Critiques of political rulers based on Presbyterianism was nowhere more pronounced in the case of English and Scottish exiles who brought the ideals of Geneva home to their respective realms.  Among the first advocates of Presbyterianism, such as Knox in Scotland and Thomas Cartwright in England, this new church government not only questioned the rule and legitimacy of bishops.  It also undermined the religious claims of the English monarchy (leading to James I’s line – “no bishops, no king”). Because the English Reformation instituted the king (Henry VIII) as the head of the church, Presbyterians, who insisted that Christ was the only head of the church, formed an inherent threat to England’s political establishment.

When George III, king of Britain, the very same monarch Thomas Jefferson identified as a tyrant, said that the American Revolution was a “Presbyterian rebellion,” did he actually think that ministers in the colonial Presbyterian church were leading the cause of political independence?  He may have.  After all, John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), was an ordained Presbyterian minister who was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence.  Maybe King George remembered the line of one of his predecessors, James I, who said “No bishop, no king.”  James had Presbyterians in mind with that line.  As both king of Scotland and England and during his youth (born 1566), he had seen how demanding Presbyterians were.  In 1582, Scottish advocates of Presbyterianism had kidnaped the king to pressure him and his advisors to overturn episcopacy and make the Church of Scotland Presbyterian.  For this and other reasons, George III had good reasons for being haunted by Presbyterianism.

But what made this form of church government such a threat to British government?  The answer requires not trying to fit John Locke or Thomas Jefferson into some kind of Presbyterian outlook.  Instead, the source of Presbyterianism’s political potency came not from political philosophy but by insisting that councils and synods, rather than bishops, govern the church.

Observers on hand for the launch of Presbyterianism in 1540s Geneva would not have predicted its political ramifications.  To be sure, John Calvin sparred with Geneva’s mayor and city council over the power of excommunication (because it was spiritual, Calvin said it belonged exclusively to the church) Yet, as a form of church polity, despite breaking with the episcopal model reaching back at least to the fourth century, Presbyterianism was merely a form of government midway between the hierarchical structures of bishops and the democratic ideals of congregationalism (which put church power into the hands of all church members).  Presbyters were pastors and elders, clergy and gifted laity, joined in a kind of republican rule, both in the local church and extending to regional and national synods.

Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1541) was one of his conditions for returning to Geneva.  His earlier reforms went too far and the city government told Calvin to leave.  His three-year absence (1538-1541), which took him to Strasbourg where Presbyterian patterns of government were in place, solidified a commitment to what was essentially a conciliar path for rule within the church. Conciliarism, in fact, is one way to explain the origins of Presbyterianism.  When the Western church needed to resolve the Great Schism (1378-1415), a period of rival popes, one in Avignon and one in Rome, a council of bishops (Constance) intervened.  This body restored a single papacy in Rome and called for a regular council of bishops (every ten years) to assist the pope.  (Subsequent popes saw councils as a threat to papal supremacy and refused to call them.)

Calvin’s version of conciliarism excluded bishops and relied exclusively on presbyters or elders.  His Ecclesiastical Ordinances actually called for four distinct church offices – pastors (preachers), elders (laymen), deacons (laymen), and teachers (pastors who taught theology). Calvin’s teachers worked in the Geneva Academy and trained both pastors and taught citizens in two tiers of curricula (theology and humanism respectively), thus demonstrating Protestantism’s aid to and dependence on literacy.  The elevation of qualified laity into church government was novel even if most Presbyterian apologists argued that this was the pattern of the early church. Elders were responsible to review and supplement the teaching and authority of pastors (for starters). Deacons undertook the work of charity – everything from welfare to health care – which was considerable in a city teeming with refugees.  Presbyterianism had no direct equivalents to the separate powers of modern governments – the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of civil polity.  Those parallels developed later in the minds of Presbyterian defenders of republicanism, such as Thomas Smyth, the Charleston (SC) pastor who wrote Ecclesiastical Republicanism (1843) to explain the harmony between Presbyterian polity and the United States’ government.

