From Confession To Constitution: How The Presbyterians Shaped The First Admendment

By Leah Farish

The history of the Presbyterian church in America and that of the founding of the United States exhibit many parallels that converge in the wording of the First Amendment. In this article, we uncover some contributions of the Calvinist faith to our nation’s origins and specifically to the Religion Clauses in the Constitution: the Presbyterian document called the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) resonates in the First Amendment. We show that the denomination’s structure, the “biography” of the Presbyterians on this soil, and their worldview all profoundly influenced church/state relations and have application today.

The Marriage Of True Minds

Protestant views, “particularly...the ideas associated with covenant theology,” [1] decisively affected our earliest American decisions. [2] A giant who straddled both the Presbyterian and secular world, John Witherspoon, was a leader in both spheres. As president of the Presbyterian bastion that is now Princeton, Witherspoon was accused of promoting revolt from Britain, “poisoning the minds” of its students.” [3] One of Witherspoon’s pupils was James Madison, who came to the college to learn from him personally. Witherspoon and other Reformed thinkers influenced many of the Founders—and vice versa. The rector of Trinity Church in New York said in 1776, “I do not know one Presbyterian minister, nor have I been able, after strict inquiry, to hear of any who did not by preaching and every effort in their power promote all the measures of the Continental Congress, however extravagant.” [4] One expert on Presbyterian history says, “Claims have sometimes been made that the United States Constitution was deliberately patterned after the Presbyterian form of government. It is nearer the truth to say that resemblances existing between the two are due to the fact that the principles of representative government upon which both rest were the common heritage of the men and women of the Revolutionary period, many of whom came of Calvinistic stock and most of whom had been influenced by the political thought of the Puritan revolution.” [5] Montesquieu observed, “Calvin, having to do with people who lived under republican governments, or with obscure citizens in monarchies, might very well avoid establishing dignities and preferments” [6] in favor of a representative democracy.

“Suffice it to say that two-thirds of our Revolutionary forefathers were men trained in the school of Calvin, the majority of them being Presbyterians, and that without exception the ministers of the Synod were devoted to the patriotic cause,” [7] summarizes another scholar. President John Adams said of the Calvinist Ponet’s “Short Treatise on Political Power” that it held “all the essential principles of liberty, which were afterward dilated on by Sidney and Locke.” German historian Leopold von Ranke has said, “John Calvin was the virtual founder of America.” [8]

The confession that had most united Reformed thinkers since 1648 is, of course, the Westminster Confession of Faith. It was written along with proof texts and catechisms, the most common form being called “the Shorter Catechism of the Assembly of Divines” (for older children) by a mixture of Presbyterians (the largest group), Episcopalians, Independents, and Erastians (those who believed the state should handle all matters of discipline and enforcement of church law). Coincidentally, perhaps, the next year, in 1649, a British Council generated a document called the Agreement of the People, which scholar Bernard Schwartz has hailed as “a sketch of a republican Constitution, the first written organic statement in Anglo-American history...[that] suggestively anticipated many of the fundamentals of later American Constitutions.” [9] Although aborted by Cromwell, it was “a landmark in the history of constitutional theory”—it protected the “exercise of religion” (a phrase we find in the First Amendment) and provided that Parliament should build churches and support “divines,” but treat Jews, “heathens, and dissenters...gently.” [10] A year after the appearance of the religious manifesto, the proclamation of civil liberties emerged—just as happened in the United States.

In the New World, the Confession was adopted with slight variations by the Congregationalist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches, and the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut designated it as state doctrine. [11] The Philadelphia Baptist Conference of 1688 and the Congregationalists employed creeds such as the Savoy Declaration that were similar to the Confession, and on the topic of church and state, only minor differences appear. [12] By the mid-1770s, most of the colonial population lived under either an Anglican or a Congregational state establishment. [13] Anglicans/Episcopalians remained at odds with Reformed thought over many liturgical issues, but they were certainly familiar with the precepts of the Catechisms, taught in the New England Primer, and echoed in the streets: “Presbys, Presbys, dinna bend (do not kneel), Preach all day on man’s chief end.” [14] Some of them appreciatively read Reformed scholars and devotional writers such as Francis Turretin, Cambridge’s John Edwards, [15] and the American Francis Alison. [16] Althusius and Ponet were well known, though often controversial, throughout Europe, and among learned Americans. [17] Some Anglicans were in fact Calvinists, according to Patricia Bonomi. [18] And immigration brought more of the faithful between 1766 and 1776: “Anglican sympathizers estimated that most new American residents were Presbyterians.” [19]

