Jacob Green’s Revolution: Radical Religion and Reform in a Revolutionary Age by S. Scott Rohrer (review)

S. Scott Rohrer’s biography of New Jersey Presbyterian minister Jacob Green is a welcome addition to the subject of religion in the American Revolution. Interest in this important subject has grown immensely since the analyses of Jerald C. Brauer in the 1970s, thanks to the work of Patricia Bonomi, Thomas Kidd, Mark Noll, Nancy Rhoden, and William Sweet, among others. Studies in this area typically focus on religious movements, church evolutions, doctrinal debates, and their connections to revolutionary culture, without dwelling specifically on the personal dimension of history. Rohrer’s book contributes to bridging the gap by putting flesh in that realm of ideas. The core interest of this biography lies in the way it brings forth the richness and complexity of the minister’s life experience while still embracing the wider historical picture. Students and general readers will appreciate the fascinating details and interesting twists and turns of Green’s career. They will certainly be led to reflect not only on how the connection between religion and revolution played out in Green’s life, but also on whether he was motivated mostly by religious tenets or worldly pursuits.

The biography comes in three parts in a standard chronological arrangement. Part I covers the world of Jacob Green as a student, pastor, and father. It highlights his religious angst during his boyhood and student years at Harvard, and delves into the dilemmas arising from the connection of predestination, free will, and political activism. It also describes the challenge of balancing duties at the head of a church and of a numerous family, and the contentious relations Green had with his congregation over his salary, life style, and subsidiary occupations. Part II focuses on Green’s engagement for the Revolution at the local and national levels as a polemicist, revolutionary, politician, and host to rebel forces. Part III takes up his post-Revolutionary activities as a religious and social reformer.

The structure features a novelty. Each chapter ends with a short aside devoted to “The Loyalist down the Road,” Anglican minister Thomas Bradbury Chandler. Rohrer intends the parallel as an “alternative biography” (p. xii), a contrasting foil to put Green into sharper focus and to show that the impact of religion in the era of Revolution was not uniform. The two-tales approach may be appreciated by the general reader or the undergraduate student who is discovering the field; however, it may be considered a distracting and superfluous side show by the specialist who will not find much that enhances the understanding of Green, especially as the parallel lives do not intersect in any dynamic manner.

The book is a good example of how important it is to study second-tier leaders of the American Revolution. It succeeds in illuminating Green’s multiple roles and motivations, his ethics and inconsistencies, his accomplishments and shortcomings, his struggle to reconcile spiritual beliefs and worldly concerns, and the constant interplay of his Calvinist tenets with the wider circles of family, church, community, state, and nation. Green’s complex personality shatters certain myths associated with strict, dour Calvinism: he claims spiritual leadership but gets censured by his congregation for failing to live up to his teachings; he is a property and luxury seeker while decrying those who put money and worldly affairs before God; he is extremely introverted but he also lashes out in anger against his church when refused a better salary; he can be a slave holder but also an abolitionist.

Accounting for such a perplexing complexity is not easy. Rohrer generally explains the different facets of Green’s personality and behavior convincingly, though at times he sacrifices critical detachment and accepts Green’s self-justifications. To the question, for example, of why Green bought a slave (while his mentor, Jonathan Edwards, was condemned by church members for the inhuman and sinful practice...