The Westminster Confession, to which libertarian and authoritarian American Presbyterians profess allegiance, has a chapter on the liberty of conscience, one of the only Reformed creeds to devote an entire section to this subject. Because of the Whiggish reading of Calvinism that has gained so wide a hearing in the church and academy, many readers would expect to see in this chapter some evidence that directly connects liberty of conscience to civil liberty. But the authors of the Westminster Confession clearly assert that the Chrisian idea of liberty of conscience may not be used for any kind of political liberty. On the one hand, Christian liberty pertains exclusively to the liberation from the bondage of sin and the penalty of death through the merits of Christ. On the other hand, the confession teaches that any who “upon pretense of Christian liberty, shall oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exercise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the ordinance of God” and may be “proceeded against by the censures of the church, and by the power of the civil magistrate” (original Westminster Confession of Faith, 20.4). This clear differentiation between civil and spiritual liberty was unremarkable among sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformed theologians and creeds. Only after the Enlightenment and the American framers’ idea of a “new science of politics” did Calvinists begin to blur that distinction. . . .

As the experience of American Presbyterianism shows, to rally behind the liberties promoted in the American founding, ministers and theologians in the mainstream denominations needed a version of the Westminster Confession that had been gutted of the idea that the state holds responsibility for the health of the church. Conversely, American Presbyterians who still clung to the politics that had informed the writing of the Westminster standards, namely, the Covenanters, took a different and non-Whiggish view of the American experiment. These Calvinists were law abiding and recognized the legitimacy of the United States, while they also refused to become involved in the affairs of the nation that would compromise the kingship of Christ over both the church and the state.

“Implausible: Calvinism and American Politics” by D. G. Hart in John Calvin’s American Legacy, ed. Thomas J. Davies, 84-85.