The Protestant Interest and American Presbyterianism
In my last two essays, I argued that the original and American versions of chapter 23 of the Westminster Confession are not contradictory. In fact, they’re quite similar, especially when compared to modern Protestant takes on political theology. However, these explorations raise an important question: Why did the American Presbyterians revise chapter 23?
To my knowledge, we do not have documentation of the debates in 1788 that led the Americans to revise chapter 23. However, we do have a note from nearly 60 years prior, when the Synod of Philadelphia adopted the Confession. The presbyters adopted the Confession with the qualification that they did so
excepting only some Clauses in the 20 and 23 Chapters, concerning which Clauses, the Synod do unanimously declare, that they do not receive those Articles in any such sense as to suppose the civil Magistrate hath a controlling Power over Synods with Respect to the Exercise of their ministerial Authority; or power to persecute any for their Religion, or in any sense contrary to the Protestant succession to the Throne of Great-Britain.
We already covered the clauses from chapter 23 that these presbyters probably had in mind. But what about chapter 20? The most likely candidate is 20.4, where the original version of the Confession reads as follows:
And because the power which God hath ordained, and the liberty which Christ hath purchased, are not intended by God to destroy, but mutually to uphold and preserve one another; they who, upon pretense of Christian liberty, shall oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exercise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the ordinance of God. And for their publishing of such opinions, or maintaining of such practices, as are contrary to the light of nature, or to the known principles of Christianity, whether concerning faith, worship, or conversation; or to the power of godliness; or such erroneous opinions or practices as, either in their own nature, or in the manner of publishing or maintaining them, are destructive to the external peace and order which Christ hath established in the Church; they may lawfully be called to account, and proceeded against by the censures of the Church, and by the power of the Civil Magistrate. (emphasis added)
In short, chapter 20.4 affirms that the civil magistrate may use his power to stop erroneous opinions or practices that threaten to destroy the peace and order of the church. In 1788, the Americans removed that final clause, “and by the power of the Civil Magistrate,” along with the clauses they removed from chapter 23.3.
At this point, we must rehearse what we covered in my first essay: removal does not entail denial. By eliminating the final clause of 20.4, the Presbyterians in Philadelphia no longer required ministers to affirm the clause. However, not requiring someone to affirm the clause is much different from requiring someone to deny the clause. Put another way, if the American Presbyterians desired to deny the final clause, they could have simply added a negation: “and not by the power of the Civil Magistrate.” However, they did not add any such negation. Rather, they merely removed the affirmation. Consequently, from the perspective of confessional subscription, the final clause of 20.4 is optional. A minister in good standing is free to either affirm or deny the final clause.
This exercise brings us back to our opening question: Why did the Americans make this change? It is safe to assume that the American Presbyterians in 1788 were of the same mind as the American Presbyterians of 1729, more or less. Consequently, they probably revised chapters 20 and 23 to ensure they were not read in the wrong sense. Afterall, the Presbyterians in 1729 did not take exception to chapters 20 and 23 wholesale. Rather, they took exception to a particular interpretation of these clauses. They adopted the Confession “excepting only some Clauses in the 20 and 23 Chapters, concerning which Clauses, the Synod do unanimously declare, that they do not receive those Articles in any such sense. . .”
What “sense” of these clauses did they deny? First, they clarify that these chapters should not be read as giving the civil magistrate “controlling Power over Synods with Respect to the Exercise of their ministerial Authority.” This is not a controversial opinion. It’s the standard Reformed position. As Samuel Blair (1712–1751) put it, this statement denies “a great part of that unlawful supremacy and headship over the church, which the presbyterian church has always protested against.” The magistrate has authority circa sacra, not in sacra. He must not seek to interfere with the due exercise of ecclesiastical authority. Both the Westminster Divines and the Presbyterians in Philadelphia affirmed this point. On this point, at least, the Americans desired to clarify the classic Reformed position, not deny it.
