluralistic society, if one presumes to talk about "religion" a decent respect for his listeners requires that he try to make clear what he has in mind. Religion is a subject formally dealt with in almost every university discipline and, naturally, in each spoken of in the particular dialect of the tribe. Because we recognize concepts by the words they usually come clothed in, specialists often find it difficult to recognize even one of their own favorite concepts when it is disguised in the terminology of another academic ghetto.³ Therefore the primary purpose of attempting to define "religion" is to ask whether perhaps a consensus in the understanding of what we are talking about is concealed under the many different guises in which the concept appears. It seems to me that such a consensus exists, or is emerging.

In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville, that aboriginal Delphic oracle of things American, noted that no societies have ever managed without general acceptance by the people of some "dogmatic beliefs, that is to say, opinions which men take on trust without discussion." Without such beliefs "no common action would be possible, and . . . there could be no body social." If society is to exist "it is essential that all the minds of the citizens" be "held together by some leading ideas; and that could never happen unless each of them sometimes came to draw his opinions from the same source and was ready to accept some beliefs ready made." ⁴

Tocqueville’s view has become a commonplace, enabling Robert Bellah in presenting his view of "American Civil Religion" to note:

James Baldwin, in a 1959 essay entitled "The Discovery of What It Means to be an American," says he went to Paris to live because he thought he "hated America." But in the experience of living in Paris and trying to relate his experience to "that of others, Negroes and whites, writers and non-writers, I proved, to my astonishment, to be as American as any Texas GI. And I found my experience was shared by every American writer I knew in Paris." Generalizing from this experience, Mr. Baldwin concluded: "Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of the people." With this insight, he says, "I was released from the illusion that I hated America" and "I was able to accept my role -- as distinguished, I must say, from my ‘place’ -- in the extraordinary drama which is America."⁶

Historian Ralph Henry Gabriel rested his delineation of The Course ol American Democratic Thought on a concept of shared "social beliefs" that emerged by around 1815, serving Americans "as guides to action, as standards by which to judge the quality of social life, and as goals to inspire humane living." This "cluster of ideas and ideals.

taken together, made up a national faith which, although unrecognized as such, had the power of a state religion.⁷ Gabriel concluded that only by understanding this "faith" or "religion" was it possible to understand the middle period of American history.

Anthropologist Ruth Benedict in her now classic Patterns of Culture argued: "What really binds men together" in communities "is their culture -- the ideas and the standards they have in common."⁸ It is these shared beliefs that give them a sense of belonging together and of being different from the peoples of other cultures. To understand a people we must know what those "ideas and standards" are.

Edward Shils, writing on "intellectuals," indicated that he assumed that "actual communities [are] bound together by the acceptance of a common body of standards."⁹ To him we shall return in another connection.

Sociologists, as the quotation from Bellah suggests, have been quick to call the shared ideas and standards religious." To Robin M. Williams, Jr., religion is that " ‘system of beliefs’ that defines the norms for behavior in the society" and "represents a complex of ultimate value-orientations." It follows that "every functioning society has a common religion . . . a common set of ideas, rituals, and symbols" which supply and/or celebrate "an overarching sense of unity." It follows that "no society can be understood without also understanding its religion."¹⁰ Seen in this context, to concentrate exclusively on describing a people’s "way of life" as exhibited in their behavior is to miss the primarily important thing -- what holds them together in a community.

Paul Tillich expressed the same view in more abstract jargon, as befits a theologian:

And, finally, Philip Selznick’s one-sentence summary: "A democracy is a normative system in which behavior and belonging are judged on the basis of conformity, or lack of it, with the master ideal" shared by the people.¹²

These examples, I trust, are enough to suggest a consensus that the word "religion" is to point to a constellation of shared beliefs respecting the nature of the universe and man’s place in it, from which the standards for conduct are supposedly deduced. In this view, when we speak of the religion of an individual or of a community we mean to point to whatever constellation of ideas and standards does in fact give cosmic significance and hence purpose to his or its way of life.¹³

While some of the ideas and beliefs here referred to may be clearly articulated, more commonly they are of the nature of Tocqueville’s "opinions which men take on trust without discussion," that is, assume or presuppose. In philosopher Alfred North Whitehead’s words, "Religion has been and is now the major source of those ideals which add to life a sense of purpose that is worthwhile." It follows, he added, that "apart from religion, expressed in ways generally intelligible, populations sink into the apathetic task of daily survival, with minor alleviations."¹⁴ In that case, for example, "national security" becomes the ultimate goal that guides national policies.

I wish to emphasize three implications of this consensus definition of "religion": (1) that the religion of a society is whatever system of beliefs actually provides cosmic legitimation for its institutions, and for the activities of its people; (2) that every individual, every community, has his or its religion; and (3) that the central content of the religion is what is assumed or presupposed by most believers, that is, has to do with what to them is obvious. Hence Baldwin’s reference to the "hidden laws" that govern society. For nothing is more hidden from most persons than the presuppositions’ on which their whole structure of thinking rests.¹⁶

However, at least a few reflective individuals in every society are conscious of the fact that they hold some "truths to be self-evident" -- persons who realize with Franklin that there are some things they have "never doubted." These are the "intellectuals," and, as Shils says, "There would be intellectuals in society even if there were no intellectuals by disposition." ¹⁷ Baldwin concluded that their calling was to make others aware of these hidden laws that determine their thinking and acting.

If we presume to talk about "religion" in our pluralistic society we must realize that the word points to a numerous family in which there are hundreds of genera (the world’s religions) and thousands of species and sub-species (e.g., denominations), each with its own protective institutional shell.¹⁸ In such a society one cannot be overtly and socially religious without choosing to associate with one of the thousand or more vigorously competitive species. Such competition tends to induce the members of each species to claim, implicitly at least, to be the only true representatives of the family. I call this the "Parson Thwackum syndrome," for that cleric in Henry Fielding’s History of Tom Jones stated that position most lucidly: "When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England."¹⁹ Thus to Thwackum, Anglican, Protestant, Christian, and religious were synonymous. The Thwackums among us erase all distinctions between family, genus, species, and sub-species of religion. And the Thwackum perspective is not uncommon even among the very learned and sophisticated professors in the prestige theological schools who confuse their beliefs with the "authentic faith." Ruth Benedict, recognizing the syndrome, warned "white culture" against its tendency "always to identify our own local ways of behaving with behaviour, or our own socialized habits with Human Nature," and, she might have added, our species of religion with religion.²⁰

Further, a genus or species of religion may be defined and defended from two quite different points of view -- from that of the insider and from that of an outsider. To the insider, talk and writing about his species of religion is analogous to autobiography. To the outsider, talk about a species of religion is analogous to biography, the voice of knowledge about.²¹ In sophisticated dress this distinction was invoked by H. Richard Niebuhr in his The Meaning of Revelation.²² His use of the terms "inner" and "outer" history has been widely adopted by those who gain a reputation for profound thought by repeating the terminology of a master.

Down through the centuries of Christendom able theologians nourished the belief that there was an absolute and eternal difference in kind between "natural" unregenerate persons (the outsiders) and regenerate "saints" (the insiders). Jonathan Edwards, certainly one of the best and the brightest, etched the line between them with great clarity, arguing that "natural men" could no more understand the "gracious influences which the saints are subjects of" than the person with no sense of taste whatever could apprehend "the sweet taste of honey . . . by only looking on it, and feeling of it"²³ In this obscurantist citadel of euphoric and absolute assurance generations of Christians have smugly found an impregnable defense of their peculiar species of Christianity.

More surprising to me, in 1962 Professor Arthur S. Link applied this distinction to the writing of "secular" history in the twentieth century. Assuming that the historian "is called to be a mere chronicler of the past," he argued that the non-Christian historian’s chronicle is subject to "the tyranny of the ego’s insatiable demands for its own understanding and control of history." But God gives Christians "the ability to be good and faithful historians" through the gift of the Spirit. Therefore the Christian’s history, being "purged of the ego’s distortions and perversions," is the only truly "objective" chronicle. Mr. Link concluded that "if the writers of the Biblical record were ‘inspired,’ that is, given grace to be true historians, then we, too, can be ‘inspired’ even as we are justified." ²⁴ The reader of Mr. Link’s writings will hereafter note that the author modestly intimates that they belong in the canon of inspired pronouncements.

From the standpoint of those of us who live outside the temples in which such grace-endowed fellows dwell, what religion is can be only an opinion based on inferences drawn from observation and analysis of what self-styled religious people do and say, individually and collectively, and of their explanation and defense of their saying and doing. For as John Dewey noted, we cannot observe religion-in-general, but only genera and species of the family.²⁵

This is to say that outsiders, for whom religion is as religion does, can produce only biographies of the species or genera of religion. And if Jonathan Edwards was, and if Arthur S. Link is, right, the communication gulf between insiders and outsiders is impassable. To the outsider the insider’s autobiographical argument is unconvincing or meaningless because he lives in a different world of reality in which the insider’s claim is an obscurantist refuge for all the species of privatized religiosity. Ruth Benedict delineated the contrast between the two perspectives, as only an Outsider could do, in her contrast between open and closed groups:

I have argued that the experience of the old Christianity in the New World resulted in the internalizing of Christianity with the consequent separation in principle of one's "salvation" from a sense of responsibility for the social, economic, and political life of his society. The nature of this separation can also be delineated in contemporary sociological language, and my interest in consensus induces me to try to do so.

Talcott Parsons is, I take it, a respectable representative of the discipline that has sometimes aspired to be crowned the modern queen of the sciences. Parsons distinguishes between "cultural systems" and "social systems," and describes the relation between them. "Social systems," he says, "are organized about the exigencies of interaction among acting units, both individual persons and collective units." In analyzing them we merely describe "what in fact is done" or predict "what will be."²⁷

On the other hand, "Cultural systems . . . are organized about the patterning of meaning in symbolic systems [‘meaning systems’] ."²⁸ As for the relation between them, "meaning systems are always in some respects and to some degree normative in their significance" for action and interaction in the social system. Or, as I would say, the meaning system provides cosmic legitimation for the social system.

Parsons continues: the function of a meaning system is that it specifies "what in some sense should be done and evaluate[s] the actual performance accordingly," that is, because it defines what is normal behavior, and is internalized, it stands in judgment over deviant action. This all seems in keeping with the complex definition of "religion" I spelled out above. To me, functionally Parsons’s meaning system is the religion of the society.

In applying this definition to an understanding of our America, it is natural to suppose that the religion (meaning-system) that legitimates America’s social, political, and economic system is Christianity as given institutionalized form in the many denominations. This I have come to believe is a mistake. My thesis -- that the internalization of religion beginning with the eighteenth-century revivals effectively separated assurance of "salvation" from a sense of responsibility for the institutions of the convert’s society -- means just that.²⁹ This is to say that the species of religion incarnated in the denominations, with their massive institutional inertia, is not the religion that actually sets and legitimates the norms for our society -- that the theology of the denominations does not legitimate the political and legal structure of the commonwealth.³⁰

It follows that it is not very profitable to go looking for the real theology of our Republic in the dusty historical attics of the institutionalized piosity of our contemporary society. Certainly it is not profitable to look only there. Recognition of this separation was always implicit, for example, in those educators who, while holding that the public schools inculcated the moral and spiritual values of the democracy, were very careful to divorce those values from all species of the religion institutionalized in the nation’s sects.