Presbyterians—Political Animals

The Presbyterian church is one structured in “presbyteries,” or multi-church bodies of representatives elected by majority votes of individual congregations. This structure thus differs both from the hierarchical organization of Catholic, Orthodox, Episcopal/Anglican, and Methodist denominations and from the fiercely autonomous local bodies preferred in Congregational, Quaker, some Baptist, and Church of Christ denominations. As legal analyst Marci Hamilton has observed, “The Presbyterian representative system mediates between [potentially] unfettered, tyrannical rule and anarchical democracy....” [20] The Presbyterians cannot take full credit for the concept, however: John Witherspoon commended to the Continental Congress “the Example of the Greeks, the Dutch, and the Swiss…[and urged that they] form a Confederation of States each of which must have a separate Government.” [21]

Reformed bodies have sometimes met in regional bodies called synods, and in their largest body called a general assembly. From time to time it has been noted that this “federal” type of representation resembles the structure that was chosen for the American system of government, with counties and states operating like local churches in electing leaders to represent them in Congress/assemblies. [22] Hamilton concludes: “It was a Presbyterian-style representative system the Framers settled upon.... The Constitution echoes...a Calvinist-inspired republican form of government....” [23] This form was not just a structural preference for the Presbyterians; it derived from their theology. The biblical concept that “in Adam all die” and that Christ is our “federal head” through His covenant with His people is one of the cherished themes of the Reformation. [24]

Presbyterians were active in statecraft for generations before the U.S. Constitution was written. As the Revolution created a vacuum of authority, the Presbyterians’ love of order and suspicion of auto­cracy [25] propelled them to seek influence rather than power. They were vigorously involved in drafting organizing documents, such as state constitutions, [26] gaining “practical political insights” along the way. [27] One of their ranks even expounded the merits of a bicameral legislature. [28] They were indeed convinced of their duty to have a political impact. “Those who subscribed to Calvin’s view of the sovereignty of God ‘deduced the moral obligation of all men to society, and a consequent devotion to productivity and public service as part of the service of God.’” [29]

This brand of Christianity was adept at influencing others even when their religious distinctives were not shared. Benjamin Rush said of John Witherspoon, “His sermons are loaded with good sense,” and that he had heard few preachers equal to him. [30] The Confession never uses the word “Presbyterian,” and never speaks of a certain named group as the church. It is a broad statement created for the promotion of unity, not uniformity. The church was, however, cohesive. “Presbyterians,” says scholar James McAllister, “more than the members of any other religious body, were in touch with each other from Maine to Georgia.... The minister of the Presbyterian church came to the Carolinas and Virginia from Philadelphia or New York, and kept in touch with representatives of the church in every part of the colonies.” [31] This gave them a broad database of information and sensitivities to many regional interests.

It is probable that the public had a warm spot in its heart for the Presbyterian championing of the Revolution, which had been an undeniable sacrifice. At the Declaration of Independence, “the whole face of matters was changed, and ministers of the Gospel had to make their election.... Then it was that the first body of clergy of any denomination in America that openly recognized that act, and thereby identified themselves with the cause of freedom and independence, was the comparatively numerous and very influential Presbytery of Hanover in Virginia.” [32] One Episcopalian averred, “A Presbyterian royalist was a thing unheard of. The debt of gratitude which independent America owes to the dissenting clergy and laity never can be paid.” [33]

Indeed, Presbyterians may have been sympathetic figures in Revolutionary times. Although the royal forces were not known for torching colonial houses of worship, Presbyterians were occasionally victimized. On August 10, 1779, the New Hampshire Gazette reported that the British “manifest peculiar malice against the Presbyterian churches, having, during this month, burnt three in New York State, and two in Connecticut.” [34] Perhaps this was partly attributable to Princeton acting as a “seminary of sedition.” [35]

