The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum "Evidences of Calvin’s Themes in the American Declaration" by David W. Hall

This year, thankfully, is giving rise to many reviews of the Declaration of Independence. Toward that end, we a republishing a few resources to help this who wish to commemorate, leading up to the July 4th celebration. These posts are collected in a small volume, Declaring Independence: Revealing Dependence (2025) if you or friends wish to have the series as a package.

Evidences of Calvin’s Themes in the American Declaration

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn once wrote, “If we call the American statesmen of the late eighteenth century the Founding Fathers of the United States, then the Pilgrims and Puritans were the grandfathers and Calvin the great-grandfather. . . . [T]hough the fashionable eighteenth century Deism may have pervaded some intellectual circles, the prevailing spirit of Americans before and after the War of Independence was essentially Calvinistic.”[1]

Presbyterians were the most rapidly growing segment of American religion in the early eighteenth century; and in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and in both Carolinas, they were the largest distinctive ideological group.[2] Most of the leading politicians and officers from the North Carolina militia were Presbyterian (and Calvinistic) elders. On an even larger scale, approximately two-thirds of the colonial population at the time of the Revolution was dominated by dissenting groups who retained little affection for Anglicanism or any other hierarchical structure.

America’s founding cannot be understood if divorced from the founders’ religious convictions. In fact, scholars who review the earliest pamphlets, books, and the popular press find that the Bible is the single most frequently quoted source.[4] Another token of the pervasiveness of Calvinism in early America is the disproportionate number of colleges founded by Calvinistic groups. Of the 207 colleges founded prior to the United States Civil War, 49 were begun by Presbyterians alone.[5]

This explains, in part, why some of the revolutionary militia from New York called themselves the “Presbyterian Junto” and accounts for the fear that with such a visible cadre of Calvinist participants in the Revolution, “rumors were very rife that projects were on foot to make Presbyterianism the religion of the new republic.”[6]

The views of the Calvinistic Presbyterians shifted somewhat between 1760 and 1776. Whereas in a 1761 address to a Princeton audience, Samuel Davies could extol the British monarchy in general and George II in particular as the illuminator of virtuous beams to the whole Dominion,[7] it was not until the Witherspoon years that Princeton became a fiercely anti-monarchical center.[8] Once the Presbyterians began to oppose the Crown in the 1770s, English clergy and political leaders alike noted the American dissent as a resurgence of the Puritan spirit characteristic of the Westminster Assembly. As the Reverend William Jones expressed it: “This has been a Presbyterian war from the beginning as certainly as that in 1641.”[9] In 1776 this same Jones wrote about the wide influence that these dissenters, mainly Presbyterian children of Calvin, were having in America. He accused them of supporting the government when convenient or insofar as it agreed with their views, but never failing “to oppose it, if its establishment is of service to any party but themselves.”[10]

This pronounced shift in the Presbyterian outlook is evident from both secular and ecclesiastical records at the outset of the Revolution. For example, a group of Virginians protested against “unlimited and unconstitutional power” in 1775. Later, the near “complete uniformity of Presbyterian clergy”[11] in support of the war may be seen from their support of General Washington in various synodical resolutions. Harking back to their Scottish and Northern Ireland roots, these Presbyterians viewed themselves as continuing the Calvinistic tradition of removing kings if they violated their covenant, “setting aside bigotted Princes,” rather than as creating a new theo-political doctrine.[12]

On the eve of the Revolution, Presbyterians, still echoing Beza and Rutherford, were arguing against taxation and confiscatory reprisals. To confiscate one’s money or property without consent was “unjust and contrary to reason and the law of God, and the Gospel of Christ; it is contrary to Magna Carta . . . and the Constitution of England; and to complain, and even to resist such a lawless power is just and reasonable and no rebellion.”[13]

The Presbyterian Synod of 1775 approved a pastoral letter (ordering copies for at least 500 churches and ministers), indicating its conviction that “unless God in his sovereign providence speedily prevents it, all the horrors of a civil war” were imminent. The synod then encouraged repentance and urged its youthful patriots to cultivate piety and maintain the political principles of the Glorious Revolution.[14] In 1776 Virginia’s Hanover Presbytery called upon its own legislature to cast off “the yoke of tyranny and form independent governments upon equitable and liberal foundations.” When the war finally ended, the Presbyterian Synod praised “the supreme Disposer” for his favorable providence in guiding the patriots to victory.

