Religious Factor in the American Revolution and Founding of the USA

Abstract

The article is devoted to an analysis of the religious factor in the American Revolution and the founding of the USA. Based on a wide range of sources and scholarly literature, the author shows a combination of secular and Protestant in uences in the process of institutional formation of the American independent statehood. The author further reveals the signi cant role of polemical arguments and historical examples related to the Bible in the American political thought of this period. The majority of key actors of the American Revolution of the 18th century were convinced that religion served as the basis for civic virtue necessary for a republican form of government. The worldview shared by the Founding Fathers implied a theistic source of law and legislative process. At the federal level, the separation of church and state established by the 1787 Constitution and the 1789 Bill of Rights was largely a consequence of the organizational fragmentation of American Protestantism. A conclusion is drawn about the dual nature of the US statehood at the end of the 18th century, which combined both secular and religious elements and was re ected in the symbolism of the Great State Seal (1782).