Even if Presbyterianism did not require a specific form of civil government, it did promise greater levels of godliness among both the laity and clergy. This was actually the theme that united Protestants and humanists, namely, greater consistency between professions of holiness and actually Christian practice.  For pastors, Calvin’s ideas established clear guidelines (education and tests) for ordination, in contrast to the seeming arbitrariness of bishops’ standards for ordaining priests.  Presbyterianism also emphasized discipline in church life not only as a method to correct Christians who had veered from holiness.  The presence of elders in local congregations provided far more guidance to church members than distant bishops.  Calvin’s church order, consequently, provided a clear model for correcting the medieval church whose reputation for hypocrisy had provoked a large body of books and pamphlets that mocked Roman Catholicism’s vaunted holiness.  In a sociological sense, Presbyterianism was an early instance of modernity’s drive to rationalize human interactions.  It supplied the church with professional standards and transparent structures of governance.

The practice of Presbyterian in Geneva became especially attractive to those who visited Geneva – especially English and Scottish exiles during the 1550s.  The church under Calvin’s influence seemed to be a model Christian commonwealth. For instance, as early as 1542, the consistory (pastors and elders) insisted that Genevans attend weekly sermons, learn new prayers and the catechism, and abandon Roman Catholic forms of devotion.  Minutes of the Geneva churches also reveal that officers heard hundreds of cases of un-Christian behavior, from improper behavior during church services and strained relations between spouses to gambling and dancing. When John Knox traveled to Geneva (1556-1559), he marveled that the city was “the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the apostles.” Presbyterian church government seemed to be responsible for Geneva’s success.  This seemingly novel way of running the church became the ideal for a thorough reformation of Western Christianity.

Calvin’s reforms did have political implications and sometimes brought him into conflict with Geneva’s city government.  As much as historians of political theory have linked Reformed Protestant ideas about government (of which Calvin was a major voice) to an older tradition of resistance theory – that is, when subjects or citizens may legitimately disobey civil authority, Presbyterianism’s path to challenging established government was more straightforward.  Its form of government was a direct rebuke to churches where bishops, who often enjoyed cozy relationships with kings and princes, controlled the church.

Critiques of political rulers based on Presbyterianism was nowhere more pronounced in the case of English and Scottish exiles who brought the ideals of Geneva home to their respective realms.  Among the first advocates of Presbyterianism, such as Knox in Scotland and Thomas Cartwright in England, this new church government not only questioned the rule and legitimacy of bishops.  It also undermined the religious claims of the English monarchy (leading to James I’s line – “no bishops, no king”). Because the English Reformation instituted the king (Henry VIII) as the head of the church, Presbyterians, who insisted that Christ was the only head of the church, formed an inherent threat to England’s political establishment. In 1603, when James VI of Scotland added James I of England to his titles, Presbyterians were a threat to the political order in both realms.

These political conflicts in England and Scotland placed Presbyterians in the front lines of those challenging kings, queens, and bishops – any existing authority – who stood in the way of restoring the church to its apostolic order and simplicity. In fact, more than the Dutch, German, or French Reformed churches, Presbyterianism among the English and Scots became associated with political rebellion.  The reason was that church reform in England and Scotland, according to Calvin’s Geneva play book, involved confronting two sacred and ancient institutions – the king (or queen) and the bishop.

It took a long time for the cracks in the political foundations that Presbyterianism introduced to be felt in North America.  It was almost exactly two centuries between Scotland’s “Second Book of Discipline” (1578) and the Declaration of Independence.  But without the controversies that Presbyterians ignited in England and Scotland, and contributed to the civil war between Parliament and the crown (1640s), the execution of Charles I (1649), Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth, the Restoration (1660), and the Glorious Revolution (1688/1689), American independence from Britain and the church’s freedom from bishops would have seemed unimaginable.  George III may have been completely unaware of Presbyterianism’s origins in Geneva or its long history of challenging the British monarch’s religious policies. But by describing the American Revolution as a “Presbyterian rebellion,” the king was closer to the truth than anyone giving credit to Thomas Paine or John Locke.

(“Presbyterian Polity and the American Revolution” is based on an excerpt from D. G. Hart, Protestants and Patriots: Presbyterians in the Age of Revolution (University of Notre Dame Press, 2026.)