Presbyterian preaching had such attraction for the Founders that during the Constitutional Convention the place chosen for the July 4 oration was “the Reformed Calvinistic Church” in Philadelphia, where Rev. William Rogers prayed in turn for “that august body, assembled in this city, who compose our federal convention.” [36] One scholar has said, “Calvinist theory has never limited itself solely to organization of the church structure. It is the mark of the Calvinist and especially Presbyterian theory that it has political application. The colonial era was the high point of the spread of the precepts of American Presbyterianism through church as well as secular government.” [37] As one Presbyterian historical center recalls, “[Presbyterians in America] did not want to form a denomination that was governed from the top down but from the bottom up. [38] The 1787 Synod’s Minutes include this impassioned declaration against slavery, for example: “It is…the duty of those who maintain the rights of humanity and who acknowledge and teach the obligations of Christianity, to use such means as are in their power to extend the blessings of equal freedom to every part of the human race.” [39]

Biography Of A Denomination—And Of A Nation

Thus we see that the Calvinist temperament and philosophy have been widely noted for their contributions to the plan of our government. But the very experience of the Presbyterians on this soil—their narrative—also explains why government and church history are so intimately connected in this nation. The experience of the Presbyterian church in America in many ways prefigures and finally merges with that of its national home. And the decisions about organizational structure and the relation of church to state intersected for them, just as it did for all the framers of the Bill of Rights.

The Reformed church began its American presence much as secular England did: with land grants and emissaries that did not entertain notions of separate national entities. [40] Likewise, the preliminary regional entities harbored the “most affectionate Desires of Peace and Union” typical of lonely outposts for each other. [41] But with time came difficulty. One of the early Minutes of the New York Synod poignantly complains to its mother church in Scotland much as the colonies expressed dismay at neglect—and oppression—from their king. It reads, “The young Daughter of the Church of Scotland, helpless, exposed, in this foreign Land cries to her tender and powerful Mother for Relief.” [42] So, too, increased the secular demands by the colonists upon the King. Meanwhile on these shores, ill feelings, possibly competitive in nature, bubbled up between synods, the New York Synod insisting that “Members being aggrieved & obtaining no Satisfying Redress, even in the highest Judicature, have a Right to protest & require the Same to be recorded.” [43] They had long criticized the Philadelphia Synod for setting up a rival synod in New York, saying it looked “like erecting Altar against Altar.” [44] When the New York and Philadelphia Synods finally did unite (trusting themselves only to an eponymous title, rather like “the United States of America”), they made sure to guarantee that all matters would be decided by a “Major Vote and...no member is liable to prosecution on Account of his protesting...for the exoneration of his or their Conscience before God.” [45]

The Minutes show us that it was equally important to these men to figure out how to protect dissent as to organize. In 1766, a vocal minority threatened to withdraw, and the majority feared that the consequence of letting them “violently break off, is to prefer ye pri­vate Rights of Individuals to the public Rights, and will destroy all gov­erning Authority in the Body.” [46] The problems seemed intractable. In 1770, “Doctor Witherspoon reports that the Committee appointed at our last Synod to converse with the Seceders in order to an union betwixt them and us by reason of several disappointments have not met.” [47]

One might expect the European “mother” to resolve these problems, but it had been losing credibility with the Americans, who, in 1773, voted to quit recognizing ministers or even candidates from overseas because of the “Degeneracy” of the British and Irish clergy. [48] Noticeable here is the parallel to the scorn colonists overall felt about European morals. [49] Finally, the denomination resolved to re-form itself as a separate American body.

Around 1785, church leaders “began to formulate plans for a national, representative body that would serve as an effective capstone of the church’s administrative hierarchical structure.... Some ministers were highly suspicious of a national body that, in their view, would amass power and thereby usurp the authority of the presbyteries.” [50] In 1786, the Synod selected a committee to “draft a plan of government” [51] and took up the task of amending the parts of the Westminster Confession that dealt with “the civil magistrate,” since they were no longer subsisting under a monarchy.

