Common Sense, Evangelicals, and the Rhetoric of Revival
by Nate Cullerton
In 1805, John Adams wrote of Thomas Paine: “ I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or its affairs for the last thirty years than Paine.”1 Indeed, today Paine’s Common Sense is widely accepted as one of the most brilliant and influential political pamphlets ever written in the English language.2 Upon its release in 1776, America, though having already begun hostilities with Britain at the battle of Lexington and Concord, remained to a large degree divided or apathetic over the cause of independence.3 The impact of Common Sense on the colonies, who had yet to declare independence, was dramatic and immediate. In a time where political pamphlets usually reached an audience in the thousands and went through one or two editions, Common Sense reached between 120,000 and 150,000 copies in its first year alone and eventually went through more than fifty editions.4 As many as one in five adults had read the pamphlet or had it read to them during the course of the Revolution.
The wide acceptance of Paine’s arguments and their continued relevance today make Common Sense a ripe area for study, and some of the linguistic and argumentative contradictions within the text have allowed historians and readers to find almost anything within it, from radical egalitarianism to more conventional Whig ideology, millennial Evangelicalism to enlightenment rationality. To some degree, this ideological and rhetorical shape-shifting or “kitchen-sink” approach may explain some of the appeal of the text.5 Looking more deeply, however, we can locate Paine at the intersection of two seemingly widely divergent philosophical views that came to dominate the American landscape during the revolution. Paine succeeded as much for his rhetorical prowess—his plain style—as for his melding of the prevailing ideologies of Protestant Evangelicalism and radical republicanism. The convergence of these ideas during the revolution has been well told by numerous historians.6 The purpose of this paper will be to illustrate Paine’s prophetic ability to weave a narrative of emotional and rational force from the often contradictory ideological currents of Revolutionary America, presenting it in such a way as to provide a conversion into civic life as powerful and arguably longer lasting than those conversions to Christ brought on by Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” As one reader in Connecticut described the experience: “You have declared the sentiment of millions. Your production may justly be compared to a land flood that sweeps all before it. We were blind, but on reading these enlightening words the scales have fallen from our eyes.”7
To have such an immediate impact, Common Sense had to resonate in both style and content. Stylistically, much has been written on Paine’s use of the “plain style.” He eschewed all of the classical references considered de rigueur for a man of letters during the 18th century. Typical political pamphlets of that era were filled with elaborate Latin phrases and lengthy quotations from Roman and Greek sources that were completely inaccessible to the average colonial reader. In this way, he followed the path perfected by the Puritan ministry from the earliest days of colonial New England, who used only the Bible as a guide and wrote in easy-to-understand language. Common Sense is structured as a sermon in the plain style, presenting numerous arguments backed only by Paine’s reasoning and from scripture. This was an astute move for a man trying to reach the widest possible audience, as America’s Puritan tradition had accustomed large segments of the population to receiving sermons of just this sort. It is useful here to make some comparisons between Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” considered the most effective sermon of the Great Awakening, and Paine’s text. Edwards famously uses the image of sinners being held over the pit of hell with nothing but the grace of a vengeful God keeping them from damnation, exhorting his parishioners to “awake thoroughly out of sleep” before it is too late.8 Much of the sermon is taken up with vivid descriptions of the imminent danger faced by the unconverted, a danger of which they may not be aware: “You probably are not sensible of this,” Edwards warns as he proceeds to shatter any delusions of security with the frightening imagery of hell.9 Upon revealing the true threat, Edwards pushes for action: “the use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons.”
