“No King but King Jesus:” Religion in the American Revolution

On a Sunday in September 1775, a group of soldiers gathered around a tomb in Newburyport, Massachusetts. The tomb was not empty, but still, the men came seeking power from what lay within. Beneath Old South Church, in the dim crypt where George Whitefield had been interred five years earlier, an unlikely band stood in solemn awe: Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Daniel Morgan, and others bound for war. We can only guess their motives, but it was likely a mixture of reverence and curiosity, or perhaps a desperate need for spiritual strength before the peril ahead. Within days, they would begin a brutal and ill-fated march to Quebec. But in that moment, they turned to the remains of a revivalist, hoping that some trace of his power might accompany them into the wilderness.

After the sermon, in which the Reverend Samuel Spring preached from Exodus 33:15 applying Moses’ plea for God’s presence to the army’s northward campaign, the officers asked to see Whitefield’s tomb. The sexton fetched the keys and led them into the crypt. When the vault was opened, one recalled, “the body had nearly all returned to dust.” Yet Whitefield’s clerical collar and wristbands remained astonishingly intact. These garments were cut into fragments and handed out to the officers like relics. His tomb became a site of pilgrimage, his clothing transformed into talismans, and his memory conscripted into the cause of war.¹

This scene may strike us as macabre, yet it was only one of many that reveal how deeply religion coursed through the American Revolution. To be sure, it would be a mistake to treat the War of Independence as a war of religion; but it would be equally mistaken to minimize the role that faith played in shaping colonial frustrations with parliament and King George III, and in infusing the conflict with deeper meaning. From pulpits and campfires, on the home front and in the heat of battle, colonists on every side invoked religion to make sense of their cause. ² Some turned to Scripture, insisting that God had ordained the king and that to resist him was to resist God (Romans. 13:1–2). Others drew upon the same Bible to argue that obedience was due only to just rulers, and that Paul’s exhortation to “stand fast…in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Galatians. 5:1) demanded resistance to tyranny in the name of both Christian faith and American freedom.³ Still others, nurtured on works like John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563), interpreted their own sacrifices through the lens of the martyrs of the early church and the English Reformation under Queen “Bloody Mary.”⁴ Many, from George Washington down to ordinary soldiers, discerned in the war the guiding hand of Providence, convinced that victories at Trenton and Saratoga bore witness to divine favor.⁵

A Sea of Faiths

This diversity of expression reflected the wider spectrum of religious life in Revolutionary America. Some colonists spoke openly about their faith, while others were more guarded, weighing carefully when and where to display their convictions. Still others were Christian more by cultural inheritance than by personal devotion. Scholars continue to debate the extent of church membership, but the best estimates place it at 30–40 percent in 1776, with weekly attendance lower still (perhaps only one in five).⁶ Although the colonies were home to a wide variety of faiths — Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Catholics, Jews, Deists, alongside indigenous African religious traditions and Islam among enslaved and free blacks, and the long-standing traditions of Native Americans — the colonial culture was nevertheless overwhelmingly Christian, and specifically Protestant. ⁷

Christianity shaped the names parents gave their children, the rhythm of the week, the rituals of birth and death, and even the layout of towns. Sunday was observed as the Lord’s Day, when commerce ceased, families came together, and worship services stretched long into the afternoon. The meetinghouse, especially in New England, served both as a place of worship and as a civic center, where sermons mingled religious conviction with political instruction. Public life was punctuated by religious festivals and fast days, proclaimed in response to droughts, military victories, or other extraordinary events, and every November colonists marked “Pope’s Day,” an anti-Catholic celebration of bonfires, effigies, and parades.⁸

The Great Awakening of the 1740s pushed this culture of faith to new heights, as itinerant preachers like George Whitefield drew enormous crowds with his dramatic sermons. So many flocked to hear him that contemporaries described clogged roads filled with riders rushing to catch a glimpse, making Whitefield America’s first true celebrity.⁹ These revivals shattered the old parish system and broke down the authority of the established churches, encouraging ordinary men and women to challenge traditional structures of power. Many historians contend that this new spirit of lay participation and resistance laid crucial cultural groundwork for the American Revolution. ¹⁰

