Does the American Revision of the Westminster Confession Contradict the Original Version on the Doctrine of the Civil Magistrate?

I’ve written before about how Presbyterians changed their views on the civil magistrate and how this shift is reflected in the American revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith.¹ When the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America adopted the Westminster Standards in 1788, they amended the Standards in four places: WCF 20:4, 23:3, 31:3; and WLC 109. The most significant change is in Chapter 23, where the third article was almost completely rewritten. 

The stakes may not seem very high, and the whole debate may seem like little more than historical wrangling. But this is quite a live issue in the Presbyterian world. For one thing, all ministers and officers in the PCA and the OPC subscribe to the American revisions. If the two documents are just different in emphasis, than a minister in the PCA could say, “Sure, I agree with my own denominational standards, but they don’t contradict what the Westminster Assembly decided in 1646.” On the other hand, if the two versions are mutually exclusive, then a man must decide which view of the civil magistrate he affirms.

Similarly, many suggest that there was a single Reformed political theology from Calvin to Turretin to New England to the eighteenth-century Presbyterians. If these proponents can show that there was a consistent view for 250 years, then anything deviating from that view should be considered less than truly Reformed. My contention is that Reformed political thought has not been static, and, in fact, that American Presbyterianism saw itself as correcting elements of the earlier tradition.

How Different?

It is worth seeing once again the two versions of WCF 23:3 side by side. Everything after the initial underlined section is new in the American version.

Since publishing my article in 2024, several responses have argued that the difference between the two versions of WCF 23:3 is only a matter of emphasis and not an actual contradiction. Other ministerial colleagues in the PCA have argued that although the American version of WCF 23:3 is significantly changed, the new version does not entail a denial of anything in the original. These brothers assert that the Westminster divines and the American Presbyterians agreed with the magisterial Reformers that the civil magistrate may not interfere in matters of faith (in sacra). This, however, is not the same as saying the magistrate does not have authority around matters of faith (circa sacra). Thus, it is argued that the American Presbyterians prohibited the magistrate’s involvement “in matters of faith” without rejecting what the original version of WCF 23:3 said about the magistrate’s duties “around matters of faith.” 

Central to this argument is the recognition that America at the end of the eighteenth century, and well into the nineteenth century, continued to uphold blasphemy laws, Sabbath laws, and religious tests for office. Moreover, Presbyterians—including those responsible for drafting the American revision—were often in favor of these provisions. Like their British counterparts in 1646, American Presbyterians believed the civil magistrate should maintain “piety, justice, and peace” (WCF 23:2). Some have maintained, then, that American version—while perhaps not a hard establishmentarianism, is still a “soft” establishmentarianism. In short, the two versions of the Westminster Confession may not be identical, but they are, in the end, not mutually exclusive.

Must, Must Not, May (1646)

What should we make of this argument that the two versions are merely different, not contradictory? To answer this question, we have to go back to the original 1646 version. We can break apart WCF 23:3 into three lists: what the civil magistrate must do, what he must not do, and what he may do.

The civil magistrate must:

1. Take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church.
2. That the truth of God be kept pure and entire.
3. That all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed.
4. That all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline be prevented or reformed.
5. That all the ordinances of God be duly settled, administered, and observed.

The civil magistrate must not:

1. Assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments.
2. Assume to himself the powers of the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

The civil magistrate may:

1. Call synods or be present at synods.
2. Provide that whatever is transacted at synods be according to the mind of God.

Notice that although the Westminster divines prohibit the magistrate from preaching, from administering the sacraments, and from enacting ecclesiastical discipline, they do give the magistrate considerable authority in matters related to the church. In fact, the first thing the magistrate must do is ensure that “unity and peace are preserved in the Church.” Likewise, he must ensure that doctrine is kept pure and that the worship and discipline of the church are reformed. He is responsible not only for the establishment of the ordinances of the church, but for ensuring that these ordinances are observed by the people. Finally, we are told that the civil magistrate has power to call ecclesiastical synods and power to determine whether the decisions of the synod are “according to the mind of God.” 

