Читать книгу One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, Tome 1 - John Williamson Nevin - Страница 8

by Sam Hamstra Jr.

As a young pastor back in the 1980s, I began my doctoral studies with the hope of discovering an American Protestant ecclesiology to guide my service to the church. I quickly discovered that, while little work had been done in this area, most of what had been done could be found in the mid-nineteenth century. That time period is a gold mine for contemporary scholars interested in American Protestant ecclesiology. It was then that, with unprecedented intensity and devotion, Protestant Christians throughout the Old and New Worlds wrestled long and hard with the doctrine of the church and her ministry. From Oxford to Mercersburg and many places in between, theologians and practitioners turned their attention to the subject of ecclesiology. Their published works remain unsurpassed to this day.1

While nineteenth-century Americans addressed many issues concerning the church and the pastoral ministry, a great deal of their work was written in response to what Nevin refers to as the “great question of the age,”2 that being the Church Question.3 Of this question, Nevin writes,

It is evidently drawing to itself all minds of the more earnest order, more and more, in all parts of the world. Where it comes to be apprehended in its true character, it can hardly fail to be of absorbing interest; nor is it possible perhaps for one who has become thus interested in it to dismiss it again from his thoughts. Its connections are found to reach in the end, through the entire range of the Christian life. Its issues are of the most momentous nature, and solemn as eternity itself. No question can be less of merely curious or speculative interest. It is in some respects just now of all practical questions decidedly the most practical. In these circumstances it calls for attention, earnest, and prayerful, and profound.4

Philip Schaff agreed. In his Principle of Protestantism he writes, “1. Every period of the Church and of Theology has its particular problem to solve. . . . 2. The main question of our time is concerning the nature of the Church itself in its relation to the world and to single Christians.”5

The German Reformed Church

The German Reformed Church in Pennsylvania, later called the Reformed Church in the United States, may have wrestled with the Church Question more extensively than any other denomination.6 German Reformed immigrants scattered throughout the colonies during the eighteenth century, with thousands settling in Pennsylvania. Once settled, they gathered for “religious meetings” and then sought to establish congregations that conformed to the patterns they had left behind in Europe. Having no pastors at first, they invited lay leaders to “maintain the ministry of the Word.”7

The first lay leader on record was the schoolteacher John Philip Boehm (1683–1749). In 1720 Boehm settled on a tract of land in Whitpain Township, then in Philadelphia, now in Montgomery County. In a short time his German Reformed neighbors recognized his gifts and begged Boehm to take upon himself the office of the ministry, placing him “in a strait betwixt three considerations: the pleading of the people, the law of the Reformed Church, and the promptings of his conscience.”8 In time, his conscience prevailed and he accepted the invitation. Boehm proceeded to draw up a church order and organized the German Reformed immigrants into three congregations so that each would have the authority to call a pastor. The newly organized congregations then each elected Boehm as their pastor. He celebrated the Lord’s Supper for the first time on October 15, 1725. Soon thereafter George Michael Weiss, a recent immigrant, arrived on the scene and challenged the validity of Boehm’s ministry. That challenge prompted an appeal for guidance by the congregations to the Reformed Church in the Netherlands.9 A favorable decision resulted in the ordination of Boehm by the Dutch Reformed ministers in New York on November 23, 1729.

The ordination of John Philip Boehm established a sixty-five year relationship between the German Reformed Church and the Dutch Reformed Church. The German Reformed congregations functioned first as a Coetus under the ecclesiastical supervision of the Dutch Reformed Church.10 In 1793 the formal ties between the two groups were broken when the Coetus became Der Synod Der Reformirten Hoch Deutschen Kirche In Den Vereinigten Staaten Von America.11 The Statistical report for 1793 numbered 78 congregations and 40,000 members of which 15,000 were communicant members.12 As historian George Warren Richards noted, the new synod immediately faced four challenges: the provision of ministers (45 of the 78 congregations were without pastors), the training of new pastors, the influence of American-born voluntary societies, and the influence of the revival system.13 Regarding the third and fourth challenges, Richards writes,

The method of propagating and nurturing faith in God as revealed in Jesus Christ, by the educational or by the revival system was not a new issue, but a new form of an old issue in a new world. Its counterpart was the conflict between the way of the established State Churches in Europe and the way of Pietism in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, known as Methodism in England. In fact it was the continuation in the modern era of the conflict between Church and Sect in the ancient and the Middle Ages. In Europe the Sect was restrained, partly by the age-old traditions of the Church and partly by the law of the State. Yet separation and independency could not be wholly prevented. The frontiers of colonial times and the toleration or freedom granted to all religions, as long as they did not transgress the civil law, gave large room for individualism, the right of private interpretation of Scripture, and the freedom of public assembly. Every denomination was more or less affected by the revival system; some became committed to it, others adopted certain features of it, few stood aloof from it.14

Although German Reformed churches had broken formal ties to the Dutch Reformed Church, a denominational structure for a national church did not become a reality for another seventy years. In 1863, the celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of the Heidelberg Catechism become the occasion for the formation of the General Synod of the German Reformed Church—uniting the older Eastern Synod with the Ohio Synod (separate since 1824) for national cooperation. We now had one General Synod, two district Synods, 27 Classes, 500 ministers, 1200 congregations, 100,000 baptized, 130,000 confirmed members, two theological seminaries, and four colleges.15 These statistics reveal that the German Reformed Church represented but a sliver of the Protestants in a nation of over twenty-seven million people.16 The 1860 census revealed that American Christians owned 38,183 buildings, with seating for 10,128,761 people, valued at $172,397,922.17 According to this report, German Reformed congregations had accommodations or seating for 273,697 people, about 1.4% of the total. Dutch Reformed congregations, by comparison, had seating for 211,068. Both denominations lagged well behind the Methodists (6,259,799), Baptists (4,044,220) and Presbyterians (2,565,949).

