was religion the main cause of the english civil war essay

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Religion in the British Civil Wars

Introduction, general overviews.

• Primary Sources
• Scotland and Ireland
• Radical Religion
• Atlantic Colonies
• Liberty of Conscience

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Religion in the British Civil Wars by Rachel N. Schnepper LAST REVIEWED: 08 February 2023 LAST MODIFIED: 26 February 2013 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0186

Religion and the British Civil Wars, also known as the War of the Three Kingdoms or the English Revolution, are inextricably interconnected: it is impossible to understand the causes and course of the English Revolution and exclude religion. Once the Long Parliament committed itself to the reformation of the Church of England, the question remained of what shape this reform should take. Competing visions of church-government or ecclesiologies, such as Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, and Erastianism, dominated debate within the halls of Parliament. However, the breakdown of state-controlled religious conformity released an explosion of new and often radical sects. These radical denominations, which included Ranters, Baptists, Diggers, Levellers, and Quakers, played a prominent role in both political and religious considerations of the Revolution. Furthermore, debates on national religious settlement favoring one church government over another were also complicated by the appearance of an initially minor, but sustained and increasingly important, transatlantic conversation over liberty of conscience. The centrality of religion was recognized, to a degree, in the 19th century, with Samuel Rawson Gardiner terming the English Revolution as the Puritan Revolution. Until comparatively recently, however, the religious factors in the Revolution tended to be downplayed or explained away in nonreligious terms. Recent historiography has renewed interest in the religious dimensions of the English Revolution, an interest that has been shaped by a reconceptualization and redefinition of the meanings of religious belief for ordinary men and women in the 17th century. It is now almost universally agreed upon by historians of the English Revolution that the civil wars between the three kingdoms of the British monarchy—England, Scotland, and Ireland—erupted principally over differing visions of national church-government. Despite being a relatively recent intervention in the scholarship, the literature on religion in the English Revolution is vast, and it continues to provide fertile ground for research and debate. With such breadth of scholarship, the focus of this bibliography must necessarily be truncated and selective. Nevertheless, many of the works included in this article are intended to give the researcher an overview not only of religious history in England in the 1640s and 1650s, but also of the other components of the British monarchy, including not just Scotland and Ireland but also the Atlantic colonies of the nascent British Empire.

The almost annual appearance of general overviews of the English Revolution or the British Civil Wars points to the continued vitality of this historiographical field. Researchers new to the field will probably gain the most by starting with Woolrych 2002 , which addresses the “multiple kingdoms” with multiple religions problem of the British state, integrating the Scottish and Irish histories into what until recently was mostly focused on England. This recent shift to focusing on the problem of multiple kingdoms with multiple religions within the British state owes its origins to Russell 1990 , but Gardiner 2011 , a multivolume series on the outbreak and course of the Revolution, engages with similar ideas and themes. Recent broad narrative accounts of 1640–1660, such as Scott 2000 , push this trend in the scholarship even further, locating the British Isles’ century of revolution within a pan-European context. Morrill 1993 builds upon the historiographical intervention of Russell 1990 but places more emphasis on the centrality of religious belief in the outbreak and course of the English Revolution. Morrill 1993 continues to be relevant, as evidenced by Prior and Burgess 2011 , which takes the author’s claim that the British Civil Wars were “the last of the Wars of Religion” (p. 68) as its point of departure. Just when exactly the Revolution radicalized continues to be a fiercely debated topic, but Cressy 2006 , looking at the first two years of the Revolution from a wider, more popular point of view, challenges prevailing notions that the Revolution radicalized in the mid- to late 1640s, locating the seeds of popular radicalism from its outset. Adamson 2007 looks at the same period as Cressy 2006 but from a wholly different perspective, at the godly elites in the House of Lords.

Adamson, John. The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I . London: Orion, 2007.

Exhaustive reconstruction of events from 1640 to 1642 that focuses exclusively on the peers who, Adamson argues, were responsible for the revolt against Charles I. In his provocative analysis of these peers, Adamson maintains that their religious and political frustrations at the policies of the monarchy incited them to revolt.

Cressy, David. England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution, 1640–1642 . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Cressy argues that England was in the midst of revolutionary turmoil and upheaval before the outbreak of civil war in 1642. The bulk of the book, Part 2, focuses exclusively on English religious culture prior to 1642, tracing the rise and collapse of Laudianism and the factionalism that emerged in its wake.

Gardiner, Samuel Rawson. History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603–1642 . 10 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

First published in 1883–1884; continued in History of the Great Civil War, 1642–1649 (5 vols., London: Longmans, Green, 1893) and History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649–1660 (4 vols., London: Longmans, Green, 1903). Exhaustive treatment of constitutional, religious, and legal thought from the early Stuart period and Revolution. Useful mostly for scholars interested in historiographical evolution.

Morrill, John. The Nature of the English Revolution: Essays . New York: Longman, 1993.

A collection of essays by Morrill subdivided into three thematic sections: the importance of localism during the Civil Wars, the centrality of religion to the conflict, and a push to see the English Revolution from a British point of view. His essay titled “The Religious Context of the English Civil War” famously claimed that the English Civil War was “the last of Europe’s wars of religion” (pp. 45–68).

Prior, Charles W. A., and Glenn Burgess, eds. England’s Wars of Religion, Revisited . Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 2011.

Introduction argues that, until recently, historians understood the English Revolution as a struggle to preserve civil liberty, but one in which participants used a religious idiom to express a politically revolutionary ideology. Each essay rejects this view, maintaining that historians must take seriously the religious language of the time.

Russell, Conrad. The Causes of the English Civil War . Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.

Russell’s seminal breakdown of the causes of the English Civil Wars, attributing them to the constitutional problem of multiple kingdoms, the religious problem of competing theologies, and the financial and personal poverty of Charles I.

Scott, Jonathan. England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511605741

Scott situates England’s century of “troubles” within the wider contexts of European confessionalization, state formation, and militarization of the 17th century.

Woolrych, Austin. Britain in Revolution: 1625–1660 . New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Massive narrative account of the English Revolution with particular focus on Irish and Scottish roles.

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Religious Fears as the Cause of the English Civil War

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Steffan Blanco

The English Civil War from 1642 to 1651 was a period of social belligerence, religious disputes, political experimentation and instability in England, Scotland and Ireland. However, less is known but much is debated about the causes since they did not seem likely to produce the conflicts, just the type of it. Some historians have focused on society and the masses, others on elites, others on socio-economic aspects and many more in the running of the church and the state. Others complain about the top-down approaches, too much focus on Scotland and Ireland, and misinterpretations of documents left by royalists and parliamentarians. There are those who argue it was a religious conflict, while others argue that it was portrayed by some contemporaries as a holy war. Although many still disagree, there is a growing consensus among historians that religion did played a paramount role in causing the conflicts. The years leading to the Civil War were a period of royal miscalculations, Scottish and Irish revolts due mainly to religious tensions, religious discussions between royalists and parliamentarians, and religious zeal which produced an unexpected and unwanted civil war. While political and constitutional grievances seemed to have triggered the conflicts and build up tension, religion was the primary underlying factor.

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Religion and the Civil War

"Preaching at a Methodist Camp Meeting in Eastham Massachusetts 1850s"

At the beginning of the Civil War, the United States was a nation of religious people. The 1860 United States Census recorded 28 different Protestant denominations, a small but thriving Jewish community, and a steadily growing number of Roman Catholics. Together, these institutions included 19,128,750 Americans. Among the Protestant churches, the largest number of adherents belonged to either Methodist (32%), Baptist (19%), or Presbyterian (10%) churches while 14% affiliated themselves with Congregational, Episcopal, Christian, and Lutheran congregations. Another 7% belonged to Roman Catholic parishes. The remaining faithful attended subsets of the Baptist and Presbyterian churches, Jewish synagogues, Unitarian congregations, Universalist meetings, and a variety of other ethnically defined churches.    