I assume that the general health and well-being of a commonwealth-society hinges upon a harmony between its meaning and social systems -- between its religion and its society -- and that the theology inculcated by the society’s dominant churches suggests the cosmic significance of the norms that are invoked to control behavior in the social, economic, political, and judicial spheres. This is to say that religion is the mainspring of an integrated society. When the mainspring is broken the society runs down. Or, as Alfred North Whitehead expressed it, "Religion has been and is now the major source of those ideals which add to life a sense of purpose that is worthwhile. Apart from religion, expressed in ways generally intelligible, populations sink into the apathetic task of daily survival, with minor alleviations."³¹

That the mainspring of the old-line denominations in America is broken seems widely assumed today and even persuasively documented.³² A few years ago it was exuberantly self-confessed by professors in jet-set theological schools who joined Friedrich Nietzsche’s madman in the secular city’s marketplace (for example, in Time magazine) proclaiming the death of God. More recently representatives of these self-liquidating theologians have intimated, with more than usual insight, that it is their theology that is dead, or at least like the sheep of Little Bo-Peep, is lost and they do not know where to find it.³³

I am willing to take their word for it. But the loss of their ideology does not perturb me insofar as the welfare of the Republic is concerned. For I hold that their lost theology is not and never has been the mainspring of that Republic -- that the theology of the Republic is that of "Enlightenment" in Crane Brinton’s sense. And it is not clear that this mainspring is broken. Indeed Michael Novak was easily able to develop a persuasive argument that it is very much intact; that, indeed, "the tradition in which intellectuals ordinarily define themselves [today] is that of the Enlightenment"; that Enlightenment is "the dominant religion" in contemporary society.³⁴ And Martin E. Marty, defender of an implicit but vaguely defined Protestant orthodoxy against "religion in general," has argued that in American history, "while Protestants pointed with pride to their achievements they hardly realized that the typically rationalist view of the irrelevancy of theological distinctions in a pluralist society was pulling the rug Out from under them." And this means, Marty concludes, borrowing a punch line from Oscar Handlin, "that the Enlightenment prevailed over ‘the forms American religion took in its development from Calvinism.’ "³⁵ That most of us are closer to the tradition of Enlightenment than to eighteenth-century Christian orthodoxy we realize when we stop to think that we would no doubt find Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, even Thomas Paine more congenial dinner company than Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Davies, George Whitefield, or Timothy Dwight.

Mr. Marty’s thesis, noted above, suggests that one might say of most academic theology in America what George Herbert Mead said of Josiah Royce’s philosophy, that it was part of the escape from the crudity of American life, not an interpretation of it," for "it . . . did not root in the active life of the community" and therefore "was not an interpretation of American life." So, Mead continues, although from around 1800 "culture was sought vividly in institutions of learning, in lyceums and clubs, it did not reflect the political and economic activities which were fundamental in American life."³⁶

And one might say of Marty’s Protestant Christians, unaware that the rug was being pulled out from under them by Enlightenment, what Mead said of William James: "He was not aware of the break between the profound processes of American life [Parsons’s social system] and its culture [Parsons’s culture system]."³⁷

In a most perceptive essay published in 1964, the late historian-theologian Joseph Haroutunian gave more definite theological content to the development to which Marty and Mead pointed. The predominant Christian orthodoxy in the United States, he argues,

After giving due regard to the liberal and other theological movements in the United States he summarizes his view in an understatement: "It appears that American Christianity has done less than justice to American Experience, and so have American theologians."

I assume that the theologians are the intellectuals of a community of faith or belief. I am using the word "intellectual(s)" in the sense developed by Shils and Parsons in the articles noted above. In Parsons’s terminology, the intellectual is "expected . . . to put cultural considerations above social," his function being to define and, presumably, to articulate and disseminate the meaning system (or "value orientation") of his society. Shils spelled this out in clearer fashion. He assumed, as noted above, that communities are "bound together by the acceptance of a common body of standards" which are internalized and "continually . . . applied by each member in his own work and in the institutions which assess and select works and persons for appreciation or condemnation." These standards are seldom rationalized and made overt but are carried and maintained primarily in "songs, histories, poems, biographies, and constitutions, etc., which diffuse a sense of affinity among the members of the society."

Intellectuals are driven by a "need to penetrate beyond the screen of immediate concrete experience" -- that is, beyond the concerns relative to Parsons’s social system -- to the "ultimate principles" implicit therein, which is to say "the existing body of cultural values." Then by "preaching, teaching, and writing" in "schools, churches, newspapers, and similar structures" they "infuse into sections of the population which are intellectual neither by inner vocation nor by social role, a perceptiveness and an imagery which they would otherwise lack."³⁹ Here in Shils’s terminology we may recognize James Baldwin’s conception of the responsibility of the artist-writer to clarify and articulate the hidden laws that govern his society and himself.

I hear Parsons and Shils saying that the task of the intellectuals is to infuse in the population the beliefs and standards that define what is normal behavior in their society, and that these beliefs are legitimated by the ultimate principles implicit in them. This means in my way of speaking that, ideally, intellectuals would assume responsibility for inculcating the religion of their community.

This seems to me essentially the thesis David W. Noble developed in his book, Historians Against History. The Frontier Thesis and the National Covenant in American Historical Writing Since 1890. The historian, Noble argues, "is our most important secular theologian," responsible for describing and defending the covenant that makes us a people, being always ready both to "explain how his country has achieved its uniqueness" and to "warn against the intrusion of alien influences."⁴⁰

What I have described as the separation of "salvation" from social responsibility, in the terminology of Parsons and Shils could be described as a separation of the cultural system and value orientation professed in a community from the actual social system, or the divorce of religion from what George Herbert Mead called "the political and economic activities which were fundamental in American life."

Traditionally in Christendom the church, a very tangible institution in, but conceived as not entirely of, the society,⁴¹ was the home of the intellectuals. The church in this respect was roughly analogous to the university in our society. For those who lived during the centuries of Catholic Christendom, as for the Puritans of early Massachusetts Bay, theologians played the role in society that Parsons and Shils designate as the role of intellectuals in any society.⁴² Further, they were expected to give guidance to rulers and people, in minute detail if necessary, for they were the recognized interpreters of the proper application of the general standards to specific issues. In this social-cultural structure "salvation" was inextricably bound to right conduct in every area of life from birth to last rites.

With the fragmentation of the transnational church by the Reformation, and the establishment of religious pluralism, this unified authoritarian structure was destroyed and Christianity was thereafter incarnated in many different and highly competitive institutions, each legitimated by its absolutized parochial interpretation of the common gospel. Each Established church that resulted made for its place in its nation the same sort of claims that the universal Catholic church had made for its ubiquitous transnational authority. In other words, the new nations reverted to tribalism, and an Established church was the institutionalization of the nation’s tribal cult.

In this situation no substantive difference was made between church and commonwealth. Both were merely ways of looking at the same body of people. This was evidenced in the legal structure by the merging of monarch into God, legitimated by some forms of the doctrine of the divine right of kings’ In this context the role of the theologian of an Established church was that of a true intellectual of and for his nation-society.

When the American Revolution was completed, let us say with John Adams by around 1815,⁴⁴ not only had the Established Church of England been rejected, but, more important, the very idea of Establishment had been discarded in principle by the new Constitution. For the first time in Christendom there was legal religious freedom as distinct from toleration in a commonwealth.⁴⁵ Church and state could no longer be seen as coextensive functional institutionalized authorities -- as merely two ways of looking at the same society. A church became a voluntary association within the commonwealth, in competition with perhaps hundreds of others. Loyalty to God, symbol of the highest ideals and standards (cultural system), could now be distinguished from loyalty to monarch or state, symbols of nation (social system), and it was possible to conceive that the two might be in conflict. This development is what John Adams meant by "the Revolution" -- the change that took place "in the minds and hearts of the people" which he described as "a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations."⁴⁶

With this Revolution the theologian, who had lost his transnational perspective with the Reformation, lost also his national perspective, and became the intellectual for but one of the multitude of competing sects. Now his primary role was to construct a solid defense of his sect’s peculiar species of Christianity against all the other sects making the same absolutistic claim. Because the one thing all Christians held in common was the authority of Scripture, all such defenses were erected on this foundation. This meant that even while ostensibly defending the authority of the Bible against skeptics, infidels, and atheists, each sect was actually contending against all other Christian groups for sole possession of the revelation by right of having the only, or most nearly, correct interpretation of it. Meantime the Revolution meant that all their sectarian claims had been made completely irrelevant to the individual’s status and rights as a citizen, and to the being and well-being of the commonwealth in which they lived. Thus the competition between the sects undermined belief in the distinctive beliefs of all of them. For in the minds of Mr. and Ms. John Q. Public the strident claims of the sects simply cancelled each other out, as their Republic was teaching them that no sect’s distinctives had a bearing on their rights as citizens.⁴⁷

Meantime the new kind of commonwealth that had emerged in Christendom found cosmic legitimation in Enlightenment theology -- the cosmopolitan perspective that induced Benjamin Franklin to pray that God would "grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, ‘This is my Country.’ "⁴⁸

The same sentiment prompted Alexander Hamilton to suggest in the first Federalist Paper that in the new kind of nation being born philanthropy (love for mankind) must always temper patriotism (love for country), which is to say that "national security" is not necessarily always the ultimate consideration.