Recurring Themes

The Church Question was discussed within a specific and unprecedented social context. The reader of the articles in this volume will discover that John Nevin, both directly and indirectly, responded to several realities in antebellum America.18 For the purposes of this volume, I identify five: revivalism, republicanism, rationalism, pluralism, and immigration. Granted, these realities worked in concert, each influencing the others in ways beyond the grasp of even the best historians, making it difficult, then, to assert which one preceded the others or had greater influence than the others. Granted as well that isolating each ingredient from others only takes place in the abstract, we do so now with the hopes of identifying the primary contribution of each ingredient to the American context within which the Church Question was asked and answered.

Revivalism

In the closing years of the eighteenth century, many people in the new United States believed that Christianity was facing a serious crisis. In May of 1798, with only 5–10% of the population holding church membership,19 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church issued a pastoral letter that warned of “a general dereliction of religious principle and practice among our fellow-citizens, . . . a visible and prevailing impiety and contempt for the laws and institutions of religion, and an abounding infidelity which in many instances tends to Atheism itself.”20 Several factors may have contributed to religious malaise in the country, including distrust of the Episcopalian church and the growing number of pioneers on the frontier, far removed from established churches.21 While many other reasons may be offered to explain the problem, the solution in the eyes of most American Protestants was simple. In times of trouble, seek revival. It worked once before in the so-called First Great Awakening.22 So why not again?

In final years of the eighteenth century and early years of the nineteenth, countless ministers began preaching for revival and an equal number of congregations began praying for it. Just where this new wave of revivals began or which one came first will probably never be settled.23 Historians typically identify three different flash points. First, in 1799 revival hit towns from Connecticut to New Hampshire.24 The Reverend Edward Griffin wrote, “I saw a continued succession of heavenly sprinkling at New Salem, Farmington, Middlebury, and New Hartford . . . until, in 1799, I could stand at my door in New Hartford, Litchfield County, and number fifty or sixty contagious congregations laid down in one field of divine wonders, and as many more in different parts of New England.”25 Second, in 1797 the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian pastor James McGready led his church in Logan County, Kentucky to pray regularly “for the conversion of sinners in Logan County, and throughout the world.” On August 6, 1801 his efforts, along with those of others like Barton Stone (1772–1844), bore spectacular fruit. At that time a great “camp meeting” convened at Cane Ridge, KY. Somewhere between 10,000 and 25,000 attended while preachers from a variety of theological traditions delivered revivalistic sermons. The meeting continued for a week.26 Third, at Yale in 1802 revival followed the preaching of President Timothy Dwight (1752–1817), the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, as about one-third of the students professed conversion. Iain Murray notes, “The Yale revival was marked by a feature that became characteristic of the new era: the number of men coming forward for the gospel ministry was suddenly multiplied.”27 Lyman Beecher and Nathaniel Taylor, who would later become leaders of revivals, were among that number.

The Second Great Awakening included many revivals, the last of which took place in 1858.28 According to James I. Good, a wave of revival spread over the German Reformed Church from 1828 to 1844.29 The “Annual Report” of 1843, the year that Nevin wrote the first edition of his Anxious Bench, refers to revivals in many of the German Reformed congregations:

With a few exceptions, all of them have experienced to a greater or less extent seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord—in the Classis of Mercersburg, in the Charges of Greencastle, Schellsburg, Waterstreet, Waynesboro, Woodock Valley, and Chambersburg; likewise in the Classis of Maryland and of Lebanon, in congregations of Reading, Lancaster, and Harrisburg; never before were such outpourings of the Holy Spirit experienced. In Lebanon and Elizabethtown the Word of God has also been manifested.30

In response, German Reformed congregations “walked a difficult tightrope—on the one hand affirming the necessity of the individual spiritual rebirth found in revivalism and on the other hand upholding the centrality of the church and its sacraments as the primary setting where faith is nurtured.”31 The aforementioned “Annual Report” warned of two forms of false religion: formalism and fanaticism, reflecting concern that the “congregations were in danger of being swept into the current of revivalism of the emotional type.”32

Two individuals more than any other embody the major thrusts of what is now called the Second Great Awakening: the tireless itinerant Methodist Francis Asbury (1745–1816) and the lawyer turned revivalist Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875). In response to an invitation from John Wesley, Asbury arrived in Philadelphia from Birmingham, England in 1771.33 Shortly after his arrival, he became disturbed by the concentration of settled Methodist pastors in American cities. In response, Asbury successfully prodded them into circulation so that more people could be reached with the Methodist message of grace and perfection. His efforts gave rise to the Methodist circuit rider, the preacher on horseback who, following the advancing frontier, sought out potential converts in the most remote settlements. Asbury himself traveled for 45 years, covered 300,000 miles, preached 16,000 sermons, ordained 4,000 preachers, and encouraged local churches to establish Sunday schools. As an evangelist, he perfected the use of the protracted camp meetings—meetings outside of the regular weekly gatherings of the churches. These meetings took place for several days under a tent, some distance from the homes of those who traveled to attend.