Like Edwards, Paine sets about creating the powerful sense of immediacy necessary for a conversion. First, he seeks to universalize the danger of British occupation, turning what was a localized struggle into a looming national emergency: “The evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American property is possessed.”10 Then Paine describes the horrors of living in Boston, calling its inhabitants “prisoners without hope of redemption” and filling the section with religious imagery worthy of an old testament tradition, including wretchedness, fire, and destruction. This passage is alive with wrath as Paine heaps scorn upon readers who, having been shown the true nature of their situation, still refuse to act: “then are you unworthy of the name of husband, father, friend or lover…you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant.”11 And also “there is no Punishment which that man will not deserve.” Finally, like Edwards, Paine states the purpose of conversion using almost exactly the same language: “I mean not to exhibit horror for the purpose of provoking revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and unmanly slumbers…”12
Both Paine and Edwards also use strikingly similar language in describing royalty. Edwards refers to “earthly potentates” as “but feeble, despicable worms of the dust” in comparison to the Almighty, while Paine writes of kings, “How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust.”13 Though there is considerable dispute over whether the ministers of the Great Awakening were in ideological sync with Whigs at the time “Sinners” was delivered, the text offers good evidence that, at the very least, the biblically supported arguments against monarchy made by Paine would be familiar to Evangelical audiences. Edwards writes, “ All the kings of the earth, before God, are as grasshoppers; they are nothing and less than nothing: both their love and their hatred are to be despised.” Here, of course, Edwards is making an argument against idolatry—not necessarily against monarchy—but the presence of this line of reasoning further points to the genius of Common Sense in its dismantling of monarchical legitimacy. “ It was the most prosperous invention the devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry,” Paine writes of monarchy, taking Edwards’ warning from sacred history and applying it for political purposes.
This migration of language and ideas between the sacred and the political functioned in both directions during the decades after the Great Awakening, and it is often difficult to crystallize the causal relationships between the two.14 It would take research beyond the scope of this paper to even determine if Paine had read Edwards’ sermon, though Ruth Bloch has shown that their was widespread distribution of other millennial literature arising from the Great Awakening throughout the colonies in the 18th Century.15 Whether or not Paine read the sermon, it is safe to say that the immediate popularity of Common Sense shows a receptiveness to both its form and content reflecting the lasting influence of the Great Awakening, and America’s Puritan tradition more broadly, of which Edwards was the prime example. By framing the struggle for independence as a post-historical battle for the freedom of all mankind, Paine revived the founding millennial idea of the original Puritans while reflecting the growing convergence of millennial language between ministers and politicians in the latter part of the 18th Century.16
Hatch has traced this convergence to the French and Indian War, and describes the outcome as “civil millennialism.” In Hatch’s view, there were growing doubts amongst the revivalist ministers of the 1740’s that the “end of history” they had foretold as a result of the Great Awakening would materialize. It seemed, even to Edwards, that God was everywhere in retreat and the explosion of religious fervor brought on by the Awakening was dying off. Unlike Heimert, Hatch sees the period after the Awakening as a transition during which the focus of the millennial energies of the 1740’s were shifted from the saving of souls to the saving of the nation. This process began during the French and Indian War when the flagging spirits of the ministry were revived in common struggle against the threat of popish domination by the French.17 Here the language of politics first began to enter the language of colonial religion, as sermons began to focus more on freedom and liberty of worship against the slavery and oppression of France rather than the apolitical vital piety which was the focus of Edwards’ preaching.18 Victory over the French only served to confirm the divine nature of the colonies and their ministers’ hopes for a new millennium in America. Quite suddenly, hopes that had begun to fade with the dwindling fires of the Awakening were given new purpose by becoming associated with contemporary political events.19 Paine easily weaved these associations into Common Sense, further bridging the worlds of politics and religion: “ For monarchy in every instance is the popery of the government.”20
As conflict with the British began to intensify during the 1760’s, the ministers turned their sermons against the tyranny of England instead of the threat of French domination. They lay aside the factional differences that had begun to separate them after the Awakening, and began to emphasize the communal unity and civic liberty of Winthrop and the early Puritans.21 In this way, they began to emphasize the flight of the Puritans towards religious freedom, and, always attuned to the dangers of original sin, located evidence for the depravity of man in the tyranny and oppression of the British crown.22 As the minister Elijah Fitch explained of the British, “that there is rooted enmity and hatred in the hearts of the ungodly against both God and his people…for this reason they are said to be of their father the devil, whose works they do.”23 Again, Paine was astutely attuned to these currents of religious thought, associating hereditary succession with the fall of man—“original sin and hereditary succession are parallels”—and its supporters with the killers of Jesus: “Ye that oppose independence now, ye know not what ye do.”24 Paine also reserves his most potent words for the king, that “Royal Brute of England,” a “hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh” with “blood on his soul.”25 Finally, as war began, ministers associated the war with the last struggle with “the Man of Sin”, now represented in the person of British tyranny, victory over whom would turn “a vale of tears into a paradise of God.” The cause of liberty, as one minister put it, “is the cause of heaven and against hell—of the kind Parent of the universe, against the prince of darkness, and the destroyer of the human race.”26
