Testy Presbys

A member of the congregation gifted us with a copy of David Fleming’s Who’s Your Founding Father? One Man’s Quest to Uncover the First, True Declaration of Independence. It’s about a crowd of drunken Scots-Irish Presbyterians in the frontier town of Charlotte, North Carolina who declared themselves free of British rule a year before the better-known gathering in Philadelphia. Their “Mecklenburg Declaration” strikingly resembles the one penned by Thomas Jefferson. When John Adams became aware of it years later, he concluded that Jefferson must have plagiarized it. Fleming’s book, a hilarious search for the truth of the matter, argues that Adams was right.

I’m enjoying the book because it’s about Laura’s hometown; it’s been published just in time for next year’s 250th Fourth of July, and it’s about Presbyterians. We Presbyterians played a leading role in the American Revolution, so much so that a courtier to King George III decried the Revolution as a “Presbyterian revolt.”

But why were Presbyterians so hell-bent (pardon the expression) on revolt? It wasn’t always that way. The Westminster Confession of Faith, a 17th century statement of faith that Scottish Presbyterians subscribed to, held that the civil government had the right and responsibility to suppress heresies and reform the church’s worship and discipline. Church and state had different responsibilities, but each was to support the other.

But things changed between the drafting of the Westminster Confession and the rebellion in the colonies. In France, King Louis XIV decreed that French Protestants had to become Catholic or face jail or deportation. Scotland and England became united under the same king, and the King was obliged to be an Anglican and uphold its liturgy and rule by bishops. Scottish Presbyterians worried that a king committed to the “wrong” brand of Christianity might persecute their brand of Christianity, all in the name of “reform.” They brought that worry to the colonies.

The Marriage and Vestry Acts of 1769 levied a tax for the support of Anglican churches in the colonies and required all lawful marriages to be performed by Anglican clergymen. In western North Carolina, Scots-Irish Presbyterians resented paying for churches that didn’t exist on the frontier. They also resented making long trips to find an Anglican priest to marry them. Inevitably, babies were born out of wedlock, “with no way to legally inherit anything and no possible path to heaven,” writes Fleming.

By 1775, the irascible Scots-Irish were spoiling for a fight. They declared themselves independent and celebrated their freedom by consuming a whole lot of whiskey. The next year, John Witherspoon, a Scottish immigrant, clergyman, and sixth President of Princeton, locked arms with Quakers, Unitarians, Anglicans and others he assumed were going to hell, and signed the Declaration of Independence.

Gone were the days when Presbyterians believed that church and state should work hand in glove. They had embraced the separation of church and state and the obligation to revolt against the government if it ruled tyrannically.

Happy belated Fourth of July!
Marvin

P.S. Enjoy this related social media post by Jack Jenkins, reporter for Religion News Service, about some irascible Presbyterians closer to home: