American Revolution and the Church

in this lecture we're going to be looking at the American Revolution and its impact on the church and to put this lecture in its context we have so far discussed all kinds of things related to the changes when Protestantism and all types of various groups came to the new world and settled down we described things like the changes in culture and of the application of the church like the democratization of the church how the church increasingly in America moved from a top-down structure led entirely by elders or bishops or simply the pastors over a congregation to increasingly a need to include the will of the body to include the voice of the people and we didn't want to pass moral judgment on either side what we're seeing here is more of a transition in terms of the culture as the church moves to have different you might say felt needs when it came to how church is supposed to be expressed or lived out in the context the modern world but going forward after the move to the new world and increasingly so as the modern world unfolds the need to have a democratization of the church a distribution of the power a distribution of the voices of those who determine the next steps of a different generation in terms of their faith became a lived reality there was also moved to increasingly non institutional or at times anti institutional perspectives when it came to the life of the church and we know that's pretty well in the 20th and 21st centuries there are all kinds of folks that say I love Christ but I'm not always all that comfortable with the institutional church and we'd like to think that we're the first generation of times to think of this actually this comes as part of the American spirit we like to keep our power at bay whether it's in the government whether it's in the local communities whether it's in the home whether it's in the church we tend to chafe under too much authority and I've set a point along the way of course if you were to go back in time to several you would find a people that did not find authority or influence or power to be all that bad it was just assumed that God had placed him there over them and that while they didn't like tyranny they certainly respected and followed whatever authority was over them the last component of the evolution from the old world to the new is really a desire for separation from all that had come before and this happens you might say first in the political arena there are those both at home and abroad who are calling for the cessation of the control of the colonies they want independence or a certain level of autonomy a lot of what's going on here of course is the Americas are very affluent they are contributing a great amount of money and resources to the evolving in the emerging British Empire so a lot of these calls for independence drew a great deal of energy by the fact that America didn't really need to be a vassal any longer now as we'll see in a minute of course a great deal of the rhetoric that's involved here is about the suppression of American liberties and Freedoms and that is certainly true we are not going to deny that however the reality is those they are living in the Americas in the colonies know that if they were left on their own if they did not have taxation external to themselves to the British Empire but they would get along just fine economically the great gamble was always will they get along politically and you can see this all throughout history simply because you overthrow one tyrant or one regime that is believed to be oppressive doesn't mean that the new one is going to be all that much better and in fact because you've already overthrown one power the likelihood of others rising up to overthrow your new regime actually compounds it grows so let's just go ahead and give a quick synopsis of the American Revolution so that we know the world that we're talking about here we're talking roughly from 1765 to just give a round number 1785 of course the Revolutionary War ends in 1783 and it only has begun in 1775 so we're talking about a decade before the outbreak of the war and just a few years thereafter in 1773 there was the Boston Tea Party it organized riot that was sparked in part because the Americans believed that England was going to offload all of its surplus from its Asian trade all this tea that had been brought in that they were going to be required to purchase this excess tea at a price that was unfavorable now if that is indeed what the British government is thinking there's lots of good reasons to assume this the American colonies just like England notoriously consumed vast quantities of tea it was their favourite drink of choice they also had lots of expendable income again their affluent but for whatever reason the idea that the Brits were going to bring in tea and that the Americans were going to be required to purchase it only first at a certain price seemed to have sparked part of this rebellious instinct this spirit that they were being asked to do things as vassals when they should be treated more as equals of course the Boston Tea Party was met in 1774 the year after with certain acts of coercion increased taxes and these kinds of things were placed upon the American colonies which only fanned the flame of the problem one of the often overlooked things in terms of the religious history though is that also in 1774 there was something called the Quebec Act which is something thats related to Canada which of course is a British colony as well but it set off a lot of religious fervor and a lot of religious arguments against the British Empire in its relationship to the colonies the Quebec Act was a compromise deal that carved out the area that obviously today still goes by that name the decision of the crown though was to make this place more amenable to Roman Catholicism so the oath to be a Protestant was removed from this colony so that those who moved here to the area of Quebec could with freedom practice their Roman Catholic faith and there were a number of other complexities here the by large with his does in the colonies is it sparks a concern that England is losing its edge and its conviction about its Protestant heritage and of course we've seen all this long history with the English peoples from Elizabeth laun there is this personal sense that English people are Protestant people and by this point in the colonies even though there has been a melting pot of all these different denominations there is still a self-awareness or a self description of the colonies being predominantly Protestant and to their fear that the Quebec territories just to their north would become a pro Catholic regime that would have the challenge the colonies or worse