Viewing Common Sense through the lens of a growing civil millennialism helps explain the immediate popularity of the pamphlet, as its best sections are alive with the idea of a secular utopia signaling the impending millennium. “We have the power to begin the world over again,” Paine writes, “the birthday of a new world is at hand.” 27 Paine continuously makes reference to a new era and a new time, eliminating the claims of history as he looks optimistically to a post-millennial paradise. “Now is the feed time of continental union…” he writes, “a new era for politics is struck; a new method of thinking hath arise.”28 Or elsewhere: ”The sun never shone on a cause of greater worth…posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even till the end of time, by the proceedings now.”29 By acting now, and resisting “delay or timidity” the continent could be “the glory of the earth.”30 Paine emphasizes the notion of refuge, framing the current events as a continuity of God’s sacred plan for the chosen people of America: “The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years.”31 Elsewhere, Paine brings this notion to the present day, tying it to the revived notion of Puritan civil and religious liberty that the ministers of the day had been preaching; “This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.”32 Compare this to a sermon from Jonathan Mayhew in 1754 and we can see Paine in complete convergence with the religious myth making of the time: “Our ancestors,” Mayhew declared, “tho’ not perfect and infallible in all respects, were a religious, brave, and virtuous set of men, whose love of liberty, civil and religious, brought them from their native land, into the American deserts.”33
A final point of affinity between Common Sense and the Great Awakening that must be considered is its appeal to the “feelings and affections” of man rather than to classical, rationalist argument. As Harry Stout shows in a brilliant examination of popular communications during the revolutionary period, the traditional political pamphlet originated from an elite world of classically educated gentleman and had little relevance to the common man. In fact, these pamphlets were intended to maintain the established social order and hierarchy: “The common people were not included in the audience, but it was assumed that they would continue to defer to the leaders. There was no recognition that the pamphleteers' impassioned celebration of republicanism would require a new rhetoric of communications reflecting a profound shift in the nature of social authority-a rhetoric, in brief, that threatened to undermine the exclusive world in which the pamphlets were originally conceived.”34 Stout traces this change in the nature of social authority to the Great Awakening, particularly in its attacks against hierarchical ministry and in its forms of address: spontaneous, emotional, and impersonal: what Perry Miller called a “rhetoric of sensation” more concerned with affections than ornament.35 Rhys Isaac, too, has traced the development of radical egalitarian social movements in the Revolutionary South to the spread of Evangelicalism through fiery preaching and rejection of deference.36
Paine’s humble Quaker origins—he had no classical education—may in part explain why he was able to completely eschew the formalities of political writing of the time and address himself to such a broad audience. His friendship with the radical Presbyterian Benjamin Rush, who himself came from a group of radical Scots-Irish Pennsylvanians described as the “most God-provoking Democrats on this side of Hell” might also explain his familiarity with the ideas and forms of the Evangelicals.37 Whatever the cause, in Common Sense, we find the written equivalent of the egalitarian oral preaching tradition which Isaac uses to explain the popularity of Paine’s revolutionary counterpart in the South, Patrick Henry. Indeed, the high point of Paine’s sermon reads as if it were meant to be preached, bringing full rhetorical strength to bear on the themes of a civil millennium:
O Ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the
tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old
world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted
round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have expelled her—
Europe regards her as a stranger, and England hath given her
warning to depart. O! Receive the fugitive, and prepare in
time an asylum for mankind.38
With sections like this, and Paine’s asking his readers to follow their “feelings and affections,” it is a small wonder that Tories responded to the political upheavals around them with comparisons to the religious enthusiasm of the Evangelicals. As Jonathan Sewell wrote in 1775, “There is an enthusiasm in politics, like that which religious notions inspire, that drive men on with an unnatural impetuosity, that baffles and confounds all calculation grounded upon rational principle.”39
The convergence of the sacred and the political in Common Sense has had a profound impact on American identity and consciousness to this day. After the war, millennial language would continue to proliferate among politicians and ministers alike. The reverend Ezra Stiles wrote in 1783 that the blessings promised to Israel “were allusively prophetic of the future prosperity and splendor of the United States,”40 and in the mid 19th century, Abraham Lincoln--like Paine, not an Evangelical—would speak of Americans as “the almost chosen people,” and of the United States as “the last, best hope of the earth.”41 More recently, both major presidential candidates have revived the “city on the hill” imagery of Winthrop and later of Paine to continue to promote an aggressive idea of American exceptionalism, the last bastion of liberty, leader of the free world. Paine was the first great articulator of a secular vision of the city on the hill, and made expert use of the styles and prominent ideology of Protestant Evangelicals to create a myth of American destiny that resonated with a mass audience and holds sway today. By addressing his arguments in an egalitarian style pioneered by Great Awakening revivalist ministers, using imagery and ideas familiar to a broad constituency of the “middling and lower sorts,” Paine not only reiterated the familiar case for independence articulated by prominent Whigs, but recast the struggle with England as a continuation of the sacred battle for the freedom of all mankind. In this way, he broadened the audience for political discourse beyond the narrow, elite world of traditional political pamphleteering and helped bring the egalitarian spirit of the revivals into a political world that had remained deferential to authority and tradition, forever changing the nature of American politics and laying the groundwork of a budding American nationalism.
