What do you think?
Rate this book
Christians in the American Revolution
"Blending a commanding knowledge of the fi eld with a rare gift for synthesis and lucid expression, Mark Noll brings to life what it meant for Christians in a diff erent time and place to wrestle with the political implications of their faith." Nathan O. Hatch, University of Notre Dame "His study . . . should provoke us afresh to a reexamination of the interpretation of belief and culture in our own time." David F. Wells, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary When Christians understand the religious history of the United States, with its close connection to political history, they are better prepared to make knowledgable contributions to the current discussion of national values, priorities and purposes. Christians in the American Revolution begins with a brief survey of the political and religious background of the pre-Revolutionary years. Th e author then examines the influence of various religious convictions on the movement for independence and, conversely, the eff ect of the Revolution on colonial church bodies and their understanding of Christian truth. Colonial Christians responded in four major ways to the Revolution: they supported complete freedom in politics and religion; they advocated social and political reform; they called for submission to English authority; and they argued against involvement of Christians in the war eff ort. Whether Patriot, Reformer, Loyalist or Pacifi st, American Christian colonials infl uenced not only the fledgling nation, but the development of religious thought to the present. This revised edition includes a new bibliographic essay detailing contributions to this field since the first edition was published in 1977. MARK A. NOLL (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is McManis Professor of Christian Th ought at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. In recent years he has been a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, University of Chicago Divinity School, Westminster Th eological Seminary and Regent College (Vancouver, British Columbia). A widely recognized expert in American religious history, he has written numerous books, including America's God, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
About the author
Mark A. Noll
124 books215 followersMark A. Noll (born 1946), Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, is a progressive evangelical Christian scholar. In 2005, Noll was named by Time Magazine as one of the twenty-five most influential evangelicals in America. Noll is a prolific author and many of his books have earned considerable acclaim within the academic community.
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
, a book about the anti-intellectual tendencies within the American evangelical movement, was featured in a cover story in the popular American literary and cultural magazine, Atlantic Monthly. He was awarded a National Humanities Medal in the Oval Office by President George W. Bush in 2006.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 14, 2012
This is a welcome reprint of a work originally published in 1977 by Christian University Press. Noll’s PhD thesis was in this field and this may be a reworking of his doctoral work. It belongs to the plethora of works that appeared around the Bicentennial year of 1976, though it is here updated and provides an insightful survey of the role of the Christian churches during the American Revolution. Though the book itself is thirty-five years old, there is an impressive review of more recent literature given in an Afterword (pp. 93-113), which helpfully traces more recent trends and indicates ‘pressing areas’ that remain for historians of the period immediately following the Revolution. The addition of this essay makes the book all the more valuable for current readers and researchers.
Earliest histories of the American Revolution tended to be heroic interpretations describing good men overthrowing tyrants, an approach that eventually gave way to a Whig interpretation that stressed America’s destiny and the inevitability of historical progress. The canons of early twentieth century historiography soon put paid to what it considered such flights of fancy and sought to apply objective, unbiased, scientific analysis, leading to a variety of approaches, most focusing on the dimension of social struggle inherent in the events. Recent decades have included a focus on previously neglected participants such as Native Americans, slaves and women. The religious dimensions of the conflict, however, remain relatively unexplored. It is increasingly recognised that the Revolution was a global war, one phase of Britain’s war with France as well as America’s first civil war, fought between fellow Britons. The fact that these Britons were an eminently religious people is hugely significant in understanding the motive causes of Rebels and Loyalists alike. Anyone seeking to understand the religious responses to the conflict cannot afford to overlook Noll’s book.
Ch. 1 nicely sets out the causes of unrest over the ‘Intolerable Acts’ from both the British and American sides of the question. Noll makes it clear that in addition to the colonists seeing the British administration of the American colonies as a threat to hard won English liberties, there was also ‘a deep vein of religiously charged discourse’ consistently mined by colonists in their move toward independence (pp. 25-27). While Jefferson’s pronouncements on the purposes of the Divine Being were decidedly Deist, those who heard him had often been profoundly shaped by the Evangelical doctrines of the Great Awakening. The rhetoric of liberty received a less distinctively Evangelical hearing in Britain because the revival did not touch the centres of political power there in the way that it did in America.
The second chapter turns to a survey of the religious history of the colonies defined by Noll as “the story of Puritanism” (p.29). It is helpful in distinguishing between the New Divinity, New Lights, Old Lights and Old Calvinists that emerged in response to the revivalism of Jonathan Edwards. Noll suggests that the itinerant nature of inter-colonial evangelism pointed toward an emerging national consciousness. To read newspaper reports of Gilbert Tennent’s inter-colonial preaching tours led people to begin to think of themselves as ‘American Christians’ rather than, for example, ‘New Jersey Presbyterians.’
