Government

The impressive pastor in the West in the mid-19th century was Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1818-1902). He had been trained at Amherst, the University of Georgia, and Columbia SC) Theological Seminary. Prior to moving to New Orleans in 1856 (until his death in 1902), Palmer had pastored in Savannah and...

Stephen Case’s 1783 “Defensive Arms Vindicated” alluded to John Knox, even citing specific page numbers. [1] In Case’s same sermon, Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex was cited twice (once with reference to Rutherford’s original Question 32 about warrant for popular revolt), as was the later Jus Populi...

Samuel Langdon (1723-1797) graduated from Harvard in 1740 (along with Samuel Adams). After serving as a chaplain and as a pastor, Langdon became Harvard’s President in 1774, two years before the Declaration. He also was a delegate to the New Hampshire state convention in 1788. His sermon, “The...

Samuel McClintock (1732-1804), a graduate of the College of New Jersey, served the Greenland, New Hampshire, Congregational church for nearly a half century. He was a chaplain in the French and Indian War and for the New Hampshire Regiment in the Revolutionary War. This sermon was preached at the...

The Rev. Simeon Howard (1733-1804; Harvard, class of 1758) succeeded the well-known patriot-preacher, Jonathan Mayhew, as Pastor of West Church (Congregationalist) in Boston. Howard delivered this sermon to the Council of Massachusetts Bay on May 31, 1780. A few months later, the Council elected...

The Rev. Samuel Cooke (Harvard, class of 1735; d. 1783) preached this sermon to Her Majesty’s Council, the militia, and the Massachusetts House of Representatives in Cambridge, MA in 1770. Among the Councillors elected at that meeting were Samuel Adams (clerk) and John Hancock, whose signature has...

Charles Chauncy (1705-1787) was one of the most influential pastors in Boston during his life. He received his theological training at Harvard and served as pastor of First Church for nearly 60 years. He wrote numerous pamphlets between 1762-1771 against the British proposal to impose a Bishop in...

An American sermon on a choice morsel from the book of Revelation . . . associating corruption with hierarchies . . . and warning the church to resist sycophantic governments in league with that . . . and, further, that sermon was not from a late 20th century evangelical pulpit but rather from a...

Not only did Calvin’s shadow continue at the founding of America, but an erudite Swiss pastor led southerners in the faith and in application of scripture to the times. John Joachim Zubly was born in St. Gall in 1724 and ministered in London and Charleston, prior to serving as the first pastor of...

Allusions to Reformation themes abounded in early American sermons. The Waldensians, the eradication of the French Huguenots, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli were all referred to in Samuel Davies’ 1756 sermon, “The Mediatorial Kingdom and Glories of Jesus Christ.” The Calvinist college at Princeton,...