In 1818 Charles Finney was practicing law in Adams, New York when he came under the influence of a young Presbyterian pastor named George Gale (1789–1861).34 Finney admired Gale but remained skeptical about the Christian faith until 1821 when, led by a personal reading of the Scriptures, he experienced a conversion which brought him a “retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead his cause.” Within days his career as a highly successful converter of souls began on the streets of Adams. Refusing formal theological training, but already exhibiting great power as a preacher, Finney was licensed to preach by the local Saint Lawrence Presbytery. Soon he was making news in the local papers. Before long he gained national attention by a series of spectacular evangelistic meetings in Rome, Utica, Troy, and other cities along the Erie Canal. This is where his “new measures” took form. They included direct and forceful speech, prayers for sinners by name, protracted meetings like those held decades earlier by Asbury, the testimonies of women in public meetings, marketing of upcoming meetings, and the “anxious bench,” a place in the gathering space or sanctuary for the almost-saved where, once seated, they become objects of special exhortation and prayer. Years later, in his Lectures on Revivals, Finney explained his rationale for the use of such measures: “It is not a miracle, or dependent on a miracle, in any sense. It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means—as much so as any other effect produced by the application of means.”35

We may identify several distinctive features of the Second Great Awakening which, in time, shaped answers to the Church Question. First, the revival preachers of the Second Great Awakening effectively utilized protracted camp or tent meetings. In time, the apparent success of these meetings encouraged local congregations to try similar tactics in their sanctuaries. Second, rather than waiting for the Lord to work in the hearts of those who heard their messages, as had been done by the preachers in the First Great Awakening, the preachers of the Second Great Awakening induced responses through specialized techniques. In time, the apparent success of new measures, like the “anxious bench,” encouraged settled pastors to add them to their evangelistic tool box and employ them in their sanctuaries. Third, the Second Great Awakening encouraged a national move from the Calvinism of Whitefield and Edwards to Arminianism. This move is most evident in the rise of Methodism in America, but is also evident in the number of notable individuals, such as Barton Stone and Charles Finney, who rejected their Calvinistic roots and embraced decisionist techniques. Fourth, the Second Great Awakening stirred up a vision for missionary work and social reform, each made possible by the rise of voluntary societies. These new endeavors organized the forces of like-minded individuals towards the accomplishment of specific goals—and did so outside of the jurisdiction of local congregations and national denominations. As Mark Noll catalogues, during this time period

. . . the country saw the founding of the American Board of for Foreign Missions (1810), The American Bible Society (1816), the Colonization Society for liberated slaves (1817), the American Sunday School Union (1824), the American Tract Society (1825), the American Education Society (1826), the American Home Missionary Society (1826), and many more organizations.36

Republicanism

The initial foundation of American theology came from Europe. Consequently, until about 1750, American Protestantism was “decisively stamped” by its “old-world origins;” this imprint was “instinctively traditional, habitually deferential to inherited authority, and suspicious of individual self-assertion.”37 But that type of old world faith faced great pressure in the new world from American republicanism. This unprecedented form of government, embodied in the Constitution of the United States and characterized by the principles of religious liberty, separation of church and state, voluntaryism, and the sovereignty of the people, encouraged the transformation of a predominantly European understanding of the church and its ministry into a uniquely American phenomenon. More specifically, it transformed the Old World church from an essential dispenser of grace to each person in a parish into a devotional center and voluntary society of like-minded individuals; it reshaped the pastoral ministry from a necessary ecclesiastical office with authority to maintain the faith and represent the church into a helpful ecclesiastical profession of persuasion without authority, except that granted by the populace.

Sidney Mead was one of the first historians to draw attention to the influence of republicanism on the American church. His discussion of “The Rise of the Evangelical Conception of the Ministry in America” describes how the general conception of the faith was transformed as the church adapted to the unprecedented challenges of religious freedom and the separation of Church and State:

Throughout the long process of institutional adaptation to the exigencies of a new world during which traditional churches and sects were metamorphosed into denominations and a kind of congregationalism came to prevail in every group as lay influence burgeoned, the spiritual and ideological apprehension of the faith itself was being transformed from one primarily ritualistic and sacerdotal to one primarily evangelical—a change that greatly affected the whole conception of the ministry.38

Through his research, Mead also discovered that the role of the pastor was transformed from a priestly model to an evangelical model. In other words, the function of the pastor changed from that of a minister of the means of grace to that of a minister to people with the fundamental task of winning support for the gospel, the church, and the pastoral office.

In his outstanding publication, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, Mark Noll affirms Mead’s thesis by persuasively arguing that American Christianity shifted “away from European theological traditions, descended directly from the Protestant Reformation, toward a Protestant evangelical theology decisively shaped by its engagement with Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary America.” “By the early nineteenth century,” writes Noll, “a surprising synthesis had evolved: a compound of evangelical Protestant religion, republican political ideology, and commonsense moral reasoning.” Consequently, “it is not an exaggeration to claim that nineteenth-century Protestant evangelicalism differed from the religion of the Protestant Reformation as much as sixteenth-century Reformation Protestantism differed from the Roman Catholic theology from which it emerged.”39

In his landmark book, The Democratization of American Christianity, Nathan Hatch confirms Noll’s interpretation while convincingly arguing that democratization is the key to understanding the development of American Christianity from 1780–1830. Through his research of religious leaders and popular movements, Hatch identifies three ways in which the democratic spirit profoundly shaped the structures of American Christianity. First, the beliefs flowing from the American Revolution “expanded the circle of people who considered themselves capable of thinking for themselves about issues of freedom, equality, sovereignty, and representation.”40 Second, this egalitarian attitude led to an erosion of respect for authority, tradition, station, and education. Third, as leadership was redefined in keeping with the values and priorities of ordinary people, the age-old distinction that set the clergy apart as a separate order of men was rejected:

As common people became significant actors on the religious scene, there was increasing confusion and angry debate over the purpose and function of the church. A style of religious leadership that the public deemed “untutored” and “irregular” as late as the First Great Awakening became overwhelmingly successful, even normative, in the first decades of the republic.41