that Britain might do the same in their territories carve out an area that is exclusively reserved for Catholics and so as the temperature rises eventually in 1775 you have the outbreak of hostilities of skirmishes which eventually lead to the full-scale American Revolutionary War the war ends in 1783 and then four years thereafter you have the unfolding of what this new American Congress is going to be now there's one thing we have to make very clear here all the realities of the early American ethos as it moves from being a British colony into being its own country is moving actually a way at least by those who are the framers of the Constitution and of the documents related to the American Revolution there's a movement away from overt denominational or theological affiliation with in these documents themselves the Constitution and again these supporting documents are very illustrative of the ways men like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and others wanted to make sure that the breath overall of the American colonies that would now become a nation could find themselves in these documents so all these documents and in particular the Constitution restrain references to God to simply a bare acknowledgement of the existence of God or of his loving kindness and care over the nation there are no specifics it is a restraint to the bare minimum of a theistic understanding of the world there is a God of course they do make mention of him but trying to determine any of the particularity of the Protestant heritage or just of bare Christian doctrine based on these documents is simply impossible similarly and more importantly all the criticisms and the justifications for the Revolution were entirely secular there are no claims to religious persecution or suppression these arguments play a vital role as we'll see in a minute but there is no justification for the war based in the documents of the founding of America on a religious principle or on religious concerns everything is entirely secular meaning that they are involved with merely the political world now we have to be careful here of course in the 20th and 21st centuries the word secular means more or less antithetical to religion itself that's not really what I mean when I say the word secular the word secular historically up until long after the American Revolution just simply means things that pertain to this world non spiritual factors economics sociology politics these kinds of things obviously in this day and age all these things carry with them religious Freight or another way of putting it is those who are religious pastors and leaders of these kinds could contribute part of the vocabulary or the grammar as to why these issues these problems are to be seen as justifiable and so what we're going to be doing for the rest of this lecture is we're going to be highlighting the issues that are principally about the religious factors and the way that the church engages with the American Revolution now what we're not saying here is that religion is the only factor nor are we saying that it is the dominant factor rather because this is a church history class what we're looking at here are the religious elements and the way that the church engages with the world as it becomes revolutionary so we're not minimalizing any of the standard story of the political and social ramifications of the revolution but simply we want to highlight those that are also religious or we might say it another way we're going to highlight those people who are religious who are contributing to this world now one of the more important things that goes on right here in the middle of the American Revolution is the church in the Americas have to decide if they're going to support or not support the Revolutionary War now this is a harder question to answer than many people in the modern world are willing to admit simply but the church has to figure out how reading Romans 13 which is Paul's call to obey the civil authorities that are over us all is very clear do not lift a finger in rebellion against the one who holds the sword meaning the government and there had been a long history of reading this text very very concretely it is assumed of course the Paul is writing in the context of Emperor Nero the great tyrant of the Roman Empire who burned Christians and did all kinds of nasty things it was assumed then in terms of exegesis that if Paul could say that about Nero how much more must Christians in the modern world or in any age throughout the church's history submit to the authorities that are over them and this logic of course played a heavy hand and the submission to authority of all kinds that I had talked about earlier what had happened though ever since roughly the 17th century all the way down now until the latter half of the 18th century is there arose what historians call the spirit of the Republican or the Renaissance virtues of the classical world and what's in play here is very complex but essentially what's happening is historians and scholars people who are framing the thought life of the world or reaching back to a Classical period to a classical mode in which there was this idea that societies should be free and that what keeps it together is a heroic and they often tend to say manly virtue that the freedoms one has is always countered by the quality of the virtue of its citizens now they called it manly because of course this is very much a patriarchal age but also because this is how the Romans described it virtue is manliness this kind of virile strength of integrity those who are powerful those who have money those who have wisdom don't simply hoard it for themselves but turn around and lavish it upon the citizens and the communities that they are a part of this was very much part and parcel to the Roman Republic the Republic that was there before Caesar and the Claudian revolution in the first century know what's important here is all these virtues of course are being described and discussed there is a rapid increase of this desire for a more classical understanding of freedom and virtue the problem though is of course is the Bible doesn't put it that way the Bible says that we're sinners and one of the ways that the Bible describes the political order is that it is a restraint upon the natural sinful desires which lead to excess carnal living and the narcissism of those who are in power well one of the big things that happens here one of the serious developments within the church is that this American ideal this belief in virtue integrity the American Way that you're supposed to earn your way through this world it just must be someone of rugged integrity and the inherent goodness of all people at all times actually begins