The procedural similarities and the contemporaneousness with the U.S. Constitutional drafting here become pronounced; the chart below illustrates the parallels. In 1787, the churchmen formulated a new denominational government that shifted focus from the centralized General Assembly (as in Scotland) and instead emphasized the authority of their four synods and their local churches. The General Assembly was still acknowledged for its importance in “promoting the general welfare” (another phrase that found its way into the Constitution) of the church as a whole. At that gathering, the Presbyterians ultimately drafted what they called a “constitution,” which was sent around to the presbyteries “for consideration” [52]—a constitution which was to be unalterable except for amendment proposed by two thirds of the presbyteries. This was then sent to the presbyteries for ratification, and the united New York and Philadelphia Synod held its final meeting in May 1788, at which time it ordered a printing of its new version of the Westminster Confession of Faith. The American government founders drafted the Constitution in 1787, and the ratification process by the states began; nine were needed for the nation to form as planned.

Presbyterians	U.S. Government
May 1787, Philadelphia—Drafted Constitution and sent to churches for ratification	May-September 1787, Philadelphia—Drafted Constitution and sent to states for ratification
May 1788, Philadelphia— Last meeting of Synod adopted ratified Constitution, including new sections on church/state relations	May 1788, Philadelphia—Constitutional Convention reconvened; 9th state ratified Constitution in June; First Amendment argued mostly in August and September and is adopted in September
May 1789, Philadelphia— First General Assembly convened	March, 1789, New York—First U.S. Congress convened

As we see above, the first U.S. Congress under the new Constitution met in March of 1789, and the first General Assembly, “catching this spirit…of nationalism,” met two months later. [53] The Reverend John Rodgers, an intimate friend and advisor to George Washington, was Moderator, [54] and one of its first acts was to appoint Witherspoon to write a cordial letter from the Synod to the new president [of the Congress] George Washington, with whom he had a friendship. [55] Perhaps it was the First Congress who caught their spirit—one of Congress’s first acts was to write to President Washington requesting that he set a day of public thanksgiving and prayer. [56]

New Creed For A New Continent

Anyone who shared the Presbyterian corporate life outlined above would have a sense of déjà vu as the states threw off British rule, struggled for cohesion while balancing local concerns, and wrote their own Constitution (the secular term for our governing document until the Presbyterians used “constitution” was “articles of confederation”). Perhaps Edward L. Parker’s 1851 account [57] exaggerates in saying that when “the sages of America came to settle the forms of our government, they did but copy into every constitution the simple element of representative republicanism, as found in the Presbyterian system.” But we are safe in averring that through the deliberate, learned, passionate, principled, and entirely voluntary creative task of adapting their church to American life, Presbyterians had felt their way through many of the dilemmas their political counterparts faced, and possessed experience and analysis to bring to the process that other Christians—Baptists, Catholics, and Congregationalists, for example—did not. It is natural that the Presbyterians and their creedal document shaped not just the structure of secular power in the new country but the relation of church to state as well.

The churchmen needed to change their Confession to reflect and address the new nation. Just as the colonies had started their Revolution with Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence that set forth self-evident truths, the Synod formulated “Preliminary Principles” by May of 1788 that started thus: “Jesus Christ, upon whose shoulders the government rests, whose name is called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace; of the increase of whose government and peace there shall be no end; who sits upon the throne of David, and upon His kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and justice.” [58] It is interesting that even though Reformed men were leaders in overturning the monarchy on these shores, they still delighted in calling Jesus their King, and do so even now. One Revolutionary cried, “What Britons! Because we won’t worship your idol King, will you prevent us from worshipping the ‘King of Kings,’ Heaven forbid!... We have too long imitated your excesses.” [59] This is consistent with the Declaration of Independence in that the Declaration does not complain of the concept of monarchy so much as of the abusive arbitrariness of the King and the lack of compliance with his own moral and legal standards. In the Declaration, Jefferson attacks the King as “unworthy” because of his “character.” God and Jesus do not labor under the same defects as ordinary humans do.

In a later section the Principles declare: “God alone is Lord of the conscience; and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are in anything contrary to his word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship: Therefore, they consider the rights of private judgment, in all matters that respect religion, as universal, and unalienable: they do not even wish to see any religious constitution aided by the civil power, further than may be necessary for protection and security, and, at the same time, equal and common to all others.” [60] These words echo Jefferson’s as written in the Jefferson Memorial: “Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens...are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion.... No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.” [61] Another scholar notes that Madisonian terms like “Governor of the Universe,” “Supreme Lawgiver,” and “Universal Sovereign” all “occurred in Protestant tracts…and conformed precisely to the unique Calvinistic view of God’s sovereignty.” [62]

The passages in the original Westminster Confession itself that dealt with church/state relations were in Section 23—“Of Civil Magistrates.”