D.G. Hart builds on the work of both Noll and Hatch by specifying the effect of republicanism on the daily life of church members. In his estimation, “The Americanization of Protestantism in the United States did more than recast theological discourse or establish a new relationship between clergy and laity.” It also “turned American Protestant piety from forms and routines orientated around the church and the ministry of its officers to religious practices geared toward the experience of the individual, the reformist activities of voluntary associations, and small groups of religious zealots.”42 In short,

American Protestantism entered a new phase during Nevin’s lifetime. It is not an overstatement or caricature to say that, since it was no longer regulated by the state and no longer administered by ordained officers, Protestant Christianity in the United States became a religion of the people, by the people, for the people.”43

Nevin challenged the developing revivalist view of the church and her pastoral ministry. He was convinced that American Protestantism had capitulated while adapting to republicanism and, thereby, compromised significant theological truths. In response, he attacked this emerging ecclesiastical republicanism from a number of different directions. He repeatedly challenged the right of private judgment. He confronted Charles Finney’s nineteenth-century form of American revivalism, a unique fruit of republicanism. Most importantly, he developed an alternative: an historical, biblical, and theological conception of the church and its ministry.

Rationalism

In his classic work America: A Sketch of Its Political, Social, and Religious Character of the United States of North America, Philip Schaff (1819–1893) offered this comment on nineteenth-century American Christianity:

It is more Petrine than Johannean; more like Martha than like the pensive Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus. It expands more in breadth than in depth. It is often carried on like a secular business, and in a mechanical and utilitarian spirit. It lacks the beautiful enamel of deep fervor and heartiness, the true mysticism, an appreciation of history and the church; it wants the substratum of a profound and spiritual theology; and under the mask of orthodoxy it not unfrequently conceals, without intending or knowing it, the tendency to abstract intellectualism and superficial rationalism.”44

With those words Schaff acknowledged the pervasive influence in America of a “form of ethical reasoning,” one developed in Scotland by Francis Hutcheson (1694–1747) and Thomas Reid (1710–1796), and known by several names: the new moral philosophy, theistic mental sciences, and evangelical enlightenment. Brad Littlejohn offers this excellent summary of the core values of this new form of thinking:

Reid argued that there was no need to posit the existence of intermediate “ideas” which are the objectives of our knowledge, as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume had; rather, the mind “apprehends reality directly and unmediated.” The reliability of this knowledge is insured by the “common sense” all men share, which arises “from the constitution of the human mind itself.”45

“Generally considered,” adds Mark Noll, “this new moral philosophy promoted ‘common sense moral reasoning,’ or an approach to ethics self-consciously grounded upon universal human instincts.”46

The practical import of common sense realism into the life of the church was a shift from an affirmation of human inability to uninhibited confidence in the power of the mind to determine self-evident truths. That simple step had profound implications, one of which led pastors and lay people alike to embrace a populist hermeneutic in their approach to Scripture. Confident that they could understand the sacred texts without the help of pastors or traditions or creeds, each person exercised his or her right of private judgment. On the academic side of the church, scholars like Charles Hodge confidently approached their task of biblical interpretation as if they were scientists masterfully and objectively piecing together scripture passages into an integrated intellectual system.47 In the end, by the mid-nineteenth century:

A Protestantism rooted in the Reformation, descended from Puritanism, and renewed in the 1740s by the New Light revivalism of John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards came to take up . . . the new moral philosophy. These three phases of Protestant development—Reformation, Puritanism, and revival—had stressed human disability as much as human capability, noetic deficiency as much as epistemic capacity, and historical realism as much as social optimism. By contrast, the newer reasoning featured the construction of ethics on the basis of science, it insisted upon the universal character of ethical intuitions, and it favored these intuitions over traditional, historic, or ecclesiastical authority as the ideal basis for morality.48

Religious Pluralism

One of the “evils” that grew out of the Second Great Awakening “was the sudden growth of new denominations, all claiming to represent true religion:”

To a major extent, it gave men the Bible as their guide instead of the goddess Reason whose reign had begun in France. But the experience of Kentucky [at Cane Ridge] also demonstrated what could happen where men and women who were untaught in the Bible decided its meaning for themselves. Such people, while claiming the Bible as their only authority, could all too easily be carried away by things to which Scripture gives no sanction. And while they supposed they were following their own judgment, the fact might be that they were the victims of demagogues who know how to manipulate populist opinion.49

Winthrop Hudson agrees: While revivals and voluntary societies embodied “a spirit of unity,” at the same time “there were discordant notes[,] . . . controversy[,] and division.”50 As Philip Schaff observed, “America is the classic land of sects, where in perfect freedom from civil disqualification, they can develop themselves without restraint.”51

Religious pluralism prompted an ecumenical movement among those who viewed it as inconsistent with the prayer of Jesus for the unity of the church (John 17:20–23). Generally speaking, ecumenists took one of three approaches to the spirit of sectarianism in America. Some rejected their current context by pushing the restart button. This “No Creed but the Bible group”—which included groups like the Campbellites and Winebrenner’s “Church of God”—blamed creeds and traditions for the divisions in the church. They affirmed the imperative of unity, sought to restore the original unity of the church, and called “upon the Christian world to come with them to the pure fountain of God’s word, as having no doubt that it is to be secured in this way.”52 As Nichols notes, “this type of movement was so widespread . . . as to provide a significant key to the prevailing American religious mentality.”53 Others sought to repair the American Protestant church by accepting the divisions as healthy and then minimizing their distinctive tenets in order to form alliances. With reference to this approach, Nevin wrote,

A very favorite way of representing the subject, at one time, was to compare the different denominations to the several different kinds of soldiers that go to make up a regular army. More beautiful is the illustration (the last we have seen of the sort) brought forward in connection with the late “Christian Alliance” movement by a distinguished orator from the Established Church of Scotland, making the several denominations to be so many chords, whose combined music constitutes the harmony of the one, holy, universal Church!”54

