John Witherspoon and the Transatlantic Enlightenment

Eighteenth-century America encountered the Enlightenment in different versions. A secular, anticlerical Enlightenment found expression in the writings of Thomas Paine; embraced by Thomas Jefferson, it became an aspect of the political tradition Jefferson founded. This kind of Enlightenment sympathised initially with the French Revolution and breathed a skepticism of prescription and authority, whether temporal or spiritual. But America also nurtured a Christian Enlightenment, less well remembered today but in fact durable and pervasive in its influence. This version of the Enlightenment actually drew strength from the cultural tradition of the Protestant Reformation and synthesised rational empiricism with Christian piety. In America, this Protestant Enlightenment effected a reconciliation between religion and republicanism that Europeans found astonishing. The Protestant Enlightenment was chiefly responsible for the American antislavery movement, for the American system of popular education, and ultimately for the large role that organised religion has continued to play in American society and politics.1 It is even arguable-and will here be argued-that the Protestant Enlightenment influenced the framers of the Constitution. A central figure in this version of the Trans-Atlantic Enlightenment was the Scottish-American John Witherspoon.