The American Revolution and the Presbyterian Rebellion
By Peter Lillback - Posted at byFaith:
Published August 20, 2026
In 1887, Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon entitled, “The Covenanter.” In it he described a portrait hanging in his bedroom depicting a Covenanter sitting in a field, sword by his side, Bible open. “Evidently he smelleth the battle afar off, and is preparing for it by drinking in some mighty promise,” Spurgeon said. “As you look into the old man’s face you can almost hear him saying to himself, ‘For the crown of Christ and the covenant, I would gladly lay down my life this day.’”The Scottish and Scots-Irish Heritage
Spurgeon’s portrait of the Bible-reading warrior — the Covenanter — conveys the character of the Scottish and Scots-Irish believers who brought the Presbyterian faith to America. There are many moving stories from the Reformation: the first martyr, Patrick Hamilton at St. Andrews; John Knox standing with his broadsword next to soon-to-be-martyred George Wishart; the Solemn League and Covenant at the start of the English Civil War; the “killing times,” when Covenanters were destroyed for refusing to yield to the religious dictates of the King of England; Francis Makemie’s victorious legal battle that granted toleration to Presbyterian preachers in the English colonies. The heroic courage of these warriors of faith has roots going back centuries to their ancient ancestors who forced Rome to give up on the conquest of Scotland, and to build Hadrian’s Wall instead.
The defense of religious liberty marked the Scottish immigrants to the New World, as it did all of the Calvinistic immigrants to the New World. The various Reformed churches had known religious persecution, often at great cost. Congregationalists, Huguenots, and Presbyterians sought to defend the precious gift of liberty that they enjoyed in the colonies, knowing that it had been purchased by the blood of their forefathers.
It is no wonder, then, that the American War of Independence earned an epithet from King George III, “a Presbyterian Rebellion.” Similarly, an assessment attributed to Parliamentarian Horace Walpole humorously asserts, “Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian Parson,” referring to John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence.
A striking report of the Scots-Irish support for American independence comes from George Washington. Ulster writer W.F. Marshall reported that Washington declared, “If defeated everywhere else, I will make my last stand for liberty among the Scotch-Irish [or Ulster Scots] of my native Virginia.”
Captain Johann Heinrichs, a Hessian in British service in the colonies, said in 1778, “Call it not an American rebellion; it is nothing more or less than an Irish Scotch Presbyterian rebellion.”