At the heart of this religious world stood the Bible (almost universally the King James Version), which served as the central cultural text of colonial America, shaping law, politics, education, worship, and even the cadence of everyday speech. It ordered the rhythms of daily practice and the structures of public order, functioning simultaneously as household treasure, schoolbook, devotional guide, legal reference, and political authority. Bibles were among the most prized possessions, often preserved across generations with family genealogies inscribed within. Psalters and catechisms served as primers for teaching children to read, ensuring that literacy itself was bound up with scriptural instruction. The New England Primer, the first American schoolbook, reinforced this pattern by combining alphabet lessons with biblical verses, prayers, and catechism, so that learning to read was inseparable from learning the faith. Even the physical landscape bore a biblical imprint. Towns such as Providence, Salem, and New Haven proclaimed ideals of divine care, peace, and covenantal refuge, while others, like Bethlehem, Canaan, Goshen, Shiloh, Zion, Hebron, and Jericho mapped the sacred geography of Israel onto the New World.¹¹

Simply put, religion saturated colonial America. Whether they were devout or not, colonists lived in a world where Christianity was inescapable.

Fighting a Holy War

Given how deeply Christian norms permeated British America, it is hardly surprising that, as the Imperial Crisis unfolded, colonists drew on religious language and imagery to voice their discontent with Parliament. After the Stamp Act of 1765 and again during the crisis over the Intolerable Acts in 1774, ministers compared Britain to Pharaoh enslaving Israel. They urged Americans to see themselves as God’s chosen people on an exodus toward liberty. In Philadelphia in 1766, as the Stamp Act controversy reached its height, some Presbyterians even declared they would have “No King but King Jesus,” a cry that rattled the city’s stamp distributor and evoked the specter of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth.¹²

The Quebec Act of 1774, which allowed Catholic worship and the establishment of a bishop in Canada, triggered a wave of Protestant outrage. Newspapers like the Pennsylvania Journal warned that “the pope, the devil, and all their emissaries” were now allied with London, and that Catholic armies were being prepared to crush Boston. Pastor Joseph Lyman told his Massachusetts congregation that the Quebec Act was a bid to “set up Popery and arbitrary power.” At the same time, Baptist leader Isaac Backus declared that King George III had violated his coronation oath in signing it. Across the colonies, ministers and congregations feared that Britain aimed to impose a Catholic hierarchy upon Protestant America. Such alarms also drew upon earlier controversies over the prospect of an American episcopate. Since the 1740s, dissenters had warned that the Crown might impose a bishop upon the colonies, a step they viewed as inseparable from political tyranny and “Popish” corruption. The fear of a bishop arriving from London became a potent symbol of imperial overreach, uniting Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists in opposition, even as many Anglicans supported the idea. Indeed, while nearly all Reformed clergy rallied to the patriot cause, Anglican ministers were divided, with some denouncing rebellion as sin and others joining the Revolution as chaplains and preachers of liberty. In that spirit, the Suffolk Resolves, later endorsed by the Continental Congress, insisted that “as men and Protestant Christians” Americans must resist Britain for the safety of their faith and liberty.¹³

When fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord, patriot ministers declared that the colonies had no choice but to defend their liberties by arms. Baptist David Jones insisted in “Defensive War in a Just Cause Sinless” (1775) that to fight for “liberties and properties” was a Christian duty, while Presbyterian John Carmichael argued in A Self-Defensive War Lawful (1775) that self-preservation made resistance unavoidable. In Boston, John Lathrop preached that to resist rulers who “leap the bounds” of their lawful authority was obedience to God. Such voices from religious leaders framed the conflict not as rebellion but as a righteous act of self-defense sanctified by scripture, tradition, and reason. ¹⁴ Yet the clergy did not limit their engagement to pulpit and pamphlet. Hundreds entered the conflict directly as chaplains in the Continental Army, ministering to soldiers in camps, officiating at burials, sustaining morale, and, in some cases, even taking up arms. In this way, the pulpit and the battlefield were fused, and the clergy emerged as both spiritual and material participants in the struggle for independence.¹⁵

Throughout the Continental Congress, religion was never far from either rhetoric or ritual. From Jacob Duché’s opening prayer in September 1774 to repeated calls for days of fasting, repentance, and thanksgiving, delegates framed their work in explicitly theological terms. Liberty was invoked not only as a natural right but as a sacred trust, entrusted to them by “the Supreme Judge of the world.” John Witherspoon, the only active minister in the Congress, insisted that resistance to tyranny was both rational and scriptural, while Thomas Paine’s Common Sense harnessed biblical passages to rally support against monarchy.¹⁶ When Jefferson and the drafting committee shaped the Declaration of Independence, they wove these themes together, deliberately appealing to a Creator, Providence, and divine judgment. By presenting independence as a sacred cause, undertaken “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence,” the delegates bound together evangelical Christians, Presbyterians, Anglicans, and even Enlightenment Deists. It cast the Revolution as a moral and spiritual struggle as much as a political one.¹⁷

