The Bible of the Revolution

Until the American Revolution, America’s Bibles had been shipped in from England. When that supply was cut off and supplies dwindled in 1777, Congress resolved to import 20,000 copies of the Bible from other countries, based on a Congressional committee’s determination that “the use of the Bible is so universal and its importance so great.”

That resolution was not acted upon, though, and the need remained. Robert Aitken of Philadelphia published a New Testament in 1777 and followed it with three additional editions. In early 1781, he petitioned Congress and received the approval to print the entire Bible. Thus originated the first American printing of the English Bible in 1782, what has come to be called the “Bible of the Revolution.”

W. P. Strickland, an early American historian, said of this Bible publication: “Who, in view of this fact, will call in question the assertion that this is a Bible nation? Who will charge the government with indifference to religion when the first Congress of the States assumed all the rights and performed all the duties of a Bible Society long before such an institution had an existence in the world?”

Taken from The American Patriot’s Bible