After establishing the political and religious background Noll moves in chapters 3 through 6 to the Patriotic, Reforming, Loyalist, and Pacifist responses in turn. Chapter 7 provides a helpful Thematic Summary (pp. 149-62). Noll argues that Christian convictions, in particular the Puritan concept of covenant, undergirded the political thinking of the age. God establishes sovereign rule over humanity and expects human governments to function according to his covenant. The connection between Christian theological convictions and the Whig conception of government was very strong, providing fertile soil for revolutionary ideas. The Puritan pulpit, especially in New England, was highly educated and articulate and provided a regular setting forth of the idea that reason and revelation alike demonstrated that there was a divinely sanctioned form of government. Of course clergy differed over exactly what that form of government looked like, but all had an opinion one way or another, and their influence over the population was not inconsiderable.
Noll warns against assuming that the Christian response to the Revolution was uniform. Republican and Loyalist voices both made explicitly Christian claims in support of their stances. Some turned the War into a holy crusade; others took a prophetic stance, warning against the immorality and injustice that armed conflict inevitably brings. The Deism of America’s Founding Fathers is thought by many to have resulted in a kind of civil religion without any specifically Christian narrative. Samuel Hopkins author of A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans (1776) is cited by Mark Noll as an example of those New Lights who supported the Revolution but directed those engaged in the struggle for liberty to grant the same privilege to their slaves. Such prophetic voices maintained a distinctively Christian voice and resisted the idolatry of creating a merely civil religion (pp. 92-98).
Not only was the Revolution influenced by Christian thought; the reverse was also the case, as the Churches were influenced by the rhetoric of liberty in making their own case for toleration. Baptists in New England and Presbyterians in Virginia argued against Congregational and Anglican hegemony respectively. How could freedom from British rule be fought in the political sphere if the tyranny of Established Churches be left standing? Such thinking would lead inevitably to the disestablishment of religion and the remarkably successful free market religious economy of the new republic. The place of the Churches in post-Revolutionary society would be less central. Where previously the leading intellectual figures had been church leaders, it would now be political leaders who would have the greater influence. The Great Awakening had ensured that religious interests would be at the heart of cultural and intellectual discourse. The American Revolution ensured that political theory would now take centre stage. One of the most significant outcomes of the Revolution for the Churches was that the long-standing fear of Anglican establishment was finally removed leaving Baptists and Methodists to become the religious success story of the ensuing age, outstripping all other competitors.
Noll’s book is strong on Presbyterians and Congregationalists but provides a less detailed analysis of Methodism, considering it only in his broader discussion of the Loyalist response. The interested reader would do well to supplement Noll with Dee E. Andrews, The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800: The Shaping of an Evangelical Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). John Wesley’s opposition to the American Revolution, set out in his 1775 pamphlet, A Calm Address to Our American Colonies is well known. Noll claims that John Wesley took a ‘specifically biblical approach’ to the conflict and sees this as strangely out of step with loyalist rhetoric and more in keeping with Whig politics (p. 116). This claim needs some nuancing. Acquaintance with Wesley’s political tracts shows that he rarely appealed to the Bible in setting out his case in support of the king and the parliament. Wesley’s political tracts consistently reject on historical and pragmatic grounds John Locke’s social contract theory with its idea that nations govern only by the consent of the governed. He saw no need to reform the political system of constitutional monarchy since its finely-tuned balance of power between king, parliament, and people needed only to be preserved in order for genuine liberty to prevail.
Of course the absence of explicitly biblical material in Wesley’s political tracts does not mean that there was no theology at all behind Wesley’s politics. Jason Vickers has argued that in the eighteenth century context of a ‘confessional state,’ Wesley’s ecclesiastical, political and theological commitments are ‘interrelated, mutually enforcing and generally of a piece with each other,’ so that in interpreting Wesley every political statement must be ‘monitored…for its theological and ecclesiastical implications.’ Certainly, for Wesley human liberty is derived from the natural image of God bestowed at creation rather than from any contingent political condition. This would be but one of many possible examples of the way in which Wesley’s political statements, are underpinned by theological convictions, notwithstanding the absence of any explicit appeal to the Bible.
It is only perhaps an aesthetic matter but I find the indents overly deep, probably twice what they should be. This is the kind of formatting problem that occurs when a book is not freshly typeset but simply reproduced untouched from an earlier book. Publishing conventions have changed since the 1970s and this gives this present edition a slightly dated look. Of course this is a small criticism and should not deter any reader needing a solid introduction to the role of the churches in British America and in the early republic that replaced it.