Roman Catholic and Jewish Patriots

Yet the Revolution was not solely a Protestant struggle. Roman Catholics and Jews, though small minorities, also committed themselves to both Independence and Loyalism. For Catholics (long targets of prejudice), the crisis opened new paths to civic inclusion, especially in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Many rallied to the Patriot cause, with Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, standing as a symbol of loyalty to republican ideals. Carroll and his cousin, Jesuit priest John Carroll, argued that Catholics could be trusted citizens precisely because they rejected papal interference in civil affairs. At the same time, other Catholics (particularly in Philadelphia and the Mohawk Valley) remained loyal to the Crown out of religious traditionalism, deference to papal and episcopal calls for obedience, economic connections to Britain, or lingering resentment of patriot anti-Catholicism. Yet as Catholic support for Independence grew and Catholic France entered the war as an indispensable ally, the Continental Congress gradually softened its anti-Catholic rhetoric and came to view Catholics as essential partners in the cause.¹⁸

Jews, even fewer in number, likewise figured in the Patriot cause. They served in militias and the Continental Army, like Abraham Solomon, who signed the muster roll at Bunker Hill in Hebrew, and Charleston’s “Jew Company” drew heavily from Jewish volunteers. Gershom Seixas of New York’s Shearith Israel turned his synagogue into a patriot space and carried its Torah scrolls into exile rather than worship under British rule. In Philadelphia, Mikveh Israel became a national hub for patriot Jews, adopting a congregational “constitution” in 1782 modeled on revolutionary ideals. Others contributed financially, most notably Haym Salomon, who worked with Robert Morris to secure funds for the Continental Army and the French. ¹⁹ By the early republic, both Catholics and Jews could point to their bloodshed and service rendered in 1776 as proof of their rightful place as equal citizens.

The Faith of Loyalists

But Loyalists also invoked the Almighty, both in defense of the Crown and on the battlefield. Anglican clergymen reminded their congregations of the biblical command to honor the King and submit to governing authorities, citing Romans 13, 1 Peter 2, and Jesus’s words to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” They also pointed to Proverbs 24:21 and the stories of rebels like Absalom and Korah, warning that God had always judged those who rose against his appointed rulers. For devout loyalists, patriot appeals to scripture were not acts of fidelity but attempts to sanctify sedition. The Maryland priest Jonathan Boucher, in his famous 1775 sermon “On Civil Liberty, Passive Obedience, and Nonresistance,” declared that true liberty meant freedom from sin, not freedom from government, and warned that to resist authority was to defy God’s will (preaching with pistols at hand as hostile patriots gathered outside his church). Charles Inglis, rector of Trinity Church in New York, preached to loyalist militiamen in 1777 that they were fighting “the Cause of Truth against Falsehood — of Loyalty against Rebellion — of legal Government against Usurpation — of Constitutional Freedom against Tyranny,” and he condemned the patriots for “turning Faith into Faction, and the Gospel of Peace into an Engine of War and Sedition.”

Other loyalist writers, including Thomas Bradbury Chandler and Daniel Leonard, denounced rebellion as not merely unlawful but as a grievous sin against divine and civil order, second only to blasphemy itself. Loyalist clergy styled themselves heirs of the English Royalists of the Civil War, defenders of an older Anglican-Protestant tradition of order, obedience, and non-resistance. In their view, patriot appeals to John Locke and Whig contract theory represented a novel and dangerous departure from this settled inheritance. On the battlefield, like their patriot counterparts, loyalist chaplains prayed for God’s protection over their troops, but they reminded soldiers that their first duty was obedience to the king. For black loyalists such as the Baptist preacher David George, who fled bondage and later organized churches from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone, the British cause also bore a providential character, promising freedom alongside fidelity to divine order. Thus, loyalist preachers and writers cast the Revolution not as a contest of policy but as a spiritual struggle, insisting that obedience to the king was fidelity to God and that rebellion imperiled both the state and the soul.²⁰

