The Reading Room - History

“I Will Shake All Nations”:
The Impact of Presbyterianism on America

Introduction • Presbyterians and Civil Liberty • Presbyterians and the American Revolution
Presbyterianism’s Continuing Impact • Sources

By: G. W. Fisher (Pastor of The Bible Presbyterian Church in Tacoma, WA)

During the anniversary of the establishment of the Presbyterian Church in America, it is both proper and prudent that we remember the profound influence Presbyterianism has had on our nation. Its effects on American society began early on in the nation’s history, and continue, we hope, down to this present hour in those Presbyterian bodies that have remained faithful to God’s Word.

Christian History Magazine ran an article several years ago, in its fiftieth issue, entitled, “Preaching the Insurrection.” Harry Stout, the author, made this observation:

Over the span of the colonial era, American ministers delivered approximately 8 million sermons, each lasting one to one-and-a-half hours. The average 70-year-old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime, totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening. This is the number of classroom hours it would take to receive ten separate undergraduate degrees in a modern university, without ever repeating a course!

Events were perceived not from the mundane, human vantage point but from God’s. The vast majority of colonists were Reformed or Calvinist[ic], to whom things were not as they might appear at ground level: all events, no matter how mundane or seemingly random, were parts of a larger pattern of meaning, part of God’s providential design. The outlines of this pattern were contained in Scripture and interpreted by discerning pastors.

Thus colonial audiences learned to perceive themselves not as a ragtag settlement of religious exiles and eccentrics but as God’s special people, planted in the American wilderness to bring light to the Old World left behind. ¹

Nowhere was this work more faithfully and regularly carried on than in the Presbyterian churches of colonial America. Presbyterian clergymen could be counted on to bring the truth to bear in the arenas of civil liberty and politics. Their involvement in these issues, and a host of others that encompassed their biblical world view (e.g., education, healthcare, and benevolences), had a long history prior to the influence of Presbyterianism in early America. It stemmed from the conviction that the Word of God requires this kind of stewardship of the believer.

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