It was this cosmopolitan theology that the Christian denominations almost universally rejected during the course of the revivals that swept across the nation following the 1790s. In doing so they turned back to pre-eighteenth-century theologians, or to the theologians of Europe’s Established churches, for the framework of their intellectual structures, while the meaning system that informed and legitimated the social, economic, political, and judicial systems of the nation followed in the tradition of Enlightenment thinking.⁴⁹ It was this development that institutionalized the separation of "salvation" from the convert’s responsibility for the structures of his society. ⁵⁰

One of the most extensively documented historical generalizations is that Enlightenment was driven underground by social opprobrium and character assassination of the infidel, but that its meaning system (to use Parsons’ terms) was never examined for its intellectual merits and refuted by Christian theologians.⁵¹ The Enlightenment meaning system continued, of course, to have its more or less able defenders. But most of them might rightly complain with Thomas Paine that his Christian opponents confounded "a dispute about authenticity with a dispute about doctrines," that is, in answer to his questioning of the authority of the Bible as sole revelation of God for teaching man his duty, they quoted Scripture to refute him.⁵² This suggests what I suspect was the case, that the great majority of clerical leaders and theologians did not recognize the real issue or realize the nature of the revolution in thinking that was taking place. Each in his denominational stockade tended to absolutize and universalize his parochial species of Christianity, while sharing with those in his Christian opponents ghettoes the common abhorrence of "infidelity." The "infidel" was on everyone’s enemies list.⁵³

This meant, to repeat my thesis, that every ardent defense of sectarian Christianity, however unintentional, was by implication an attack on the mainspring of the Republic.⁵⁴ Consequently the intellectuals -- the unofficial "theologians" of the Republic -- explaining, defending, acting upon, and in-fusing the values of the commonwealth were commonly anathema to the leaders of institutionalized Christianity. Either that or -- and this was done by Robert Baird, who published his Religion in America in 1844-45 -- they were posthumously metamorphosed into his species of good sectarian Christians.⁵⁵

This development meant the emergence in the common-wealth of two disparate, even competing culture systems, inculcating different conceptions of a proper social system, each with its own kind of intellectuals. Many theologians of the sects continued to talk as if they were the exponents of the normative culture system of the commonwealth, while actually they represented only that of, at best Christianity in general, at worst their exclusive sect. Meantime the intellectuals of the commonwealth, e.g., Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, and even Eisenhower, naturally found no real religious home in any existing sect. And many sensitive persons squirmed to have the best of both worlds, usually in the end by giving each a separate but equal compartment in their minds.

The question of the place of sectarian theologians in the commonwealth was solved by default. For with the general erosion of belief noted above, they lost even their vocation as defenders of what the Parson Thwackums among them have called denominational distinctives against both those of the other Christian sects and unbelievers. They became, at their best, defenders of the theologically amorphous but highly moralistic species of Christianity-in-general represented in recent decades by The Christian Century, at their worst pugnacious and powerful sectarian isolationists like the Rev. Carl McIntire. In either case, having usually been programmed in their theological schools to confuse the cosmopolitan Enlightenment theology with worship of the state, they have found it hard to find a plausibly significant role to play in the society.⁵⁶

George Santayana described the fanatic as one who redoubles his efforts when he has lost his aim. This is an apt characterization of the faddishness that has characterized professional theology during the past several decades.⁵⁷ It is not surprising, when seen in this context, that as long ago as 1933, theological school professor John C. Bennett lamented a widespread "feeling of theological homelessness" among his kind. ⁵⁸

End Notes:

1. It seems generally accepted that "the Christianity which developed in the United States was unique. It displayed features which marked it as distinct from previous Christianity in any other land." Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity (New York: Harper & Bros., 1937-45), 4:424.

2. For a definition of "accommodate" as distinct from "adjust" and "adapt" see John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934), pp. 15-17.

3. H. Richard Niebuhr was always acutely aware of the problems pluralism posed for dialogue. For example: Every effort to deal with the history of ideas is beset by hazards. Semantic traps are strewn along the way of the inquirer; such words as democracy, liberty, justice, etc., point to different concepts or varying complexes of concepts as they are used in different periods of history and by different men. The unuttered and frequently unacknowledged presuppositions of those who employ them also vary; and since meaning largely depends on context the difficulties of understanding what is meant are increased by the difficulty of ascertaining what is at the back of the minds. Our hazards are multiplied when the ideas in question are of a moral and religious sort." "The Idea of Covenant and American Democracy," Church History 23 (June 1954): 126.

4. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, eds. J. P. Mayer and Max Lerner; trans. George Lawrence (New York; Harper & Row, 1966), Part II, chap. 2, p. 398. Samuel Butler stated Tocqueville’s point succinctly; "So it is with most of us: that which we observe to be taken as a matter of course by those round us, we take as a matter of course ourselves." Samuel Butler, Erewhon, or Over the Range (New York: The New American Library of World Literature, 1960), p. 138. The complete Erewhon was first published in 1872.

5. Robert N. Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial (New York: Seabury Press, 1975),p. xi.

6. James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1961), pp. 15-19.

7. Randolph Henry Gabriel, The Course of American Democratic Thought. 2d ed. (New York: Ronald Press Co., 1956) p.26.

8. Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (Boston: Houghton Muffin Co.. 1959), p. 16.

9. Edward Shils, "The Intellectuals and the Powers: Some Perspectives for Comparative Analysis," in Philip Rieff, ed., On Intellectuals (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., l970), p. 41

10. Robin M. Williams, Jr., American Society. A Sociological Interpretation (New York: Knopf, 1952), pp. 304-306.

11. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, ed. Robert C. Kimball (New York: Oxford University Press Galaxy Book, 1964), p. 42.

12. Philip Selznick, "Natural Law and Sociology" in John Cogley et al., Natural Law and Modern Society (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1966), pp. 158, 170. See also the "Sociological Definition of Religion" developed by Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark, Religion and Society in Tension (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1965), chap. 1, pp. 3-17.

13. There is considerable evidence from psychiatry that whether or not individuals will hold and cherish such beliefs is nor a matter of choice, for without them they die. See, for example, Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. An Introduction to Logotherapy, originally published as From Death-Camp to Existentialism (New York: Washington Square Press, n.d.), Part I, "Experiences in a Concentration Camp," pp. 3-148; Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass Age (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1960), passim, but esp. chap. 4, 5; Robert Jay Lifton, Revolutionary Immortality, Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1968).

14. Alfred North Whitehead, "An Appeal to Sanity," in Essays in Science and Philosophy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948), p. 55.

15. I am using the words "presupposed," and "presupposition(s)" -- for substance thereof at least -- with the meaning and connotations developed by R. G. Collingwood in An Essay on Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), pp. 21-48.

16. For this reason one cannot understand believers simply by listening to what they profess. We are all Erewhonians in this respect: "It is a distinguishing peculiarity of the Erewhonians that when they profess themselves to be quite certain about any matter, and avow it as a base on which they are to build a system of practice, they seldom quite believe in it. If they smell a rat about the precincts of a cherished institution, they will always stop their noses to it if they can." So, the inadvertent visitor concluded, "they did not know themselves what they believed; all they did know was that it was a disease nor to believe as they did." That is a good description of the sectarian mind. Samuel Butler, Erewhon, p. 142.

17. Shils, "The Intellectuals and the Powers," p. 29.

18. Cf. Dewey A Common Faith, pp. 9-10: "There is no such thing as religion in the singular. There is only a multitude of religions. ‘Religion’ is a strictly collective term. . . . The adjective ‘religious’ denotes nothing in the way of a specifiable entity, either institutional or as a system of beliefs. It does not denote anything to which one can specifically point to this and that historic religion or existing church."

19. The Modern Library edition, p. 84.

20. Benedict, Patterns of Culture, p.7.

21. For the imagery of "autobiography" and "biography" I am indebted to William A. Clebsch’s book, From Sacred to Profane America; the Role of Religion in American History (New York: Harper and Row, l968), p. 4.

22. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation (New York: Macmillan Co. 1946), pp. 81-90. Implied in Niebuhr’s view is a defense of his species of Christian faith by removing it from the critical scrutiny of the "external" community. To that degree he stood in the tradition of Jonathan Edwards.

23. Jonathan Edwards, "Religious Affections," in The Works of President Edwards in Eight Volumes (Worcester, Mass.: Isaiah Thomas, 1808), Vol. IV: 134

24. Arthur S. Link, "The Historian’s Vocation," in Theology Today 19 (April 1962): 75-89.

25. Dewey, A Common Faith, p. 10.

26. Benedict, Patterns of Culture, p. 8.

27. Talcott Parsons, "The Intellectual: A Social Role Category," in Philip Rieff, ed., On Intellectuals, p. 3.

28. Ibid. John Higham seems to combine features of Parsons’ "culture systems" and "social systems" in his concept of "ideologies" which, he says, are "those explicit systems of general beliefs that give large bodies of people a common identity and purpose, a common program of action, and a standard for self-criticism. Being relatively formalized and explicit, ideology contrasts with a wider, older, more ambiguous fund of myth and tradition. It includes doctrines or theories on the one hand and policies or prescriptions on the other. Accordingly, it links social action with fundamental beliefs, collective identity with the course of history. . . . Arising in the course of modernization when an unreflective culture fractures, ideology provides a new basis for solidarity." John Hingham, "Hanging Together: Divergent Unities in American History," Journal of American History 61, 1 (June 1974):10.

29. For another form of this thesis, extensively developed, see John Herman Randall, Sr. and Jr., Religion and the Modern World (New York: Stokes Co., 1929), chap. II, "The Religious Heritage of the Nineteenth Century," pp. 23-44.

30. Actually this seems to me to be commonly recognized as, for example, in the assertion made by Robert M. Brown that Christianity is nor where the "greatest decisions" are made. The Ecumenical Revolution: An Interpretation 0f the Catholic-Protestant Dialogue (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1967), p. 307.

31. Whitehead, "An Appeal to Sanity," pp. 55-56. For a powerful use of the mainspring figure, see Adlai Stevenson, "Our Broken Mainspring," in Gerry G. Brown, ed., Adlai F. Stevenson, a Short Biography (New York: Barron’s Educational Series, 1965), pp. 201 -- 15.

32. For example, in Dean M. Kelley’s study, Why Conservative Churches are Growing; A Study in Sociology of Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), passim.

33. "Whatever Happened to Theology," Christianity and Crisis 35, 8 (May 12, 1975). In this issue twelve eminent theologians address this question. Although they differ considerably in explanations of why it happened and when, all seem to agree that theology has disappeared. Among the most enlightening reasons given is that by Rosemary Ruether: "I believe that the demise of such systematic theology is nor recent but has been in preparation since the Enlightenment. The attempt to rebuild systematic dogmatics since the 19th century has finally fallen through" (p. 109). Gordon K. Kaufman laments, "The once proud queen of the sciences, having lost a sense of her own meaning and integrity, had become a common prostitute" (p. 111), catering to a series of fads.

34. Michael Novak, "The Enlightenment is Dead," in The Center Magazine, IV (March/April, 1971): 19-20. The title of the article seemed to me to be contradicted by its content, as the quotations suggest.

35. Martin E. Marry, The New Shape of American Religion (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959), pp. 71-72.

36. George Herbert Mead, "The Philosophies of Royce, James, and Dewey in Their American Setting," in Andrew J. Reck, ed., Selected Writings of George Herbert Mead (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company’s Library of Liberal Arts), 1964. The quotations are, in order, from pages 383, 376, 377, and 381. The essay was first published in the International Journal of Ethics 40 (1929-1930) 211-31; it seems to me that George Santayana argued essentially the same thesis in his famous essay on "The Genteel Tradition." Herbert Wallace Schneider spelled out "how philosophy [in America] lost its living connections with the general culture of the American people and became a technical discipline in academic curricula. At the same time . . . religion and morals gradually severed their philosophical bonds, and, as the philosophers would say, became unenlightened." A History of American Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946), p. 225.

