"Long before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, the Reverend Jonathan Mayhew preached a message from his Boston pulpit that powerfully blended a defense of religious liberty with an emerging notion of constitutional resistance to British tyranny. His ideas shaped the thinking of future leaders of the American Revolution such as John Adams, James Otis, Robert Treat Paine, Josiah Quincy, Paul Revere, and many others. Seamlessly integrating political, intellectual, and religious history, Mullins's elegant and illuminating study restores Mayhew to his rightful place in emergence of Revolutionary protest while also conveying the full complexity and originality of Mayhew's thought."-- Rosemarie Zagarri , University Professor and Professor of History, George Mason University " Father of Liberty imaginatively connects Massachusetts political history, including the events directly instigated by Mayhew, with the minister's radical preaching. Mullins show how Mayhew, in attempting to recapture an elusive and virtuous past, propelled New Englanders into uncharted political and religious territory."-- Christopher Beneke , author of Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of American Pluralism "The panegyrics of John Adams and Robert Treat Paine that the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew was instrumental in changing popular opinion in pre-Revolution America were not empty words. As Professor Mullins demonstrates with skill and flair, Mayhew obliged the revolutionary generation to consider rather than confront the inconvenient truths of their times: that religious faith and political cause were inextricably matters of individual liberty.

Mayhew's early death dimmed his visibility to posterity but not to contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic who took to Mayhew's rationalism and liberalism following the Great Awakening. Mayhew was much more than a popularizer of ideas or iconoclast of Loyalist propaganda. By the 1760s, he probably reached further than any preacher of his day. His sermons-- delivered, printed, circulated, discussed, criticized, gossiped-- nourished commonplace debates, helping to alter the 'religious sentiments' Adams believed accompanied the political transformation. Mayhew was the forgotten hero of a generation fondly remembered for their own heroics."-- Colin Nicolson , author of The "Infamas Govener": Francis Bernard and the Origins of the American Revolution.