The steady Protestant growth resulted from a series of revivals known in retrospect as the Second Great Awakening. The revivals were national in their scope, but to most people they were local events, shaped by local preachers and lay leaders, determined by local customs and economy, and played out in local congregations. Catholicism, which had been a minor church in the United States’ first decades, grew largely as a result of immigration from Germany and Ireland between 1820 and 1860. This growth alarmed many Protestants who feared an increase of Catholic influence and created a backlash that manifested in print, in occasional violence, and in political organizations.

In both the North and South, women played critical roles in the development of evangelical faith. Even though women did not serve as pastors or deacons, they did play primary roles in Church School (or Sunday School) and were influential in their roles in promoting piety at home. In many congregations, women made up most full members and their voices were influential in setting the direction of congregational policy and practice.

African Americans, both enslaved and free, developed church patterns that both followed the larger patterns of the white church but also diverged in important ways. In the free states, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by Richard Allen in Philadelphia in 1816, became an important and influential center of faith, community, and political activism.

In the slaveholding states, the pattern was more complicated. For most enslaved people in the plantation districts, worship was typically in biracial – though rigorously segregated – churches. Several large, all-Black churches existed in the South’s urban centers. Within them, free and enslaved peoples created autonomy and a political community. These churches, however, were closely monitored by Whites and in times of tension were shuttered.  In “hush harbors” and secret prayer meeting, however, separate from white over-sight, Black Christians created entirely autonomous worship.

Though the northern and southern branches of the major evangelical denominations shared theology, church governance, an investment in missionary work both at home and abroad, and a literalist approach to reading the Bible, during the 1820s and 1830s they increasingly grew apart because of their positions concerning slavery. This division came to a breaking point in the 1840s when southern Methodists (1844) and Southern Baptists (1845) broke from their northern counterparts over disputes about the propriety of employing missionaries who were slave owners. At the time, many saw this division as a step toward political disunion.

The division of the churches into northern and southern denominations sharpened the nation’s religious divide. In the 15 years before secession and Civil War southern Methodists and Baptists brought to maturity a pro-slavery theology that touted the morality of slaveholding, the superiority of slave society, and the racial inferiority of African Americans. At the same time, the perfectionism and millennialism of the northern churches provide a moral foundation for a variety of social reform movements including antislavery. Though reading the same Bible and praying to the same God, America’s churches had by the 1850s become distinctly separate with very different views as to what God’s plan was for the future.

Further Reading:

• Broken Churches, Broken Nation   By: Clarence C. Goen.
• The Democratization of American Christianity   By: Nathan Hatch.
• The Civil War as a Theological Crisis   By:   Mark Noll.
• Redeeming the Southern Family: Evangelical Women and Domestic Devotion in the Antebellum South  By: Scott Stephen.
• Taking Heaven By Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America   By:   John Wigger.

St. Michael's Church Graveyard

The First Great Awakening

The Dunkers

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What Were the Top 4 Causes of the Civil War?

• M.A., History, University of Florida
• B.A., History, University of Florida

The question “what caused the U.S. Civil War ?” has been debated since the horrific conflict ended in 1865. As with most wars, however, there was no single cause.

Pressing Issues That Led to the Civil War

The Civil War erupted from a variety of long-standing tensions and disagreements about American life and politics. For nearly a century, the people and politicians of the Northern and Southern states had been clashing over the issues that finally led to war: economic interests, cultural values, the power of the federal government to control the states, and, most importantly, slavery in American society.

While some of these differences might have been resolved peacefully through diplomacy, the institution of slavery was not among them.

With a way of life steeped in age-old traditions of white supremacy and a mainly agricultural economy that depended on the labor of enslaved people, the Southern states viewed enslavement as essential to their very survival.

Slavery in the Economy and Society

At the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the enslavement of people not only remained legal in all 13 British American colonies, but it also continued to play a significant role in their economies and societies.

Prior to the American Revolution, the institution of slavery in America had become firmly established as being limited to persons of African ancestry. In this atmosphere, the seeds of white supremacy were sown.

Even when the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789, very few Black people and no enslaved people were allowed to vote or own property.