to become adopted within the life of the church you can almost see the switch go off from roughly this point in the mid to late 1770s on into the next century as we'll see in this lecture and in others there is this rise of this belief on the one hand that the world is fallen but the fallenness of the world becomes locked up in certain boogeymen certain demonic forces whether it's this group or that group or the Catholics or politics or something but there becomes infused within the American church within all denominations frankly this ultimate assumption that what is going on is that the Americas are a blessed nation that can carve out some utopian ideal based off of the virtues that are part of the Spirit here and we're going to trace this as we go through but just to get the punchline the churches that have the most impact from 1770 until 1900 roughly from this point of the revolution until the start of the 20th century the denominations in the movements that have the most impact tend to be the ones that are open to talking about things like holiness sanctification godly living separation from the evils of this world and that preached a certain amount of activism to their people now to be clear this is not the only determining factor but because of the American Revolution the ethos up and down the American colonies becomes one of self-determination stand on your own two feet rugged individualism and so the churches that have a theology that can sync up with that American spirit tend to be the ones that have ears that are willing to hear them there are other more earthy flights that spill out of the American Revolution as well one of the things that happens is the Anglican Church the Church of England the official church not yet known as the Episcopal Church mind you becomes attenuated it becomes despised in some circles as a result of the revolution bishops become seen as the plague spreaders of a Royalists understanding of how to do government there's a pretty widespread description of Anglican bishops as the tools of oppression and as a result all things begin to shape the Anglican Church in America first and foremost they go through a period of retraction there's even one story of an Anglican Church simply shutting its doors because the pastor there was a loyalist he did not believe in the American spirit the idea of overthrowing the government and rather than put himself or his congregation through hard times or through persecution he decided it was better to close shop now the Anglican Church will obviously not die in the Americas but in major pockets where resistance was particularly fierce and after the revolution in rural areas that are more keen against the oppression of those who are an authority over the people you're going to see a dramatic lack of impact of churches that have a pretty rigid hierarchy let me just think the deep south over the last say 150 years what are the principal denominations that have the largest voice well simply put they are the one that have a very flat or low hierarchy single church congregations Baptist churches holiness movements charismatic movements etc I often joke that the furthest hierarchy most Americans tend to be willing to put up with or that they don't have natural questions about just simply as a result of this American revolutionary spirit the highest are willing to go tends to be presbyterian or some type of sonata l' government a collaboration of the pastors amongst themselves but if you stick a bishop on top of something historically that tends to be concerned now that absent flows but again if the accent of the american spirit is on the democratization of the church then any type of hierarchy any type of single person over them always tends to chafe and so when we get to just after the Revolutionary War because of this revolutionary spirit and because of the injection of some of these ideas into the American ethos you see a number of different things go back and forth first of all in the political or the social arena from 1770s lon frankly all the way down into the latter half of the 20th century the American experiment has this very ironic twist within it which is that for a community a culture a political order that preaches so much the separation of church and state it simply has not done a very good job of separating religious speech and religious justification for the things that we do in our culture and in the political world my doctoral adviser loved to point this out if you compare England today with America today England of course is still an official state Church the Church of England is still from the top down from the Queen down part of the English identity and yet when it comes to their political orders when it comes to culture at large when it comes to society there is not as much of an overt expression of religious themes within the wider world or the political world now there are certainly some to be sure but it's not this constant evolution of this constant justification of things based on religious principles well if you look at America today by contrast and I think my adviser was right on this America touts so very much the separation of church and state but our worlds of theology Bible religious expression political expression are so entangled with one another that at times you would think that we were kidding ourselves when we talk about separation of church and state Anabaptist talking about one political party or another I've taken the wider view here of all the last several centuries you have politicians that repeatedly justify things and appeal to religious principles to advance their legislation their decisions their leadership we also have a very permeable relationship between our religious leaders and the political order I mean just taking them account the fact that when JFK announced his candidacy for the American presidency the American press and all the way down to the lay level just got embroiled in this conversation about what they were going to do if a Catholic became president of the United States the assumption was well we can't have somebody with that religious perspective because that religious perspective is one that is fundamentally opposed to who we are just think of presidents who have stood in pulpits in the last 60 to 70 years offering a message about their perspective on politics or think of the again justification for all kinds of legislation doesn't matter your politics I mean everybody's doing this the American spirit from the 1700s Frank Leon has an ambiguous relationship an ambiguous understanding as to how these two worlds church and state separate in ways that are not simply institutional so after the American Revolution after the constitutional foundations were laid there were still states like the state of Massachusetts that had an official state church they still had a state-funded Church and they continue this on for some time but the state of Virginia has absolutely no religious affiliation or involvement or support of the state that is driven entirely by Thomas Jefferson's desire to really live out a separation of these two worlds well even if we all come to the conclusion as to what separation of church and state means in the American context what is unanswered in what is often ignored in the conversation is the softer relationship of persuasion argument and the language that we use to justify what we do this is not a twentieth century problem this is not what the evangelicals are the fundamentalists or the Catholics or the atheists in the 20th century did to ruin the church this is a fundamental ambiguity in the American world even Thomas Paine for example one of the early justify errs of the American Revolution who wrote a number of blistering books about the oppression of government on top of the people he himself was an atheist or a deist somewhere in between there had no concern whatsoever for religion and yet in his book common sense perhaps his most famous book on the political establishment he makes repeatedly biblical arguments as to why there ought to be a revolution that is you might say a microcosm of the issue here now what does this mean in real time and in real space well after the American Revolution what begins to happen is the areas known as the trans Appalachian regions which of course refers to the loose mountain range that separates the early Eastern colonies from the area that we today might call the Midwest all this band of states that was formerly owned by France but now as part of the English in America context America simply jumps over those mountains in runs as fast as possible to spread out in areas like Illinois Tennessee eventually making their way over time through the formation of new states further and further out west well as these areas plant and as they take root there is an opportunity to see which denomination which church within the American context is willing to go there and to take the faith with them to these folks who are there now out settling in places that are no longer simply the English colonies and the fact that matter is is the group that above all launches itself with abandon into the ministry opportunities out in these areas the most significant group are the Methodists now over time Baptists and other congregational groups other holiness groups begin to emerge and they take on a new importance as well but the first really are the Matt they combine radical preaching a real itinerant style of evangelism which frankly goes hand in glove with a relatively anti institutional model they combine that with a real sturdy institutional structure that really merges a top-down Authority which every institution needs to run effectively with the will of the body or the opportunity for voice or dissent to rise up to be heard and the man above all who really forms and shapes the way that the Methodist Church will engage with the new country of America the main man is Francis Asbury Asbury lived from 1745 to 1816 and it's Asbury along with a man by the name of Thomas Koch who become the two First Methodist bishops in the new world now of course immediately the question might arise we'll hang on I thought you said churches with bishops were relatively marginalized well in this case the Methodists structure the opportunity to have lay involvement at all levels really took the sting out of the bishops they did come under pressure at times they were occasionally challenged by people who did not want to top down establishment but the way that the Methodists launched themselves into the missionary expansion into the evangelistic expansion out west is simply staggering and it ought to be appreciated as Berry's a man who at 22 was appointed to be a traveling preacher by John Wesley himself he was the only Methodist who were actually remain in America during the Revolutionary War the others fled back for fear of their lives the role that Asbury plays though is simply staggering and we're going to look at it a bit more in our next lecture on the Second Great Awakening but he is radically opposed to any type of social hierarchy in fact Asbury is instrumental in nurturing and supporting a very important man the name a black Harry hoser black Harry hozier was a man who was illiterate he had been a slave he'd become a freedmen and he began to travel to Asbury as part of his support and along the road Asbury would read the Bible to him and through a very strong mind black Harry hozier began to memorize large portions of the scripture and francis asbury bucking all the trends of the day put black hairy hoser forward as one of the revival preachers in his entourage and in fact black hairy hozier is the first black preacher in America to address a predominantly white audience he stands up and he just simply preaches the gospel now in the context of the late 1700s that is radical it speaks to part of this again method as ethos breaking down the divides within society at large Methodists have always been on the leading edge first the abolitionist movement in the Americas and then later in the civil rights era so Asbury is one of these men who capitalizes on the new spirit of the revolutionary air in the church the democratization of the church the relatively anti or non institutionalization of the church as well as a growing need to separate America from its past and to plot a new trajectory that ideally would have a breakdown of societal distinctions that had been so prominent from the English culture as of these leaders Asbury and Koch become the first to again capitalize on the Revolutionary era and the spell out and the changes to the American ethos to the American church ethos happens almost immediately when we see it in the rise of the Second Great Awakening

Channel: Ryan Reeves

Views: 70,352

Rating: 4.8700509 out of 5

Keywords: Church (Project Focus), American Revolution (Event), American Revolutionary War (Military Conflict), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (College/University), Ryan M. Reeves, Politics (TV Genre), College (TV Genre), Revolution (Industry), University (Building Function), George Whitefield (Author), Puritan (Religion), Protestantism (Religion), Religion (TV Genre)

Id: sKWUcSpk5Jk

Length: 28min 46sec (1726 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/PrestoVivace]

First Great Awakening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IBEXiIjmps

[u/PrestoVivace]

George Whitefield https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXznIj84DJ0