Praise the Lord & Pass the Ammunition

By Dan Shippey & Michael Burns

Outside the church, icy cold air bit at the skin. Inside, however, the temperature was rising rapidly.

The 30-year-old pastor was full of fire as he delivered his sermon before the congregation. He had just launched into the third chapter of Ecclesiastes:

“There is a time to rend, and a time to sew

A time to keep silent, and a time to speak

A time to love, and a time to hate

A time of war,”

He paused and his eyes swept across the faces before him. It seemed for a brief second that he looked at, and into, every one of them.

“And this is a time of war!”

He pulled open his clerical robe to reveal a Colonel’s uniform. The next morning he would lead 300 volunteers (many from his congregation) to form the center of the Eighth Virginia Regiment.

They would see action at the Battle of Brandywine, The Battle of Germantown and the Battle of Monmouth. A year later the Reverend cum Colonel would be promoted to Brigadier General Peter Muhlenberg. 

   The concept of a warrior/pastor seems oxymoronic in today’s society. It is difficult to picture your reverend, priest or rabbi taking the field of battle. The churches and synagogues today seek to avoid battle, to be inoffensive even when it comes to their core values, so as to appear “seeker friendly.” But the church of the 18^th century was not only involved in the revolution, it was one of the reasons the revolution was possible.

    The Great Awakening was the period during the 1730’s-40’s, when the UK and the American colonies experienced heightened religious activity. In America, the movement had a profound effect on how people thought and how their society functioned. The meetinghouse or church building became the social and political center of a town. Itinerant pastors were the bards of their day, connecting the colonies through news, philosophy and discussion of current ideas. This connection gave the future states a common vocabulary of faith and spread egalitarianism, the idea that everyone’s soul holds the possibility of redemption. Egalitarianism extended from religion into political thought, because if all souls hold equal value then they have (by extension) the same political, economic, social and civil rights. By the time Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self evident, That all men are created equal” the concept of egalitarianism was firmly established in the minds of the people. The churches had the power to reach into even the smallest backwoods community with the same message that was preached in New York and Philadelphia. The revolution had begun as all real revolutions do: with a change in thinking.

       Not all pastors or churches moved toward revolution. There were certainly divisions of Patriots and Loyalist within the Church of England. The Moravians and Quakers shunned all violence, and so were not large supporters of the Revolution. However, there are exceptions.  General Nathaniel Green, for example, left his Quaker faith to join the militia. Calvinist believers had trouble with the very idea of revolution because they believed that a king or government could only be in power if God willed it so. Only if obeying a man (king) resulted in disobeying God could an act of rebellion be justified. Some Calvinists argued that the King, by breaking his own laws and not being a shepherd for his people, was himself disobeying God; therefore rebellion was acceptable.  Not all agreed with this line of reasoning. Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Lutherans were lumped together and called “Protestants” by the British, who viewed them as one of the core causes of the conflict.