Earliest histories of the American Revolution tended to be heroic interpretations describing good men overthrowing tyrants, an approach that eventually gave way to a Whig interpretation that stressed America’s destiny and the inevitability of historical progress. The canons of early twentieth century historiography soon put paid to what it considered such flights of fancy and sought to apply objective, unbiased, scientific analysis, leading to a variety of approaches, most focusing on the dimension of social struggle inherent in the events. Recent decades have included a focus on previously neglected participants such as Native Americans, slaves and women. The religious dimensions of the conflict, however, remain relatively unexplored. It is increasingly recognised that the Revolution was a global war, one phase of Britain’s war with France as well as America’s first civil war, fought between fellow Britons. The fact that these Britons were an eminently religious people is hugely significant in understanding the motive causes of Rebels and Loyalists alike. Anyone seeking to understand the religious responses to the conflict cannot afford to overlook Noll’s book.
Ch. 1 nicely sets out the causes of unrest over the ‘Intolerable Acts’ from both the British and American sides of the question. Noll makes it clear that in addition to the colonists seeing the British administration of the American colonies as a threat to hard won English liberties, there was also ‘a deep vein of religiously charged discourse’ consistently mined by colonists in their move toward independence (pp. 25-27). While Jefferson’s pronouncements on the purposes of the Divine Being were decidedly Deist, those who heard him had often been profoundly shaped by the Evangelical doctrines of the Great Awakening. The rhetoric of liberty received a less distinctively Evangelical hearing in Britain because the revival did not touch the centres of political power there in the way that it did in America.
The second chapter turns to a survey of the religious history of the colonies defined by Noll as “the story of Puritanism” (p.29). It is helpful in distinguishing between the New Divinity, New Lights, Old Lights and Old Calvinists that emerged in response to the revivalism of Jonathan Edwards. Noll suggests that the itinerant nature of inter-colonial evangelism pointed toward an emerging national consciousness. To read newspaper reports of Gilbert Tennent’s inter-colonial preaching tours led people to begin to think of themselves as ‘American Christians’ rather than, for example, ‘New Jersey Presbyterians.’
After establishing the political and religious background Noll moves in chapters 3 through 6 to the Patriotic, Reforming, Loyalist, and Pacifist responses in turn. Chapter 7 provides a helpful Thematic Summary (pp. 149-62). Noll argues that Christian convictions, in particular the Puritan concept of covenant, undergirded the political thinking of the age. God establishes sovereign rule over humanity and expects human governments to function according to his covenant. The connection between Christian theological convictions and the Whig conception of government was very strong, providing fertile soil for revolutionary ideas. The Puritan pulpit, especially in New England, was highly educated and articulate and provided a regular setting forth of the idea that reason and revelation alike demonstrated that there was a divinely sanctioned form of government. Of course clergy differed over exactly what that form of government looked like, but all had an opinion one way or another, and their influence over the population was not inconsiderable.
Noll warns against assuming that the Christian response to the Revolution was uniform. Republican and Loyalist voices both made explicitly Christian claims in support of their stances. Some turned the War into a holy crusade; others took a prophetic stance, warning against the immorality and injustice that armed conflict inevitably brings. The Deism of America’s Founding Fathers is thought by many to have resulted in a kind of civil religion without any specifically Christian narrative. Samuel Hopkins author of A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans (1776) is cited by Mark Noll as an example of those New Lights who supported the Revolution but directed those engaged in the struggle for liberty to grant the same privilege to their slaves. Such prophetic voices maintained a distinctively Christian voice and resisted the idolatry of creating a merely civil religion (pp. 92-98).
Not only was the Revolution influenced by Christian thought; the reverse was also the case, as the Churches were influenced by the rhetoric of liberty in making their own case for toleration. Baptists in New England and Presbyterians in Virginia argued against Congregational and Anglican hegemony respectively. How could freedom from British rule be fought in the political sphere if the tyranny of Established Churches be left standing? Such thinking would lead inevitably to the disestablishment of religion and the remarkably successful free market religious economy of the new republic. The place of the Churches in post-Revolutionary society would be less central. Where previously the leading intellectual figures had been church leaders, it would now be political leaders who would have the greater influence. The Great Awakening had ensured that religious interests would be at the heart of cultural and intellectual discourse. The American Revolution ensured that political theory would now take centre stage. One of the most significant outcomes of the Revolution for the Churches was that the long-standing fear of Anglican establishment was finally removed leaving Baptists and Methodists to become the religious success story of the ensuing age, outstripping all other competitors.
