Founding Fathers Who Were Ministers 2

Another signer of the Declaration who was also a minister was Robert Treat Paine, a chaplain who later became the attorney general of Massachusetts and a justice on the state supreme court. Additionally, signer Lyman Hall was an ordained Congregational minister who later became governor of Georgia; and signer Francis Hopkinson was a church musician and organist who compiled and edited the first hymnbook produced solely in America.

Among the signers of the Constitution were also several ministers, including the Rev. Abraham Baldwin, a chaplain in the War for Independence who was offered the Professor of Divinity and Theology at Yale and later founded the University of Georgia, which had a declared purpose of teaching religion to students. He also served in the first US House of Representatives where he helped frame the Bill of Rights.

And signer Hugh Williamson was a licensed preacher in the Presbyterian Church who served in the first US Congress, where he, too, helped frame the Bill of Rights. Roger Sherman —-the only Founding Father to sign the Articles of Association (1774), the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Articles of Confederation (1781), the US Constitution (1787) — also helped frame the Bill of Rights and was a lay theologian, penning multiple pieces on Theological issues.

Content sourced from The American Story The Beginnings by David Barton and Tim Barton