At the time of the Revolution, one British soldier wrote of the continuing influence of Calvin on popular support for independence. Captain Johann Heinrichs wrote back to Hessia: “Call this war, dearest friend, by whatsoever name you may, only call it not an American Rebellion, it is nothing more or less than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion.”[15]Heinrichs went on to compare it to earlier French Huguenot wars, except this time the Calvinists were the victors and they viewed religion and liberty as inextricably intertwined. Heinrichs was not alone in making observations like these.

Presbyterian ministers showed no hesitation in taking on political roles. They did so with vigor and had great impact in the political arena. It was in no way unusual, therefore, that in addition to John Witherspoon, Presbyterian Jacob Green (Ashbel Green’s father) was a member of the provincial Congress of New Jersey. John J. Zubly (Swiss native and Pastor of Savannah’s Independent Presbyterian Church) was one of Georgia’s delegates to the Continental Congress. Many others served in state provincial Congresses at the formation of our union.[16]

Jonathan Clark’s summary is accurate:

Another author noted: “When Cornwallis was driven back to retreat and ultimate surrender at Yorktown, all the colonels in the Colonial Army but one were Presbyterian elders. More than one-half of all the soldiers and officers of the American Army during the Revolution were Presbyterians.” Presbyterian pastor Charles Thompson doubled as a Secretary of the Continental Congress and earned John Adams’ praise as “the life of the cause of liberty.”[18]

Not only did Presbyterian convictions fuel the Revolution, the faith’s underlying Calvinism is also reflected in many of the official documents between the Revolution and the ratification of the United States Constitution. Primary documents confirm the thesis we have been documenting: the Declaration of Independence, acts of the Continental Congress between 1776 and 1787, and the United States Constitution all bear the impress of two centuries of Calvinistic thinking. The Federalist Papers, the original constitutions for the states, and other popular discourse also spell out the heritage of the Reformation as well.[19] Even if fading in some respects and transformed in others, Calvin’s ideas, as we see in the Declaration itself next, were still vital during this final act of the founding period.
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[1] Kuehnelt-Leddihn also commented as early as 1972 that “The history of the United States is that of a battle between the two Johns of Geneva, John Calvin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and it seems that Rousseau is winning.” Cited in Harold O. J. Brown, “Unfettered Individualism,” The Religion and Society Report, September 1999, vol. 16, no. 9, 2. See the final chapter in this volume for more on this typology.
[2] Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 353.
[4] See John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987), 51-52.
[5] James G. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1962), 321.)
[6] W. P. Breed, Presbyterians and The Revolution (1876; rpr. Decatur, MS: Issacharian Press, 1993), 15.
[7] Cited in Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 356.
[8] As late as May 1775, the Synods of New York and Philadelphia were still calling for calmness among Americans and respect to be given to George III.
[9] Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 357.
[10] Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832, 358.
[11] Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832, 358-9.
[12] Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832, 360.
[13] Cited in Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 360. Cotton Mather had argued earlier that the liberties of Magna Carta were still applicable for North American colonists.
[14] The text of the overture is contained in W. P. Breed, Presbyterians and The Revolution (1876; rpr. Decatur, MS: Issacharian Press, 1993), 33-37.
[15] Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 362. David Ramsay also confirms that the Scottish-Irish Presbyterians were a natural constituency to support the revolution on theological grounds. He writes: “The Presbyterians and Independents, were almost universally attached to the measures of Congress. Their religious societies are governed on the republican plan. From independence they had much to hope, but from Great Britain if finally successful, they had reason to fear the establishment of a church hierarchy.” David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution, ed. Lester H. Cohen (1789, rpr. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1990), vol. 2, 626.
[16] W. P. Breed, Presbyterians and The Revolution (1876; rpr. Decatur, MS: Issacharian Press, 1993), 29-30, contains a helpful summary.
[17] Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 363.
[18] Lorraine Boettner, 384, cited in J. Steve Wilkins, America, the First 350 Years (Forest, MS: Covenant Publications, 1988), 70.
[19] Thomas G. West has recently clarified that the founders repudiated a total wall of separation between religion and public life in this fashion: “The founders opposed an official state-sponsored church, but they favored government support of religion through public laws, in official speeches and proclamations, on ceremonial occasions, and especially in public schools. Daniel Palm, ed., On Faith and Free Government (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 5. West also avers that the founders’ view of religious liberty did not disqualify state or local governments from promoting certain religious customs, as long as they comported with reason.