Compare the European paragraph 3 with its new American counterpart:

Original

American

The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven [1]: yet he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses of worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed....

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments [1]; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven [2]; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith [3]. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest in such a manner, that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging, every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger [4]. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth, should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof [emphasis ours], among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief [5]. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretence of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance.*

* Lee Irons, ed. “The American Revision of the Westminster Standards.” The Upper Register, 2002. http://www.upper-register.com/theonomy/1788_revision_parallel.html (accessed October 3, 2005).

One of the first changes we see is that the old Confession speaks of “The civil magistrate” and the new, “Civil magistrates.” The plural form showed an understanding of power as something newly diffused through society. The next change is from the old duty of the government to preserve unity and pure doctrine and to suppress heresy and blasphemy, to a duty not to interfere in the least in matters of faith—a tectonic shift. The new wording goes on to warn that “no law of any commonwealth” should intrude upon religion or “the due exercise thereof.”

Note the similarity to the language of the First Amendment, which provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” It is very close to the wording that the state of New Hampshire suggested for a draft of the Bill of Rights, and which Princeton graduate Samuel Livermore of New Hampshire proposed later the same summer at the ratifying Convention: “Congress shall make no laws touching religion, or infringing the rights of conscience.’ [63] Fisher Ames, tutored for advanced studies by a staunch Calvinist, then suggested similar wording that was readily adopted by the House and Senate for the First Amendment.

Debate had flurried over whether states or only the federal government should be restricted concerning religion. (Who knew what the Synod had meant by “any commonwealth”? The Hanover Presbytery had declared, “[W]e embrace [the Declaration of Independence]...as the Magna Charta of our commonwealth....”]) [64] That Presbytery was located in the state of Virginia, which called itself a commonwealth. The definition was unclear enough to leave Reformed Christian Congressmen on both sides of the First Amendment issue. Half a dozen of the states supported churches with their taxes, and 11 of 13 had religious tests for office. The legislators could not disestablish their own constituencies’ churches and expect to be re-elected.

The Calvinist philosophical background of many of the Framers doesn’t guide us to a single conclusion either; one author says that the founders were comfortable with “localism” in church/state decisions because of their “optimism” about the new republic. [65] Marc Arkin says that it was “pessimism” and a “dark view of human nature” that made them give latitude to the states in handling religion. [66] Regardless, for whatever reasons, state religious establishments remained into the nineteenth century and voluntarily disestablished as each state felt so inclined.

Civil Magistrates In 2010

The tensions between the idealistic vision for a federal government complete with a generous Bill of Rights on the one hand, and a pragmatic protectiveness of local decisions about matters like religion and education on the other hand, were evident in many of the Calvinist framers and persist to this day. The transformation of the Confession for the New World suggests where to strike some of the difficult balances.

The Presbyterians’ emphasis on the contributions of religious people to public service as well as discourse hints at possibilities of government support to faith-based educational and humanitarian work where non-faith-based action can compete for that support as well. Vouchers or tuition tax credits that flow toward private religious school tuition, and relief from tax support of objectionable programs, should be allowed, as contemplated by the Presbyterian leadership in the 1780s: “Every Citizen should have a liberty annually to direct his assessed proportion to such Community as he chuses.” [67]

Granted, no American’s conscience was meant by the Confession to be violated by government; but to assess from afar what constitutes “subtle coercion” or “endorsement” in the context of a given community is a dubious task. What the revised Confession and the early acts of the Founders suggest is that the no-establishment issue is a state or local concern. This is certainly not to recommend that states should be allowed to establish religions. “Enclaves,” whether of sharia law, pseudo-Mormon cult life, or other alien jurisprudences or public policies, are extremes we must avoid in this nation. And state constitutions and laws, with their own limits on established religions, stand ready to defend against such pretenders. But some diversity of fact-sensitive judicial and legislative opinions as to what constitutes an establishment of religion are more true to logic and national heritage than the judge-made ”incorporation” of the federal establishment clause to the states. “The aim of the Constitution,” said one British historian, “seems to be not so much to attain great common ends...as to avert the evils...from any government strong enough to threaten the pre-existing communities of the individual citizen.” [68] Justice Joseph Story wrote that on account of the First Amendment, “[T]he whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the State governments to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice and the State constitutions.” [69] Not until the twentieth century was the Establishment Clause thought to apply to the states, contrary to the intent of the Founders and of the Reconstruction Congress. [70]