Both Schaff and Nevin criticized this ecumenical strategy. Schaff objected: “[T]o make room for union, peculiarities of doctrine are to be surrendered for which our fathers contended and made the greatest sacrifices.”55 Nevin agreed: “It is a catholicity which stands wholly in negations; by which all that is affirmed as a distinguishing interest by the different denominations is either denied, or at least treated as something of no worth.”56 A third strategy involved efforts to reform that which has been broken by developing theological systems for the American context. Presbyterians in this group opted for the invisible-visible church distinction, which allowed them to affirm the unity of the church and, at the same time, affirm denominationalism. John Nevin took a different approach by condemning sectarianism, calling the church to repentance for the sin of sectarianism, and prescribing an incarnational ecclesiology which required faith in the Church itself.57

Inculturation by Immigrants

“Between the American Revolution and 1845,” writes Nathan Hatch, “the population of the United States grew at a staggering rate: two and a half million became twenty million in seventy years.”58 This unprecedented growth was due to a high birth rate, the availability of land, and immigration. The Annual Report of the Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service reports total immigration to the United States as 143,439 from 1821–1830, 599,425 from 1831–1840, and 1,713,251 from 1841–1850. Another 2,598,214 immigrated from 1851–1860.

This factor especially impacted the German Reformed Church. After 1830 “a new wave of German immigrants flooded into the expanding frontier, stretching the resources and ecclesiology of German Reformed communities.”59 According to one albeit slightly exaggerated estimate, over four million Germans immigrated to the New World from 1841–1860. Many if not most of these immigrants left Germany after the failure of the revolutions of 1848 to establish democracy. This massive German immigration led to “increasing German-American self-consciousness,” encouraging immigrants to “cheris[h] the heritage from the fatherland” while accepting “responsibility for their newly adopted nation.”60 “This growing self-consciousness had negative and positive aspects. On the negative side were the tensions of cultural and language differences. On the positive side was the maintenance of identity so essential to societal development.”61 All this took place as a new generation of American-born Germans from Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey moved to Ohio and Illinois, and a newer group of German-speaking immigrants settled farther west in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and the Dakotas where they formed distinct communities of German Reformed people. The tensions between these two German Reformed groups continued up to the post-World War I period.62

All nineteenth-century German Reformed immigrants faced, at least, two challenges. The first was adjusting to the economic, social and political conditions in America. In the process, they wrestled with how much of the Old World to hold on to while living in the New World, and with how quickly to let go of the Old while living in the New. John Nevin, though not a German by birth or lineage, was but one member of the German Reformed Church with a conservative opinion: “I do not hesitate to say that the German Reformed Church ought not to lay aside her distinctive national character and merge herself in a foreign interest. . . . In Eastern Pennsylvania especially, the predominant form of mind will continue to be German;. . . . ”63 The second challenge was religious. To what extent would Old World theological and ecclesiastical formulations function in the New World? Will they be preserved, the hope of the more conservative, or significantly modified, the hope of the more progressive? More specifically, how will the Old World norm of the union of the magisterium with the church, and that union’s subsequent influence on the doctrines of the church and her ministry, play out in the New World where such a union does not exist? The responses of the German Reformed Church to these challenges “exhibit both the essence of the faith tradition it represented and the way in which the sociocultural ethos of the growing nation defined limits as well as opportunities for that tradition.”64

The Church Question Answered

In America, opposing answers to the Church Question prompted the rise of two parties: the Revivalists, characterized by a willingness to adapt to the demands of the New World, and the Conservatives who warned of compromising basic precepts of their theological traditions. Contemporary scholars often refer to the Revivalists as evangelicals and the Conservatives as confessionalists. Evangelicals embraced both the need for revival, as well as the “new measures” of revivalism.65 While answering the Church Question, they tended to reduce God’s normative strategy to Romans 10:13–17:

For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.66

On that foundation, as well as the apparent success of itinerant preachers during the Second Great Awakening, evangelicals believed that the normative pattern by which God brings individuals to salvation is through the preaching of the Gospel, an act that can take place anywhere, anytime, and by anyone. Fueled by the democratization of American Christianity, which included the conviction that every Christian could and should read and interpret Scripture for him or herself, they also believed that Christians could grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord outside of the ministry of the local church.67 Hence, the sacraments or ordinances, catechesis, and regular participation in the weekly gathering of the local church were viewed as optional.

The Confessional Movement in America took shape in three traditions: the Lutheran, the Episcopalian, and the Reformed. The most notable Lutheran confessionalist was Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887), the founder of the Missouri Synod. Bishop John Henry Hobart (1775–1830) led the Episcopalian confessional or high church movement. John Williamson Nevin and Philip Schaff led the Reformed movement from within their German Reformed Church. According to Walter Conser, four themes characterized the beliefs of American confessional theologians.68 First, although they strongly opposed revivalism and “new measures,” confessionalists still considered themselves supporters of the evangelical faith. Second, they rejected the subjectivism of revivalism, which included an ardent defense of the right of private interpretation of Scripture and, in its place, they affirmed the need for historic statements of faith to guide Christians in their interpretations of the Bible. Third, they were social and political conservatives, fearful of the excesses of Jacksonian policies. Fourth, they challenged all who would listen to rethink the doctrine of the church, a challenge which brought the Church Question to the top of the theological agenda of most scholars in the first half of the nineteenth century. While answering that question, confessionalists affirmed the essential role of the local church and her ministry in God’s plan for the salvation of the world. With the evangelicals, they affirmed the importance of preaching but insisted that such preaching take place under the supervision of the local church and be delivered by individuals authorized by that same church and its denomination. In their estimation, however, the ministry of preaching was but one of many ministries the Triune God employs for the redemption of the people of God. More specifically, confessionalists asserted that the church is the authorized dispenser of ministry that leads individuals to salvation and, then as a spiritual mother, nurtures them in the faith. All that is to say that, in their estimation, there was no salvation outside of the church.

