On and around January 3, 2025, I put up a number of posts on X about the role of Calvinism in America’s founding. I reproduce some of them here, along with a few other notes.
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The first Great Awakening, which was very Calvinistic in nature, was certainly instrumental in America’s founding. George Whitefield – the “other George” – has been called the grandfather of America for good reason.
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With this background we shall not be surprised to find that the Presbyterians took a very prominent part in American Revolution. Our own historian Bancroft says: “The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was the natural outgrowth of the principles which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Presbyterians of Ulster.” So intense, universal, and aggressive were the Presbyterians in their zeal for liberty that the war was spoken of in England as “The Presbyterian Rebellion.” An ardent colonial supporter of King George III wrote home: “I fix all the blame for these extraordinary proceedings upon the Presbyterians. They have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures. They always do and ever will act against government from that restless and turbulent anti-monarchial spirit which has always distinguished them everywhere.” When the news of “these extraordinary proceedings” reached England, Prime Minister Horace Walpole said in Parliament, “Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson.”
— Loraine Boettner
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One of the reasons the American colonists declared independence in 1776 was the threat from King George to appoint a bishop over the colonies, essentially forcing them back under the very Episcopalian rule they sought to escape by coming to the “new world.”
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“John Calvin and his Genevan followers had a profound influence on the American founding.”
— David Hall
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“It would be almost impossible to give the merest outline of the influence of the Calvinists on the civil and religious liberties of this continent without seeming to be a mere Calvinistic eulogist; for the contestants in the great Revolutionary conflict were, so far as religious opinions prevailed, so generally Calvinistic on the one side and Arminian on the other as to leave the glory of the result almost entirely with the Calvinists. They who are best acquainted with the history will agree most readily with the historian, Merle D’Aubigne, when he says: ‘Calvin was the founder of the greatest of republics. The Pilgrims who left their country in the reign of James I., and, landing on the barren soil of New England, founded populous and mighty colonies, were his sons, his direct and legitimate sons; and that American nation which we have seen growing so rapidly boasts as its father the humble Reformer on the shores of Lake Leman [Lake Geneva].’”
— N.S. McFetridge
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The religious character of North America, viewed as a whole, is predominantly of the Reformed or Calvinistic stamp…To obtain a clear view of the enormous influence which Calvin’s personality, moral earnestness, and legislative genius, have exerted on history, you must go to Scotland and to the United States.
— Philip Schaff
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“Mr. Bancroft says: ‘The first public voice in America for dissolving all connection with Great Britain came not from the Puritans of New England, the Dutch of New York, nor the Planters of Virginia, but from the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of the Carolinas.’ He evidently refers to the influence of Rev. Alexander Craighead and the Mecklenburg Declaration: and this influence was due to the meeting of the Covenanters of Octorara, where in 1743, they denounced in a public manner the policy of George the Second, renewed the Covenants, swore with uplifted swords that they would defend their lives and their property against all attack and confiscation, and their consciences should be kept free from the tyrannical burden of Episcopacy….It is now difficult to tell whether Donald Cargill, Hezekiah Balch or Thomas Jefferson wrote the National Declaration of American Independence, for in sentiment it is the same as the “Queensferry Paper” and the Mecklenburg Declaration.”
— W. Melancthon Glasgow
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he gibe of some in the British Parliament that the American revolution was “a Presbyterian Rebellion” did not miss the mark. We may include in “Presbyterian” other Calvinists such as New England Congregationalists, many of the Baptists, and others. The long-standing New England tradition of “election day sermons” continued to play a major part in shaping public opinion toward rebellion toward England on grounds of transcendent law. Presbyterian preaching by Samuel Davies and others had a similar effect in preparing the climate of religious public opinion for resistance to royal or parliamentary tyranny in the name of divine law, expressed in legal covenants. Davies directly inspired Patrick Henry, a young Anglican, whose Presbyterian mother frequently took him to hear Davies.”
— Douglas F. Kelly
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“He that will not honor the memory, and respect the influence of Calvin, knows but little of the origin of American liberty.”
— George Bancroft, Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855)
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“Politically, Calvinism is the chief source of modern republican government. That Calvinism and republicanism are related to each other as cause and effect is acknowledged by authorities who are not Presbyterians or Reformed…The Westminster Standards are the common doctrinal standards of all the Calvinists of Great Britain and Ireland, the countries which have given to the United States its language and to a considerable degree its laws. The English Calvinists, commonly known as Puritans, early found a home on American shores, and the Scotch, Dutch, Scotch-Irish, French and German settlers, who were of the Protestant faith, were their natural allies. It is important to a clear understanding of the influence of Westminster in American Colonial history to know that the majority of the early settlers of this country from Massachusetts to New Jersey inclusive, and also in parts of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, were Calvinists.”