Some shifts in the church/state balance suggested by the Confession include:

• Development of the jurisprudence of state constitutions’ religion clauses. State constitutions may permissibly give greater rights (such as free exercise rights) than the federal does. Many states’ so-called “Blaine Amendments” forbidding that any public funds benefit religious institutions are relics of nineteenth-century anti-Catholic politics and should be discarded by their state legislatures as discriminatory.
• Greater vigilance over the portion of the Lemon v. Kurtzman-and-progeny test of state activity that forbids inhibiting religion, which is usually ignored in favor of hypersensitivity to the portion that forbids advancing religion.
• Stronger emphasis on the First Amendment free-speech right to hear and receive information, including religious views, which would lead to greater access by students to religious viewpoints in public schools and libraries.
• More rigorous identification of “hecklers’ vetoes”— silencing and chilling of legitimate religious expression by the protest of one intolerant hearer.
• Re-examination of the incorporation of the Establishment Clause to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment, in view of the lack of original intent to do so. A resolution by Congress about its intent regarding the Fourteenth Amendment, or a Constitutional Amendment to clarify this, is desirable.

These approaches would better reflect the original understanding of the religion clauses than the current hostility to religion often seen today.

Notes

1. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 32; see also Paul Carlson, Our Presbyterian Heritage (Elgin, IL: David Cook Publishing Company, 1973), 13. I thank Rachael Monnin for her research assistance.
2. Lefferts Loetscher, A Brief History of the Presbyterians (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1989), 72.
3. Mark A. Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 1768-1822 (Vancouver, B.C.: Regent College Publishers, 2004), 84.
4. Lefferts Loetscher, 75.
5. Ibid., 77-78.
6. Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, vol. 2 (New York: Colonial Press, 1899), 31.
7. Frederick W. Loetscher, “The 200th Anniversary of the Adopting Act,” Address, 1929 General Assembly (St. Louis: Presbyterian Church in America Historical Center), n.p. http://www.pcahistory.org/documents/subscription/200anniv.html (accessed October 12, 2008).
8. Carlson, 19.
9. Bernard Schwartz, The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History, vol. 1 (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1971), 22.
10. Ibid., The Bill of Rights, 1:22 and see 24, 28, 121-22.
11. Derek Davis, Religion and the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 28.
12. David W. Hall, The Genevan Reformation and the American Founding (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), 413-14.
13. Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society and Politics in Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 32.
14. Davis, Religion and the Continental Congress, 28.
15. Bruce Mullin, Professor of History and World Mission and Professor of Modern Anglican Studies and the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, email message to author, September 15, 2005.
16. John Woolverton, Editor of Anglican and Episcopal History, the quarterly journal of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church, e-mail message to author, September 19, 2005.
17. James L. McAllister, Jr., “Francis Alison and John Witherspoon: Political Philosophers and Revolutionaries,” Journal of Presbyterian History 54 (1976): 35, quoted in Marci A. Hamilton, “The Reverend John Witherspoon and the Constitutional Convention,” in Stephen M. Feldman, ed., Law and Religion: A Critical Anthology (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 55.
18. David Van Drunen, “The Two Kingdoms Doctrine and the Relation of Church and State in the Early Reformed Tradition,” Journal of Church and State 49, 4 (2007), 747-48.
19. Bonomi, 32.
20. Hall, 266.
21. Hamilton in Feldman, 59; John Laursen, “Althusius, Federalism, and the Christian Social Contract,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA, August 28, 2002. http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p64932_index.html (accessed December 3, 2008).
22. Randall Balmer and John R. Fitzmier, The Presbyterians: Denominations in America (Praeger Publishing, 1994), 9.
23. Hamilton in Feldman, 62-63.