However, a growing movement to abolish slavery had led many Northern states to enact abolitionist laws and abandon enslavement. With an economy based more on industry than agriculture, the North enjoyed a steady flow of European immigrants. As impoverished refugees from the potato famine of the 1840s and 1850s, many of these new immigrants could be hired as factory workers at low wages, thus reducing the need for enslaved people in the North.

In the Southern states, longer growing seasons and fertile soils had established an economy based on agriculture fueled by sprawling plantations owned by White people that depended on enslaved people to perform a wide range of duties.

When Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became very profitable. This machine was able to reduce the time it took to separate seeds from the cotton. At the same time, the increase in the number of plantations willing to move from other crops to cotton created an even greater need for enslaved people. The Southern economy became a one-crop economy, depending on cotton and, therefore, on enslaved people.

Though it was often supported throughout the social and economic classes, not every White Southerner enslaved people. The population of the pro-slavery states was around 9.6 million in 1850   and only about 350,000 were enslavers.   This included many of the wealthiest families, a number of whom owned large plantations. At the start of the Civil War, at least 4 million enslaved people   were forced to live and work on the Southern plantations.

In contrast, industry ruled the economy of the North and less emphasis was on agriculture, though even that was more diverse. Many Northern industries were purchasing the South's raw cotton and turning it into finished goods.

This economic disparity also led to irreconcilable differences in societal and political views.

In the North, the influx of immigrants—many from countries that had long since abolished slavery—contributed to a society in which people of different cultures and classes lived and worked together.

The South, however, continued to hold onto a social order based on white supremacy in both private and political life, not unlike that under the rule of racial apartheid that persisted in South Africa for decades .

In both the North and South, these differences influenced views on the powers of the federal government to control the economies and cultures of the states.

States and Federal Rights

Since the time of the American Revolution , two camps emerged when it came to the role of government. Some people argued for greater rights for the states and others argued that the federal government needed to have more control.

The first organized government in the U.S. after the Revolution was under the Articles of Confederation. The 13 states formed a loose Confederation with a very weak federal government. However, when problems arose, the weaknesses of the Articles caused the leaders of the time to come together at the Constitutional Convention and create, in secret, the U.S. Constitution .

Strong proponents of states rights like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry were not present at this meeting. Many felt that the new Constitution ignored the rights of states to continue to act independently. They felt that the states should still have the right to decide if they were willing to accept certain federal acts.

This resulted in the idea of nullification , whereby the states would have the right to rule federal acts unconstitutional. The federal government denied states this right. However, proponents such as John C. Calhoun —who resigned as vice president to represent South Carolina in the Senate—fought vehemently for nullification. When nullification would not work and many of the Southern states felt that they were no longer respected, they moved toward thoughts of secession.

Pro-slavery States and Free States

As America began to expand—first with the lands gained from the Louisiana Purchase and later with the Mexican War —the question arose of whether new states would be pro-slavery states or free states. An attempt was made to ensure that equal numbers of free states and pro-slavery states were admitted to the Union, but over time this proved difficult.

The Missouri Compromise passed in 1820. This established a rule that prohibited enslavement in states from the former Louisiana Purchase north of the latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes, with the exception of Missouri.

During the Mexican War, the debate began about what would happen with the new territories the U.S. expected to gain upon victory. David Wilmot proposed the Wilmot Proviso in 1846, which would ban enslavement in the new lands. This was shot down amid much debate.

The Compromise of 1850 was created by Henry Clay and others to deal with the balance between pro-slavery states and free states. It was designed to protect both Northern and Southern interests. When California was admitted as a free state, one of the provisions was the Fugitive Slave Act . This held individuals responsible for harboring freedom-seeking enslaved people, even if they were located in free states.

The  Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was another issue that further increased tensions. It created two new territories that would allow the states to use popular sovereignty to determine whether they would be free states or pro-slavery states. The real issue occurred in Kansas where pro-slavery Missourians, called "Border Ruffians," began to pour into the state in an attempt to force it toward slavery.

Problems came to a head with a violent clash at Lawrence, Kansas. This caused it to become known as " Bleeding Kansas ." The fight even erupted on the floor of the Senate when anti-slavery proponent Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was beaten on the head by South Carolina Sen. Preston Brooks.

