Makemie's Politics (Part 1)
Religious liberty and The Father of American Presbyterianism
Boyd Stanley Schlenther has called Francis Makemie “a man of polemics and politics.” 1 Certainly, Makemie’s An Answer to George Kieth’s Libel proves him the polemicist. The Father of American Presbyterianism had no qualms publicly defending Reformed orthodoxy against challenges from Quakers or any other sectarian group.2
However, it was not just theology that brought out Makemie’s polemical side. As Schlenther’s quote suggests, Makemie was also fiercely committed to defending his political views as well.
So few of Makemie’s works remain with us today that claiming an exhaustive understanding of his politics may be a bit of an overstatement. However, consistent themes run throughout his letters that allow us to say a couple things for certain about Makemie’s politics.
The first, and the focus of this essay, is Makemie’s rigorous defense of dissenters and their religious liberty.
As we shall see, it was an issue with which Makemie was personally involved.
In January of 1707, Makemie and a colleague named John Hampton travelled to New York City to visit with some of the members of the Dutch and French Reformed communities there. When he arrived, it was requested that Makemie fill the pulpits at a couple of local churches. However, the colonial Governor of New York, Lord Cornbury, refused. Makemie, being no stranger to conflict, ignored Cornbury’s ruling and conducted a service “in as publick (sic) a manner as possible” in the home of a local parishioner to a crowd of about ten people.3
It was announced that Makemie would preach again at a local church’s evening service later in the week. Makemie, however, never made it to the service. Lord Cornbury arrested both Hampton and Makemie before the latter could ascend the pulpit. Makemie’s offense, according to Cornbury, was preaching without the required license. Makemie spent forty-six days in jail where he issued appeals to local authorities and prepared a written copy of the sermon which had led to his arrest.
On March 8, Makemie was released and remained for trial on June 3. Undoubtably, Cornbury had hoped that this Presbyterian rabble-rouser would not return, but Makemie, so troubled by his arrest and the threat it posed to the religious liberty of dissenters, chose to return to New York City and plead his case.
In what is popularly believed to be a product of Makemie’s own hand, a narrative of the arrest and prosecution was published for the interested masses. After all, this was “the first Prosecution of this nature that ever was in America.”4 In many ways, Makemie’s fate would set a powerful precedent for religious liberty rights on the American continent for decades to come.
A Narrative details the many twists and turns throughout Makemie’s trial. It is Makemie pleading his own case near the end of the trial, however, that gives us the best insight into his personal views about politics and religion in the New World.
At first, Makemie defended his right to preach by invoking the Toleration Act of 1689. When Cornbury argued that the Act of Toleration did not apply to the colonies, Makemie objected. If it didn’t, why had he been required to obtain one in Virginia and Maryland earlier in his ministry? Certainly, New York was much a part of the Crown’s dominion as was Virginia.
Makemie also charged Cornbury with unfairly applying the law. Why were the magistrates in New York requiring more from those “who have complied, and are still ready to comply with the Act of Toleration, and are nearest to, and likest the Church of England of any Dissenters” than they were from Jews, Quakers, and Lutherans in the colony?5 To Makemie, this was nothing less than targeted harassment of Presbyterians by establishment-minded Anglicans.
It was Makemie who finally delivered the final blow to Cornbury’s case. Near the end of the trial, Makemie returned to the question of the Act of Toleration and its applicability in the case. Perhaps there really was something to the Governor’s argument. After all, the Act of Toleration presumed legal and formal establishment of the Church of England in the colony. But could Lord Cornbury, or any of his attorneys, produce the law which had done just that?
They couldn’t, of course, because no such law existed. In New York, “there is no particular Perswasion (sic) established by law,” concluded Makemie, “and consequently all Perswasions there are upon an equal bottom of Liberty.”6
Makemie was cleared of all charges and returned to his home near the Chesapeake. He had won a major victory for American Presbyterians. His colleagues in ministry would take advantage of the liberty partially secured by Makemie’s defense by taking the Presbyterian faith to the edges of the frontier with evangelistic zeal and purpose. Few Presbyterians, having tasted the fruits of religious liberty, would be willing to give it up in later conflicts with the English establishment.
All of this is not to say that Makemie’s personal views about religious liberty rights were synonymous with those later enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Makemie’s tolerance for religious diversity only went so far. It’s not clear that his full-throated defense of dissenters applied to Roman Catholics for example—not in his mind at least. However, his sophisticated interpretation of the Act of Toleration underscored his belief that religious liberty should be the rule in free states, not the exception.
Religious liberty was a major part of Makemie’s politics. Yet, Makemie balanced his views on toleration with theological convictions regarding the civil magistrate’s duty to religion and promoting the public good. Makemie was a staunch defender of liberty, but it would be a mistake to turn him into some kind of harbinger of secular liberalism.
I will address those other aspects of Makemie’s politics in a future essay.
Boyd Stanley Schlenther, The Life and Writings of Francis Makemie, Father of American Presbyterianism (c. 1658-1708) (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1999), 20.
See Robert Hasler, “Makemie’s Defense” The New Vivarium, July 23, 2025, https://thenewvivarium.substack.com/p/makemies-defense.
Francis Makemie, “A Narrative of a New and Unusual American Imprisonment” in The Life and Writings of Francis Makemie, Father of American Presbyterianism (c. 1658-1708), ed. Boyd Stanley Schlenther (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1999), 191.
Makemie, “A Narrative,” 190.
Ibid., 196.
Ibid., 224.