Noll’s book is strong on Presbyterians and Congregationalists but provides a less detailed analysis of Methodism, considering it only in his broader discussion of the Loyalist response. The interested reader would do well to supplement Noll with Dee E. Andrews, The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800: The Shaping of an Evangelical Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). John Wesley’s opposition to the American Revolution, set out in his 1775 pamphlet, A Calm Address to Our American Colonies is well known. Noll claims that John Wesley took a ‘specifically biblical approach’ to the conflict and sees this as strangely out of step with loyalist rhetoric and more in keeping with Whig politics (p. 116). This claim needs some nuancing. Acquaintance with Wesley’s political tracts shows that he rarely appealed to the Bible in setting out his case in support of the king and the parliament. Wesley’s political tracts consistently reject on historical and pragmatic grounds John Locke’s social contract theory with its idea that nations govern only by the consent of the governed. He saw no need to reform the political system of constitutional monarchy since its finely-tuned balance of power between king, parliament, and people needed only to be preserved in order for genuine liberty to prevail.
Of course the absence of explicitly biblical material in Wesley’s political tracts does not mean that there was no theology at all behind Wesley’s politics. Jason Vickers has argued that in the eighteenth century context of a ‘confessional state,’ Wesley’s ecclesiastical, political and theological commitments are ‘interrelated, mutually enforcing and generally of a piece with each other,’ so that in interpreting Wesley every political statement must be ‘monitored…for its theological and ecclesiastical implications.’ Certainly, for Wesley human liberty is derived from the natural image of God bestowed at creation rather than from any contingent political condition. This would be but one of many possible examples of the way in which Wesley’s political statements, are underpinned by theological convictions, notwithstanding the absence of any explicit appeal to the Bible.
It is only perhaps an aesthetic matter but I find the indents overly deep, probably twice what they should be. This is the kind of formatting problem that occurs when a book is not freshly typeset but simply reproduced untouched from an earlier book. Publishing conventions have changed since the 1970s and this gives this present edition a slightly dated look. Of course this is a small criticism and should not deter any reader needing a solid introduction to the role of the churches in British America and in the early republic that replaced it.
December 29, 2021
Noll certainly knows the original sources.
This book has the following 8 chapters:
1. Prelude to War
2. The Religious Background
3. The Patriotic Response
4. The Reforming Response
5. The Loyalist Response
6. The Pacifist Response
7. Thematic Summary
8. The American Revolution and the Religious History of the United States.
Noll examines the religious condition of the colonies before the revolution, and then looks at the responses of various religious groups to the call to arms, and the need for monetary support of the revolution.
This book has the following 8 chapters:
1. Prelude to War
2. The Religious Background
3. The Patriotic Response
4. The Reforming Response
5. The Loyalist Response
6. The Pacifist Response
7. Thematic Summary
8. The American Revolution and the Religious History of the United States.
Noll examines the religious condition of the colonies before the revolution, and then looks at the responses of various religious groups to the call to arms, and the need for monetary support of the revolution.
December 21, 2019
(NOTE: I'm stingy with stars. For me 2 stars means a good book or a B. 3 stars means a very good book or a B+. 4 stars means an outstanding book or an A {only about 5% of the books I read merit 4 stars}. 5 stars means an all time favorite or an A+ {Only one of 400 or 500 books rates this!).
All of Mark Noll's books are good. I hope to do a real review someday.
All of Mark Noll's books are good. I hope to do a real review someday.
February 6, 2022
This book had some good parts. One or two chapters were especially interesting but as a whole I read like what it was, an unpolished doctoral thesis. It was not bad but just at times a bit of a slog. Historians would appreciate its thoroughness but history buffs may be a little bored with it.
February 12, 2017
Christians in the American Revolution makes for a compact and clear read. The quality of Noll’s prose is noteworthy for a first book — in 1977 the author already exhibited the fine prose that would later characterize his 2014 memoir. Noll resists imbuing his story with his personal religious beliefs or American exceptionalism. He rejects the “facile identification of America as a Christian country” and acknowledges groups that rejected America’s dominant culture (quoted words from 170, 174). While Noll argues for the significance of Christianity in American history, he does not view Christianity as the defining characteristic of American history, and he shows ideological diversity within the Founding Fathers’ generation. This book sidesteps the religiously imbued history that the Religious Right promoted in the late twentieth century. I might have liked to see some information in this book about non-Christians in the Revolution, to contextualize the Christian material, but I am nitpicking. This is a book about Christians written by a Christian scholar and published by a Christian press, yet it is a great introduction to religious questions during the American Revolution and will satisfy readers of any or no faith.
September 28, 2010
u.s. history
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews