Protestant Jesuits

A Brief History of American Presbyterianism

If you’ll kindly indulge a self-quote, I’ve written before that,

“the impetus for the American revisions to the [Westminster] Confession dealing with the Christian magistrate were not insulated from this crisis of public opinion for Presbyterians, and further that said revisions were generally in step with the constitutional settlement then emerging. True subscription to the revised Confession should appreciate this fact that it is not pure and inevitable theological progression that drove the revisions.”

Zachary Garris and James Baird agree with me on this general thesis, viz., that suspicion of intolerance (of other Protestant sects) and ambition unto national establishment influenced the American revisions to the Confession.

To support this thesis, I cited a lot of stuff from Thomas Jefferson on how the Presbyterians were the root of all evil. He really, really hated Presbyterians (and Calvin). William Short calling Presbyterians “Protestant Jesuits” is probably the best one, however. Would that we Presbyterians were as “tyrannical and ambitious” today as Jefferson thought. I also mentioned in passing that John Adams blamed the rumor that he was in league with Presbyterians to establish a national church for losing him an election. (There were English Presbyterian churches, by the way, not just Scottish, as well as Irish.)

Here’s what else Adams had to say in a letter to Mercy Otis Warren, he recounts accusations against him, regarding his drafting of the Massachusetts Constitution, and responds through several anecdotes (he is providing corrections to Warren’s history and comments on a conversation with an unnamed German “minister”).

[Accusation:] They report that you made the Constitution of Massachusetts and have had influence enough in that State to Establish the Presbyterian Religion, and make all other Sects of Christians pay Taxes for the Support of it.

[Response:] I had a Share in the Convention that formed the Constitution, but I did not draw the Article respecting Religion, but that Article as it is obliges no Man to pay to the Support of any particular sect. Every Man is at Liberty to apply his Taxes to the Support of his own Church and Minister. Minister. Taxes however they are obliged to pay. Adams Taxes for Building Churches and Supporting Ministers, with Some limitations and exceptions that I am not certain that I remember they are obliged to pay.

[Accusation:] Well that is an Establishment of Christianity.

[Response:] This was Said with an Arch and Smiling Countenance, which I understood very well to mean I am very glad they have established Christianity, but I must not acknowledge it because my People have been taught to believe that any Establishment in Pennsylvania, will be an Establishment of Scotch Presbyterianism.

[…]

[Commentary:] This Idea was propagated through the Union, that I was a Presbyterian, that I was about to introduce an Establishment of Presbyterianism and compel all other denominations to pay Taxes to the Support of Presbyterian Ministers and Churches. And a kind of continental Synod or General Assembly of Presbyterians which was called at Philadelphia a little before this time, an Innovation that alarmed all but Presbyterians, contributed infinitely to countenance those Electioneering Maneuvers. Upon the Catholics I have reason to believe they had Some Effect. Upon the Protestant Episcopalians they had little or none: for these had received too much countenance and assistance from me in Holland, and England for them to believe that I was a bigoted Presbyterian, or that I would promote any Establishment that would do Injustice to them or any other denomination. With the Baptists Quakers Methodists and Moravians as well as the Dutch and German Lutherans and Calvinists it had an immense Effect and turned them in such Numbers as decided the Election. They said Let Us have an Atheist or Deist or any Thing rather than an Establishment of Presbyterianism.”

Poor Mr. Adams.

Granted, Presbyterian was at the time a rather fluid term politically, so it should not be assumed that all of this is ecclesiastically or confessionally accurate.

The Saybrook Platform (1700) and the Heads of Agreement (1691) had muddied the waters a bit, at least in Connecticut. But this doesn’t quite explain everything, even on the ecclesiastical side. As M. Louise Greene recounts,

“From the adoption of the Saybrook Plat- form, the Connecticut churches were for many years preéminently Presbyterian in character. The terms Congregational and Presbyterian were often used interchangeably. As late as 1799, the Hartford North Association, speaking of the Connecticut churches, declared them “to contain the essentials of the Church of Scotland or Presbyterian Church in America.” The General Association in 1805 affirmed that “The Saybrook Platform is the constitution 6f the Presbyterian Church in Connecticut.””

Something else happened. (Presbyterian also, at some point, just became shorthand for Calvinist.) The standing associations and otherwise incorporation of the Heads of Agreement compromise by Solomon Stoddard et al into Saybrook did not on its own produce this equivocation of labels. At its start, Connecticut was decidedly of the Congregational Way, and its mother colony, Massachusetts resisted mightily any Presbyterian-izing. What is clear, however, is that at some point the labels became interchangeable in Connecticut which, as I’ve pointed out before, retained its original charter as its constitution into the nineteenth century. Curious.

Aforementioned is that the Presbyterian label was also rather fluid politically in and around the War for Independence. it seems to have basically stood for radical republicanism or anti-monarchism, an association dating back to the tyrannicide of the century prior. Polemically, then, “Presbyterian” also encompassed Congregationalists and anyone else in league with them. Jospeh Galloway’s account of the “rebellion” (1780) links the two together like this. “Timoleon” (James Tilton (1745–1822)) gave Presbyterians the lion’s share of credit for enacting and completing the Revolution.

Whatever the makeup, it was what Ben Franklin called “the Storm of Presbyterian Rage” (that “certain Sect”) that, in part, loudly drove the country toward denunciation of the Crown. The sectaries and rebels had killed a king once and were eager to do it again. Their radical republicanism was inseparable from their religion. (You really should read Paul Rahe’s Against Throne and Altar, phenomenal scholarship [!], to get a sense of the shift from classical to modern republicanism that took place in the mid-to-late seventeenth century. James Hankins also touches on this in Virtue Politics.) Presbyterians, reports Franklin, were an uncompromising sort, the most vocal against American representatives being sent to the House of Commons, and also the biggest proponents of a new American Parliament. The emergence of a Presbyterian “oligarchy” was a constant fear.

In a humorous dialogue “between Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Saxony and America” from Franklin, probably written in 1775, Britian and America trade insults. America calls Britain a “blood thirsty bully” and Britian responds in kind: “O! you wicked-Whig-Presbyterian-Serpent! Have you the Impudence to appear before me after all your Disobedience? Surrender immediately all your Liberties and Properties into my Hands, or I will cut you to Pieces.”

You get a sense of the polemical use of “Presbyterian.” A “Presbyterian” was a rebel, a monarchomach, anti-Tory, a “republican,” an aspirant oligarch, and an establishmentarian. James Madison suspected them of the latter, and he had spent some time around Presbyterians at Princeton. Above all other sects, the Presbyterians exhibited ambition to “dictate in matters of Religion.” Perhaps, they were just motivated by fear of Episcopacy, but either way… The whole rebellion against Britain had been laid at their feet. What would prevent them from doing it again?

All this and more was swirling around. To think it had no effect on the Presbyterian synod that produced the revisions to the Confession is ludicrous. That said revisions signal an agreement and compliance with the new constitutional order of the time is inescapable. Indeed, as Garris points out,

“[T]he 1788 revisions to the Confession represent a consensus response to the American context, which included allegations that Presbyterians were seeking a national establishment… Such criticisms were known to the Synod of New York and Philadelphia, which in 1783 issued a statement to calm the fears of Christians from other denominations:

“It having been represented to Synod, that the Presbyterian Church suffers greatly, in the opinion of other denominations, from an apprehension, that they hold intolerant principles. –– The Synod do solemnly & publicly declare, that they ever have, & still do renounce and abhor the principles of intolerance; & we do believe that every peaceable member of civil society ought to be protected in the full & free exercise of their religion.”

The Synod in 1783 wanted to counter the allegations from other denominations that Presbyterians were “intolerant” of other Protestants.”

The point of all this is to suggest that the revisions were strategic, driven by necessity, not the result of some massive doctrinal shift. Indeed, the textual change itself suggests no such massive shift, only moderation according to the circumstances.