There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. —John Witherspoon
Two hundred and fifty years ago, news arrived in London that a long and protracted conflict with the American colonial possessions of Great Britain had culminated in a resolute declaration of independence. Horace Walpole, the prime minister, rose in Parliament to declare: “There is no use crying about it. Cousin America has eloped with a Presbyterian parson.” It was a sentiment shared with virtually all the royalists on both sides of the Atlantic.
From the beginning of the conflict, King George III had been convinced that the leading patriot leaders were Presbyterians (a term he loosely used to describe Reformed Congregationalists as well as Presbyterians). As early as 1774, he had quipped to Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson, “Are they not Presbyterians?” In truth, the king had every reason to suspect so.
The crown had struggled to suppress restive Reformed pastors and their congregants since the sixteenth century—with the Pilgrims, the Puritans, the Covenanters, and the Jacobites. The king and his advisors surmised that the Scots-Irish, already comprising a third of the population of the colonies and newly reinvigorated by the Great Awakening, were fomenting fresh troubles.
The king was advised by William Jones in 1776, “This has been a Presbyterian war from the beginning . . . and accordingly the first firing against the king’s troops was from a Massachusetts meeting house.” Likewise, Ambrose Serle, secretary to British General Howe in New York City, wrote to the British Secretary of State in 1776 telling him that the American Revolution was ultimately “a religious war.” Indeed, he asserted that the revolt would not and could not be sustained were it not for the Presbyterian ministers who “bred it.” He lamented the fact that almost every minister in America seemed to “double as a politician.” In November 1776, the Earl of Dartmouth was informed by one of his New York emissaries, “Presbyterianism is really at the bottom of this whole conspiracy, has supplied it with vigor, and will never rest, till something is decided on it.” A Hessian mercenary captain, enlisted by the British, told a correspondent in Wiesbaden, “Call this war, dearest friend, by whatsoever name you may, only call it not an American Revolution, it is nothing more nor less than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion.” A letter published in a London newspaper from a royalist in New York lamented, “Believe me, the Presbyterians have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures.” Serving in his ambassadorial role in London, Benjamin Franklin confirmed that the antipathy of the royalist was due to the fact that they believed the American Patriots were “Whigs and Presbyterians.”
These assumptions were not without warrant. Amidst the fervor of the Great Awakening—a series of revivals that occurred throughout the colonies in the period between 1720–1750—the pulpits of America were ablaze with both Reformed theology and the scriptural warrant for liberty. Second Corinthians 3:17 and Galatians 5:1 were favorite texts: “Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17). “For freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1).
Because of the growing cultural relevance of personal faith due to the impact of the Great Awakening, there was an increased awareness of how important religious liberty was to advancing the cause of Christ. The great Reformed Baptist leader, Isaac Backus, emphasized that the gospel of grace could only take root in a culture that allowed for the freedom for it to be proclaimed. George Whitefield often warned that political liberty could never be compromised without risking the integrity of spiritual liberty as well. He foresaw the danger that a conflict between the colonies and Britain might pose to the ongoing work of the gospel. Speaking to a crowd in Portsmouth, Massachusetts, in 1764, he said:
I can’t in conscience leave the town without acquainting you with a secret. My heart bleeds for America. O poor New England! There is a deep-laid plot against both your civil and religious liberties, and they will be lost. Your golden days are at an end. You have nothing but trouble before you.
He would not live to see how prophetic his words were.
The “Presbyterian parson” whom Prime Minister Walpole accused of having “eloped” with “Cousin America” was John Witherspoon. He was the president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, the first great Presbyterian institution of higher learning. Witherspoon, a prominent Scottish scholar-preacher, had dramatically developed and enlarged Princeton’s campus and academic program, adding French, history, international law, philosophy, and speech to course offerings, all in accord with a consistent Reformational worldview. He simultaneously furthered the growth of the Presbyterian Church in North America, launching an initiative that helped to plant dozens of new churches along the frontier as well as in those areas renewed by the revivals of the Great Awakening.
But he was also a strong advocate of freedom in the civic arena. When the colonies began to chafe against the petty tyrannies of Parliament, Witherspoon lent his considerable reputation to the cause of independence. He was a man of presence and of great energy. Only George Washington commanded more respect than he did. According to historian Jeffry Morrison:
There was no abler advocate for American independence, or better representative of the legacy of the Reformation’s theory of resistance in early America. Although something of a forgotten founder today, in fact Witherspoon was rightly called a colossus in his own day.
Indeed, John Adams confirmed that Witherspoon was “as high a Son of Liberty, as any Man in America.”
Of the 478 graduates he trained at Princeton, a large proportion rose to occupy high offices. Among these were twelve members of the Continental Congress, five delegates to the Constitutional Convention, a vice president, forty-nine members of the House of Representatives, twenty-eight senators, three Supreme Court justices, eight district judges, one Secretary of State, three attorneys general, and two foreign ministers. Twenty-six of Witherspoon’s graduates were state judges, seventeen were members of their state constitutional conventions, and fourteen were members of the state conventions that ratified the federal Constitution. In addition, four of Witherspoon’s pupils held presidential offices: three served as presidents of Congress under the Articles of Confederation—Thomas McKean, Elias Boudinot, and Thomas Mifflin—and one, James Madison, served as President of the United States under the Constitution.
A member of the Continental Congress himself (1776–1779, 1780–1782), Witherspoon signed the Declaration of Independence, helped to draft the Articles of Confederation and later the Bill of Rights, and was a delegate to the New Jersey convention of 1787 that ratified the Constitution. He was the only pastor, the only professor, the only college president to serve in any of those capacities. He served on at least 126 committees during his public service tenure and drafted the instructions to the American peace commissioners in France in 1781.
Just two months after he was first elected to the Continental Congress, he preached a sermon in the college chapel at Princeton. “The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men,” subsequently published in Philadelphia, caused a great stir across the restive American colonies. In the sermon, he made a strong biblical argument for the Declaration of Independence—and even a war for freedom, if necessary—based on the covenantal violations of king and Parliament as evidence of God’s providential dealings in this poor fallen world.
The sermon rested on foundations for a Reformational theology of resistance to tyranny that had been laid by Pierre Viret and John Knox in the sixteenth century and Samuel Rutherford and John Milton in the seventeenth century. It was predicated on the ideas of magistratal interpositionalism and covenantal jurisdictionalism—ideas that paved the way for the republicanism and federalism of the Founding Fathers.
The sermon was instrumental in convincing a large number of very reluctant patriots to see the issues of independence through the lens of covenantal obedience rather than through the lens of revolutionary fervor—a critical distinction. Indeed, it was the gravitas of Witherspoon’s leadership and vision that persuaded them that “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”
In the end, Witherspoon’s theological argument won the day and independence was declared. The American patriots took up the cause of the Presbyterian rebellion and a great experiment in liberty was begun.
Ligonier Ministries