In short, the civil magistrate, according to the Westminster divines, should be involved in maintaining the welfare of the church, should root out false expressions of the church, should reform the church (when corrupt), should prevent the church from being corrupted (when already reformed), should oversee the establishment of the church, and should make sure that his people attend church services. Some may call this involvement only circa sacra (because the magistrate is not an officer in the church), but clearly the Westminster Assembly was calling for a very active magistrate with respect to matters of faith.
We can see how the Confession was understood in its own day by looking at the book Truth’s Victory Over Error by David Dickson (1589–1662). Based on lectures given in the early 1650s, Dickson’s work (released posthumously in 1684) was the first published commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith. In his section on the civil magistrate, Dickson asks,

Is it the duty of the Civil Magistrate, to take order, that all Blasphemies and Heresies be suppressed, all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed; all abuses in worship and discipline reformed, all Idolaters, Gainsayers, and other obstinate dissenters, being obliged and forced to quit their tenets and opinions, and conform themselves to the true worship and service of God, according to his Law?²

Dickson answers “Yes,” and then seeks to confute those who disagree. The first half of Dickson’s question comes directly from WCF 23:3, while the second half gives Dickson’s gloss on what the first half entails. According to Dickson, idolaters, gainsayers, and dissenters should be forced to quit their beliefs and conform themselves to the true worship and service of God.

In the next paragraph, Dickson further insists that:

Quakers and other Sectaries err, who judge it Antichristian, and the practice of the Church of Rome, that the Civil and Supreme Magistrate, with the assistance of the Church and her Censures, should by his coactive power, force and oblige all his subjects, to a Reformation of Religion, and to a conformity to the true worship, sound doctrine, and discipline of the Church.³

In Dickson’s estimation, the Westminster Confession requires the civil magistrate to exercise a coercive power in matters of faith. The magistrate is obliged to reform religion and should force all his subjects to conform to the true worship, sound doctrine, and discipline of the church. Dickson considers it an error held only by Quakers and sects that the civil magistrate should not do all these things.

Must, Must Not, May (1788)

Having looked at the original version of WCF 23:3, we need to now look at the American revision. Again, we can break apart the doctrine in terms of what the magistrate must do and must not do (there is no corresponding category of may).

The civil magistrate must:

1. Protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest.
2. Ensure that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger.
3. Protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever.
4. Take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or  disturbance.

The civil magistrate must not:

1. Assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments.
2. Assume to himself the powers of the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
3. In the least, interfere in matters of faith.
4. Enact any laws that interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise [of the church’s government and discipline], among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and beliefs.

From the outset we should recognize that the new version of WCF 23:3 represents a massive change. This is not like believing the earth is round even though the Confession never says the earth is round. Of course, there are many things we can believe that the Confession does not bother to address. But when the Confession is changed in such a drastic way, we are right to think there must have been something in the original that they no longer agreed with. 

Thankfully, in the case of the American revision, we don’t have to wonder what they didn’t agree with. The American Presbyterians tell us.

For starters, we know that American Presbyterians rejected the idea that the magistrate had power to call synods. When colonial Presbyterians adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith in the Adopting Act of 1729, they did so

excepting only some Clauses in the 20 and 23 Chapters, concerning which Clauses, the Synod do unanimously declare, that they do not receive those Articles in any such sense as to suppose the civil Magistrate hath a controlling Power over Synods with Respect to the Exercise of their ministerial Authority; or power to persecute any for their Religion, or in any sense contrary to the Protestant succession to the Throne of Great-Britain.⁴

This amounts to an explicit repudiation of several elements of the Westminster Confession of 1646.

Likewise, we have this crucial paragraph from the Synod minutes of 1786:

The Synod of New York and Philadelphia adopt, according to the known and established meaning of the Terms, the Westminster confession of Faith as the confession of their faith; save that every candidate for the gospel Ministry is permitted to except against so much of the twenty third Chapter as gives authority to the Civil Magistrate in matters of Religion. The Presbyterian Church in America considers the Church of Christ as a spiritual Society intirely distinct from the Civil Government; and having a right to regulate their own ecclesiastical policy independently of the interposition of the Magistrate.”⁵

There is no way to construe this self-understanding, in relationship to the historic text, as merely a matter of emphasis. Why announce in 1729 that you do not agree with Chapter 23 in the Confession, and then declare again in 1786 that you disagree with the same chapter, and then drastically revise that chapter two years later, if you are simply “leaning in a different direction” or wanting to stress a different but complementary point? In the eyes of the American Synod, the Westminster Confession gave “authority to the Civil magistrate in matters of Religion.” The Synod did not see the Westminster divines as advocating only a circa sacra involvement. They believed the original edition of the Confession gave too much power to the civil magistrate, and they set out to change that mistake. When the 1788 edition says the civil magistrate must not “in the least, interfere in matter of faith” it means to reject what the 1646 edition said about the civil magistrate’s involvement in the doctrine, worship, discipline, government, attendance, and assemblies of the church.