37. Mead, "The Philosophies of Royce, James, and Dewey," p. 381.

38. Joseph Haroutunian, "Theology and American Experience," Criterion (Winter, 1964): 7-9. Criterion is, or was, the house organ of the Divinity School of The University of Chicago.

39. Shils, "The Intellectuals and the Powers," pp. 27-30. Adolf A. Berle, Jr., in his book Power Without Property; A New Development in American Political Economy (New York: Harcourt, Harvest Book, 1929; e.g., pp. 90-91, 110-16, and 154-55) makes a helpful distinction between the "public consensus" and the "public opinion" that carries the same connotations as Shils’s designation of the role of the intellectual vis-à-vis the general population; Berle’s "public consensus" points to Shils’s "common standards," and Berle’s "public opinion" points to temporary winds of opinion which often run counter to the "public consensus" or the "common standards." In my terminology, developed in articles and unpublished lectures during the past years, the intellectuals define, describe, and teach the elements of the historical "character" of a people who constitute a community, as distinct from the temporary "shapes" their movements may take; A people’s conception of their true character is invoked in judgment on their immediate shape.

40. David W. Noble, Historians Against History; The Frontier Thesis and the National Covenant in American Historical Writing Since 1890. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1965), pp. 4, 17. Robert N. Bellah, a self-confessed "former establishment fundamentalist," definitely assumes this role in his book, The Broken Covenant. His "Confessions of a Former Establishment Fundamentalist" was published in Bulletin of the Council on the Study of Religion 1,3 (December, 1970): 3-6.

41. For this distinction, see Tocqueville’s "The Principle of the Sovereignty of the People in America," which is chap. 4 in vol. I, Pt. 1 of his Democracy in America; in the translation by George Lawrence, edited by J. P. Mayer and Max Lerner (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 51-53.

42. This seems to be commonly assumed by historians. For example, Edmund S. Morgan says that the founders of New England "knew, from the works of theologians, what principles they must embody in their new institutions." Roger Williams: the Church and the State (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967), p. 68.

43. See John Neville Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings (New York: Harper and Row, Torchbooks, 1965), passim.

44. Adams wrote in 1815, "The last twenty-five years of the last century, and the first fifteen years of this, may be called the age of revolutions and constitutions." Adams commonly made a distinction between the Revolution and the War for Independence. In 1818 he wrote, "But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations." And this Revolution, he thought, might be said to have begun "as early as the first plantation of the country." Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment; The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society (New York: George Braziller, 1965), pp. 223, 228, 229.

45. Jefferson was very conscious of the distinction, and in this respect quite aware of how he and his fellow Americans differed from Locke. In his "Notes on Religion" written around 1782 Jefferson notes that "Locke denies toleration to those who entertain opinions contrary to those moral rules necessary for the preservation of society, as for instance, that faith is not to be kept with those of another persuasion, that Kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns, that dominion is founded in grace, or that obedience is due to some foreign prince; or who will not own and teach the duty of tolerating all men in matters of religion; or who deny the existence of a god (it was a great thing to go so far -- as he himself says of the parliament which framed the act of toleration -- but where he stopped short we may go on) ." Saul K. Padover, ed., The Complete Jefferson (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, Inc., l943), p. 945.

Adrienne Koch, after quoting this in part, adds: "That he went on, and America went on, from toleration to religious freedom is very much to the point in our general understanding of the American Enlightenment." "Pragmatic Wisdom and the American Enlightenment," The William and Mary Quarterly 18,3 (July 1961): 323.

It seems generally agreed that the American leaders’ ideas were not original. Herbert W. Schneider in his A History of American Philosophy (p. 36), asserts that they "had no systems of thought, and they consciously borrowed most of the scattered ideas which they put into action." One cannot, he argued, "make the American Enlightenment appear as a ‘glorious revolution’ in thought as well as in fact."

It seems equally agreed that the Americans differed from European thinkers because of their practical political experience and their unique opportunity to put the revolutionary ideas into practice. This is stressed by Hannah Arendt (On Revolution [New York: Viking Press, 1965], pp. 115-16), who argues that "compared to this American experience, the preparation of the French hommes de lettres who were to make the Revolution was theoretical in the extreme. . . . They had no experience to fall back upon, only ideas and principles untested by reality."

Adrienne Koch stresses the same point in the Introduction to her The American Enlightenment, pp. 19-45.

46. Letter to H. Niles, February 13, 1818, in Koch, The American Enlightenment, p. 228.

47. The case of Lucy Mack Smith, mother of the prophet, Joseph Smith, illustrates this.

48. Franklin’s letter to David Hartley, December 4, 1789, in Koch, The American Enlightenment, p. 107.

49. In making this point in class lectures Professor Wilhelm Pauck used to tell us that modern man stands either with one foot in the Reformation and the other on a banana peel, or with one foot in the Enlightenment and the other on the banana peel. I suppose that the two most prestigious representatives of the Reformation and the Enlightenment in my day were Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer respectively.

50. See n. 29.

51. This was extensively spelled out in my Nathaniel William Taylor; A Connecticut Liberal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942), Chapters IV and VI. More recent literature is noted in the article by Mary Kelley and myself, "Protestantism in the Shadow of Enlightenment," in Soundings, 58,3 (Fall 1975): 345, n. 42.

52. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, preface to Part II.

53. See Martin B. Marty, The Infidel; Free Thought and American Religion (Cleveland: World Pub. Co.’s Meridian Books, 1961), passim, for delineation of how the image of "the infidel" was often created and universally used by Christian leaders in America to rally support for their enterprises by pointing to a common enemy.

54. A striking example of this effect was noted in Liberty 58 (November-December, 1963) 8-9. In the state of Hawaii Christmas and Good Friday were paid holidays for state employees; they cost the state about $500,000 a year. In February of 1963 a state senator introduced two bills into the Hawaiian Legislature. The first would have removed Christmas and Good Friday from the list of paid holidays. The second, an alternate bill, would have added a "Buddha Day" (April 8) to the paid holidays at an additional cost of about $250,000. It would seem, granted the large Buddhist population, that either bill would have been fair, and in principle compatible with the Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment. But in reaction to the proposed legislation Protestant Billy Graham declared, "If we take away these days (Christmas and Good Friday) we are taking away the basis of our way of life, our religion"; and a Roman Catholic Monsignor asserted, "The state of Hawaii and the other forty-nine states ought to be amazed at the arrogance of those who insult God-fearing people, by stamping out the traditional observance of the greatest Christian feast of the year." Obviously neither bill, if passed, would have taken away or stamped out either Christmas or Good Friday. What both of these highly visible Christian leaders were actually contending for was continued recognition and support by the civil authority of their particular species of Christianity against all other religious faiths -- a direct attack on the principle of religious freedom inherent in the First Amendment.

55. H. Richard Niebuhr is an example of a very honest, tender, and sensitive person and most able thinker impaled on the horns of the dilemma posed by the Christian absolutism he inherited and defended in his denomination and the relativism of the pluralistic cosmopolitan society in which he came to live as a Yale professor. In him the problem was personified of how to be an absolutist in a relativistic and cosmopolitan world; or, vocationally, how to be a theologian for a particular species of Christianity while serving as a professorial intellectual at pluralistic Yale. My impression is that a majority of professors in the "liberal" theological schools circumvent this problem by quietly renouncing responsibility for and to the denomination with which they may be at least nominally affiliated. H. Richard Niebuhr was made of sterner mental and spiritual stuff, so in his writings the tension is made manifest.

56. Herbert W. Schneider noted the metamorphosis of the eighteenth-century type of philosopher who was an investigator, either natural or moral, into "the nineteenth-century . . . species of educator known as professors of philosophy" who "were primarily teachers" whose "ambition was to be orthodox, to teach the truth, i.e., to instruct their students in correct doctrine. . . . "Similarly," Schneider adds, "the theologians lost most of their speculative or philosophical interest and were content to refine their systems for the edification of the faithful and the confounding of rival theologians. In short, our history of American philosophy now takes us into the schoolrooms of colleges and seminaries. What President Francis Wayland said of his own famous textbook in moral science stares the idea of orthodoxy in general: ‘Being designed for the purposes of instruction, its aim is to be simple, clear, and purely didactic.’ " A History of American Philosophy, p. 226.

Alfred North Whitehead concluded that "theology has largely failed" in its function "to provide a rational understanding of the rise of civilization, and of the tenderness of mere life itself, in a world which superficially is founded upon the clashings of senseless compulsion," and stated his belief that "the defect of the liberal theology of the last two hundred years is that it has confined itself to the suggestion of minor, vapid reasons why people should continue to go to church in the traditional fashion." Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Free Press, 1967), p. 170.

More devastating was the curt comment of top-flight theologian John B. Cobb, Jr., in 1967 that, while "there is no lack of highly trained and intelligent men keenly interested in constructive theological work, their "essays for the most part are trivial" and leave "a vacuum in which even the splash of a small pebble attracts widespread attention -- and, he should have added, only in the very restricted circle of the jet-set professorial theologians outside of which the attention attracted seems to be practically nil. "From Crisis Theology to the Post-Modern World," in Bernard Murchland, ed., The Meaning of the Death of God; Protestant, Jewish and Catholic Scholars Explore Atheistic Theology (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), p. 138.

57. See Mary Kelley and Sidney E. Mead, "Protestantism in the Shadow of Enlightenment," pp. 338-42.

58. John C. Bennett, "After Liberalism -- What?" The Christian Century 50 (November 8, 1933): 1403.

(Jerarld C. Brauer, is Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor of the History of Christianity at the Divinity School, The University of Chicago)

For many years scholars have debated the relationship between religion and revolution. Almost all of the views expressed in the discussions of that basic problem are reflected also in the writings on the relationship between religion and the American Revolution. Earliest interpreters of that intricate relationship could be classified as exemplars of filial piety. They believed that the roots of the American Revolution were to be found primarily within the Puritanism brought from England to American shores. The Puritan world-view as represented by its doughty expositors, the New England clergy, provided the intellectual vision or framework in terms of which the Revolution later was mounted.

That view encountered a number of basic objections. How could it account for the transformation of a theocratic state into a democratic state? Could one demonstrate that the basic ideas espoused by the clergy made any impact on masses of people? At best it might be argued that certain of these basic ideas were taken over by later propagandists and used for their own purposes.

Perhaps the most telling critique of the earliest assumed relationship between Puritanism and the American Revolution is that it stressed certain abstract ideas, theological and philosophical, and so overlooked the real forces that produced the American Revolution. It tended to ignore deep-rooted social tensions that marked mid and later eighteenth-century American society. It subsumed all colonial sectional concerns under a basically New England concern. It failed to see the late eighteenth-century struggle with England in terms of a long ongoing struggle between the colonies and the mother country. It paid scant attention to the economic tensions which slowly developed between England and the colonies and reached their peak after the conclusion of the French and Indian War.