Secondly, they clarify that these chapters should not be read as giving the magistrate “power to persecute any for their Religion.” This clause is tricky because these words mean something different for us today than what they meant for the early Americans. Today, we would take this clause as teaching liberalism–the idea that the government must not favor any of the world religions. Instead, the job of the government is to remain a neutral arbiter, creating public space open to all opinions, no matter how impious.
As we already noted, the early Americans did not share this opinion at all. They believed in Sabbath laws, blasphemy laws, and religious tests for office, limited to Christians (and often only Protestants). Many believed in state-funded churches and Protestant schools. They also desired for their magistrates to take an active role in promoting Christianity. John Witherspoon put it well in 1776: “He is the best friend to American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind.” For this reason, the American Presbyterians were pleased with George Washington. Writing to him in 1789, the General Assembly stated, “Public virtue is the most certain mean of public felicity; and religion is the surest basis of virtue. We therefore esteem it a peculiar happiness, to behold in our chief magistrate, a steady, uniform, avowed friend of the Christian religion.” In sum, they saw it as the duty of the civil magistrate to maintain the Christian piety of the people (WCF 23.2). They were no liberals.
We’ve established what the clause does not mean. But what did the American Presbyterians mean when they denied the magistrate “power to persecute any for their Religion”? First, note the word persecute. Today, we often use the word loosely, but the early Americans had a much richer conception. It might prove helpful to remember that the founding generation was highly educated. They were steeped in the great texts of the Western tradition, swimming in the stream of Aristotle’s Ethics and Thomas’s treatise on the virtues. For Aristotle and Thomas, virtue exists at the mean between two kinds of vices: vices of deficiency and vices of excess. So, for example, temperance is a virtue. Its two vices are gluttony (excess) and asceticism (deficiency). We can think about persecution along similar lines. It is a vice of excess. Under the pretext of the purity of the church, the magistrate may punish Christians because of his over-indulgent fervor for his own preferred form of worship. But excess is not the only vice to which the magistrate may fall prey. He may also fall prey to the vice of deficiency. For example, the magistrate may treat false religion with indifference, allowing impiety to take root. The virtue that sits between these two vices is prudence. A prudent magistrate favors true religion, and suppresses false religion, in such a wise and strategic manner that true Christian piety springs forth in the nation like apples on a well-tended tree. In short, when the American Presbyterians denied the power of the magistrate to persecute people, they’re denying him the right to use his official powers for the vicious treatment of true Christians. They’re not denying him the right to use his God-ordained powers virtuously–that is, with prudence and for the sake of maintaining the Christian piety of the people.
Second, note the word religion. Today, we take this word to designate the class of all world religions, but that was not typically how the early Americans used the word. Oftentimes, they used it to designate true Christian religion. Particularly in the context of the founding, it often referred to different branches of Christianity–and specifically the Protestant branches. The Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (1779–1845) makes this point in his commentary on the First Amendment. When it opens by saying “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” Story notes that this clause was not meant to make the government neutral on religious matters. The “sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state,” he says. Hence, “an attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.” Consequently, the First Amendment was not intended to “countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity.” Instead, it was designed to “exclude all rivalry among Christian sects.” In other words, when the First Amendment forbid Congress from establishing a religion, it was not denying that America was a Christian nation. Rather, it was removing the power of Congress to pick one Christian sect over another at the Federal level. “Religion” in the First Amendment, therefore, is best interpreted as “a particular sect of Christianity.”
Along similar lines, when the Presbyterians denied the magistrate “power to persecute any for their Religion,” they were denying his right to persecute people who belonged to legitimate Protestant denominations. Summarizing the meaning of the 1729 statement, Alexander Creaghead (1705–1766) says:
The Presbytery freely owns and declares there may be Protestants of other Denominations, besides the Presbyterians, sincerely, godly, true Believers in Christ, and dear to him; and we doubt not there are many such, notwithstanding they believe and maintain some Things, through human Imperfection in this present State, which are erroneous, who therefore ought not to be looked upon as Heathen Men and Publicans, but loved as the Children of God and Members of the Body of Christ, seeing they are sound in the main Essentials of Religion, and afford hopeful Evidences of sincere Piety.
