How important was Religion to the Upheavals of the 1640's?

Of the nearly 100,000 men who died fighting for Kirk, King or Parliament in conflict in the 1640’s all, in an age of deep and almost universal piety, were motivated, to a greater or lesser extent, by religion. As Glenn Burgess put it ‘in their minds … it was a religious war’ and being such both sides acted with the lack of restraint one would expect in a religious war. [1] The multitude of upheavals: the seven year Civil War that enabled the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the reduction of class boundaries in the New Model Army and the eventual and unprecedented regicide and institution of a republican regime in 1649, all were exaggerated or directly caused and influenced by religion. As such religion was of pivotal importance to the upheavals of the 1640’s.           On the one hand, this importance of religion can be seen in causing the Bishops’ Wars of 1637-1640: the first initial spark of conflict that enabled the enormous upheaval of the decade. Some revisionists have recently attempted to register secular factors in explaining the open rebellion of the Covenanters in 1637 that led to the conflict, considering the Act of Revocation in 1625 or Charles I’s lack of presence in Scotland (he visited just once in 15 years before 1640) as creating the ground swelling of opposition to his rule; however, the nature of its occurrence was entirely theological rather than secular. The conflict came from ecclesiastical matters as it ‘evolved out of Charles’s blundered attempt to introduce a new prayer book into Scotland’ which was the direct cause of riots in Edinburgh in 1637; indeed, a sense of divine right was saturated throughout the movement, enabling its successful invasion and occupation of much of North Eastern England in 1640, and the surviving evidence available to us is a definitive proof of this.[2] Afterall, surviving Covenanter army banners proclaim statements like ‘If God be with us, who be against us?’ and Scottish clergyman stated in sermons that those Royalist Scots or English against them must lay down their arms ‘lest they be found … to fight against God himself’. [3] [4] Religion was therefore both the short-term cause of the Bishops’ War and the mandate that allowed the conflict to be popularly fought by the thousands in the Covenanter army. The failure of Charles I to beat this motivated and successful army led to the calling of the Long Parliament in November 1640, an emboldened Presbyterian movement in England and the rise of parliamentary and popular opposition to his reign: all of which enabled the coming of Civil War in 1642 and the ensuing upheaval it caused. Therefore, since one of the key factors that enabled the conflict was itself created by religious issues, the importance of religion as being the paramount cause of the chaos of the 1640’s becomes clear. [1] Burgess, Glenn, ‘Was the English Civil War a War of Religion? The Evidence of Political Propaganda’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 1998[2] Waureghen, Sarah ‘Covenanter Propaganda and Conceptualizations of the Public during the Bishops Wars, 1638-1640’, The Historical Journal, 2009[3] Banner of Major Alexander Douglas at the Battle of Newburn[4] Archibald Johnston of Wariston – A short relation of the kirk of Scotland since the Reformation. Edinburgh, 1638