The late Hannah Arendt wrote, "The rebellious spirit, which seems so manifest in certain strictly religious movements in the modern age, always ended in some Great Awakening or revivalism which, no matter how much it might ‘revive’ those who were seized by it, remained politically without consequences and historically futile." ¹ Such a view hardly does justice to the complex realities of the historical situation which saw the development of the American Revolution. Religion was indeed one of the primary forces which impelled colonial American people towards revolution and sustained them in their actions.

In an attempt to prove a connection between religion and the American Revolution, some historians thought it sufficient to quote sermons that contained words and ideas similar or identical to political rhetoric of the Revolution. John W. Thornton is a good example. In the preface to his The Pulpit of the American Revolution, which appeared in Boston in 1860, Thornton begins with this statement:

Thornton goes on to say, "In the sermon of 1750 Jonathan Mayhew declared the Christian principles of government in the faith of which Washington, ordained by God, won liberty for America, not less for England, and ultimately for the world.³ And quite self-consciously, Thornton tied in the American Revolution with the earlier English Puritan Revolution when he stated, "The name of Hugh Peter reminds us that New England shared in English Revolution of 1640; sent preachers and soldiers, aid and comfort to Cromwell; gave an asylum to the tyrannicides, Whalley, Goffe, and Dixwell; reaffirmed the same maxims of liberty in the Revolution of 1688, and stood right on the record for the third revolution of 1776."⁴

Thornton not only sees an intimate connection between religion and the American Revolution; he confines that relationship to Puritanism. Such a view overlooked entirely the Episcopalian contributions made through Virginia leaders. Where the latter have been credited it is usually pointed out that they were no longer genuinely religious but at the very best latitudinarian in their outlook. But even if latitudinarianism is to be understood as a religious movement, one recent historian argued that "the contribution of religious latitudinarianism . . . is normally overrated in American history."⁵

If latitudinarianism and Enlightenment are to be understood, in part, as religious movements, as a number of contemporary historians now argue, then the relationship between religion and the American Revolution requires reevaluation. That process is now underway.⁶ This paper assumes that fundamental contributions were made by religious movements other than Puritanism and Revivalism, but in this brief essay it is impossible to touch that larger question.

The Thornton preface is a classic example of begging the question of the interrelationship between religion and the American Revolution. Did these abstract, formal theological doctrines relate directly to the political process of the day, or were they primarily rationalizations of fundamental realities which were in no sense theological? Historians of religious thought and institutions in America have paid insufficient attention to these two basic criticisms. They persist in the assumption that formal discourse related directly to the political action of the American Revolution.

The problem is to determine, if possible, ‘how New England culture moved through its religious symbols and beliefs from what appeared to be a conservative theocracy to wholehearted support of a revolution. In his stimulating essay "Center and Periphery" Edward Shils provides a perspective which enables one to note how Puritanism’s and Revivalism’s theological beliefs and symbols helped to create a revolution in the colonists’ hearts and minds prior to the outbreak of the rebellion.⁷

New England society was founded on and lived out of a clear center, which from its inception contained certain paradoxical or peripheral elements. It is not difficult to locate the realm of values, beliefs, and symbols which gave coherence and meaning to that society. These beliefs and symbols the New Englanders grounded in sacrality or in God himself; they were ultimate, dependent upon the will of God as revealed in Scripture and reconfirmed in nature. Though all of society participated in them and upheld them, they were especially embodied in and manifested by a ruling elite composed of magistrates and ministers. Out of these symbols and beliefs order prevailed both for society at large and for the various subsystems and institutions within it.

Society was a coherent, well-articulated system that exhibited a basic center and contained several peripheral or paradoxical elements. As the historical process unfolded and New Englanders participated in the vicissitudes of historical experience, the center, composed of the symbols, values, and beliefs which initially undergirded order and authority in the colony, became a dynamic ingredient in rebellion against Crown and Parliament.

It is unnecessary and impossible to sketch out the entire process whereby Puritanism and Revivalism, drawing on symbols and beliefs which were central to New England society, helped to overthrow both King and Parliament. An effort will be made to lift up several of these central values and beliefs and to indicate briefly how each underwent a process of transformation and reaffirmation which enabled it to play a direct role in the political processes of the late eighteenth century. Fortunately, all of these beliefs and symbols have been carefully analyzed and studied by numerous scholars, and it is unnecessary to spend time on their subtleties and various interconnections.

I

The Puritans who first settled Massachusetts Bay Colony believed that their holy experiment was founded on divine will. They believed that every aspect of their life, both personal and social, was grounded in sacrality. The very fact of their presence in the New World was posited on the assumption that God, in his providence, had saved the discovery of the New World until after the reformation of his church. The Puritans were called by Providence to settle the New World and to establish a "due forme of Government both civill and ecclesiastical,"⁸ grounded on the revealed word of God as encountered in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Modern society might wish to deny the ultimacy of those beliefs and symbols which under-girded it, but in New England the Puritan concern was the opposite. It heartily affirmed that society existed only in and through divine Providence.

Though predestination was an essential doctrine for the vast majority of Puritans and had consequences both for personal and social life, it cannot in itself be counted as one of the central symbols or beliefs that marked Puritan society. Seven or eight basic symbols, beliefs, or values were closely articulated to form the center as well as the peripheral structure of Puritan society. These were reflected throughout New England economic, political, and family life and class structure, as well as in the institutions of the churches and schools. They were held tenaciously and incarnated by the ruling elite in each of the subsystems and institutions. They initially provided resources for order and stability, but later they served to create dissatisfaction and revolution.

One of the most important symbols and values in the entire Puritan cultural system is covenant. This symbol was one of the most basic and pervasive in Puritan society, and it touched on every aspect of life. Covenant did not represent a means whereby a capricious or even irrational deity gave structure and rationality to his otherwise arbitrary will.⁹ Covenant was grounded in Scripture as demonstrated by the way God initially called Israel into being through a covenant with Abraham. To be sure, in his eternal wisdom, God elected those whom he chose for eternal life and banned the remainder to perdition, but the way he chose to make known his election was through his Word and Spirit, which created a relationship of covenant between himself and each of his elect; thus, the relation between God and the individual was grounded on covenant.

Three things are essential for the Puritan understanding of covenant. First, it is absolutely clear that all initiative in the creation and sustenance of covenant is in God’s hands. He creates, initiates, and sustains the covenant relationship. It is purely an act of grace on God’s side. On the other hand, the covenant is, in the second place, conditional. That is, God lays down the basis of covenant and the terms of its fulfillment, and if man fails to fulfill it, the covenant is broken. Judgment and punishment ensue. A third thing to note about the covenant is its communal nature. Though it is grounded in the relationship between God and the individual, its purpose is not simply the salvation of individuals but rather the creation of a people. Individuals are not covenanted to God singly, in a lonely relationship. Though the relationship between God and the soul is highly individual and subjective, it occurs only in the context of a community, the church. Churches are collections of individuals covenanted with each other to form a congregation of fellow believers. There is no true manifestation of the church apart from fellow believers owning a covenant with God and with each other.

The basic symbol or belief in the covenant as the way in which God, man, and fellow believers are related carried over into every aspect of Puritan life. Just as the relation between God and man, and between man and fellow men in the church, was grounded on covenant so was the body politic. Before the Pilgrims landed they formulated the Mayflower Compact based upon the concept of the church covenant. In his famous sermon on "Christian Charity," John Winthrop reminded the Puritans that they had covenanted together to undertake a common task; the entire Massachusetts Bay effort was interpreted as a covenant between those engaged in a common enterprise and as a covenant between all the people and God.¹⁰ This symbol is found in diaries, in letters, in countless sermons preached in the context of regular services, and in sermons on great occasions stretching from Winthrop’s "Christian Charity" through fast-day and election-day sermons up to and through the very Revolution itself. The commercial charter which the Puritans turned into a political constitution for their holy commonwealth was looked upon as a special act of Providence sealing the covenant made with his people.¹¹

A second fundamental belief and central value of Puritan society was the symbol of consent. This too was grounded in Puritan religious experience and tested in day-to-day historical experience. Puritan society was inconceivable apart from the reality of consent. Though God predetermined who was to be saved, it was also his will that election would be made manifest to believers through their conversion. Without a profound, existential religious experience of conversion one could not be a Christian. This was the religious basis of Puritan dissatisfaction with the Reformation in the Church of England: the church was made up primarily of lukewarm Christians who had never experienced the shattering judgment and spiritual rebuilding of the conversion experience.

Conversion represented human consent to the reality of divine election. It was God’s will that man consent to the reality of his sinfulness and in the experience of that degradation consent to the reality of divine forgiveness in Jesus Christ. Only in that way would the covenant be owned. God did not strike the elect with a thunderbolt or magically transform a person from sinner to saint. The process of election was internalized through key experiences in life which culminated in human acceptance of salvation. It involved a self-conscious decision to consent to God’s will for forgiveness.

The theme of consent runs throughout Puritan society. Just as man consents to God’s judgments and divine activities, so the consent of man is required at all key points in human existence. When one joined a congregation one had to demonstrate the truth and validity of one’s consent to divine will, and upon acceptance by the congregation one had to consent to join that congregation and to abide by its rules. Therefore, no church had the power to force its will upon any other church. Each congregation was a full and complete church in and of itself, and through consent of its members could make all decisions concerning its own welfare.

Above all, a minister could not be imposed on a congregation by any power from the outside, even by the magistrate. Members of the congregation consented to their own minister. Also in the body politic, consent was required at all key points. Magistrates, deputies, and selectmen had to go through a process of nomination and election by freemen. Without consent they could not rule. Even the militia chose their own officers. Thus the symbol of consent was deeply imbedded in the very matrix of values out of which New England society lived. It cannot be denied that consent operated in New England society in such a way that a relatively small group of elite magistrates and deputies managed to retain control of the colony. But that is not the point. They retained their role as a special elite in society only insofar as they embodied the main values of the people and made necessary adjustments in order to retain consent.

The rule of fundamental law and its absolute necessity was another central belief or value of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.¹² Law was not simply a necessity because of the fallen nature of mankind and the consequent war of all against all. It was more than simply a deterrent against anarchy and chaos. Law was, beyond that, a positive reality which provided structure and order for life so that humanity could realize its full potential in mutual service as well as the fulfillment of its responsibilities to God. Law provided the framework within which a people could live out their covenant responsibilities to God and to each other. It offered not only guidelines but a lure toward the good life.

Law was a structure in which and under which all people lived and worked. No person and no group was above the law and each found their mutual responsibilities properly defined in it. At its best law represented God’s own will for the cosmos. In its historic reality, it evidenced the particular way the English people had worked Out their destiny under God’s law. Law required both power and authority, but it also provided the limits in terms of which power and authority could and ought to be exercised.¹³ It was effectual only because it participated in and was transcended by sacrality. God was both its source and its end so that no person or group, however representative or symbolic of the law, stood beyond it. Though fundamental law provided an essentially conserving force for Puritanism, it became, under other circumstances, a source of protest against both Crown and Parliament.