The German Reformed Church included both evangelicals and confessionalists. Joseph F. Berg (1812–1871) and Elias Heiner were two of the more outspoken evangelicals while John Nevin and Philip Schaff served as their confessional counterparts. These individuals, joined by others, engaged in an intense debate through the printed page.69 As James Hastings Nichols observed, Nevin insisted that “salvation in Christ does not reach souls in isolation.” Salvation comes to humanity through Christ who is present in the world through the church. Since the agency of the church is essential to salvation, there is no salvation outside of the church.70 In contrast, Heiner suggested that salvation is normally received outside the church: “Personal, individual piety is to be preferred to any outward connection with the church whatever. . . . There are thousands in the world who belong to Christ, and yet they have no outward form or formal connexion with his visible church.”71 Berg agreed: “Religion is a personal matter from beginning to end. . . . The church does not make the believer. Believers constitute the church.”72 Naturally, both evangelicals and confessionalists “claimed to uphold old standards of Reformed faith and denounced the opponent as the innovator.”73 At the same time, the Reformed Germans in America began defining themselves as a denomination.

The first synod of the German Reformed Church organized in 1793 at Lancaster. In 1820 the synod divided itself into classes, the equivalent of districts or regions, and decided to found a theological seminary which opened in 1825. From 1822 to 1865 the Synod experienced several divisions. In 1822 the free synod of Pennsylvania broke away but returned in 1837. The Ohio classis broke off in 1824 and organized itself into an independent synod in 1846. In 1863, the General Synod of the German Reformed Church was formed, uniting the two regional Synods.

Richards chronicles the manner by which the German Reformed Church navigated the internal debate over the Church Question by examining the denomination’s annual “Report on the State of Religion.”74 The Synod of 1836 complained about the “neglect of responsibility of those who profess religion” whose “power of godliness is sunk and lost in forms.” The Synod of 1838 offers “good news from the churches” in their battle with the “revival system” as “brethren in every section of Zion seem alike animated to come to the help of the Lord against the mighty, though there may be a diversity of views and feelings with respect to the instrumentalities to be employed.” The Synod also encouraged its pastors and people to “adhere to the ancient doctrinal standards of our Church,” even while cooperating with non-German Reformed agencies. The Synod of 1840 affirmed the value of union and cooperation with other Christians and encouraged its members to “seek to be one in the reception of the truth, one in spirit, and one in our efforts against the common enemy.” The Synod of 1841 encouraged its congregations to “to keep firm hold upon the past, to cling faithfully to our ancient doctrines, order and customs.” The Synod report of 1843 warned of two forms of false religion: formalism and fanaticism. It admitted that “in the past in this country mere form of religion usurped the place of vital godliness, alongside of ardent and devout piety in many parts of our Church.” That same report acknowledged that during the “last ten or twelve years a marked improvement has taken place,” and warned that there is now “much danger of passing over to the other extreme and to repose trust in the ecstasies of fanatical feelings. . . . Congregations were in danger of being swept into the current of revivalism of the emotional type.”75

While the Church Question appeared in many shapes and forms, it boiled down to this: Is the church, as embodied in duly constituted local communities, guided by duly recognized leaders, essential to God’s saving activity? If the answer to that question is “No,” the so-called “Low Church view,” then that same church is but one of many instruments employed in the fulfilment of the divine mission. If the answer is “Yes,” the “High Church” view, then the normal means of God’s saving activity is the church, in which children are nurtured in the faith, and through which adults are brought to faith. Of course, those who answered in the affirmative recognized that our sovereign Triune God may choose to work outside of the strategy that has been put into play since the ascension of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday. There will be individuals, like Saul on the road to Damascus, to whom Christ appears directly. However, those who answered in the affirmative held that, ever since the ascension of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday, the Triune God normally worked in and through the church.

John Nevin and the Church Question76

While he never wrote a systematic ecclesiology, the fire in John Nevin’s belly was the church and her ministry.77 Throughout his prolific career, he provided the church with a long list of publications addressing numerous ecclesiological themes. This volume includes nine articles or books written from 1843 to 1858. The year 1843 marks the publication of the first edition of The Anxious Bench. It was written but three years after Nevin moved to Mercersburg to provide leadership for the struggling Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church. Nevin contributed seven articles that addressed, in some measure, the Church Question. The sermon On Catholic Unity (1845) represents his first major statement on the subject. Nevin delivered this defining document on Christian unity before the Joint Convention of the German Reformed Church and the Dutch Reformed Church in Harrisburg on August 8, 1844. Nevin preached The Church at the opening of the Synod of the German Reformed Church at Carlisle, PA on October 15, 1846; it was delivered in the wake of the “heresy trial” of Schaff and Nevin over the publication of The Principle of Protestantism, and was published at the request of Synod by the Publication Office of the German Reformed Church in 1847. In Antichrist (1848) Nevin affirms the centrality of the incarnation, defines the Antichrist in part as a denial of the organic and real link between the incarnate Christ and the Church, and offers his most searing critique of sectarianism. In The Sect System (1849) Nevin presents his review of History of the Religious Denominations in the United States, edited by John Winebrenner (1797–1860), an outspoken evangelical who had begun his ministry within the German Reformed Church. In Catholicism (1851) Nevin deliberates on the classic marks of the church while unpacking what the Apostles’ Creed means by “one, holy, catholic Church.”

