Teaching the Article
Exercise 5, The "Laudable" Passion
Read the following documents and discuss the moral terms that Philip Vickers Fithian and early American Presbyterians used in understanding the American Revolution. What in Fithian's local attachments and commitment to Presbyterian faith prepared him to embrace a cosmopolitan revolutionary ideology?
Why was "political jealousy" so "laudable" a passion while other forms of jealousy were "dangerous?" How did Fithian's Presbyterian faith, as proclaimed by the Synod of Philadelphia and New York and nurtured in the context of his "beloved Cohansey," inform his response to the American Revolution?