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 intellectual currents of New England divinity that sought to reconcile Calvinist theology with emerging republican political theory. Smalley's contributions to American religious thought reflected the broader engagement of clergy in debates over legitimate authority and social order during the founding period.