In the spring of 1853, “the way was open for Dr. Nevin to retire from public life, and find that rest for his body and mind which, after thirteen years of the most intense mental activity, he needed more than anything else.”78 The “way” referred to by Appel was the move of Marshall College to Lancaster. Nevin had declined the invitation to move with the school and shared the reason for his decision in a private interview with this biographer, Theodore Appel:

Among other things he said that, as was well known, he was not satisfied with the present state of Protestantism and Romanism; that he had published his views freely; that he did not wish to burden the new institution with the odium or opposition which they had called forth; and that the College was most likely to do better under a new president to whom there could be no objection on account of his philosophy or theology, as was the case with himself.79

Interestingly, Emmanuel Gerhart, the systematician of Mercersburg Theology, was chosen as the school’s president.80 Appel couldn’t resist this comment on that decision: “Here, as in other things, the hand of Providence manifested itself in enabling the College to grow in its own likeness and image, without suffering any harm to its historical integrity.”81

While Nevin retired from his role as a professor, he continued to preach and write. In his sermon, “The Christian Ministry,” he offers a systematic portrait of the pastoral office. He delivered this sermon in November 1854 at Zion’s Church of Chambersburg during the installation of Bernard C. Wolff (1794–1870), Nevin’s successor as Professor of Theology. In 1857, he wrote an extensive review of a commentary on Ephesians by Charles Hodge, a book wherein Nevin’s former professor focuses on predestination and election. Nevin challenges Hodge’s presuppositions and, in the process, distinguishes both his understanding of election and the church from that of Hodge. In 1858, Nevin wrote “Thoughts on the Church.” This is the last of his publications focused on the church and its ministry, though he wrote articles in defense of the Provisional Liturgy.82

Through these nine texts Nevin encouraged German Reformed Christians, and all others who would listen, to return to “the historical Reformational faith in the visible Church as the true Body of Christ.”83 For Nevin, “the church is the vehicle by which the theanthropic life of Christ is carried forward through history and imparted to mankind.”84 The life of Christ is then imparted to each individual through union with Christ that takes place by and through the ministry of the church. In other words, the church is the primary source of spiritual grace and a place of life-long nurture and discipleship, and the pastoral office is a necessary medium of God’s salvific grace; the pastors who fill the office are called to serve as priests, clothed with apostolic authority.

1. See as examples, Canon, Lectures on Pastoral Theology; Hoppin, The Office and Work of the Christian Ministry; Murphy, Pastoral Theology.

2. Nevin, “Translator’s Introduction” to Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism, 54. The latest edition of Principle, with full editorial apparatus, has been recently published in the present series: Schaff, The Development of the Church: “The Principle of Protestantism” and other Historical Writings of Philip Schaff, ed. David R. Bains and Theodore Louis Trost, MTSS, vol. 3. This edition of Principle and What is Church History? will be used throughout.

3. For treatments of the “Church Question,” see Welch, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 1:190–232; Conser Jr., Church and Confession. Almost certainly Nevin was introduced to the concept by Schaff in the lectures that became Principle of Protestantism (October 1844). It does not appear in Nevin’s writing until the 1846 sermon, “The Church” (below, 156). Schaff discussed the question in What is Church History?, 237–38.

4. Nevin, “Introduction” to Schaff, Principle of Protestantism, MTSS, vol. 3, 54–5.

5. Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism, MTSS, vol. 3, 192, emphasis original.

6. For a brief history of the Reformed Church in the United States, see Gunnemann, The Shaping of the United Church of Christ, 167–182.

7. Richards, History of the Theological Seminary, 27.

8. Ibid.

9. “The Consistory of the German Reformed Churches of Falkner Swamp, Skippack, and Whitemarch to the Classis of Amsterdam, July 1729,” in Hambrick-Stowe, ed., Colonial and National Beginnings, 274–284.

10. Coetus, a word of Latin origin, refers to a group or assembly of neighboring congregations within the denomination which serves as an assembly to adjudicate ecclesiastical matters, such as the formation of new congregations and the ordination of ministers. For more on the first Coetus of the German congregations, see Good, History of the Reformed Church, 331–43.

11. Trans. “The Synod of the Reformed High-German Church in the United States of America.”

12. Richards, History of the Theological Seminary, 78.

13. Ibid., 67.

14. Ibid., 217.

15. “The State of the Church” (1863), in Nordbeck and Zuck, ed., Consolidation and Expansion, 521–25.

16. These 1855 national statistics are from Robert Baird, State and Prospects of Religion in America (London, 1855), cited by Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform, 17.

17. Ibid.

18. A good beginning place for a study of the contextual history of American from the 1730s to the 1860s is Noll, America’s God. In this volume, Noll describes the surprising synthesis of religious, political, and philosophical principles that surfaced in nineteenth-century America.

19. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, 163.

20. Minutes of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America . . . , A. D 1789 to A. D. 1820, 152–53.

21. Noll, History of Christianity, 163–64.

22. The modern standard study of the emergence of revivalism in the colonies is Kidd, The Great Awakening.

23. Ibid., 268ff., 312ff., points out that revivals had continued between 1760 and 1800.

24. Keller, The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut.

25. From an 1832 letter by the Reverend Edward D. Griffin, in Sprague, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, 151–52.

