Revolution and Religious Liberty

In recent years American historians have seriously challenged the early twentieth-century liberal interpretation of the American Revolution. It now seems probable that the revolution was "an elitist movement with only a modest amount of explicit striving among either the people at large or any of the dominant political factions for a wider diffusion of political power." One of the persistent themes of the liberal view has been that of the striving for and winning of religious liberty. This topic easily lent itself to the epic of the "common man" combining against the aristocracy to force substantial social and political changes.Even the terms "dissenters" and "establishment" carried the emotional impact inherent in the interpretation and made the whole process seem self-evident. Just as the reexamination of the American Revolution as a whole has made possible a more plausible understanding of the events in America after the revolution, a reassessment of the events leading to disestablishment and the legal adoption of a policy of religious liberty could lead to a fresh understanding of the role of religion in American national life

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• The Growth of the American Republic 1000 to 1942

  Jesse H Shera, Samuel Eliot Morison et al.•The Mississippi Valley Historical…•1943

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• The Revolution of American Conservatism

  Heinz Dieterich, H R Dieterich et al.•The Western Political Quarterly•1966

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• Colonial Virginia as First Amendment Matrix

  M K Singleton•Journal of Church and State•1966

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