A fourth central value for Puritan society was a profound belief in an organic society ordained by God. Whatever democratic elements early New England society possessed, it certainly lacked any view of egalitarianism. Society was built on a clear, ordered structure. As in the medieval view of the body politic, society was built solidly on a hierarchical arrangement. It was not as complex or well ordered as the English society from which it derived. Perhaps one could call it a simplification of and variation on the English class-system which had a hereditary monarchy on top, followed in descending succession by clearly demarked classifications of nobility, a complex church hierarchy, a landed gentry, a rising merchant class, simple yeomen, and vast numbers of unfranchised people who fitted none of those categories.

It has been said that the clearly ordered society of New England consisted of basically two classes and that the lines between these two were constantly shifting. One class was composed of people of quality or the rich and the other involved common folk or the not-so-rich, though financial status was not the only distinguishing mark between the two groups. In addition to money and particularly land, the heritage and background one brought from England was important, as was one’s status in the church and in the various civic functions within the community.¹⁴

In New England the first group consisted of a small number of people such as the magistrates and other political officers, the ministers, the merchants, and the slowly increasing number of professional people such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers. The second group was composed largely of small landowners whose material resources were not yet sufficient to establish them as members of the first class.

Puritan sermons and tracts abound with references to the good ruler.¹⁵ In fact, Winthrop was typical of a ruler who reminded both himself and his fellow magistrates of the nature and extent of their responsibilities. The point is that New England society believed that a small number of people symbolized the deepest values and beliefs of their system as long as that elite remained faithful embodiments of those beliefs.

The essentially conservative New England Puritan belief in the hierarchically ordered society had both within its theory and in its practice forces which, under the proper historical circumstances, could become highly critical if not revolutionary. The Achilles’ heel of the New England Puritan value system and belief pattern was in their loyalty to Crown and Parliament. Englishmen were bred to respect and honor the Crown even when they disagreed with it. The founders of New England were Englishmen. They represented several generations of frustrated efforts at religious reform, and they sought out a new habitation because they were convinced that their lives and fortunes were in danger at the hands of the Crown. They were not free to worship God as they ought or to shape their lives accordingly.

Nevertheless, the New England Puritans did not break with the central English symbol of the role and power of the English Crown. They appealed from a misguided and misinformed Crown to the Crown as it ought to be in its purity. Frustrated in their attempts to achieve religious reform through the necessary political means, Puritans in England early turned to an alliance with Parliament and looked to it more and more as the central symbol of order, justice, and power in English society. Those Puritans who came to New England shared that tradition.

New England Puritans always felt uneasy with the Stuarts, but they remained ambiguously faithful to belief in the Crown. They insisted on the validity of their charter because it was granted by the Crown, but they resisted every effort on the part of the Crown to interpret it, modify it, or take it back. The Puritans were not opposed to the Crown; rather they held an ideal of it which was totally at variance with its actuality in English history. Their view of the Crown was what Shils defined as peripheral to the center of seventeenth-century English ideals and beliefs. But not only was their view of the Crown peripheral; their geographical location itself made the Crown peripheral to their everyday experience. Though there were ample symbols of the Crown in the flag and other officials, the symbol itself was well over three thousand miles distant and lacked means of actualizing its presence. Early in New England experience Endicott got in trouble with his fellow New Englanders when he cut the cross out of the British flag and so symbolized Puritan discontent at the Crown obstinately misinformed concerning the Christian religion. In fear of losing their charter, fellow Puritans made every effort to cover this blunder.

Central to the matrix of New England Puritan values and beliefs was the symbol of Parliament as the guardian and repository of English liberties and responsibilities. Uneasy with a Crown that refused to understand itself or the Christian religion in a proper light, New England Puritans quickly aligned themselves with the Parliamentary cause during the English Puritan Revolution. They paid the price with the loss of their charter at the time of the Restoration. Further, they had to reaffirm their loyalty to the Crown though they did their best to maintain as many as possible of the privileges and prerogatives which they had so carefully built up over forty-odd years. New England had to bow to the inevitable and accept a royal governor and a large number of his underlings in various key posts. In the New England body politic the Puritans had not strayed so far from the symbol of the Crown that they were utterly unable to live with it in their system of values. They reaffirmed their earlier belief in the value and significance of the Crown and hoped for better days.

The Puritans were fully aware of the exclusion controversy waged in England at the time of the Glorious Revolution. They were delighted at the accession of William and Mary to the throne, and they applauded the emergent supremacy of Parliament. The preeminence of Parliament in conjunction with a clearly limited Crown emerged as central symbols in English life, and these were shared by New England as well. However, there was a difference in the function of Parliament and Crown in the central value system of New England society.

Although the Puritans were content to live as part of the British empire and gave genuine obeisance both to Parliament and Crown, there remained an ambiguity and a paradoxical relation between these two central symbols of English society and their function in the center of New England society. New Englanders constantly harked back to their original charter as well as their rights and liberties not only as Englishmen but as New Englanders in the New World. Election-day sermons are demonstrable proof of this attitude.¹⁶ Under the impact of historic events New England was led to the point where Parliament and Crown in the New England value system clashed with the English vision of the function and role of Crown and Parliament both within England and within the British empire.

As a result of the economic problems caused by the French and Indian War, economic problems and readjustments within England itself and throughout the empire, basic changes in the structure of Parliament, the stepped-up campaign for bishops by the Episcopal church in the colonies, and the continuing geographical distance between the colonies and the homeland, there developed a growing sense of dissatisfaction and distrust on the part of the American colonies and New England in particular.¹⁷

In the face of growing differences with England, the response of New England was comparable to their earlier response at the time of Charles I. They held a utopian view of the Crown and Parliament. Puritans appreciated and looked to the Hanoverian family for understanding and support, just as they respected and honored the function and role of Parliament. They blamed the growing difficulties on stupid and conniving politicians who were not genuinely concerned with the true interests of England, Crown, Parliament, or New England. The initial opposition to the Grenville government drew upon the whole arsenal of the central values and beliefs of Puritan society, including Crown and Parliament. Consent, covenant, the structure of fundamental law, the stability of their ordered society, Crown and Parliament, and their belief in liberty were all employed in arguments by clergymen and politicians alike.¹⁸ What started as an uncomfortable disagreement between colony and British empire escalated into a basic feeling of distrust and fear which eventuated in rebellion on the part of the colonists.

A number of events conspired to threaten the traditional liberties of the Englishman and the well-established hard-won liberties of the New Englanders themselves. As a result of the missionary activity of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel throughout the colonies and particularly in New England, and with the introduction of the Church of England worship in Boston, the very heart of New England, clergy and laity alike began to fear a vast plot to overthrow the liberties of their churches and to establish the Church of England.

Carl Bridenbaugh sketched out the social and political implications of the struggle over the attempt to establish bishops in the American colonies.¹⁹ The high point of agitation for bishops coincided with the growing alienation between the colonies and England over new taxes and a new system of tax collection, and a mounting debate over the extent and nature of Parliament’s authority in relation to the colonies. All segments of colonial society felt they had a stake in the outcome of these disagreements. As Parliament defined its power over the colonies and exercised that power in ways unacceptable to New Englanders, the initial ambiguity over Crown and Parliament in the center of New England values and beliefs grew into outright opposition. Unambiguous powerful symbols and beliefs within the center forced the symbols of Crown and Parliament into an Increasingly peripheral position until, in the name of the very center itself, they were eliminated.

Those placed in power as representatives of the Crown and Parliament could not understand the agitation, the distrust, and the growing hatred against the established system. A number of them never did understand why the Revolution came about, and so they found themselves loyalists and had to flee when their time came.²⁰ That which started as an incoherent and fearful discontent slowly crystallized into ever more precise opposition and action.

Puritanism was one of the most effective forces in colonial America in "mobilizing the general mood" and effectively organizing both ideas and actions in opposition to Crown and Parliament.²¹ Puritanism had consistently pointed to, preached, and attempted to live out the central values and beliefs that gave coherence and meaning to Puritan society. Although these symbols were not identical in content with those held by the first generation founders of New England, they were clearly derivative from that matrix of beliefs and values. In the hands of the Puritan descendents of the Revolutionary epoch, symbols such as covenant, consent, fundamental law, and liberty were used first to criticize and finally to undercut two other central symbols that had always been held with a certain degree of ambiguity, namely Crown and Parliament. These same beliefs and symbols articulated by the New England Puritans merged with parallel, similar, and, at time, even dissimilar values and beliefs from other sources to produce a new ideology which formed and shaped the resistance of the American colonies against Crown and Parliament.

II

The emergence of Revivalism in the 1730s marked a new phase in the development of Christianity in American culture, and it both renewed Puritanism and presented it with a fundamental challenge.²² Though Revivalism grew out of Puritanism, it was equally a child of the continental Pietistic movement that swept Europe and England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and made its way to American shores. On the surface Revivalism appears as a form of Puritanism whereas in fact it is just the opposite of Puritanism at many key points. Both movements share the centrality of the conversion experience; however, in Puritanism the conversion experience was set solidly in the middle of a complex social and institutional structure. In one sense, Revivalism as a religious movement excised the concept of conversion out of Puritanism and cast it loose in a highly individualistic and subjectivistic fashion.²³

Many of the central values and symbols of New England society were brought under attack directly or indirectly by the Great Awakening, the first expression of Revivalism in American culture.²⁴ Each of the basic symbols and beliefs that marked the center of New England Puritan culture will be reviewed insofar as they were modified or attacked by the Great Awakening. The consequence of newly emerging symbols and beliefs of Revivalism will be seen as a resource which fed into the growing opposition to Crown and Parliament and helped to mobilize and give structure to widespread unorganized feelings of discontent. Thus Revivalism, along with Puritanism, helped to prepare and sustain an attitude in the American colonies which eventuated in rebellion and revolution.²⁵

Among the new beliefs, symbols, and values which marked Revivalism, four in particular stand out as critical and having consequences for the development of new attitudes. Primary among these was Revivalism’s belief in and creation of the new man. Conversion of a sinner denoted the death of the old man and the emergence or rebirth of a new man. The converted believer died to sin, to old habits and patterns, and emerged a new man open to new responsibilities and new forms of discipline.

A radical break occurred in the life process of the converted person. Before conversion, one was alienated from God and one’s fellow human beings, wallowing in misdirected affections or slowly dying in indifference toward the true goals of life, and wholly committed to an unspiritual life. As a result of conversion, a human being was totally turned about. A conversion experience marked an ontological change in which the old Adam died and a new believer in Christ was born. This profound, shattering, all-embracing experience transformed the total life of the believer and had far-reaching consequences for his entire existence.

Both Puritan and Anglican divines immediately saw the consequences of this startling emphasis on the new man. Leading Boston clergy who attacked the gradual encroachment of the British on New England rights also attacked what they felt were the destructive tendencies of the Great Awakening not only in Jonathan Edwards but especially in his less sophisticated and less intelligent cohorts.²⁶ Puritanism was built upon the centrality of the doctrine of conversion, and in New England it was held that only truly converted people could be accepted into full church membership. By 1636 the holy commonwealth was ruled only by those who had demonstrated a full conversion experience to the satisfaction of the saints.

Once New England settled for the Half-Way covenant, the centrality and necessity of conversion receded into the background. It was not that New England Puritanism gave up on conversion; on the contrary, the ministers constantly hoped for, prayed for, and worked for periods of "refreshing" as they called it. There were a number of such periods in New England church life; however, they were never widespread nor did they exhibit a high degree of intensity.²⁷ The Puritan doctrine of conversion was never divorced from the doctrine of the covenant or the holy community. The emotional drive of conversion was always carefully balanced by the function and role of reason and seen in the context of a biblical hermeneutic. Hence, it was not the doctrine of the new man which was predominant in the New England Puritan concept of conversion but rather the doctrine of the converted man as a recruit for both congregation and community. Conversion was the bedrock for total citizenship in all aspects of the holy commonwealth. Conversion embodied a high degree of subjectivity, but it remained in a delicate balance both with the objectivity of total community involvement and the balancing power of reason.

The Great Awakening has been interpreted as the first colony-wide movement that bound together many diverse interests among the thirteen colonies and provided a thread of unity that ran throughout the group. Some historians have gone so far as to argue that it was the first movement that gave the colonies any sense of common identity.²⁸ Itinerant ministers, exemplified by the indefatigable George Whitfield, traveled from colony to colony bearing their message of repentance and redemption. Whitfield’s numerous trips to America and his crisscrossing the colonies and appearing in every major city documents the extent and importance of the movement. The significance of the Great Awakening lies not only in its pervasiveness throughout the colonies but equally, if not more, in those ideas and beliefs which it injected into mid-eighteenth-century American culture.

Rebirth led to a new man, a new being. Though the new man was not totally discontinuous from the old man, emphasis was on the new. A heightened sense of decision led to a high degree of self-consciousness concerning one’s difference from all those who surrounded him in society. The converted believer basked in his own uniqueness, which inevitably led to an intense dissatisfaction with the traditional, with things as they were.

Though the converts of the Great Awakening were committed to the same central grouping of values and symbols as were the Puritans, they tended to hold these with a degree of absoluteness which made them highly critical of the elite in society who symbolized those values but did not live them fully and completely. The new man was to be new and to express his commitments fully and completely. The converted believer saw no shades of gray but only extremes of good and bad, right and wrong; there was nothing in between. When the new man questioned the traditional values and beliefs it was usually not to overthrow them or to set them aside but to argue for a complete, full, logical application. Often that so-called logical application led to direct opposition to the values themselves.

Not only did the Great Awakening create a belief in the new man which tended to question traditional values; it also created an image of a new age. This was not a repudiation of earlier Puritan ideals; rather it was an attempt to carry them a step further and to apply those values directly to American society at a particular moment in history. In his History of the Work of Redemption Jonathan Edwards sketched out a new version of the chosen people theme.²⁹ No longer were the Puritans only a light and an example to the rest of the world with regard to a "due forme of Government both civill and ecclesiasticall"; now they had moved far beyond that.

In Edwards’s view America was to be the center of God’s kingdom on earth; it was here that the new age would dawn. The revivals themselves were part of the proof of this concept.³⁰ God’s Spirit had long been at work in history to bring to fruition his plans for the whole cosmos. His kingdom had in a sense already come in part and was now gradually unfolding. Prior to the final judgment and overthrow of all evil, human history would first go through a time of tribulation and then would enter a period of great creativity and goodness. Edwards was convinced that history had reached that point and the Spirit of God was about to pour itself forth throughout the world in a new, fresh, and creative way. America was to be the center of that movement, and it was from this point in the world that God’s Spirit would go forth to all mankind. Edwards’s vision of a total world history culminated in a new age of the Spirit centered in America, and in New England in particular.³¹

The combined vision of the new man and the new age appeared in a context conducive to building a sense of uniqueness and individuality among the American colonies. New men participating in the first stages of a new age could easily become disenchanted with the more restrictive traditions of an old age. There was a sense in which a number of the leaders and new converts in Revivalism had their sights fixed backwards upon a glorious past that was to be reconstituted, but it was equally true that even those older values were now seen by many in the context of a new age and a new epoch. Traditional authority, whether local magistrates, Parliament, or Crown, looked quite different from the perspective of a dawning new age. Though it is difficult to document the exact degree of Revivalism’s influence in encouraging a new ideology critical of British rule, it is nevertheless interesting to note the number of leaders and laity from the ranks of Revivalism who made common cause with the leaders of the Revolution.

Perhaps even more important than belief in the new man and in the new age was Revivalism’s insistence on the centrality of the Holy Spirit and its consequence for the religious life. The doctrine of the Spirit was at the base of both the conversion experience which created the new man and of the new age brought into being through God’s providential action. The Spirit was a great equalizer in all religious life. Only those led of the Spirit could exemplify and carry genuine religious authority. Only those reborn of the Spirit could be entrusted with ministry, and those who were not so converted were in fact destructive of Christianity.

When employed outside the context of strong traditions, the biblical injunction that "the Spirit bloweth where it listeth" tended to undercut all religious authority and in many cases all forms of authority whatsoever. It was the children of the Great Awakening who first seriously questioned the authority and the power of the traditional ministers as well as the right and authority of the magistrates to lay down the conditions of religious expression through worship.

Professor Richard L. Bushman sketched out the consequences of Revivalism and its emphasis on the Spirit for the social order in Connecticut immediately prior to the Revolution.³² He quoted Jonathan Todd in Civil Rulers to the effect that Revivalists "would put down all rule, and all authority and power among men: pleading in defense of their licentious doctrine that Christ hath made all his people kings." And from Todd he also cited the Revivalists’ disrespect for leaders, both clerical and lay, who were not properly converted, how they regarded such "leaders and rulers of this people as unconverted and opposers of the work of God, and usurping an authority that did not belong to them."³³ Bushman also pointed out that Samuel Johnson, the great Episcopalian leader in Connecticut, lumped together Revivalism and democracy in their disrespect for proper authority: "The prevalency of rigid enthusiastical conceited notions and practices in religion and republican mobbish principles and practices and policy, being most on a level and each thinking himself an able divine and statesman: hence perpetual feuds and factions in both.³⁴

One cannot deny the widespread outbreak of schism, disagreement, and infighting within the various churches as a consequence of Revivalism. Ecclesiastical authorities were fought or ignored. In their anxiety to win full freedom for their own forms of worship without paying any tax to support religious forms which they did not believe, Revivalists waged a steady campaign against all forms of authority, both clerical and lay magistrate, in an effort to achieve full freedom for themselves. They did not hesitate to attack clerical leadership which appeared unconverted, too traditionally oriented, and a danger to the Revivalists’ conception of the Christian faith.

So churches were split into several camps -- old side, new side, old light, new light, moderates, and separatists. The fact that Revivalists were willing to attack traditional authority was in itself a demonstration that in the name of a so-called just cause traditional authority could be directly attacked. Revivalists did not hesitate to point out what they claimed to be inconsistency on the part of those Puritan descendants who fought to retain their liberty against the encroachment of possible bishops but refused to extend full liberty to their fellow believers who could no longer worship with them. When a movement has successfully attacked the authority of clergy and magistrates, they are prepared by habit to take on, if necessary, Crown and Parliament.

Revivalism, which emerged in part out of Puritanism, shared most of the central beliefs and symbols of Puritanism itself; however, the Great Awakening held and embodied these same beliefs in such a way that the believers tended to be highly critical of those same values and beliefs as embodied in the contemporary elite of the day. They saw the Puritans as unfaithful to their own basic beliefs and unable to carry them through to their logical consequences. Revivalists held what might be called a utopian view of the Puritan values and beliefs. Ultimately they replaced the traditional elite figures of authority, the clergy and traditional lay magistrates, with a new figure, a new man -- any man who had been reborn in the Spirit and was living out the converted life. Thus the layman emerged as the central figure in the Christian community, prepared to judge all people and authority in terms of the presence of the Spirit.

III

Revolution does not come easily to an essentially conservative society. Armed opposition to Crown and Parliament came as a surprise even to the colonial opposition leaders. The true Revolution first occurred in the hearts and minds of colonists as they found it increasingly difficult to square their perception of what it meant to be British subjects with what it was to be American. The source of the problem was neither simple nor immediate. The reasons for discontent were multiple and complex, and their origins were in the founding of the colonies, particularly New England.

Religion was one of the premier forces that brought the colonies into being and provided them with a set of symbols, beliefs, and values which undergirded their society. In at least two respects religion fed directly into the Revolution of heart and mind that preceded the rebellion. Puritanism created the center out of which New England society lived. The symbols, values, and beliefs that comprised that center contained two elements that were always to some degree peripheral, Crown and Parliament. As history unfolded, New Englanders gradually brought these peripheral elements under heavy attack from the center itself so that Crown and Parliament were viewed as detrimental to the central values of covenant, consent, the rule of fundamental law, the structure of New England’s organic society, and the liberties of its inhabitants. Thus Puritanism was a major force in engendering a revolution in attitude toward Crown and Parliament.

In a similar fashion, the Revivalism of the Great Awakening transformed certain of the central symbols of Puritanism and introduced new values and beliefs which questioned not only the authority and function of Crown and Parliament but also the traditional role and power of established clergy and magistrate alike. Revivalism swept the thirteen colonies and provided the first common indigenous movement that they shared, Through its belief in the new man and the new age it taught thousands to question the past and to be open to the future. Inherited forms of community and authority were broken and questioned. Under the free movement of the Spirit of God a leveling dimension was introduced into religious life wherein laity received a new status, and a critical resource became available to all truly converted believers. The daily lives of the colonists reflected a growing degree of frustration and dissatisfaction with the British empire. Revivalism provided one of the most powerful forces that helped to focus that discontent and offered a set of symbols and beliefs which were both a source of criticism and a vision of new possibilities. So Revivalism fed into the American Revolution.

End Notes:

1. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1965), p. 19.

2. John Wingate Thornton, The Pulpit of the American Revolution, or the Political Sermons of the Period of 1776 (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1860), p. iii.

3. Ibid., p. v.

4. Ibid., p. xx.

5. James Hastings Nichols, Democracy and the Churches (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1951), p. 40.

6. Sidney E. Mead is one of the clearest expositors of the Enlightenment as a religious movement and its consequences for religion and politics in America. Note chapter two in this book, and also his The Nation With the Soul of a Church (New York: Harper and Row, 1975). See also Lester D. Joyce, Church and Clergy in the American Revolutions: A Study in Group Behaviour (New York: Exposition Press, 1966).

