John Smalley

John Smalley was an eighteenth-century American theologian and Congregationalist minister whose political theology articulated the relationship between ecclesiastical authority and civil governance during the Revolutionary era. His work *On the Evils of a Weak Government* exemplified the colonial clergy's engagement with questions of legitimate authority and social order, contributing to the intellectual foundations of American political thought. Smalley's writings reflected the broader Calvinist tradition's concern with the proper exercise of power and the moral obligations of both rulers and the ruled.