America’s Black Robe Regiment Part 1

For our first two centuries, Americans recognized and appreciated the indispensable role of ministers of the Gospel in securing both our civil and religious liberties. But in recent years, American culture has sequestered and sidelined her pastors. The universal church and her leaders were pushed out of the public square and told to stay in their own lane.

America owes much to the fact that historically, the church has done just the opposite. The following articles examine some of the ways in which the people of God and the pulpits were instrumental in securing freedom for this country making America the standard for liberty around the World.

Part 1 Colonial Clergy

Clergy Establish American Colonies

The early settlers who arrived in Virginia beginning in 1606 included ministers such as Revs. Robert Hunt, Richard Buck, William Mease, Alexander Whitaker, and William Wickham. In 1619 these and others helped form America’s first representative government: the Virginia House of Burgesses, with its members elected from among the people.¹ That legislature met in the Jamestown church and was opened with prayer by Rev. Bucke; the elected legislators then sat in the church choir loft to conduct legislative business.² As Bishop Galloway later observed:

The first movement toward democracy in America was inaugurated in the house of God and with the blessing of the minister of God.³

In 1620, the Pilgrims began to establish their colony in Plymouth. Their pastor, John Robinson, charged them to elect civil leaders who would not only seek the “common good,” but who would also eliminate special privileges and status between governors and the governed,⁴ a radical departure from the practice in the rest of the world at that time. The Pilgrims eagerly took that message to heart, organizing a representative government and holding annual elections.⁵ By 1636, they had also enacted a citizens’ Bill of Rights—America’s first.⁶

In 1630, the Puritans founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and under the leadership of their ministers, they, too, established representative government with annual elections.⁷ By 1641, they also had established a Bill of Rights (the “Body of Liberties”), a document of individual rights drafted by Rev. Nathaniel Ward.⁸

Seeking freedom of conscience, Rev. Roger Williams left the Massachusetts Bay Colony and established one farther south, the Rhode Island Colony. Its representative form of government⁹ ensured that “the sovereign power of all civil authority is founded in the consent of the people.”¹⁰

The same year, Rev. Thomas Hooker (along with Revs. Samuel Stone, John Davenport, and Theophilus Eaton) founded Connecticut. They not only established an elective form of government,¹¹ but in a 1638 sermon based on Deuteronomy 1:13 and Exodus 18:21, Rev. Hooker explained the three Biblical principles that had guided the plan of government in Connecticut:

1. The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God’s own allowance.
2. The privilege of election… belongs to the people…
3. They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates [i.e., the people], it is in their power also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place.¹²

Colonial Charters & Constitutions

From Rev. Hooker’s teachings and leadership sprang the “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut,” America’s first written constitution (and the direct antecedent of the federal Constitution).¹³ While it was America’s first written constitution, it was certainly not America’s first written document of governance. Such written documents had been the norm for every colony founded by biblically minded Christians. After all, that was the Scriptural model. God gave Moses a fixed written law to govern the nation of Israel (c.f., Deuteronomy 17:18-20, 31:24-26, II Chronicles 34:15-21, etc.). Renowned Cornell University professor Clinton Rossiter observed:

The Bible gave a healthy spur to the belief in a written constitution. The Mosaic Code, too, was a higher law that men could live by, and appeal to, against the decrees and whims of ordinary men.¹⁴

Written documents of governance placed direct limitations on government and gave citizens maximum protection against the rapacious whims of all-too-human leaders. This practice of providing written documents was the practice of American ministers before the Rev. Hooker’s constitution of 1638 and continued long after.

