June 29, 2025 – Third Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 3.21-27
Hebrews 11.23-28
Revolutionary Revelations
Third Sunday after Pentecost
This Friday July 4 will mark the beginning of a year-long celebration of the United States’ semiquincentennial, our 250th birthday. From July 4 2025 to July 4 2026 cities, towns and communities across the nation will celebrate with parades, music, displays, speeches, art shows, picnics and more. Our own 250th celebration here in Chester begins two days early, with a patriotic concert featuring the Corinthian Jazz Band this Wednesday evening at the Meetinghouse. The town’s 250th birthday committee is planning a variety of events throughout the year, because let’s face it, it’s kind of a big deal when you make it to your 250th birthday.
Fifty years ago the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of Connecticut published a slim volume titled Connecticut Congregationalism in the Revolutionary Era, written by UConn History Professor Dr. Freeman Meyer, a book that sketches the role played by Congregational clergy and congregations alike in the run-up to, and engagement in, the Revolutionary War. As Congregationalists and as American citizens, it is part of the fabric of our history, and I’d like to share a few pages of that history this morning.
The General Association of Connecticut is a voluntary union of the four earliest Congregational associations in what later came to be known as the Connecticut Conference. It consisted of churches in the Fairfield Association, Hartford North and Hartford South Associations, and the New Haven Association. (Our own Middlesex Association did not come into being until the 1780s.). Formed in 1738, General Association is the longest continually operating religious organization in the United States. At their 1774 Annual Meeting, the main topic of discussion was the recent Boston Tea Party and what were called “The Intolerable Acts” of 1774 passed by the English Parliament, acts which were intended to throttle religious freedom in the colonies. The assembled clergy voted unanimously to declare their alliance with their sister churches in Boston, and pledged, “in every way suitable to our Character and Station to use our influence on the good people of this Colony to concur in every proper measure calculated to afford relief to America in general, and the distressed town of Boston in particular.” Hours later, Connecticut volunteers began the journey to Lexington to take up arms against the British.
And so it began that the pulpits of Connecticut Congregational churches became the political heartbeat of the earliest days of the Revolution. One of the first volleys came from an unnamed preacher in the East Windsor church, who said of a Sunday morning, “In the late battle of Concord and Lexington, inglorious to the British arms, they have imbrued the hands in the innocent blood of their fellow subjects with a relentless cruelty and inhuman barbarity…” And like so many preachers who would follow, he was quick to marshal the scriptures as his weapon of choice in the call to arms against the British occupiers: “Whoever shall seek to save his life, shall lose it; so on the other [hand], whoever that shall lose his life, in religiously supporting so good a cause, shall find it, and in the end shall receive an hundred fold.”
Congregational clergy across the Connecticut colony took up the cause with vigor. Indeed, turning to the Bible as a formidable weapon against the enemy occupation was a common and effective strategy. While it was Abraham Lincoln who most memorably called on Jesus’ words from the gospel, “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand,” the words became a common rallying cry from pulpits across the colonies. Churches became meetinghouses to whip up animus against the British and to recruit fighters for the growing war effort. Whenever we hear somebody object to the church dipping its toes in political waters, folks, we have not seen anything that would even approximate the political and prophetic engagement of our Congregational forbears. The example of Moses and Israel vs Pharaoh and the Egyptian army was regularly invoked, Samuel was called to the cause as were Jeremiah and an array of the minor prophets. Congregations did not merely tolerate their clergy speaking out against the British, they expected it. The Congregational pulpit in particular was an efficient and effective weapon in the lead-up to and execution of the Revolutionary War.
The Rev. Nathan Perkins of West Hartford preached to a company of soldiers from his own congregation as they prepared to march to Cambridge in Boston’s defense. “We must resist unto blood,” he urged them, “or be slaves… You fight, not for your daily bread – not for your pence sterling a day – but for your lives, your property, your native land, your dearest friends, your just rights, all you hold dear and sacred as Christians – your all.” It was one of the earliest instances of an American minister suggesting that in fighting the Revolution, they were fighting for their “native land.” To that point, they were simply known as the “continent” or the “English colonies.” Understanding that there were native Americans living on the land long before the colonists arrived, by the mid-1700s most colonists were indeed native in the sense that they too were born to New England soil.
Congregational theologian and clergyman Ezra Stiles served as president of Yale College and became one of the founders of Brown University. Stiles spoke forcefully and passionately of the need for an American charter – long before the Constitution was penned. He said, “If oppression proceeds, despotism may call for an annual [Continental] Congress, and a public spirit of enterprise may originate an American Magna Carta and Bill of Rights, supported by such intrepid and persevering importunity as even sovereignty may hereafter judge it not wise to withstand.” He concluded saying, “There will be a Runnymeade in America!” Runnymeade being the place where the original Magna Carta was sealed in 1215.
In 1775 Rev. Ebenezer Baldwin told his congregation, “It is a merciful circumstance that God hath not suffered us to be involved in an unjust war… In a word, the British Parliament claim the unlimited power of having ‘a right to make laws to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever…’ the exercise of this power reduces us to a state of absolute slavery…” And we might want to pay attention to what Baldwin said next: “When rulers usurp powers never given them, and attempt to enforce them by hostile measure it is as just for the people to oppose them as ’tis to oppose a robber that makes an attempt upon my life or my property.”
I wonder. I wonder if the year-long celebration of the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding might be an opportunity for our clergy and congregations alike to pick up the mantle of our predecessors and shine the bright light of scripture and history on the present moment. In a week that just saw the highest court in the land turn its back on the First, the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments of The Bill of Rights, we may well be in the midst of one of those moments of inflection the colonists so accurately recognized. When rulers usurp powers never given them, and attempt to enforce them by hostile measure it is as just for the people to oppose them as ’tis to oppose a robber that makes an attempt upon my life or my property. Wouldn’t it be a splendid birthday gift to the nation for citizens of all stripes to remember people like Nathan Perkins, Ezra Stiles, Ebenezer Baldwin and other like Nutmeggers by raising our voices and embodying and emboldening our beliefs against the capricious despotism we are currently witnessing? Two hundred fifty years ago Connecticut clergy and congregations in particular were renowned for their unflinching patriotism. As one preacher thundered from his Connecticut pulpit, “What province, state or kingdom, from the beginning of this world to this time, has been in this respect, more highly favored, than Connecticut? I know not any. And hence this has been one of the most happy provinces upon the face of the earth.” Connecticut’s leaders were known “for their superior wisdom and integrity, virtue, magnanimity and piety… Our air healthful, our soil fertile, liberally rewarding the diligent….” You can almost hear the writer smiling as he observes, “Clearly this was a Connecticut worth defending.”
And it remains so. And both in spite of the past week’s news, and because of the past week’s news, this is also a nation worth defending. This morning we prayed the prayer offered at the First Continental Congress by the Rev. Jacob Duché, rector at Philadelphia’s Christ Church, that “order, harmony and peace may be effectually restored, and truth and justice, religion and piety prevail and flourish amongst the people.” On all the people, not just the few and the favored, but on everyone everywhere. As we come to the end of Pride month we can be proud of our forebears who fought for what you and I have and enjoy today, we can be proud to fight for those do not yet have and enjoy what we do, and we can be as proud as those early New Englanders who recognized the blessings that were theirs, and the moral, social and political obligations toward others that these blessings require. Let our prayer be the words we will sing together shortly, “America, America, God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law!”