I think that Beck took a scene from Mel Gibson’s fictionalized “The Patriot” as true. There is no evidence that the British burned American churches during the Revolution. Beck’s larger point — the hostility of the British to American religious freedom — is well-founded though. For example, in New York, the British seized non-Anglican churches and used them as barracks and prisons during the Revolution.
Where do you get that from? In addition to the very famous Bround Brook incident, the Scots actually called the American Revolution the "Presbyterian Revolution" because the British, early on, burned over 50 Presbyterian churches. "To the privations, hardships and cruelties of the war the Presbyterians were pre-eminently exposed. In them the very essence of rebellion was supposed to be concentrated, and by the wanton plunderings and excesses of the marauding parties they suffered severely. Their Presbyterianism was prima facie evidence of guilt. A house that had a large Bible and David’s Psalms in meter in it was supposed, as a matter of course, to be tenanted by rebels." - W.P. Breed, Episcopalian minister in Philadelphia
Not so. The burnings happened. Here’s just a couple of examples, there are many more:
“This beautiful church was built in 1745 as the church of Prince William Parish. It was burned by the British in May 1779. “
http://www.gloryway.com/old_sheldon_church.htm
“Red House Presbyterian Church... The first building, one of three successive wooden frame structures, was burned in 1781 by British soldiers during the Revolutionary War.”
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ncccha/memoranda/churches/redhousechurch/redhousechurch.html
This was a wild country even at that time ~ our Third Amendment prohibits the practice EXCEPT IN TIME OF WAR, which excused the Brits.
As far as burning churches down, there are instances of the Brits doing that, and in South Carolina they literally had a civil war going on with our people, patriots to the core, were up against OTHER civilians recently shipped in by the Brits ~ and all those old boys had bright red hair and gave no quarter.
For the most part the Brits did restrict themselves a bit and only burned down houses, barns and other buildings when there were suspected rebels inside ~ and when it came to churches, there's one instance of the scene shown in "The Patriot" ~ but, of course, there should have been none of that at all.
I think the scene from “The Patriot” was based on fact and Beck used that fact, not the other way around.
The British were merciless.
Sounds to me like you would do well to watch Founders Friday and lean a bit about history if you think he is using a movie to back up his statments, you might lean he is using original documents to back up his statements and much of what HE is teaching from those documents has been scrubbed from your school text books... but there is plenty of American Revolution truth out there if a person missed it in school that you don’t need a movie to teach it’’s version,