The Protestant Reformation and the American Revolution

The connection between the Protestant Reformation and the American Revolution.

I was thumbing through several books by Thomas Paine here at home when a particular passage about the US and the Reformation I had highlighted years earlier caught my eye.

In his book, “Common Sense” Thomas Paine states, “The Reformation was preceded by the discovery of America: As if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.” (Common Sense).

Is the spirit of reformation the same spirit as that of the American Revolution? Was America, to one degree or another the result of the Reformation movement?

Thomas Paine was a deist and held some rather “interesting” ideas on Christianity and the Bible. So, this isn’t some gung-ho, over spirited, Christian zealot’s comment trying to tie the two together. For example in his book, “Age of Reason”, Paine called the Old Testament a “book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy” (pg. 80, Mich. Legal Pub.), he called the New Testament a “farce in one act”.

Paine’s idea of church was, “My own mind is my own church.”(Age of Reason, pg. 50, MLP)

It’s plain to see that Paine had some rather non-traditional ideas about Christianity. So I find his observation about the Reformation and the Revolution quite unique.

So, can we draw a connection between the two? Did the Spirit that did goad the Protestant Reformation into existence, also prod the American Revolution?

Is not America a Christian nation? Many if not most will react with a resounding “No!” because they interpret that to mean a theocracy or afraid that being a citizen somehow makes one religiously affiliated. But is not America the result of Christian belief and principle? One just has to investigate the First Continental Congress to see and understand just how saturated in the word and the spirit these men truly were. Its first official act was a call for prayer, the First Continental Congress authorized Bibles for the “inhabitants of the Unites States”, and issued Proclamations for a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer.

Or, was the pulpit used for propaganda?

“Religion played a major role in the American Revolution by offering a moral sanction for opposition to the British--an assurance to the average American that revolution was justified in the sight of God....At the beginning of the war some ministers were persuaded that, with God's help, America might become "the principal Seat of the glorious Kingdom which Christ shall erect upon Earth in the latter Days." Victory over the British was taken as a sign of God's partiality for America and stimulated an outpouring of millennialist expectations--the conviction that Christ would rule on earth for 1,000 years.” Source: The Library of Congress

 We do know that the Ministers took an active part in the Revolutionary War.  The Black Robed Regiment was the name given by the British to the American clergy who played an important part in the fight of the Revolutionary War. Some credit them for the victory.

Alice M. Baldwin, in The New England Clergy and the American Revolution writes, “It is strange to today’s generation to think that the rights listed in the Declaration of Independence were nothing more than a listing of sermon topics that had been preached from the pulpit in the two decades leading up to the American Revolution, but such was the case.”

In regards to religion the Library of Congress states that, “legislators and the public considered it appropriate for the national government to promote a nondenominational, nonpolemical Christianity”.

Paine brings up another interesting point about religion, which might shed some light on the attitude of what religion was to our founding fathers. 

“As to religion….I fully and conscientiously believe, that it is the will of the Almighty, that there should be diversity of religious opinions among us: It affords a larger field for our Christian kindness. Were we all of one way of thinking, our religious dispositions would want matter for probation; and on this liberal principle, I look on the various denominations among us, to be like children of the same family, differing only, in what is called, their Christian names.”(Common Sense)

All religions seem to fall under one Christian roof. Were different Christian denominations their idea of religious diversity?

So I ask any and all, is America an extension of, or in way connected to the Protestant Reformation?

Did our founding fathers restrict the idea of religion to Christian only?

Paine supported freedom of religion and diversity thereof, but he was adamantly opposed to religion in government. Why? And why does that attitude exist today from fellow Christians?

I value your thoughts and insights.

Bill Hitchcock