W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2000 The Language of the Clergy: Religious and Political Discourse in Revolutionary America, 1754-1783 Cristine E. Maglieri College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the History of Religion Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Maglieri, Cristine E., "The Language of the Clergy: Religious and Political Discourse in Revolutionary America, 1754-1783" (2000). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539626265. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-vbyq-k788 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE LANGUAGE OF THE CLERGY RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA, 1754-1783 A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Cristine E. Maglieri 2000 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts C aju ^ H j YV j6- * 0 . Cristine E. Maglieri Approved, December 2000 Christopher Grasso oL-, A x^ju James Axtell Lu Ann Hom za^ TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.....................................................................................................iv LIST OF TABLES.................................................................................................................. v LIST OF FIGURES.................................................................................................................vi ABSTRACT................................... vii INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................... 2 CHAPTER I: SIGNS OF JUDGMENT ........................................... 10 CHAPTER II: VISIONS OF GLORY ................................................................................. 34 CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................61 BIBLIOGRAPHY 64 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My interest in religion and the American Revolution first began at Hamilton College in Douglas Ambrose’s seminar on revolutionary America. By exposing me to fresh ideas and the power of sermons, Professor Ambrose kindled the curiosity that led me to undergraduate and graduate theses on this topic. He and so many Hamilton professors continue to be a source of strength for my intellectual and personal growth. Words cannot express my gratitude for all their support. At the College of William and Mary, my graduate professors also have provided invaluable guidance and support. I want to thank Professor James Axtell for his keen editorial comments in all of my writing and Professor Lu Ann Homza for her insightful suggestions on this thesis. I especially wish to thank Professor Christopher Grasso for his patience and support and for his unwavering interest in my research. Throughout my struggle with the material, he helped me sort through and appreciate the complexities of the subject matter. The strengths of the final product are due largely to the sharp insights he provided on countless drafts. Lastly, I owe all that I am and all I hope to become to my family and friends. They never ceased believing in me and always reminded me that I had a life outside of the sermons. LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. The Strange and Wonderful Prophecies of Mr. Christopher Love 24 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. The Mitred Minuet ABSTRACT By analyzing approximately sixty political sermons from 1755 to 1783 (twenty- five sermons from 1773 to 1783), this study examines how clergymen applied religious ideas to understand temporal events and how those interpretations changed over time. In the early part of the Seven Years’ War, many clergymen focused on God’s judgment on the colonists for their sins. Ministers delivered jeremiad sermons to warn the colonists about possible destruction of the local community, the nation, or the world. By defining themselves against their French enemies during the Seven Years’ War, many clergymen fostered a dynamic and reciprocal relationship between religion and politics. As victory against the French ushered in conflict with Britain, many ministers drew on the conceptual tools that guided them during the 1750s to address the imperial crisis and to share a similar vision of America’s future glory. With their eyes toward independence, patriotic clergymen grounded religious rhetoric in historical experience to make the transition from colonies to nation. Yet in doing so, they did not apply a rigid scriptural formula. As a whole, the clergy held sometimes vastly different interpretations of the relationship between civil and spiritual liberty and modified their sermons to address each new circumstance. Analyzing the religious and political rhetoric in the sermons illuminates how the ministers’ eschatological interpretations of God’s spiritual enemies changed as the colonists moved from resistance to revolution. THE LANGUAGE OF THE CLERGY: RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA, 1754-1783 2 INTRODUCTION Connections between religion and the American Revolution are murky. Although recognizing that religious ideas were important for most people in the revolutionary era to understand their changing world, many historians disagree about the importance that these ideas had in the Revolution. Some contend that religious ideology had no “unique political role” and regard religion as secondary to radical whig ideology. In contrast, other historians elevate religion and its influence on revolutionary thought. These historians do not dismiss the importance of secular republican ideas but maintain that religion illuminates “how many Americans understood the ultimate meaning of the revolutionary crisis and birth of the American nation.”1 Below the surface of these historiographical debates lay deeper questions about what the terms Revolution and religion mean. Many scholars who analyze religion’s role in revolutionary America narrow their focus to an isolated series of events that they define as “the Revolution.” For some, the Revolution extends back to the 1730s and the religious revivals of the Great Awakening. Others emphasize the interplay between religious and political language during the Seven Years’ War or the Episcopacy controversy. In addition, many historians also have confined “religion” to the religious 3 discourse in the sermons and have focused on one theme, like millennialism or civil millennialism, covenant theology, revivalism, or the jeremiad.2 Yet such a narrow focus has glossed over the complexities of religious discourse and the complex relationship between religion and other discourse in revolutionary America. Many historians have focused on the sermons of the patriot clergymen because these ministers were speaking and writing about the war more than anyone else—they were responsible for 190 publications, approximately 80 percent of the politically relevant pamphlets, dealing with the state of public affairs between 1774 and 1784. But in an effort to understand religion’s relationship to the political ideology in revolutionary America, scholars have made too many generalizations and too many unsubstantiated assumptions. Reading the sermons as if they represent a consensus in the beliefs of the general population, some historians have neglected the fact that the published sermons were written primarily by elite New Englanders. By extracting a single theme (such as millennialism or covenant theology) from eighteenth-century preaching and presenting it as the key to revolutionary ideology, some also have reduced the sermons to a simplistic formula and the patriot clergymen to a unified mind.3 1 Bernard Bailyn, “Religion and Revolution: Three Biographical Studies,”Perspectives in American History 4(1970): 83-165, quote on page 85; Ruth H. Bloch,Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought, 1756-1800 (New York, 1985), xii. 2 On millennialism, see Bloch, Visionary Republic, Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Cause o f Liberty: Republican Thought and the Millennium in Revolutionary New (New England Haven, 1977), and Earnest Tuveson,Redeemer Nation: The Idea o f America’s Millennial Role (Chicago, 1968). Harry S. Stout focuses on the covenant theology,New see England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York, 1986). For the importance of the jeremiad, see Sacvan Bercovitch,The American Jeremiad (Madison, Wise.: 1978). 3 Statistical information on the number of sermons published are Melvin B. Endy, Jr., “Just War, Holy War, and Millennialism in Revolutionary America,”William and Mary Quarterly, 42 (1985), 3-25,10 n.15 and Ellis Sandoz, ed. Political Sermons o f the American Founding Era, 4 Before understanding how these sermons affected the mentality of the general population or political ideology, it is necessary to unearth the complexities and variations of the themes in these political sermons. Appreciating the richness of the sermons will allow historians to compare them to political pamphlets and other documents to determine