Many have covered the terrain of Anglican patriots during America’s revolutionary period. For those, like me, who live in Washington, D.C., we hear these stories regularly. So many of the Founding Fathers were Anglicans, born and bred. George Washington served on the vestries of Truro parish and Fairfax parish and he contributed to the building of Christ Church, Alexandria, part of latter parish. George Mason served on the Truro vestry alongside Washington. Thomas Jefferson was nominally Anglican, despite his Sweeney Todd approach to the Bible. Hamilton is buried in the churchyard at his parish, Trinity Church, New York. Benjamin Franklin, while a freethinker in many respects, had a stellar Anglican pedigree. The first governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry, can also be included in this number.
Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 34 were Anglicans (roughly 60%). This includes some notable figures such as Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, and Franklin from Pennsylvania, Richard Henry Lee, Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, and Francis Lightfoot Lee from Virginia, William Hooper from North Carolina, and Edward Rutledge and Arthur Middleton from South Carolina among them.
During the Constitutional Convention of 1789 in Philadelphia, a who’s who of America’s founders attended Christ Church, where the convention often met for worship. There they engaged with the emerging leaders of what would become the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, including the first presiding bishop, William White. The numbers, again, speak for themselves. The convention included 27 Anglicans out of a total of 55 delegates (49%). These were predominantly lay people, leaders in their communities, yet shaped and formed by an Anglican ethos.
The question that begs attention here is this: How did that Anglican formation shape the emerging republic within a revolutionary period? Revolutions and Anglicanism do not historically go together. While Anglicanism in the colonies did not hold the hegemonic cultural, historical, and political power that it did in England, it can be argued that Anglican precedent, alongside English culture, played an impressive role in the formation of the new republic, even providing continuity beyond revolution. J.C.D. Clark in his English Society 1660-1832 rightly argues that Anglicanism and English society went hand in glove. The same cannot be said for the colonies on the whole, but the influence of church and society was still evident.
The dissonance cannot be ignored. The Anglican men and women who supported the American cause—and we should emphasize that many did not—had been formed by the prayer book with its prayers for the king. In almost every flavor of Anglicanism at the time, passive obedience and duty were highly regarded. So the dissonance between a traditional Anglican approach and revolution cannot be ignored. But neither should we ignore the continuity that can be seen post-revolution in the new republic, arguably influenced by the Anglicanism of the founders.
Economics, governance, and religion all played a role in the American Revolution. And scholar Eric Nelson in The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding rightly points out that the initial grievances of the American colonists were with Parliament and not with the King, a backlash against the claims of Parliament related to taxation. This more conservative approach to the monarchy would change, however, in part due to the influence of Thomas Paine, a Deist and stark critic of established religion.
Much has been written about the influence of English civil law and precedent seen in the thought of our founders. But what is often overlooked is the social continuity also seen in them. The 18th century in Britain and in many ways within its colonies was one with a keen appreciation for the restoration of old paths. Even the architecture of the period speaks to this inclination. And in terms of the new republic, the founders used both English precedent and ancient models of democracy in their deliberations. It can easily be called a restorationist vision, even if its application was in no way uniform.
Clark rightly describes this restorationist view. Progress and progressive were later 19th century terms used to describe a move away from the past. In the 18th century, progress as a concept would be understood as bringing the best of the past into the present. It still involved innovation, but it was a rooted innovation. For the emerging republic, continuity could be managed within a new context now separated from its historic home, even with obvious changes to the political and social landscape.
This isn’t to ignore more striking forms of innovation or populism, two movements that would define the American experience later in ways that likely surprised the founders. Like innovation, populism in various forms was not devoid of the period, but often led by conservative leaders. The Evangelical Revival, also known as the Great Awakening on the American side, was both populist in practice and conservative in thought.
The same can be said for the emerging Episcopal Church. William White’s initial 1782 plans to instigate a temporary form of presbyterian ordination (a very similar plan that Wesley carried out in 1784) ran up against this more conservative impulse in the form of Samuel Seabury and the high-church party of Connecticut. The American Episcopal vestry emerged with a unique set of powers. But the threefold ministry was retained and a revised prayer book published in the post-revolutionary period.
Governmental forms emerged with striking reliance on ancient forms, even with adaptations, such as a bicameral legislature, a judicial branch, and an executive. Without ignoring the obvious breaks with precedence, particularly the idea of an elected head of government, we can still see continuity if we look past the propaganda of later national interest in which the American patriots are the good guys and the British represent some form of tyranny. It’s obvious to the casual observer that this is simply not the case.
The American Revolution has been seen by many historians as something closer to a British civil war, and there are no clean lines in civil wars; family fights are more complex than bifurcation allows. But importantly, the family resemblance remains. Old patterns emerge even if they emerge in different ways. Continuity and revolution are not anathema to one another. But a topic that deserves more attention is the inherently conservative religious tradition that formed so many of the early patriots, instilling in them an appreciation for precedent, for tradition, that was more than mere coincidence and whose imprint can be seen in both the revolution that took place and the republic that would emerge.
Ryan N. Danker, PhD is a Guest Writer. He is director of the John Wesley Institute, Washington, DC. He previously served on the faculties of Greensboro College and Wesley Theological Seminary. His several publications includes Wesley and the Anglicans: Political Division in Early Evangelicalism (IVP Academic, 2016).
