Christianity Today Book Review: These Pastors Loved America So Much, They Wanted It to Stay British, by John D. Wilsey (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Author, American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea) (reviewing Gregg L. Frazer (The Master's University), God Against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy's Case against the American Revolution):
When a person dies, that person is usually forgotten as time advances. The Book of Exodus opens with the memorable saying: “Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph” (1:8, ESV). Let’s face it, when most of us are laid low by the sweeping of the dread sickle, the memory of our lives will be swallowed up by oblivion. The psalmist reminds us of this reality: “As for man, his days are like grass. … The wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more” (103:15–16, ESV).
The same can be true for ideas. Many ideas die with those who strove, fought, and suffered for them. This is usually the case for the people and ideas that were on the losing side of some great controversy. If later generations do not forget them outright, they at least tend to remember them as inevitable losers, in part because the victors have reduced them to caricature.
Both dynamics seem to be true of the individuals who remained loyal to the British crown during the American Revolution. The Loyalists and their ideas are unknown to many, if not most Americans. And if they are known, they are too often remembered in simplified and distorted ways.
The living owe something worthier to the dead than forgetfulness or, worse, their misconstruing or mockery. We owe them our empathy and even, as historian Beth Barton Schweiger has recently argued, our love. And loving the dead means laboring to tell the truth about them in all its complexity. In God against the Revolution, historian Gregg L. Frazer considers the Loyalist clergy and their arguments against American rebellion and independence, giving their viewpoint a careful, comprehensive, and fair treatment. …
Frazer concludes that there were about 182 Loyalist clergymen during the Revolutionary period. Of these, he focuses on the dozen or so who were the most influential. The most prominent were Jonathan Boucher (Anglican), Thomas Bradbury Chandler (Anglican), Charles Inglis (Anglican), Samuel Seabury (Anglican), and John Joachim Zubly (Presbyterian). References to these figures appear consistently throughout the book. While Frazer mainly relies on the writings of only a select few pastors, he ably sorts out their distinctive biblical, rational, legal, and practical appeals. …
The Bible formed the cohesive foundation for the Loyalists’ argument, and their commitment to a plain reading of Scripture stands in stark contrast to the often allegorical and typological interpretive methods favored by the Patriots. Sermons by Chandler, Zubly, and George Mickeljohn demonstrate that, for the Loyalists, Romans 13 is descriptive rather than aspirational, in contrast to Mayhew’s 1750 perspective. And the Loyalists’ plain approach to Scripture also deviates sharply from that of patriot figures like Samuel Sherwood, Abraham Keteltas, and Jacob Cushing, who identified the 13 colonies with ancient Israel as the chosen people of God. The Loyalist clergy were deeply concerned that the Bible was being abused by Patriots for political ends. They worried that Patriot pastors were subjecting the text of the Bible to reason, rather than reason to the Bible. …
. Even if, in the end, we take our stand with the Patriots of 1776, the Loyalists put forward an essential caution. They compel us to reflect on whether the war was truly just, and they draw our attention toward its considerable costs in human life. We should take the Loyalists seriously, and we should thank Frazer for rescuing them from oblivion.
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