It was appropriate that I read Eric Nelson’s The Royalist Revolution this summer while on a research trip to Great Britain, since the book is a study of political ideas that bounced between England and her colonies and the effects they had on the shape of the new American nation. Continue Reading »
In 1775, a group of American soldiers raided George Whitefield’s five-year-old grave in Newbury, Massachusetts. Hoping that his relics would secure their protection in battle, they extracted a clerical collar and wristbands from the celebrated preacher’s remains and divided the cloth among themselves. The staunchly Protestant Whitefield no doubt rolled in his grave when they returned him to his resting place. Continue Reading »