Soft Establishment?

To be sure, American Presbyterians did not want a nation stripped of Christian privilege, Christian laws, and a Christian ethos. Eighteenth-century Presbyterians were for a Christian magistrate who inculcated Christian virtues for a Christian people in a Christian nation. At the same time, the Presbyterians were against any interference by the state in matters of faith. 

When the revision of the Confession was published in 1788 it included eight Preliminary Principles written by John Witherspoon. In the first principle, the Synod stated “unanimously” that

they consider the rights of private judgment, in all matters that respect religion, as universal and inalienable: They do not even wish to see any religious constitution aided by the civil power, further than be necessary for protection and security, and, at the same time, equal and common to all others.⁶

This language should come as no surprise when we recall that the New Jersey Constitution of 1776 (drafted mainly by Presbyterians and approved in the New Jersey Congress by the likes of John Witherspoon), stated unequivocally that no person should ever be “deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshipping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience,” that no person should be “compelled to attend any place of worship, contrary to his own faith and judgment,” nor should any person “be obliged to pay titles, taxes, or any other rates” for church buildings or church ministry. American Presbyterians equated the establishment principles with the dangers of Anglicanism and governmental interference.

The second Preliminary Principle builds on the first. The Synod affirmed secondly that

every Christian Church, or union and association of particular Churches, is entitled to declare the terms of admission into its communion, and the qualifications of its ministers and members, as well as the whole system of its internal government which Christ hath appointed.⁷

This is a significant departure from the original Confession. The Westminster divines could not envision a land where every church and every denomination was free to determine its own system and government. American Presbyterians, by contrast, made it a cornerstone of their ecclesiastical identity that the magistrate had no business getting involved in the church’s business.

Besides the minutes of the Synod of New York and Philadelphia, we have almost no record of how the events unfolded at the decisive assembly in 1788. One of the few (only?) firsthand accounts comes from Ashbel Green, a young pastor at the time and a member of the adopting Synod. It is worth quoting at some length his description of the relevant events:

No part of the Confession of Faith was altered, except that which relates to civil government and the civil magistrate. The Scotch Confession having been formed for a nation in which the church and state are united, declares that “the civil magistrate hath power to call Synods, and to be present at them, and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God.” In place of this, the Synod that adopted the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States declared, that “it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the Church of our common Lord, without giving preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever, shall enjoy the full, free and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger.” Some minor alterations were made in the Scotch Confession, but all of the same import as the above.

You see, then, how unfounded and senseless has been the cry, that the Presbyterian Church has been seeking governmental patronage. This can never be done, but in open violation of an established principle of the standards of that Church. Nay, I verily believe, that if there were no constitutional article on the subject, that Church would consider any connexion with the State whatever, as a calamity and a curse.

This may be as proper a place as any other to mention, that when, through mere oversight, the members of the adopting Synod were just going to take the final vote on the catechisms of the Church, without alteration, the Rev. Jacob Ker, of the state of Delaware, (I well remember his name, and think that he had very seldom spoken before,) arrested the proceedings, by calling attention to a clause in the Larger Catechism, in answer to the question, “What are the sins forbidden in the second commandment?” He stated that the catechism as it then stood, specified among the sins forbidden in this commandment, “tolerating a false religion,” and he made a motion to strike out this clause. My impression is, that this motion was carried without debate, and by a unanimous vote.⁸

Green makes clear at least three realities: (1) The delegates in Philadelphia saw themselves as adopting a different understanding of church and state than existed in Great Britain. (2) The delegates did not want governmental patronage (e.g., as existed for Anglicans in England and for Presbyterians in Scotland), for they considered any connection with the state “a calamity and curse.” (3) The delegates quickly and without controversy rejected the 1646 view that “tolerating a false religion” was a sin. In short, the adopting Synod in Philadelphia was not just talking about frogs instead of cats. They were saying, at least in many of the most important details, that they did not believe in cats anymore.