Pacifism and Religion

Despite the Revolution’s popular memory, many colonists resisted taking up arms, and religion shaped their refusal. Samson Occom, the Mohegan Presbyterian minister, embodied this tension, blending evangelical zeal with critiques of war and oppression to offer an Indigenous Christian voice that complicated the Revolution’s martial spirit. Likewise, Quakers, Mennonites, Brethren, and Moravians all appealed to Scripture to defend pacifism, citing Jesus’ commands to “love your enemies” and “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:44) and Paul’s reminder that Christians “wrestle not against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12). In 1775 Mennonites and Brethren in Pennsylvania petitioned the legislature to exempt them from military service, promising instead to “feed the hungry and give the thirsty drink.” They grounded their plea in Christ’s command to “render unto Caesar” (Mark 12:17) and Paul’s call to submit to governing authorities (Romans 13:1). Quakers in Massachusetts, some jailed for refusing to hire substitutes, denounced the Revolution as an “Unnatural War” against Christ’s teachings. Philadelphia Quaker reformer Anthony Benezet gave the most forceful defense of pacifism, publishing pamphlets that bombarded readers with verses such as “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9) and “From whence come wars and fightings among you?” (James 4:1). Moravian communities likewise sought exemption from combat so they could continue their missionary and communal life. Pacifists often endured fines, imprisonment, and even confiscation of property, but they held that loyalty to the “God of Love” outweighed loyalty to king or congress.²¹

A Sacred Cause

The Revolution, then, was never just about taxes or trade. It became a struggle to discern God’s purposes amid upheaval, as Americans looked to Scripture, tradition, and Providence to guide them. Catholics, Jews, and Protestants alike joined in a civil spirituality that framed their choices — whether as a holy fight for liberty, a sinful rebellion against divine order, or a call to peace amid violence. In sermons that thundered from pulpits, in songs sung around hearths and camps, in fasts that humbled whole communities, and in festivals that rejoiced in victories, the Revolution was constantly bathed in religious meaning. Though Americans were divided in their theology and their loyalties, most believed they were caught up in a sacred drama, in which the destiny of their nation and their souls was at stake.

¹ Joel Tyler Headley, The Chaplains and Clergy of the Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner, 1864), 92–93. Also see Jamie L. Brummitt, Protestant Relics in Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2025), 127–129.

² Mark A. Noll, Christians in the American Revolution, 2nd ed. (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2006); Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 13–24, 152–177, 224–230.

³ James P. Byrd, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

⁴ John Fanestil, One Life to Give: Martyrdom and the Making of the American Revolution (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2021).

⁵ John F. Berens, Providence and Patriotism in Early America, 1640–1815 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978).

⁶ For the most recent data on church membership and attendance in colonial British America, see Lyman Stone, Promise and Peril: The History of American Religiosity and Its Recent Decline (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 2020), 10–14, 29–32. Religious adherence on the eve of independence has long been debated, in part because historians define “church membership” so differently and draw on different types of evidence. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, relying on denominational rolls, argued that only about 17 percent of Americans belonged to a church in 1776, making the Revolution the low point of American religiosity. By contrast, Patricia Bonomi and Peter Eisenstadt, drawing on parish records and congregational surveys, contended that closer to half of all free families were affiliated with a church by the 1770s. Stone has sought to reconcile these divergent estimates by combining denominational statistics, baptismal records, and demographic data, concluding that actual adherence likely fell between these extremes.

⁷ For broad surveys of denominational development and religious diversity in colonial America, see Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), 9–74; William Pencak, Jews & Gentiles in Early America, 1654-1800 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2005); Jon Butler, New World Faiths: Religion in Colonial America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). On Native American religion during the colonial period, see Daniel K. Richter, Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 22–25, 29–32; On religious practices among free and enslaved black Americans, see Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial America, 1619–1776 (Lanham, Maryland: Rowan &; Littlefield, 2005), 49–53.

⁸ On the role of religion in colonial public and private life, see Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America, updated ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). On anti-Catholicism in colonial and revolutionary America, see Maura Jane Farrelly, Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Francis D. Cogliano, No King, No Popery: Anti-Catholicism in Revolutionary New England (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1995).

⁹ For detailed studies of George Whitefield’s career and his rise as colonial America’s first transatlantic celebrity, see Thomas S. Kidd,  George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2014); Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1991).

