"Religion and the American Revolution " Topic

"Teaching the American Revolution presents a prime opportunity to instruct your students in the ways that religion shaped the American past. Most people today think of the War for Independence as a purely secular event, a chapter in political, constitutional, military, and diplomatic history. They envision an initial resistance to the British empire triggered mainly by constitutional objections to taxation without representation; a colonial war of liberation won by a timely alliance with the French and the inspired strategies of Nathanael Greene and George Washington in the South; and, finally, republican governments at both the state and national levels being set in place by founding fathers whose most absorbing concerns were political rather than religious.

That "take" on the American Revolution is not wrong, but it is incomplete. In fact, it's only by understanding the religious situation of colonials that we can fully account for how many ordinary Americans were drawn into the resistance to Britain and then committed to the cause of rebellion and republicanism. And, indeed, that is the question that particularly intrigues many contemporary historians: What was the role played by religion in the emergence of mass support for the cause of colonial independence and military mobilization against the British?

A big topic, and the question is: How do you address it in the classroom? What follows are two practical suggestions—approaches that work with the college freshmen I teach and could easily be adapted to high school juniors and seniors…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Herein lies a family story. If you can believe nuns…

My aunt, sister Philippa IHM, put together a family history. It included as an "ancestor", John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the USA..
After Arnold's and Montgomerie's invasion of Canada, the Continental Congress appointed as envoys to Canada, said John Carroll who was at that time a mere Jesuit parish priest in Maryland, his cousin Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration and a minor character in a Nicholas Cage dumb movie, and Benjamin Franklin. There was a fourth whose name I forget.

Now here we have a delegation from the Continental Congress trying to get Canada to join our rebellion. Unfortunately, one of the Intolerable Acts condemned by said Congress was the Quebec Act which granted religious liberty to the Papists in Quebec. Congress was opposed. This did not sit well with the French Canadians. So, the trip by my namesake and his cousin and Ben and the dude whose name I always forget was a fool's errand.

NOT ONLY THAT…the Archbishop of Quebec, one M Lefebvre, excommunicated my "ancestor" for being in rebellion against lawful authority!
So the party returned to Philadelphia, and the trip nearly killed the elderly Franklin.

After the war, there were 20+ Catholic priests in America. The Pope thought that it would not be appropriate for the Yanks to be under the jurisdiction of a British Catholic bishop.
He asked Franklin for advice, and he suggested a French bishop. The Pope being more politically astute than Franklin (!) suggested that the Yankee priests select one of their own as a bishop. They picked John Carroll SJ. Who later became an Archbishop of Baltimore!

So…
I have always imagined a Council of Bishops. My namesake wanders up to Lefebvre, in vestments, and says, loudly, "Excommunicate ME, will you? Kiss my ring!"
One pines for scenes in history that never happened.

It took me Wikipedia to unearth this, and not family lore. Sadly.

The fourth guy was Samuel Chase, another Maryland signatory.

I do recall reading somewhere (possibly Blackwell's "Encyclopedia of the America Revolution") that all of the Loyalist native tribes were Anglicans, whilst the few who fought for Congress belonged to small independent churches.

I think there is a big clue in how the different churches were treated when the Crown occupied an area. I also belive a lot of the revolutionary fervor was coming out of the religious colleges in New England – which were not tied to the Church of England. The war had a not so very subtle relgious undertone to it.

The British supposedly burned a number of churches which they found to be "shops of sedition", so clearly they thought the local clergy was playing a role in stirring up rebellion.

And they were correct. It also helped those weren't the Church of England.

And some over-sanctimonious Loyalist Anglicans were doing their best to drive their Nonconformist neighbors into rebellion by attempting to enforce English church attendance laws that very specifically did not apply in America.

I think two things shaped the attitude of British Commanders fighting in the war. First was that the two major Catholic powers sided with the Americans.

Second the use of the pulpit to spread revolutionary fervor. This may have invoked the wrath of some local British Commanders.

But other than that I don't see religion having much of a role especially for the Americans, who after all had Catholic allies. I don't think they cared so long as they were on their side.

Wasn't that part of what the Revolution was about? The Americans did not want the "New World" to be caught up in the type of religious wars which plagued Europe over the centuries.

They could look more recently at the role religion played in the ECW. The ECW was not so distant of an event and weighed heavily on the minds of the Founders.

First was that the two major Catholic powers sided with the Americans.

Whilst that is correct, it is also interesting to note that the indigenous Catholics in N America broadly sided with the Crown due to the hostility of Congress and the sympathetic treatment by the Crown under the 1774 Quebec Act – Canadiens in Quebec, former Jacobites in Canada and the South, and Irish in Pennsylvania and Maryland (at one point, Washington had to attend Midnight Mass on Xmas Eve in Annapolis to try and get the local Catholics "on side").

The colonists emigrated to America to escape religious persecution. They came over so that THEY could be the ones doing the persecuting. Look up Roger Williams and why he founded Rhode Island.
The Quakers were driven from Massachusetts, ostensibly founded by seekers of religious freedom, because they were different.
Catholics were very much looked down upon, even in Maryland, which was founded as a Catholic refuge. EVERYBODY feared the Romish Papists.

The 13 colonies were far from being a hotbed of tolerance.
Freedom to practice MY religion often implies the freedom to persecute heretics. See how difficult the passage in the constitution regarding "no religious test" was to get through. We needed a First Amendment because we NEEDED a First Amendment.

Also, one of Benedict Arnold's after the fact self justification excuses was that he did not approve of the alliance with Papist France.

The rivalry between Anglican and Presbyterian missionaries to the Native tribes was an issue I frequently ran into during my research in the "Under One Sun" articles including the AmRev special. The Anglican tribes tended to remain loyal to the British and this included the Chickasaw and Muskogee. Catholic influenced tribes tended to remain neutral early in the war including the large Choctaw tribe and a number of the Great Lakes and old F&I war tribes along the Mississippi.
The Loyalist including Scot recruits were inspired by a variety of reason according to the book on Col. Browne.

One Loyalist Espiscopal minister equated rebellion with wooden clogs and popery. As far as most Cavalinist Yankees were concerned Catholicism was equal to idolatry and satanism (a belief still held in one small Mass. town in the 20th cen.) In NE they were still celebrating Pope's Day (Guy Fawkes Day) buy parading effigies of the Pope and ending the day with the burning of the Pope / guy. Washington had to tell them to knock it off were they were camped next to troops belonging to His Most Catholic Majesty, the King of France.

Well the British did burn a church in The Patriot. Runs and ducks for cover.