For example, New Jersey was chartered in 1676 and then divided into two religious sub-colonies: Puritan East Jersey and Quaker West Jersey. Each maintained a representative government with annual elections.¹⁵ Minister William Penn wrote the governing document for West Jersey. He explained:

We lay a foundation for after ages to understand their liberty… that they may not be brought in bondage but by their own consent, for we put the power in the people.¹⁶

Under Penn’s document:

Legislation was vested in a single assembly elected by all the inhabitants; the elections were to be by secret ballot; the principle of “No taxation without representation” was clearly asserted; freedom of conscience, trial by jury, and immunity from arrest without warrant were guaranteed.¹⁷

In 1681, Penn wrote the Frame of Government for Pennsylvania. It, too, established annual elections and provided numerous guarantees for citizen rights.¹⁸

Ministers Help Secure Liberties

There are many additional examples, but it is indisputable that ministers played a critical role in instituting and securing America’s most significant civil rights and freedoms. Founding Father Noah Webster explained:

The learned clergy . . . had great influence in founding the first genuine republican governments ever formed and which, with all the faults and defects of the men and their laws, were the best republican governments on earth. At this moment, the people of this country are indebted chiefly to their institutions for the rights and privileges which are enjoyed.¹⁹

Daniel Webster (the great “Defender of the Constitution”) agreed:

To the free and universal reading of the Bible in that age, men were much indebted for right views of civil liberty.²⁰

Because Christian ministers established in America freedoms and opportunities not generally available even in the mother country of Great Britain, they were also at the forefront of resisting encroachments on the civil and religious liberties that they had helped secure.

For example, when crown-appointed Governor Edmund Andros tried to seize the charters of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, revoke their representative governments, and force the establishment of the British Anglican Church upon them, opposition to Andros’ plan was led by Revs. Samuel Willard, Increase Mather, and especially Rev. John Wise.²¹ Governor Andros even imprisoned Rev. Wise for his resistance. Nevertheless, he remained an unflinching voice for freedom, penning two works in 1710 and 1717 forcefully asserting that democracy was God’s ordained government in both Church and State.²² An historian has since titled him “The Founder of American Democracy.”²³

And when Governor Berkley refused to recognize Virginia’s self-government, Quaker minister William Edmundson and Rev. Thomas Harrison led the opposition.²⁴ When Governor Thomas Hutchinson ignored the elected Massachusetts legislature, Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper led the opposition.²⁵

Reverend Wise, Founder of American Democracy

In the future, Christian ministers would provide courageous leadership throughout the War for Independence, but not before they were largely responsible for laying its intellectual foundation. To understand more of their influence, consider Rev. John Wise.

As early as 1687, the Rev. Wise was already teaching that “taxation without representation is tyranny,”²⁶ the “consent of the governed” was the foundation of government,²⁷ and that “every man must be acknowledged equal to every man.”²⁸ In 1772 with the Revolution on the horizon, the Sons of Liberty reprinted two of Wise’s works to refresh Americans’ understanding of the core Biblical principles of government.²⁹ (The first printing sold so fast that a second reprint was quickly issued.³⁰) Significantly, many of the specific points made by Wise in those works subsequently appeared four years later in the very language of the Declaration of Independence. Historian Benjamin Morris observed in 1864:

Some of the most glittering sentences in the immortal Declaration of Independence are almost literal quotations from this [1772 reprinted] essay of John Wise. . . . It was used as a political textbook in the great struggle for freedom.³¹

Twentieth century historian, Duke University’s Alice Baldwin concurred:

There is not a right asserted in the Declaration of Independence which had not been discussed by the New England clergy before 1763.³²

And President Calvin Coolidge in a 1926 speech in Philadelphia on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, similarly acknowledged:

The thoughts [in the Declaration] can very largely be traced back to what John Wise was writing in 1710.³³

It was Christian ministers such as John Wise (and scores like him) who, through their writings, Election Sermons, and other sermons on the Biblical principles of government, laid the intellectual basis for American Independence.

Continue The Series

Discover how American ministers not only laid the foundation for American Independence, but also put their lives on the line to secure it. (Part 2)
Discover how American pastors invested in their communities and the nation through involvement in government and education. (Part 3)