Just War, Holy War, and Millennialism in Revolutionary America

M [ ILLENNIALISM and the attendant understanding of America as a New Israel have become prominent topics in the recent historiography of the American Revolution. Historians have long been aware of the strong support that New England clergymen lent to the political and military struggle for Independence. In I 966 Alan Heimert, in Religion and the American Mind, presented a new understanding of the sources and rationale for that support. Finding among the proponents of New Light evangelicalism the staunchest spokesmen for American autonomy, Heimert argued that the Great Awakening had begun a process by which the Puritans' errand into the wilderness was recast in a millennial framework that accommodated the thrust toward Independence. Influenced by Heimert, many students of the eighteenth century have argued that the New Englanders' conviction that they were a latter-day Israel with a central role in salvation history produced a postmillennialism that spread throughout the colonies.' It has come to be generally agreed that by the I770s religious leaders were incorporating political developments into their salvation history and urging their people to regard the Revolution as a holy war between the forces of Christ and Antichrist to bring about the millennium. The thesis of this article is that the large majority of ministers who published sermons during the Revolutionary era justified the war effort by a rationale that was more political than religious. They believed that the war deserved the support of true Protestants, and they assumed responsi

Ancient history · Archaeology · Economic history · Political science · Spanish Civil War · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History

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