In other words, “religion” referred to other Protestant denominations including those that were not Presbyterian. The line of thinking was that these denominations may be in error but they are nevertheless true Christian churches. Hence, they ought not to be persecuted as heathens. Ironically, embedded within this statement is a key assumption, namely, that if these other religious bodies were, in fact, heathen, then the magistrate would have a right to persecute them–or, as it might be better put, prudentially suppress them. In his reply to Creaghead, Samuel Blair states, “That the Magistrate has Power to punish Persons, if they will spread and teach their Heresies to the perverting of the Gospel, and poisoning the Church I do not deny.” Both Creaghead and Blair saw this duty as essential to the magistrate’s role as a “nursing father” who ought to “protect the church of our common Lord” (23.3). In short, “religion” did not refer to all world religions, atheists, heathens, or heretics. Moreover, “religious liberty” did not give freedom to all religious opinions or practices. The magistrate may justly punish them upon necessary occasion for the defense and wellbeing of the body of Christ. Rather, it referred to other Protestant Christians. Those were the people whom the magistrate ought not to persecute.
This interpretation is rendered even more plausible by the line at the end of the 1729 statement, wherein the Presbyterians deny that chapters 20 or 23 should be read as “in any sense contrary to the Protestant succession to the Throne of Great-Britain.” Samuel Blair alternatively phrases this statement as a denial that “the popish defender had a right to the throne of Great Britain.” These statements reference the Papist Act of 1715 by the British Parliament, which claimed Catholics aspired to “the destruction of this kingdom and the extirpation of the Protestant Religion” by “stirring up and supporting the late unnatural Rebellion for the dethroning and murdering his most Sacred Majesty; for setting up a Popish Pretender upon the Throne of this kingdom; for the Destruction of the Protestant Religion and the cruel murdering and massacring of its Professors.” Consequently, the act declared Catholics “enemies to His Majesty and to the present happy Establishment.” The result was the establishment of a Protestant succession to the throne of Great Britain. Whatever their thoughts about the rest of the act and its ensuing consequences, the Presbyterians of Philadelphia approved of this Protestant succession. As a result, they asserted that chapters 20 and 23 of the Confession ought not to be interpreted “in any sense contrary to the Protestant succession to the Throne of Great-Britain.” Given the English Protestant experience, they decided that Protestant people deserve a Protestant king, and that a Roman Catholic on the throne threatened the existence of Protestantism. On this point, the American Presbyterians were eager to clarify that chapters 20 and 23 did not teach otherwise.
To summarize, the Presbyterians in Philadelphia were not liberals. They did not believe that the magistrate must remain religiously neutral and maintain a public square open to all religions, regardless of whether they were true or false, godly or satanic. Much the opposite. They believed that the magistrate, especially the chief magistrate, must remain a friend to the Christian faith, promote true and undefiled religion, and bear down with the power of the sword on all kinds of immorality and impiety. Nevertheless, the magistrate must act with appropriate temperance and prudence, which means that he must not viciously attack legitimate sects of Christianity. Such actions were not only unjust. They were also counterproductive to the cause of Christ.
Although we have little documentation from the 1788 committee of Presbyterians who revised the Confession, we do know quite a lot about the religious and political principles of the time. We can arrive, therefore, at a reasonable interpretation of why the American Presbyterians adjusted the Westminster Confession. They did not repudiate its fundamental principles. As Samuel Blair put it, the Synod of Philadelphia adopted the Confession excepting some clauses “only in such a sense, which, for my part, I believe the reverend composers never intended in them.” In other words, the act of 1729 did not render null and void the political theology of the Westminster Assembly. Instead, the Americans aimed to clarify potential misreadings of the Confession that the Divines never intended. They wanted to ensure it was not seen as legitimizing either vicious attacks by the government on Protestant denominations or the instilation of a Roman Catholic monarch. To make these clarifications, they removed some clauses and added others, but they did not deny the classic Reformed political theology of the Westminster Divines.
Image: Portraits of 8 of the 13 Gunpowder Plotters (1605), Crispijn van de Passe (1564-1637). Wikimedia Commons.
