The Folly of Revolution takes readers into a "lost" monarchical world that few Americans today would recognize. This biography examines the life and work of Thomas Bradbury Chandler, a talented, hardworking, and erudite Anglican minister from New Jersey who was also one of loyalism's fiercest advocates. Among the early American clergy, Chandler possessed one of the church's most outstanding minds. He was an Anglican leader in the 1760s and a key strategist in the effort to strengthen the American Church of England in the years preceding the Revolution. Chandler headed the campaign to create an Anglican bishopric in America-a cause that helped inflame tensions with American radicals unhappy with British policies. And, in the 1770s, his writings provided some of the most penetrating criticisms of the American revolutionary movement, raising fundamental questions about obedience and subordination that undercut Whig assertions about republicanism and popular control. Working from Chandler's library catalog and other primary sources, S. Scott Rohrer digs deep into the origins of Chandler's thought, shedding light on an important strand of traditional values and the forces and events that helped shape it. An intriguing and thoughtful reappraisal of a consequential figure in early American history, this biography brings renewed attention to the work of a leading loyalist. It will interest students, scholars, and lay readers interested in political and religious thought in Revolutionary-era America.
S. Scott Rohrer is a social historian and the author of several books, including Jacob Green's Revolution: Radical Religion and Reform in a Revolutionary Age, also published by Penn State University Press.
"An intriguing contribution to a thriving literature on religion and the American Revolution, as well as on the diversity of political sentiments present in the colonial and Revolutionary eras. The Folly of Revolution reflects a creative reading of the influences on a significant religious figure, Anglican Thomas Bradbury Chandler, and in many places, it presents insightful new readings of well-known sources." -Kate Carte, author of Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America "Thoroughly researched, The Folly of Revolution makes Thomas Bradbury Chandler and the intellectual world of this prominent loyalist more understandable. Rohrer complicates our understanding of the uses of English history by loyalists, and this study of Chandler is unique in recognizing the significance of non-juror arguments from the Glorious Revolution as foundational to his thinking about the right to rebellion." -Nancy L. Rhoden, author of Revolutionary Anglicanism: The Colonial Church of England Clergy During the American Revolution