24. Lefferts Loetscher, 72.
25. Balmer and Fitzmier, 38; McAllister, 43.
26. Howard Miller, “The Grammar of Liberty” Journal of Presbyterian History 54, 1 (Spring 1976): 142, 159.
27. Hamilton in Feldman, 63.
28. McAllister, 43.
29. Hall, 121, quoting from Herbert D. Foster, Collected Papers (privately printed, 1929), 115.
30. Lyman H. Butterfield, ed. John Witherspoon Comes to America (Princeton: Princeton University Library, 1953), 321.
31. McAllister, 29.
32. Robert Baird, Religion in America (New York: Harper, 1844), 106.
33. Presbyterian Historical Society, Witherspoon Memorial: Presbyterianism and the Revolution (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Historical Society, 2008), 5.
34. James Smylie, “Presbyterians and the American Revolution,” Journal Presbyterian History 52, 4 (Winter 1974), 412 (quoting Moore, Diary, II, 192).
35. James H. Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, U.S. Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel03.html (accessed August 21, 2005). See Hall, 388.
36. Benjamin Franklin Morris, Christian Life and Character of Civil Institutions of the United States: Developed in the Official and Historical Annals of the Republic (Philadelphia: G. W. Childs, 1864), 254. Cf. Lefferts Loetscher, 75.
37. Hamilton in Feldman, 60.
38. Presbyterian Church in America Historical Center Online, “Preliminary Principles” study. http://www.pcahistory.org/documents/principles.html (accessed October 19, 2009).
39. Guy S. Klett, ed., Presbyterian Church in America Historical Center Online. “Synod Minutes”: 627, http://www.pcahistory.org/documents/principles.html (accessed October 19, 2009).
40. Ibid., 281.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., 329.
43. Ibid., 303.
44. Ibid., 330-31.
45. Ibid., 340-41.
46. Ibid., 417.
47. Ibid., 474.
48. Ibid., 516.
49. Bailyn, 132-33, 159, 180, 186.
50. Balmer and Fitzmier, 38.
51. Ibid., 38.
52. Klett, (1787), 628; (1788), 626.
53. Lefferts Loetscher, A Brief History of the Presbyterians, 75.
54. Benjamin Franklin Morris, The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (Philadelphia: George W. Cilds, 1864), 530.
55. Jeffry Morrison, John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 12.
56. Annals of Congress 1, 949; Senate Journal, 1st Cong., 1st sess., 25 September 1789, 90.
57. Hall, 395.
58. Presbyterian Church in America Administrative Committee, Preface to the Book of Church Order, Section 1, “The King and head of the Church,” 88, http://www.pcaac.org/2009%20Reprint%20for%20web%20rev%208-24-09.pdf.
59. James Smylie, “Presbyterians and the American Revolution,” Journal Presbyterian History 52, 4 (Winter 1974) 412.
60. Presbyterian Church of America Historical Center, “Preliminary Principles,” Introductory Statement. http://www.pcahistory.org/documents/principles.html (October 20, 2009).
61. Monticello Research and Collections, “Quotations on the Jefferson Memorial, Panel Two.” http://www.monticello.org/reports/quotes/memorial.html (accessed October 21, 2009).
62. Hall, 375. For further examples and discussion, see Leah Farish, “The First Amendment’s Religion Clauses: the Calvinist document that interprets them both,” Journal of Religion and Society, 12 (2010), forthcoming.
63. Annals of Congress 1, 949; Senate Journal, 1st Cong., 1st sess., 25 September 1789, 759.
64. Robert Baird, Religion in America (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1844), 106-107.
65. Akhil Amar, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 776-77.
66. Marc M. Arkin, “Regionalism and the Religion Clauses: The Contribution of Fisher Ames,” Buffalo Law Review 47 (Spring 1999): 763-828.
67. Thomas E. Buckley, “Church-State Settlement in Virginia: The Presbyterian Contribution,” Journal of Presbyterian History, Presbyterians and the American Revolution: An Interpretive Account 54, 1 (Spring 1976): 113.
68. Lord James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (1888), quoted in E. L. Hebden Taylor, “The Rock from Which America was Hewn,” The Journal of Christian Reconstruction 3 (Summer 1976): 181.
69. Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, 1833), quoted in The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 5, Amendment I, Document 69, 2000, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions69.html (September 29, 2005).
70. Daniel L. Dreisbach, Real Threat and Mere Shadow: Religious Liberty and the First Amendment (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1987), 82, 90-92.