“That Old Time Religion”
Interestingly, in the late 1700s and early 1800s, most of New England's clergy were solidly behind the resistance movement in the colonies. They firmly believed the acceptance of the Church of England's official doctrine of passive submission to the crown would be nothing less than a repudiation of all that God had been building in the New World. The church was called from the pulpits of the colonial congregations to support and pray for the militia and brave revolutionaries of the colonies. There was no such thing as a separation of church and state. The only support for such a theory would have come from the monarchy as a method of weakening the resolve of the revolution. The chapels on our military academies campuses, the pocket Bibles carried by our service personnel. the military chaplains who serve alongside our brave men and women remind us of the spiritual power our military continues to draw from religious faith.