By Dave Kopel Liberty magazine, October 2008, pp. 27-31. More by
Kopel on Protestantism. Many modern libertarians assume that
religion and liberty are necessarily in opposition. Many modern
people in general assume that religion and revolution are
opposed. At times, of course, they are, but the history of the
American Revolution indicates that more care is required in
making this kind of judgment. In the American colonies, the
hotbed of revolution was New England, where the people were
mainly Congregationalists—descendants of the Calvinist English
Puritans. The Presbyterians, a Calvinist sect which originated
in Scotland, were spread all of the colonies, and the network of
Presbyterian ministers provided links among them. The
Congregationalist and Presbyterian ministers played an
indispensible role in inciting the American Revolution. To
understand why they were so comfortable with revolution, it
helps to look at the origins of Calvinist resistance theory,
from its tentative beginnings with Calvin himself, to