Justifying Revolution: The American Clergy's Argument for Political Resistance, 1763-1783 (original) (raw)
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Religion and the American Revolution
Since at least the time of Alexis de Tocqueville's mid-nineteenth century study of the American system, scholars have been intrigued by the connection between religion -Christianity and its various denominations -and the creation of the United States. One of the foremost subjects that historians have undertaken regarding this relationship is the dynamic between religion in the American colonies and the American Revolution.
Radicals in the Revolution: The Persecution of Christians During the Revolutionary War
2016
This paper explores the plight of radical Christians in Pennsylvania during the American Revolution. Pennsylvania, up until the American Revolution, was governed by Quakers, and home to people of many denominational backgrounds, including various Anabaptist sects, such as the Amish, Mennonites, and Brethren. Both Quakers and Anabaptists adhered to the most conservative interpretation of Jesus's teachings on not resisting an evil person (Matthew 5:38-42) and the swearing of oaths (Matthew 5:33-37). When Protestant revolutionaries took over the Pennsylvania government during the War, they required all residents of Pennsylvania to take an oath of allegiance to the Colony. The Quakers and Anabaptists, because of their conscientious objection to the War and to swearing oaths, refused to do so. The revolutionaries, as a result, treated them as if they were the worst of traitors. The irony, however, is that religious freedom was one of the causes for which they fought. As a supplement, it further explores how conscientious objectors were treated in future wars, in order to show that events such as this set a precedent for the way America has interpreted religious freedom. In order to truly study history, both sides of a given issue must be examined, whether they be positive or negative.
“Wild Mobs, to Mad Sedition Prone”: Preaching the American Revolution
2019
The Church of England in the American Colonies was really not a single institution. Because no local bishop governed the church in America, falling as it did under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, the clergy tended to have differing loyalties. Especially in the southern colonies, local vestries ruled the clergy because they controlled their stipends; therefore the clergy followed the lead of the local squirearchy and suppressed their personal views regarding independence. The New England Anglican clergy were equally in a difficult position. Midst the hostility of Puritanism and the Sons of Liberty, they seemed like an alien element. For that reason, they did not speak out either in defense of the revolution or against it. Only in the Mid-Atlantic colonies did an often vigorous debate ensure which involved Anglican clergy who either preached about the Revolution or published pamphlets—often anonymously—regarding colonial grievances. The stance they took was almost always rel...
The essay concerns the North Carolina Regulator Movement of the 1760s and its connection with the religious culture of Dissent, which dated from seventeenth-century Britain. In particular, it shows how one thread of that Dissenter culture – Christian-based nonviolence – was tested on the eve of a migration of Baptists from the Regulator area, a migration that secured the highest profile for that denomination throughout the South and the southern Appalachians. Coming on the eve of the American Revolution, the testing of nonviolence can be seen as a portent for attitudes that would come to link the religious, political and military values of a nation.
Strata, 2019
Compte rendu | Book review 209 links to the third point of providing a more localized experience into the larger narrative of the Centennial. Lastly, it highlights the interaction and collaboration between levels of government during the Centennial planning process, which effectively portrays the growth of federalism and state operations during the 1960s. This explanation and use of a regional vantage point provide a convincing argument, for not only the central thesis of how the Centennial projects are demonstrative of the wider cultural, political, economic, and social changes in the postwar period, but also for the methodological practice of using a regional perspective in a national topic.