On the night of April 18, 1775, the sexton of the Old North Church in Boston lit two lanterns in the church tower, alerting Paul Revere and William Dawes of the movement of British troops up the Charles River toward Cambridge. The expeditionary force of British regulars was under orders to march from Cambridge to Concord, where they were to seize and destroy all weapons and provisions of the Colonial militia. Revere and Dawes rode ahead of the troops, rousing the militia throughout the countryside. By the time the British advance infantry arrived at Lexington, six miles from Concord along the Bay Road, they found eighty minutemen assembled in formation on Lexington Common. Though both sides were ordered to hold their fire, a shot rang out. The British blamed the militia; the militia blamed the British; some witnesses claimed it was fired by a Colonial onlooker. Whatever its source, this “shot heard round the world” ignited the American Revolutionary War.
The American Revolution found widespread support among Colonial ministers, including the inimitable Isaac Backus, longtime pastor of First Baptist Church of Middleborough, who on the Sunday following the Battles of Lexington and Concord exhorted his congregation to be as the men of “Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do,” and thus joined with David to establish his kingdom (1 Chr 12:32). Long a vocal proponent of religious liberty, Backus became a leading promoter of independence.
A century earlier, John Bunyan faced a similar revolutionary context on at least four occasions. Though he was just a teenager when he joined the parliamentary forces in the English Civil War, Bunyan was a well-known nonconformist preacher when he distanced himself from the ill-fated Fifth Monarchist plots surrounding the Restoration. Years later, by then a famous author, Bunyan remained aloof from the exclusion plots intended to keep the Catholic James II from the English throne, nor did he participate in the schemes to depose the king in favor of the Duke of Monmouth in 1685 or William of Orange in 1688.
John Bunyan and Isaac Backus shared much in common—a common conversion in the Puritan tradition, a common theology of experiential Calvinism, a common free church ecclesiology, and a common contempt for the Church of England as an arm of Antichrist. Yet when faced with persecution and the prospect of revolution, Bunyan chose passive resistance while Backus engaged in active rebellion. What provoked these two very different responses from two very similar men?
On this two-hundred fiftieth anniversary of the “shot heard round the world,” in the city that served as the cradle of the American Revolution, this paper will examine the revolutionary theologies of John Bunyan and Isaac Backus. It will first locate both men within their revolutionary contexts. Then, it will analyze their relevant works and synthesize the points of departure in order to argue that while geography (Bedford, England vs. Colonial Middleborough) and political philosophy (Renaissance magisterial vs. Enlightenment individual) played a role, it was eschatology that proved decisive in their divergent revolutionary responses. Ultimately, each man’s view of the role of the state in the future overthrow of Antichrist determined whether he would participate in the present revolution.