1 Quoted by Eric Foner, “Tom Paine’s Republic: Radical Ideology and Social Change” Alfred F. Young, ed. The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism. Dekalb: Northern Illinois UP, 1976. Pg. 189
2 See Bernard Baliyn as discussed by Harry Stout in “Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.” The William and Mary Quarterly. October 1977, pp. 519-541.
3 Foner. Pg. 198
4 Robert A Ferguson. “The Commonalities of Common Sense.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 57. July 2000, pp. 465-504.
5 Ferguson finds the rhetorical strength of the paper in its contradictions.
6 See Mark A. Knoll. “The American Revolution and Protestant Evangelicalism.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 23, Winter 1993, pp. 615-638.
Also, Alan Heimert. Religion and the American Mind. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1966.
7 Foner. “Tom Paine’s Republic.”
8 Jonathan Edwards. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Nina Baym, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume A, 7th Edition. New York: Norton and Co., 2007, pg. 437.
9 Ibid., pg. 430
10 Thomas Paine. Common Sense. Accessed at www.dockstock.com on 12/03/08. Pg. 33.
11 Ibid
12 Ibid
13 Sinners pg. 432, Common Sense, pg. 14.
14 Hiemert’s thesis of direct influence from the New Light clergy is strongly disputed, and more recent scholars have painted a murkier picture of the exchange of ideas between Whigs and Protestant Evangelicals. See Melvin B. Endy Jr. “Just War, Holy War, and Millennialism in Revolutionary America.” The William and Mary Quarterly. January 1985, pp. 4-25. Nathan O. Hatch. “The Origins of Civil Millennialism in America: New England Clergy Men, War With France, and the Revolution.” The William and Mary Quarterly. July 1974, pp. 407-430. Harry S. Stout. “Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.” The William and Mary Quarterly. October 1977, pp. 519-541.
15 Ruth H. Bloch. “The Social and Political Base of Millennial Literature in Late 18th Century America.” American Quarterly, September 1988, pp. 378-396
16 Jonathan Winthrop’s famous sermon on the decks of the ship Arbela was the first expression of the millennial project in America: “The God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when he shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “the Lord make it like that of New England,” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.”
From “A Model of Christian Charity,” Nina Baym, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume A, 7th Edition. New York: Norton and Co., 2007. Pg. 157.
17 Hatch, pp. 422-424.
18 Ibid pg.429
19 Ibid.
20 Common Sense Pg. 47
21 Hatch 423-425
22 Heimert. Pg. 479
23 Ibid. 479
24 Common Sense, pg. 22 and 46
25 Ibid. pg. 38
26 Heimert 482
27 Common Sense. Pg. 71
28 Ibid., pg. 35
29 Ibid
30 Ibid Pg. 37
31 Ibid 32
32 Ibid Pg. 29
33 Hatch, pg. 424
34 Harry S. Stout, “Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.” The William and Mary Quarterly. Volume 34. October 1977, pp. 519-541.
35 Ibid., Pg. 11
36 Rhys Isaac. “Preachers and Patriots: Popular Culture and the Revolution in Virginia.” Alfred F. Young, ed. The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism. Dekalb: Northern Illinois UP, 1976. Pp. 127-156.
37 Foner Pg. 203
38 Common Sense Pg. 47
39 Jonathan Sewell to General Frederick Haldimand (May 30, 1775). Jack P. Greene, ed. Colonies to Nation 1763-1789. New York: Norton, 1975. Pg. 267.
40 Noll, pg. 637.
41 Ibid.