26. See the discussion in Layman, general introduction to Born of Water and the Spirit, 10–11.

27. Murray, Revival and Revivalism, 133.

28. Ibid.

29. Good, History of the Reformed Church in the Nineteenth Century, 130–34.

30. Richards, History of the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church. 219.

31. Hambrick-Stowe, ed., Colonial and National Beginnings, 9.

32. Richards, History of the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church, 219.

33. For more on Asbury, see the definitive biography by Wigger, American Saint.

34. For more on Finney, see Hardman, Charles Grandison Finney 1792–1875, and Hambrick-Stowe, Charles G. Finney.

35. Finney, Lectures on Revival, 12–13.

36. Noll, History of Christianity, 169.

37. Noll, America’s God, 19.

38. Mead, “The Rise of the Evangelical Conception of the Ministry in America (1607–1850),” 219.

39. Noll, America’s God, 9.

40. Hatch, Democratization of American Christianity, 6.

41. Ibid., 5.

42. Hart, John Williamson Nevin, 25.

43. Ibid., 26.

44. Schaff, America, 95. A new edition of America is scheduled for a future volume of MTSS.

45. Littlejohn, Mercersburg Theology, 21.

46. Noll, America’s God, 94.

47. Hodge, Systematic Theology, I:1–2: “ . . . the Bible contains the truths which the theologian has to collect, authenticate, arrange, and exhibit in their internal relation to each other.” The task of systematic theology is to “take those facts, determine their relation to each other and to other cognate truths, as well as to vindicate them and show their harmony and consistency.”

48. Noll, America’s God, 95.

49. Murray, Revival and Revivalism, 174.

50. Hudson, Religion in America, 151.

51. Schaff, America, 96.

52. Nevin, “The Sect System,” below, 246.

53. Nichols, Romanticism in American Theology, 162.

54. Nevin, Antichrist, below, 218–19n61.

55. Schaff, What is Church History?, MTSS, vol. 3, 314.

56. Nevin, “Bible Christianity,” 365.

57. See Littlejohn, Mercersburg Theology, 20–4.

58. Hatch, Democratization of American Christianity, 3–4.

59. Nordbeck and Zuck, ed., “Introduction” to “The State of the Church” (1863), in Consolidation and Expansion, 521.

60. Gunnemann, The Shaping of the United Church of Christ, 180.

61. Ibid, 180–81.

62. Ibid, 181.

63. Appel, The Life and Work of John Williamson Nevin, 113.

64. Gunnemann, The Shaping of the United Church of Christ, 174.

65. Charles Finney is often credited as the originator of decisionist techniques, which he employed during his evangelistic meetings. These “new measures” included the use of an anxious bench at the front of the gathering space—special seats for singling out persons who felt a special urgency about their salvation, protracted meetings, daily meetings, the use of informal, instead of reverential, language, especially in prayer. See Hambrick-Stowe, Charles G. Finney, 38–9.

66. English Standard Version.

67. Hatch, Democratization of American Christianity, 179–83.

68. Conser, Church and Confession, 3–10.

69. James Hastings Nichols offers an excellent summary of the debate over the Church Question within the German Reformed Church in Romanticism in American Theology, 152–54.

70. See further Adam S. Borneman’s presentation of Nevin’s developed theology of the church as the “historical extension of the Incarnate Christ,” Christ, Sacrament, and American Democracy, 89–110.

71. “S.R.,” Weekly Messenger, October 15, 1845 cited by Nichols, Romanticism in American Theology, 153.

72. “Mercersburg Theology,” Protestant Quarterly Review (1846), 83, quoted in Nichols, Romanticism in American Theology, 153.

73. Hambrick-Stowe, Colonial and National Beginnings, 17.

74. Richards, History of the Theological Seminary, 217–18.

75. Ibid., 217.

76. Brad Littlejohn provides a concise introduction to the biography and general theological contributions of John Nevin in the first volume of this series: series introduction to The Mystical Presence, vii–xiv.

77. Many have contributed to the study of the ecclesiology of John Nevin, including the following PhD dissertations: Andrew D. Black, “A ‘Vast Practical Embarrassment’: John W. Nevin, the Mercersburg Theology, and the Church Question” (Dayton, 2013); John T. Cordoue, “The Ecclesiology of John Williamson Nevin: A Catholic Appraisal” (Catholic University of America, 1969); Sam Hamstra Jr., “John Williamson Nevin: The Christian Ministry” (Marquette University, 1990); Nathan D. Mitchell, “Church, Eucharist and Liturgical Reform” (University of Notre Dame, 1981); Francis P. Ryan, “John Williamson Nevin: The Concept of Church Authority” (Marquette University, 1968); George H. Shriver, “‘Philip Schaff’s Concept of Organic Historiography’ in Relation to the Realization of ‘Evangelical Catholicism’ within the Christian Community” (Duke University, 1961); Theodore L. Trost, “Philip Schaff’s Concept of the Church with Special Reference to his Role in the Mercersburg Movement, 1844–1864” (Edinburgh University, 1958).

78. Appel, Life and Work, 443.

79. Ibid., 439.

80. At the time E. V. Gerhart (1817–1904) was professor of theology and president of Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio. In 1868 he would become professor of systematic theology at Mercersburg Seminary. His Institutes of Christian Religion was published by A. C. Armstrong and Son (New York, 1891). Discussions of Gerhart’s theological development can be found in Yrigoyen, “Emanuel V. Gerhart: Apologist for the Mercersburg Theology,” and (in the period leading up to his election as president of the college) Layman, general introduction to Born of Water and the Spirit, 31–33. A selection of Gerhart’s works will be presented in an upcoming volume of MTSS.

81. Appel, Life and Work, 442; see Hart, John Williamson Nevin, 173–74.

82. The Provisional Liturgy was published in 1857, concluding a lengthy political and ecclesiastical process that began in 1849 when Nevin, Schaff, and a dozen or so others were commissioned by the denomination to develop a liturgy for ordinary occasions of public worship. Once completed, Nevin was relieved but not “hopeful as to the success of the work.” See Appel, Life and Work, 503; Maxwell, Worship and Reformed Theology gives a study of the work and product of the commission.

83. Littlejohn, Mercersburg Theology, 2.

84. Ibid., 61.