The Forgotten Founders on Religion and Public Life

4. Oliver Ellsworth’s Calvinist Vision of Church and State in the Early Republic

chapter 4 Oliver Ellsworth’s Calvinist Vision of Church and State in the Early Republic William R. Casto Oliver Ellsworth (1745–1807) is, unfortunately, an obscure persontomosttwenty -first-centuryAmericans—eventohistorians. But he was well-regarded in late-eighteenth-century America and played an influential role in creating our federal republic. James Madison wrote that he “always regarded [Ellsworth’s] talents of a high order, and [believed] they were generally so regarded .” In the Senate, Ellsworth, who was the de facto majority leader until 1796, exerted so much influence that Aaron Burr joked, “If Ellsworth had happened to spell the name of the Deity with two d’s, it would have taken the Senate three weeks to expunge the superfluous letter.” Ellsworth played a particularly influential role in framing the Bill of Rights’ religion clauses. He was the Senate floor leader for the amendments and the Senate chairman for the Bill of Rights Committee of Conference. His understanding of the religion clauses is particularly interesting because few, if any, founders had a more comprehensive or deeper understanding of the role of religion in public affairs.1 Ellsworth was a thoroughgoing Calvinist. As a boy he studied under Joseph Bellamy, one of New England’s leading theologians . After graduation from the College of New Jersey (now 65 Princeton University), he entered postgraduate studies with another leading theologian, John Smalley. Although Ellsworth became a lawyer and a highly successful judge and politician, he continued his theological studies for the rest of his life. Toward the end of his life, he helped write A Summary of Christian Doctrine and Practice, which restated Connecticut’s orthodox Calvinism. Shortly after Ellsworth’s retirement as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, a young Daniel Webster noted with respect that Ellsworth was “as eminent for piety as for talents” and that piety made him an “ornament” of the profession.2 Ellsworth was a child of the Great Awakening that swept through America in the early 1740s and was a powerful source of political turmoil in Connecticut. The Awakening was sparked in 1740 by George Whitfield’s electrifying revival tour. Almost immediately itinerant preachers began holding revival meetings throughout New England. These revivalists, who were called New Lights, rejected the halfway covenant, which had loosened the rules for church membership. Instead, the revivalists insisted that every individual must personally experience his or her election to salvation in order to be admitted to the Lord’s Supper and to enjoy other privileges of adult membership in the church. This challenge upset most members of the Standing Order, who described themselves as Old Lights. For a period of ten or fifteen years, the Old Lights conducted a campaign of religious harassment of the New Lights. Eventually , however, the New Lights achieved political dominance. First, the New Lights formed a political alliance with the Anglicans, who were always in the minority. Later, the New Lights and the Old Lights reached an accommodation.3 During the Revolutionary War, Ellsworth progressed from obscure but important administrative assignments to become one of the state’s most important young political leaders. By 1780, at age thirty-five, he was state’s attorney for Hartford County and a member of the upper house of the state legislature and the Council of Safety. He also served six years in the Continental Congress.4 After the war, Ellsworth was appointed by the General Assembly to the Connecticut Superior Court, the state’s highest judicial court, and served until 1789. During this service he also represented Connecticut at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and played a significant 66 | William R. Casto role in crafting the Constitution. In the Convention’s plenary sessions, he helped shape the Constitution on comparatively minor points like enlarging Congress’s authority to define crimes and the election of senators by state legislatures rather than popular vote. More significantly, he was a member of the five-person Committee of Detail, which wrote the working draft of the document finally adopted by the Convention.5 Ellsworth also played a significant role in brokering some of the Convention’s most important compromises. He was a leading proponent of the compromise on the importation of slaves, and he was similarly involved in resolving the dispute over whether states would be represented in Congress on an equal footing or proportionally by population. As a small-state delegate...