The Abolitionist Movement

Increasingly, Northerners became more polarized against enslavement. Sympathies began to grow for abolitionists and against enslavement and enslavers. Many in the North came to view enslavement as not just socially unjust, but morally wrong.

The abolitionists came with a variety of viewpoints. People such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass wanted immediate freedom for all enslaved people. A group that included Theodore Weld and Arthur Tappan advocated for emancipating enslaved people slowly. Still others, including Abraham Lincoln, simply hoped to keep slavery from expanding.

A number of events helped fuel the cause for abolition in the 1850s.  Harriet Beecher Stowe  wrote " Uncle Tom's Cabin ," a popular novel that opened many eyes to the reality of enslavement. The Dred Scott Case  brought the issues of enslaved peoples' rights, freedom, and citizenship to the Supreme Court.

Additionally, some abolitionists took a less peaceful route to fighting against slavery. John Brown and his family fought on the anti-slavery side of "Bleeding Kansas." They were responsible for the Pottawatomie Massacre, in which they killed five settlers who were pro-slavery. Yet, Brown's best-known fight would be his last when the group attacked Harper's Ferry in 1859, a crime for which he would hang.

The Election of Abraham Lincoln

The politics of the day were as stormy as the anti-slavery campaigns. All of the issues of the young nation were dividing the political parties and reshaping the established two-party system of Whigs and Democrats.

The Democratic party was divided between factions in the North and South. At the same time, the conflicts surrounding Kansas and the Compromise of 1850 transformed the Whig party into the Republican party (established in 1854). In the North, this new party was seen as both anti-slavery and for the advancement of the American economy. This included the support of industry and encouraging homesteading while advancing educational opportunities. In the South, Republicans were seen as little more than divisive.

The presidential election of 1860 would be the deciding point for the Union. Abraham Lincoln represented the new Republican Party and Stephen Douglas , the Northern Democrat, was seen as his biggest rival. The Southern Democrats put John C. Breckenridge on the ballot. John C. Bell represented the Constitutional Union Party, a group of conservative Whigs hoping to avoid secession.

The country's divisions were clear on Election Day. Lincoln won the North, Breckenridge the South, and Bell the border states. Douglas won only Missouri and a portion of New Jersey. It was enough for Lincoln to win the popular vote, as well as 180 electoral votes .

Even though things were already near a boiling point after Lincoln was elected, South Carolina issued its "Declaration of the Causes of Secession " on December 24, 1860. They believed that Lincoln was anti-slavery and in favor of Northern interests.

President James Buchanan's administration did little to quell the tension or stop what would become known as " Secession Winter ." Between Election Day and Lincoln's inauguration in March, seven states seceded from the Union: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.

In the process, the South took control of federal installations, including forts in the region, which would give them a foundation for war. One of the most shocking events occurred when one-quarter of the nation's army surrendered in Texas under the command of General David E. Twigg. Not a single shot was fired in that exchange, but the stage was set for the bloodiest war in American history.

Edited by Robert Longley

DeBow, J.D.B. "Part II: Population." Statistical View of the United States, Compendium of the Seventh Census . Washington: Beverley Tucker, 1854. 

De Bow, J.D.B. " Statistical view of the United States in 1850 ." Washington: A.O.P. Nicholson. 

Kennedy, Joseph C.G. Population of the United States 1860: Compiled from the Original Returns of the 8th Census . Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1864.

• Order of Secession During the American Civil War
• American Civil War: Causes of Conflict
• Slavery in 19th Century America
• The Hoax That a Tariff Provoked the Civil War
• Did Uncle Tom's Cabin Help to Start the Civil War?
• The American Civil War and Secession
• The Road to the Civil War
• The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
• American History Timeline 1851–1860
• U.S. Legislative Compromises Over Enslavement, 1820–1854
• Top 9 Events That Led to the Civil War
• Bleeding Kansas
• Abolitionist Pamphlet Campaign
• The Abolitionists
• The Compromise of 1850 Delayed the Civil War For a Decade
• The Crittenden Compromise to Prevent the Civil War

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