Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 88

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

George Whitefield ( John Wollaston, 1738). Whitefield was a prominent English-Anglican cleric who became one of the best-known
preachers in Great Britain and North America in the eighteenth
century. His series of revival sermons is credited for helping spark
what became known as the Great Awakening that swept Protestant
Europe and British America, and especially the American colonies
in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American
religious and political thought.

of civil liberty and religious freedom. One of these
leaders was John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister and president of Princeton University, whose ideas
pertaining to the justification of the revolution influenced
students such as James Madison and Aaron Burr. In one
of his most famous sermons, Witherspoon noted that
“there was not a single instance in history, in which civil
liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire.”15
Another influential minister, Jonathan Mayhew, championed the cause of liberty and resistance to tyranny in
his sermons and writings. Thomas Jefferson borrowed
one of Mayhew’s most influential phrases and made it his
personal seal during the revolution: “Rebellion to tyrants
is obedience to God.”16 The banner “An Appeal to Heaven”
was thus not just a rallying cry for religious liberty but
rather an appeal to restore the right balance between the
limited power of man and the unlimited power of God.17
86

While religious principles deeply influenced the
revolution, the Founding Fathers were very careful to
keep the law of the land separate from the kingdom of
God. It was no accident that the first liberty in the Bill
of Rights is an assurance of religious liberty. The First
Amendment dictating that Congress make “no law
respecting an estab lishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof ” was meant to protect the
church from the influence of the state as much as it was
meant to protect the civil authority from the direction
of the church. As colonial leader John Wise articulated
in a 1717 sermon, the “power of churches is but a faint
resemblance of civil power,” noting that churches and
governments are engaged in different pursuits.18
Notwithstanding, the separation of church and
state articulated in the First Amendment was not an
effort to rid religion from political discourse. While
those who think the Founders intended a strict separation of religion and politics hearken to the metaphor
of a “wall of separation between church and state” used
by Thomas Jefferson, separating church and state is not
the same thing as separating religion and politics.19 The
Founders were wary of intertwining church and state
because using the state’s power to further the activities
of the church would be an improper invasion of the private sphere. In James Madison’s words, one’s religious
duties can be directed “only by reason and conviction,
not by force or violence,” thus the church should be
closely guarded from the coercive powers of the state.20
Such a separation would protect the conscience of
citizens but also guard the activities of the church from
undue influence from the state.
While the Founders were careful to separate church
and state, they recognized—and encouraged—the
interplay of religion in America’s political discourse.
Paradoxically, many of the Founders thought that by
removing the province of the church from the activities
of the state, they would actually encourage religion
because citizens would be free to choose the religion
that most appealed to them.21 Thus a free market of
religious choice was established, though the contemporary “market” was tilted toward Christianity because
of the customs and traditions within the colonies at
the time. While Congress was restricted by the First
Amendment, prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, the
states were not. In turn, many states incorporated laws
that violated the spirit of the First Amendment prior
March-April 2015  MILITARY REVIEW