— William H. Roberts
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“What makes Scotland, the United States, and our own beloved England, the powerful, prosperous countries that they are at present, and I pray God they may long continue? I answer in one word: Protestantism, a free Bible and a Protestant ministry, and the principles of the Reformation.”
— J.C. Ryle (1816-1900)
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“Politically, Calvinism is the chief source of modern republican government. That Calvinism and republicanism are related to each other as cause and effect is acknowledged by authorities who are not Presbyterians or Reformed…The Westminster Standards are the common doctrinal standards of all the Calvinists of Great Britain and Ireland, the countries which have given to the United States its language and to a considerable degree its laws. The English Calvinists, commonly known as Puritans, early found a home on American shores, and the Scotch, Dutch, Scotch-Irish, French and German settlers, who were of the Protestant faith, were their natural allies. It is important to a clear understanding of the influence of Westminster in American Colonial history to know that the majority of the early settlers of this country from Massachusetts to New Jersey inclusive, and also in parts of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, were Calvinists.”
— William H. Roberts
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“Calvin is virtually the founder of America.”
— German historian Leopold von Ranke
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“It is estimated that of the 3,000,000 Americans at the time of the American Revolution, 900,000 were of the Scotch or Scotch-Irish origin, 600,000 were Puritan English, and 400,000 were German or Dutch Reformed. In addition to this the Episcopalians had a Calvinistic confession in their Thirty-Nine articles; and many French Huguenots also had come to this western world.”
— Lorraine Boettner
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“A republican state took their rise about the same time in Geneva; and from that day this Calvinism has ever been identified with the cause of liberty, or the rights of man.”
— R.C. Reed
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“This great American nation, which stretches her vast and varied territory from sea to sea, and from the bleak hills of the North to the sunny plains of the South, was the purchase chiefly of the Calvinists, and the inheritance which they bequeathed to all liberty-loving people.”
— N.S. McFetridge
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R. C. Reed explains the rise of the independence movement among American colonists:
“The first declaration of independence was put forth by the Presbyterians of Mecklenburg, N.C. and the first religious body to speak out in favor of separation from Great Britain was the Presbyterian Synod of Philadelphia.”
It’s impossible to appreciate America’s founding and heritage without also appreciating John Calvin and Calvinism. If you hate and disdain Calvin, you must despise America’s origins and heritage.
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The religious character of North America, viewed as a whole, is predominantly of the Reformed or Calvinistic stamp…To obtain a clear view of the enormous influence which Calvin’s personality, moral earnestness, and legislative genius, have exerted on history, you must go to Scotland and to the United States.
— Philip Schaff
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“John Calvin and his Genevan followers had a profound influence on the American founding.”
— David Hall
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One of the reasons the American colonists declared independence in 1776 was the threat from King George to appoint a bishop over the colonies, essentially forcing them back under the very Episcopalian rule they sought to escape by coming to the “new world.”
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Considering that Calvinists built America and had a greater influence on our founding institutions than any other Christian tradition (see Doug Kelly’s book The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World for details), it would be absurd for Christian nationalism in America to not include and even privilege Calvinism. Without the Calvinistic doctrine of vocation, sphere sovereignty, and civil resistance, there is no America. Calvin has rightly been called the great grandfather of America.
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The American Revolution was basically just the continuation of the Calvinistic Reformation, in a new place and under new conditions. As Harold L. Senkbeil has put it, “The popular piety of Evangelicalism has assumed the central role in America….Some have deliberately set about completing John Calvin’s dream of building a society governed only by Christian principles [in the settling of America].”
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One of the great tragedies in American history is that the Second Great awakening almost entirely decimated the public and cultural influence of Calvinism on our nation. Revivalism replaced Scripture with experience/emotion, divine sovereignty with human free will, a high church ecclesiology with the parachurch, liturgy with revivalistic techniques, psalms with silly praise songs, and a properly ordered hierarchy with egalitarianism. America has really never recovered. Calvinists themselves were somewhat to blame for the shift, especially since their church planting efforts could not keep pace with westward expansion. In the early 19th century, a Methodist revivalist preacher said something like, “We Methodists are lighting the world on fire while the Presbyterians cannot even strike a match.” There was some truth to that.
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The need of the hour (as always) is for churches that proclaim the gospel to all people and apply the law to all of life.
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