7. Selected Essays by Edward Shils (Chicago: Center for Social Organization Studies, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1970), pp. 1-14. Taken from Edward Shils, The Logic of Personal Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961).

8. John Winthrop, "Christian Charity" in Perry Miller and Thomas Johnson, eds., The Puritans, A Source Book of Their Writings (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), 1:197.

9. There is a basic disagreement on this point. Perry Miller argued that a covenant represented Puritan attempts to soften the irrational and arbitrary act of double predestination; see his "The Marrow of Puritan Divinity," Errand into the Wilderness (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1956), pp. 65, 69. Leonard J. Trinterud established the fact that covenant theology was operative before Calvin’s Institutes and that it was present in English divinity as early as William Tyndale, whom many regard as the first English Puritan; see Trinterud’s "The Origins of Puritanism," Church History 20 (1951): 37-57.

10. John Winthrop, "Christian Charity," p. 198.

11. Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934) I:431-461.

12. Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1928), pp. 12-21.

13. John Barnard. The Throne Established by Righteousness (Boston, 1734) in A. W. Plumstead, The Wall and the Garden. Selected Massachusetts Election Sermons 1670 - 1755 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968, pp. 252-67. Ebenezer Pemberton, The Divine Origin and Dignity of Government Asserted (Boston, 1710), pp. 10, 17-18, 96-98. Baldwin, New England Clergy, pp. 32-46.

14. Robert E. Brown, Middle-Class Democracy and the Revolution, 1691-1780 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969). pp. 38-119. Stephen Foster, Their Solitary Way (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971) pp. 33-40.

15. Foster, Their Solitary Way, pp. 67-98, See also Samuel Willard, The Character of a Good Ruler . . . (Boston, 1694); Benjamin Wadsworth, Rulers Feeding and Guiding This People . . . (Boston, 1716).

16. Thornton, The Pulpit of the American Revolution, passim; Plumstead, The Wall and the Garden, passim.

17. Brown, Middle-Class Democracy.

18. Baldwin, New England Clergy, pp. 105-121.

19. Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptres Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 171-340. As a result of this definitive study one can see the growth of New England distrust of bishops to a fear of a Crown and Parliament bent on imposing an abominable system to an ideology of opposition.

20. Bernard Bailyn, "Central Themes of the Revolution" in Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson, Essays on the American Revolution (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973) pp. 15-18.

21. Ibid., p. 11. Bailyn’s use of C. Geertz’s concept of ideology as one means of explaining the process whereby ideas effect social change represents a major advance in the interpretation of the American Revolution. This is equally applicable to the role of Puritanism and the Great Awakening. "Formal discourse becomes politically powerful when it becomes ideology; when it articulates and fuses into effective formulations opinions and attitudes that are otherwise too scattered and vague to be acted upon; when it mobilizes a general mood, ‘a set of disconnected, unrealized private emotions,’ into ‘a public possession, a social fact’; when it crystallizes otherwise inchoate social and political discontent and thereby shapes what is otherwise instinctive and directs it to attainable goals, when it clarifies, symbolizes, and elevates to structured consciousness the mingled urges that stir within us. But its power is not autonomous. It can only formulate, reshape, and direct forward moods, attitudes, ideas, and aspirations that in some form, however crude or incomplete, already exist." Ibid., p. 11.

22. Two excellent essays that deal with this issue are in James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison, Religion in American Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961): by Perry Miller, "From Covenant to Revival," 1:322-360, and by H. Richard Niebuhr, "The Protestant Movement and Democracy in the United States." 1:26-50.

23. One of the first to note this important shift, though it was not documented thoroughly, was Herbert W. Schneider in a work too often overlooked, The Puritan Mind (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1930), pp. 106-110. This analysis was carried further by the late Joseph Haroutunian in Piety Versus Moralism.- The Passing of New England Theology (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1932), pp. xxi ff., 9-12.

24. Alan Heimart and Perry Miller, eds., The Great Awakenings Documents Illustrating the Crisis and its Consequences (New York and Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1967). The entire introduction is given to this analysis.

25. In the following section no attempt will be made to document from sources the four salient points from the Great Awakening as even a quick reading selected from the works of J. Edwards, G. Whitefield, G. Tennet, or any of the major figures of the Revival will exhibit these factors.

26. Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening; A History of the Revivial of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield (Boston: Tappen and Dennet, 1842), pp. 302-387. See also Edwin Gaustad, The Great Awakening (New York: Harper and Row, 1964),pp. 80-101.

27. Jonathan Edwards The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. C. C. Goen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), vol. 4, The Great Awakening, pp. 4-5, 114-115, 145-146, 562.

28. William W. Sweet, Revivalism in America (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, l944), pp. 24-27.

29. The Works of President Edwards in Four Volumes (New York: Leavitt and Allen, 1857) 1:491-497

30. Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, "Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival," p. 353.

31. Ibid. p. 358.

32. Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Churches and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967).

33. Jonathan Todd, Civil Rulers the Ministers of God:. . . Election Day Sermon, May 11th, 1749 (New London, 1949), p. 2. Quoted in Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee, p.271.

34. Ibid., p.273.

Almost every conceivable facet and dimension of early American life has been analyzed, studied, celebrated, and praised in recent years. Attention has been paid to the art, music, literature, furniture, and fine arts as well as the cultural and social mores of the Revolutionary epoch. A serious effort has been made to reappraise both the causes and the nature of the American Revolution and the consequent development of the American Constitution. Revisionists have long been at work in an attempt to view the Revolutionary events from other than the traditional perspectives. This is a salutary exercise. Fundamental questions must be asked anew by each generation as it seeks to appropriate and to understand its past. History is constantly in the process of being rewritten.

Religion in the Revolutionary epoch of American life has also received its share of current attention. No longer is it fashionable or possible to assume that there was a direct carry-over from the religious beliefs and practices in the colonies to the growth of the Revolutionary spirit and the carrying through of the Revolution itself. Books and articles are still written about the major contributions of particular religious figures such as Jonathan Mayhew, the great Boston Puritan preacher, or the overall contributions of each of the particular denominations from the Baptists to the Roman Catholics. The exercise of praise, however, hardly contributes to a profounder understanding of the causes and nature of the American Revolution. Religion is one of those forces in American life which people assume was creatively related to the founding days of the Republic. Americans have always held an unusually high degree of respect for religion and its role in their culture. Frequently they have overassessed its creative contributions. In the recent studies, however, a more balanced and hence truer picture of the relationship of religion to the American Revolution has emerged.

When three professors are asked to lecture on three different dimensions of the same subject, one is never certain what might emerge. The most careful planning could go astray. With a subject as vast as the American Revolution, totally diverse essays could be produced by different authors treating the same theme. If the diversity proved to be complementary, or if together the essays conveyed a fuller picture of the same reality, they would represent a degree of cohesiveness. On the other hand, the diversity might result in three totally unrelated, independent, and disconnected essays; in such a case, the three ought not to be put together in a single volume.

Though the three essays prepared for the Armstrong Lectures in religion at Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, Michigan dealt with different aspects or dimensions of the relation of religion to the American Revolution, those dimensions were carefully chosen so that whatever diversity of approach prevailed there would nevertheless be a certain degree of cohesiveness. It is interesting to note how many things are held in common by the three essayists.

The three authors, each from his own perspective, assume that there was a close interrelationship between religion and the American Revolution. Each of the three also assumes that this relationship was complex, not simple. Indeed, complexity might be called the key to all three essays: it is in the nature of that complexity that each of the authors grounds the relationship between religion and the American Revolution. Furthermore, all three agree that the Revolution first occurs in the attitudes, mind, or spirit of the American people prior to its outbreak in actual rebellion and warfare; two explicitly quote John Adams’s oft-quoted thoughts on that problem. All three rehearse certain of the basic religious concepts such as covenant, consent, fundamental law, and liberty as these related to the emergence and the carrying through of the Revolution. Thus, there is an underlying unity that ties together the three essays even though each deals in its own way with a particular aspect of the problem.

The first essay on "Puritanism, Revivalism, and the American Revolution" seeks to demonstrate the way in which religion helped to produce the Revolutionary spirit and attitude on the part of the American colonists. New England Puritan society was built upon and grew out of a center composed of certain basic religious symbols, beliefs, and attitudes. From the very beginning this center had within it and playing over against it certain other peripheral symbols and beliefs. As New England history unfolded, the central religious symbols brought the peripheral attitudes under attack until they were no longer regarded as tolerable within New England society. This was a basic factor that helped to bring about the revolution in the New England attitude toward England. Furthermore, the Great Awakening functioned in such a way that it not only brought the peripheral symbols of Crown and Parliament under attack but also objected to the very center of Puritan symbols and values with considerable dissatisfaction and discontent. This also led to the creation of a new revolutionary ideology. Hence the first essay argues for a creative relationship between religion and the American Revolution and views that interrelationship as something both subtle and complex.

The second essay on "Christendom, Enlightenment, and Revolution" rejects the over-simple idea that the Puritans alone or primarily were responsible for the coming of the American Revolution and for the shaping of the Revolutionary epoch in American culture. It was not the religion of American denominations which basically set and legitimated the norms for the American Revolution; rather it was the symbols, concepts, and beliefs of the Enlightenment which provided the legitimation both for the basic Revolutionary ideas and particularly for those ideas which underlay the American Constitution and subsequent American history. Professor Mead is one of a number of distinguished historians who see the Enlightenment not simply as a philosophical movement but primarily as a religious movement. In his judgment it is the Enlightenment as a religious movement which underlies the basic symbols, beliefs, and attitudes of the American Republic, and it is this form of religion that was central to the Revolution and to the shaping of the American nation. Denominational religion, including Puritanism and Revivalism, never clearly understood the implications of the Enlightenment for the founding or the future of the American nation. Thus, the relationship between religion and the American Revolution is located not where historians normally have placed it but at another point.

The third essay on "The Revolution and the Civil Religion" shares the belief that religion and the American Revolution were intimately related; however, it disagrees somewhat with the second essay in arguing that from the very beginning of the American Revolution and the constitutional period of American history there were two great structures of interpretation which underlay both the American Revolution and civil religion. For Professor Bellah, the two are, in a sense, identical. They emerged out of the Christian denominational-biblical tradition on the one hand and Enlightenment utilitarianism on the other hand. These two basic motifs have been intermingled from the very beginning. Thus the relation between religion and the American Revolution was complex and dependent upon several traditions. The essay traces out a movement from the Declaration of Independence with its primary emphasis on virtue and subsidiary concern for self-interest to the Constitution with its basic concern for self-interest. In this chapter, one has a fuller and more subtle exposition of the relationship between religion, civil religion, and the American Revolution.

Taken together, the three essays represent a coordinated and unified effort to gain a new perspective on the way that religion and the American Revolution were interrelated. The relationship is to be seen as complex, yet clear. From this point of view one can proceed to review the wide variety of ways in which religion and American culture have been constantly interrelated throughout American history.