Black Robed Regiment

28 Beacon St

King George branded rebellious "nonconformist" clergymen or “Political Pastors” as the "Black Regiment" (mocking them for the black robes they wore). This was a group of patriots who were all “robed” or ordained clergymen. These were local church pastors and preachers who were some of the smartest men in the land, bred in the best American Universities, including Yale, Harvard, and Brown. Many were also lawyers or held doctorates. These men led by action as some served in Congress, presided over influential schools, or led troops in the war. During the Revolutionary War these clergymen united around two causes: evangelism (enlarging God’s Kingdom) and freedom (liberation from England’s heavy rule). There were far more than mentioned in both this list and following summary.

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Jonathan Mayhew – MA Congregational Pastor, “Herald of the Revolution”

Peter Muhlenberg – VA Lutheran Minister and Anglican Priest, Brigadier General

John Witherspoon, NJ Presbyterian Minister, President of Princeton

John Peter Muhlenberg, PA Lutheran Minister, Revolutionary War General

Frederick A Muhlenberg, PA Lutheran Minister, 1st Speaker of the House

Abiel Foster, NH Puritan Pastor, NH and US Congressman

Benjamin Contee, MD Episcopalian Priest, Rev War Officer and Congressman

Abraham Baldwin, CT Congregationalist Minister, President pro tempore of the US Senate and Pres. of Univ. of Georgia

Paine Wingate, NH Congregationalist Pastor, Senator, and Congressman

Joseph Montgomery, PA Presbyterian Minister, Judge and Congressman

James Manning, RI Baptist Minister, Pres. Of Brown University

John J Zubly, GA Presbyterian Pastor, Continental Congressman

Many more (but not all) are described below.

Christian ministers both established and defended freedoms and opportunities not generally available in Great Britain. For example, when British Gov. Edmund Andros tried to seize the charters of RI, CT, and MA, revoke their representative governments, and force the establishment of the Anglican Church upon them, opposition to Andros’ plan was led by the Revs. Samuel Willard, Increase Mather, and especially the Rev. John Wise. When Gov. Thomas Hutchinson ignored the elected Mass legislature, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper led the opposition.

American resistance to the Stamp Act became so widespread because the “clergy fanned the fire of resistance to the Stamp Act into a strong flame.”, starting with Revs. Andrew Eliot, Charles Chauncey, Samuel Cooper, Jonathan Mayhew, and George Whitefield. In 1770 after the “Boston Massacre,” ministers boldly denounced that act including Revs. John Lathrop, Charles Chauncey, and Samuel Cooke. As tensions with the British continued to grow, ministers such as the Rev. George Whitefield and the Rev. Timothy Dwight became some of the earliest leaders to advocate America’s separation from Great Britain.

Christian ministers did not just teach the principles that led to independence, they also participated on the battlefield to secure that independence. One of the numerous examples is the Rev. Jonas Clark.

Paul Revere set off on his famous ride to the home of the Rev. Clark in Lexington where Patriot leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams were lodging (as they often did). After learning of the approaching British forces, Hancock and Adams inquired whether his people were ready to fight. Clark unhesitatingly replied, “I have trained them for this very hour!” When the original alarm sounded in Lexington, citizens gathered at the town green, and according to early historian Joel Headley: “There they found their pastor the [Rev. Clark] who had arrived before them. The roll was called and a hundred and fifty answered to their names . . . . The church, the pastor, and his congregation thus standing together in the dim light [awaiting the Redcoats], while the stars looked tranquilly down from the sky above them.”

That was a false alarm. At the next alarm, they reassembled, and afterwards 18 Americans lay on Lexington Green; 7 were dead – all from the Rev. Clark’s church. Headley concluded, “The teachings of the pulpit of Lexington caused the first blow to be struck for American Independence,” and historian James Adams added that “the patriotic preaching of the Reverend Jonas Clark primed those guns.”

When the British troops left Lexington, they fought at Concord Bridge and headed back to Boston, encountering increasing American resistance on their return. Many who awaited the British along the road were local pastors (such as the Rev. Phillips Payson and the Rev. Benjamin Balch) who had heard of the attack, taken up their own arms, and rallied their congregations to meet the returning British. As word of the attack spread wider, pastors from other areas also responded.

For example, when word reached VT, the Rev. David Avery promptly gathered 20 men and marched toward Boston recruiting additional troops along the way, and the Rev. Stephen Farrar of NH led 97 of his parishioners to Boston. The ranks of resistance to the British swelled through the efforts of Christian ministers who “were far more effective than army recruiters in rounding up citizen-soldiers.”

Weeks later when the Americans fought the British at Bunker Hill, American ministers again delved headlong into the fray. For example, when the Rev. David Grosvenor heard that the battle had commenced, he leapt from his pulpit – rifle in hand – and promptly marched to the scene of action, as did the Rev. Jonathan French.

This pattern was common through the Revolution – as when the Rev. Thomas Reed marched to the defense of Philadelphia against British General Howe; the Rev. John Steele led American forces in attacking the British; the Rev. Isaac Lewis helped lead the resistance to the British landing at Norwalk, CT; the Rev. Joseph Willard raised two full companies and then marched with them to battle; the Rev. James Latta, joined his parishioners as a common soldier; and the Rev. William Graham joined the military as a rifleman to encourage others in his parish to do the same. Many others served the army as Chaplains.

There are many additional examples. Because of their strong leadership, ministers were often targeted by the British. For example, Rev Naphtali Daggett, President of Yale fired by his lonesome on hundreds of British Soldiers. He was captured and tortured, never recovering from those wounds. Rev James Caldwell offered similar resistance in NJ and so the British burned his church, then he and his family were murdered.

The British abused, killed, or imprisoned many other clergymen, who often suffered harsher treatment and more severe penalties than did ordinary imprisoned soldiers. As a result, of the 19 church buildings in New York City, 10 were destroyed by the British. This pattern was repeated throughout many other parts of the country including Virginia.

In 1687, the Rev. John Wise was already teaching that “taxation without representation is tyranny,” the “consent of the governed” was the foundation of government, and that “every man must be acknowledged equal to every man.” In 1772 with the Revolution on the horizon, two of Wise’s works were reprinted by leading patriots and the Sons of Liberty to refresh America’s understanding of the core Biblical principles of government. As historian Benjamin Morris affirmed in 1864: “[S]ome of the most glittering sentences in the immortal Declaration of Independence are almost literal quotations from this [1772 reprinted] essay of John Wise. . . . It was used as a political text-book in the great struggle for freedom.” President Calvin Coolidge similarly acknowledged: “The thoughts [in the Declaration] can very largely be traced back to what John Wise was writing in 1710.”

John Adams rejoiced that “the pulpits have thundered” and specifically identified several ministers as being among the “characters the most conspicuous, the most ardent, and influential” in the “awakening and a revival of American principles and feelings” that led to American independence. It was Christian ministers who laid the intellectual basis for American Independence. It is strange to think that the rights listed in the Declaration of Independence were nothing more than a listing of sermon topics that had been preached from the pulpit in the two decades leading up to the American Revolution, but such was the case.

See “RELIGION and the Revolutionary War” for how the colonies were so religiously and politically divided and why it was unusual for them to unify to fight Britain.

What fruitage did these spiritual leaders produce? Mt 7:15-20. Consider John 17:16 vs Acts 20:29, 30. What would Jesus have said seeing this?

-Source Links-

*** http://nationalblackroberegiment.com/history-of-the-black-robe-regiment/ ***

https://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/24635

https://rickchromey.com/the-black-robe-regiment-how-a-group-of-patriots-founded-america/