Public Decorum or Ecclesiastical Worship?

No doubt, the revised Confession of Faith still expected the civil magistrate to be a supportive friend of the Christian religion. American Presbyterians in the eighteenth century did not envision a naked public square or a neutral civil magistrate. In his 1782 thanksgiving sermon at the end of the Revolutionary War, John Witherspoon insisted that civil magistrates “are under the strongest obligations to do their utmost to promote religion, sobriety, industry, and every social virtue, among those who are committed to their care.”⁹ For Witherspoon, this “promotion” meant three things: guarding the rights of conscience, setting an example of Christian commitment and character, and restraining open vice and impiety. He believed, as almost all Presbyterians did, that public wickedness—drunkenness, lewdness, swearing, Sabbath breaking, blasphemy, and riotous behavior—should be punished.

But here we must not confuse the magistrate’s role in maintaining public decorum with his role in maintaining the doctrine, worship, and discipline of the church. The original version of WCF 23:3 clearly gave the magistrate a duty to reform the church, to stamp out false churches, and to force his subjects to conform to the true church. The American revision explicitly rejected all of this. Now the duty of the civil magistrate was to ensure that everyone had the right to choose his own church, and that each church had the right to establish its own doctrines, government, and discipline. Likewise, the magistrate no longer had authority to call or preside over synods (a view already rejected by 1729). The magistrate’s only job relative to the church was to make sure that ecclesiastical assemblies could do their business without interference.

The revised Confession still used the familiar language of “nursing fathers” to describe the work of the civil magistrate. The phrase from Isaiah 49:23 was often applied in expansive ways, with the magisterial Reformers insisting that kings should put an end to idolatry, maintain pure doctrine, and cleanse his dominion of impiety. But the phrase was not always used in this way. In his famous sermon The Essential Rights and Liberties of Protestants (1744), Elisha Williams argued that when the civil magistrate protects all his subjects “in the enjoyment of this right of private judgment in matters of religion, and the liberty of worshipping God according to their consciences,” then he “most truly comes up to the character of a nursing father to the church of  Christ.”¹⁰ Williams believed Protestants had been inconsistent with their own principles, that some “Protestant states” had tried “to make all think and practice alike in religion by legal establishments and annexed penalties: but it never produced this effect.”¹¹ (91). He was calling for a level of religious liberty that did not exist in the Protestant nations of the Old World.

If the magistrate of 1646 had much he was supposed to do in matters of religion, the magistrate of 1788 had much he was supposed to prevent others from doing in matters of religion. According to the revised text, magistrates must protect the person and good name “of all their people” so that no one is made to suffer “indignity, violence, abuse, or injury” on account of “religion or infidelity.” The word “indignity” almost certainly refers to the various forms of public humiliation that existed in colonial America. As late as 1768, an observer in Boston noted that those who refused to go church could be put in the stocks or otherwise confined. Stocks and pillories were common forms of temporary confinement, often for religious offenses, and a mechanism designed to encourage public embarrassment. The American revision insists that not only does the magistrate have no right to inflict these punishments on religious grounds, he must also ensure that no one—no matter their religion, or even if they practice no religion whatsoever—is treated in such an abusive manner. While public decorum should be maintained (e.g., laws against blasphemy, lewdness, and swearing), no one was to be punished for what they believed, what church they went to, how their church worshiped, whom their church admitted into membership, what doctrines their church taught, or whether they went to church at all.

An American Church

The difference between 1646 and 1788 cannot be explained as a matter of emphasis. The two doctrines of the civil magistrate contain elements that are mutually exclusive. To put it bluntly, the American Presbyterians embraced the error of Quakers and sects that David Dickson thought the original Confession confuted. Either the civil magistrate must reform the church, cleanse the land of heretics, establish pure doctrine and pure worship, see to it that churches are settled, administered, and attended, or the civil magistrate must ensure that no one is punished for his religious commitments (or lack thereof), that every church can teach its own doctrine and regulate its own affairs, and that every person has unquestioned liberty to discharge his sacred responsibilities as he sees fit. Those are the options presented to us in the 1646 edition and in the 1788 edition of the Westminster Confession of Faith. 