¹⁰ On the First Great Awakening and its impact on colonial religious life, see Douglas L. Winiarski, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2017); and Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2008). On the Awakening’s political and cultural consequences as they relate to the American Revolution, see Daniel N. Gullotta, “The Great Awakening and the American Revolution,” Journal of the American Revolution (2017): 51–65; Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 11–36; and Harry S. Stout, “Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 34, no. 4 (1977): 519–541.

¹¹ For more on the Bible as the central cultural text of colonial America, see Robert E. Brown, “The Bible in the Seventeenth Century,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America, ed. Paul C. Gutjahr (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 79–95; Jan Stievermann, “Biblical Interpretation in Eighteenth-Century America,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America, ed. Paul C. Gutjahr (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 96–114. On the Bible’s role in colonial British American life, see Mark A. Noll, In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492–1783 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). On the Bible and literacy, catechisms, and devotional practice, see Daniel L. Dreisbach, Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990), 21–70.

¹² Kidd, God of Liberty, 11–15, 25, 32–35, 101–102; Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution, rev. ed. (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 52.

¹³ On the role of anti-Catholicism in fueling the Imperial Crisis and shaping revolutionary rhetoric, see Katherine Carté, Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021), 83–125; Evan Haefeli, “Protestant Empire?: Anti-Popery and British American Patriotism, 1558–1776,” in Against Popery: Britain, Empire, and Anti-Catholicism, ed. Evan Haefeli (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2020), 93–124; Kidd, God of Liberty, 34, 40, 66–68, 79, 88; Ruth H. Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought, 1756–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

¹⁴ For treatments of how American clergy defended political resistance and legitimated revolution, see Gary L.Steward, Justifying Revolution: The American Clergy’s Argument for Political Resistance, 1750–1776 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021); James Byrd, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); J. C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty 1660–1832 Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World, 1660–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

¹⁵ On chaplains and their significance in the Revolutionary struggle, see Spencer W. McBride, Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2017); Jack Darrell Crowder, Chaplains of the Revolutionary War: Black Robed American Warriors (Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 2017); Kidd, God of Liberty, 115–130.

¹⁶ On Thomas Paine’s usage of the Bible in Common Sense, see Noll, In the Beginning Was the Word, 307–315; Byrd, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War, 1–4, 16, 46, 66, 71, 110.

¹⁷ On the religious influences shaping the Declaration of Independence, as well as the religious tensions in it, see Rick Fairbanks, “The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God: The Role of Theological Claims in the Argument of the Declaration of Independence,”  Journal of Law and Religion 11, no. 2 (1994): 551–589; Derek H. Davis, Religion and the Continental Congress, 1774–1789: Contributions to Original Intent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 95–116; Derek H. Davis, “Religious Dimensions of the Declaration of Independence: Fact and Fiction,” Journal of Church and State 36, no. 3 (1994): 469–482.

¹⁸ For studies of Roman Catholic life in colonial America and Catholic participation in and against the American Revolution, see Michael D. Breidenbach, Our Dear-Bought Liberty: Catholics and Religious Toleration in Early America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2021); Maura Jane Farrelly, Papist Patriots: The Making of an American Catholic Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Bradley J. Birzer, American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2010); Martin I. J. Griffin, “Catholic Loyalists of the Revolution,” American Catholic Historical Researches 6, no. 2 (1889): 77–88.

¹⁹ On Jews and the American Revolution, see Adam Jortner, A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024); Pencak, Jews & Gentiles in Early America; Fritz Hirschfeld, George Washington and the Jews (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005); Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Impact of the American Revolution on American Jews,” Modern Judaism 1, no. 2 (1981): 149–60.

²⁰ On the religious case for Loyalism in the American Revolution, see S. Scott Rohrer, The Folly of Revolution: Thomas Bradbury Chandler and the Loyalist Mind in a Democratic Age (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022); Gregg L. Frazer, God against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy’s Case against the American Revolution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2018); Byrd, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War, 116–119, 126–128.

²¹ For the role of pacifist religious groups in the American Revolution, see Brendan McConville, The Brethren: A Story of Faith and Conspiracy in Revolutionary America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021); John R. Weinlick, “The Moravians and the American Revolution: An Overview,” Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society 23, no. 1 (1977): 1–16; Richard K. MacMaster, Mennonites in the American Revolution (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1976); Peter Brock, Pacifism in the United States: From the Colonial Era to the First World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 183-284.

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