As some of my readers know, I have been plodding away on a book about Presbyterians and the American Revolution in the mid-Atlantic. One of the things I hope to focus on is the way that the British soldiers treated Presbyterian churches and congregations during the war in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.Â
With this in mind, I found today’s post in J.L. Bell’s short series on the diary of William Cheever, a Boston merchant who wrote during the early months of the Revolutionary War, to be particularly interesting. Here is a taste of Cheever’s diary from 17 November 1775:
Almost every House whose Owner has gone out of Town is taken up for the Troops: and the old South Meeting-House is turn’d into a riding School for the light Horse, the Pews and Galleries being taken down—many of the other Places of Worship are turn’d into Barracks.
One of the quirks of the British military occupation of Boston is that officers often referred to the dominant local religion as “Presbyterian” because congregations elected their own ministers, independent of the Church of England.
But the descendants of the New England Puritans were quick to distinguish themselves from true “Presbyterians” linked to the Church of Scotland. Boston had one meeting-house with Presbyterian roots, often called the Long Lane Meeting House and later the Federal Street Church. Many of its congregants had Scottish roots.
I found it notable that the Rev. John Morrison, referred to in the Cheever diary, didn’t preach at the Presbyterian meeting-house, but at an empty Independent or Congregationalist meeting-house.
This is indeed true about the difference between “Presbyterians” and “Congregationalists.” But there is also an ecclesiastical difference between the two. There were actually many churches in eighteenth-century New England who adopted a Presbyterian church polity.