I am not suggesting that American Presbyterians of the eighteenth century would approve of the political arrangement of the twenty-first century. Surely, in many respects they would not. They assumed an overwhelmingly Protestant nation where Catholics and (more so) Jews could be tolerated, but without all the rights of Protestants. I would argue that the principles of 1788 regarding the rights of conscience and liberty of worship should be extended to non-Christians in our day, but I grant that they did not conceive of the religious pluralism we now have in America.

In the end, we have no access to what eighteenth-century Presbyterians think about the world of the future. We can, however, know something of their thoughts about the world of the past. And here my argument is that they believed they were doing something new. That’s why Presbyterians were such staunch supporters of Independence and of the Constitution.¹² Of course, one cannot help but blush to read Presbyterian pastor Alexander McWhorter (a member of the Westminster revision committee) praise “our glorious” and “wonder-working Constitution of the United States,” but American Presbyterians thought God had done something amazing in the birth of their denomination and in the birth of their country. And that amazing thing was liberty. That’s what was new—not brand new as a concept, but new as an organizing principle for a people and new as a religious right for everyone.¹³

Looking back, a century later, Philadelphia pastor Thomas Murphy noted the many similarities between the formation of the General Assembly and the formation of the Constitution. Both were organized under a similar process, at the same time, in the same place, by the same kind of men, having the same principles, and having the same prospects. Murphy saw the hand of providence at work to set up a great nation on the earth, and to establish a great scriptural church to influence and sanctify that nation. In both cases, God had done something new. Just as the national government was “adopted for a new people, formed out of the best elements of the old lands,” so was the national Presbyterian Church. It was a “new Church formed out of the best elements of the Reformed Churches of other lands,” but, make no mistake, Murphy insists, this was “not an Irish Presbyterian Church or a German or a Dutch Reformed or a Welsh, but an American Presbyterian Church.”¹⁴

Notes

1. Kevin DeYoung, “A Tale of Two Texts: How the Westminster Confession of Faith Was Changed by American Presbyterians to Reflect a New Understanding of the Civil Magistrate,” Themelios 49:2.
2. David Dickson, Truth’s Victory over Error: Or the True Principles of the Christian Religions Stated and Vindicated (Glasgow: John Bryce, 1764), 186.
3. Dickson, Truth’s Victory over Error, 187.
4. Guy S. Klett, ed., Minutes of the Presbyterian Church in America 1706–1788 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Historical Society, 1976), 104.
5. Klett, Minutes of the Presbyterian Church in America 1706–1788, 604.
6. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia, PA: Thomas Bradford, 1789), 133–34.
7. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, 134.
8. Ashbel Green and Jones Joseph Huntington, The Life of Ashbel Green, V. D. M., Begun to be Written by Himself in His Eighty-Second Year and Continued to His Eighty-Fourth (New York, NY: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1849), 183–84.
9. The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, D.D., L.L.D., Late President of the College, at Princeton New Jersey, 4 vols., 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Woodward, 1802), 3:83.
10. Elisha Williams, “The Essential Rights and Liberties of Protestants,” in Ellis Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730 –1805, 2 vols., 2^nd ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1998) 1:97.
11. Williams, “The Essential Rights and Liberties of Protestants,” 1:91.
12. Alexander MacWhorter, A Festival Discourse Occasioned by the Celebration of the Seventeenth Anniversary of American Independence (Newark, NJ: John Woods, 1793). MacWhorter (usually given as McWhorter) was a Presbyterian pastor and a member of the committee responsible to amending the Westminster Confession. Besides celebrating American independence and the cause of liberty, MacWhorter repeatedly praises “our glorious” and “wonder-working Constitution of the United States” (12).
13. A case can be made that the First Amendment religion clauses (free exercise and no establishment) are rooted in the revised Westminster Confession of Faith. See Leah Farish, “The First Amendment’s Religion Clauses: The Calvinist Document that Interprets Them Both,” Journal of Religion and Society, Vol. 12:1–22.
14. Thomas Murphy, The Presbytery of the Log College; or, The Cradle of the Presbyterian Church in America (Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1889), 306.

This article appeared on Themelios.