One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, Tome 1: John Nevin’s Writings on Ecclesiology (1844–1849)

By John Williamson Nevin and Charles Hambrick-Stowe

The mid-nineteenth century is a gold mine for contemporary scholars interested in American Protestant ecclesiology. There one will find the extensive writings of John Nevin who came to the notice of the theological world with The Anxious Bench, a critique of the "quackery" of Protestant revivalism. Influenced by a critical appropriation of cutting-edge contemporary German theology, he came to believe that the church was not "invisible," but the visible manifestation of Jesus Christ's incarnate life. Christians were to pursue unity, not in external institutional arrangements, but as unity of spiritual life. This compilation presents his theology of the catholicity of the church prior to his masterwork, The Mystical Presence, and a multifaceted, sophisticated critique of American sectarianism. This edition carefully preserves the original texts while providing extensive introductions, annotations, and bibliography.

The Mercersburg Theology Study Series presents for the first time attractive, readable, scholarly modern editions of the key writings of the nineteenth-century movement known as the Mercersburg Theology. An ambitious multi-year project, it aims to make an important contribution to the academic community and to the broader public, who can at last be properly introduced to this unique blend of American and European Reformed and Catholic theology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Aug 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781498244923

John Williamson Nevin

Sam Hamstra Jr. is the Affiliate Professor of Church History and Worship at Northern Seminary. He is the editor of several studies, most recently The Reformed Pastor: Lectures on Pastoral Theology by John Williamson Nevin, and has authored several works on worship, including What’s Love Got to Do With It? How the Heart of God Shapes Worship. John Williamson Nevin (1803–1886), professor successively at Western Theological Seminary, the Theological Seminary of the German Reformed Church at Mercersburg, and Franklin and Marshall College. He was a leading nineteenth-century theologian and founding editor of Mercersburg Review.

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One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic

Tome 1

John Nevin’s Writings on Ecclesiology (1844–1849)

By John Williamson Nevin

Edited by 
Sam Hamstra Jr.

General Editor 
David W. Layman

Foreword by Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe

153088.png

One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, Tome

1

John Nevin’s Writings on Ecclesiology (

1844

–

1849

)

Mercersburg Theology Study Series

5

Copyright © 2017 Wipf and Stock. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Wipf & Stock

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

Eugene, OR

97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1897-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-4493-0

ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-4492-3

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

September 11, 2017

Table of Contents

Title Page

Contributors

Foreword

Editorial Approach and Acknowledgments

General Introduction

Document 1: The Anxious Bench, Second Edition (1844)

Editor’s Introduction

Preface.

Chapter I.

Chapter II.

Chapter III.

Chapter IV.

Chapter V.

Chapter VI.

Chapter VII.

Document 2: Catholic Unity (1844)

Editor’s Introduction

Catholic Unity

Document 3: The Church (1847)

Editor’s Introduction

Preface

A Sermon

Document 4: Antichrist; or the Spirit of Sect and Schism (1848)

Editor’s Introduction

Preface.

Antichrist.

Document 5: The Sect System (1849)

Editor’s Introduction

The Sect System [First Article]

The Sect System: Second Article

Bibliography

The Mercersburg Theology Study Series

Volume 5

The Mercersburg Theology Study Series presents attractive, readable, scholarly modern editions of the key writings of the nineteenth-century theological movement led by Philip Schaff and John Nevin. It aims to introduce the academic community and the broader public more fully to Mercersburg’s unique blend of American and European, Reformed and Catholic theology.

Founding Editor

W. Bradford Littlejohn

Series Editors

Lee Barrett

David W. Layman

Published Volumes

1. The Mystical Presence and the Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord’s Supper Edited by Linden J. DeBie

2. Coena Mystica: Debating Reformed Eucharistic Theology Edited by Linden J. DeBie

3. The Development of the Church Edited by David R. Bains and Theodore Louis Trost

4. The Incarnate Word: Selected Writings on Christology Edited by William B. Evans

6. Born of Water and the Spirit: Essays on the Sacraments and Christian Formation
Edited by David W. Layman

Contributors

Charles Hambrick-Stowe is pastor of the First Congregational Church, Ridgefield, Connecticut. He previously served as academic dean and professor at Northern Seminary (Lombard, Illinois) and Doctor of Ministry director at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Dr. Hambrick-Stowe is the author or editor of six books and numerous articles in the field of American religious history.

Sam Hamstra Jr. is the Affiliate Professor of Church History and Worship at Northern Seminary, as well as the Founder and President of ChapterNext, a church consultancy. He is the editor of several studies, most recently The Reformed Pastor: Lectures on Pastoral Theology by John Williamson Nevin, and has authored several works on worship, most recently What’s Love Got to Do With It?: How the Heart of God Shapes Worship.

David W. Layman earned his Ph. D. in Religion from Temple University in 1994. Since then, he has been a lecturer in religious studies and philosophy at schools in south-central Pennsylvania. He is editor for volume 6 of the Mercersburg Theology Study Series, Born of Water and the Spirit: Essays on the Sacraments and Christian Formation.

John Williamson Nevin (1803–86), professor successively at Western Theological Seminary, the Theological Seminary of the German Reformed Church at Mercersburg, and Franklin and Marshall College. He was a leading nineteenth-century theologian and founding editor of Mercersburg Review.

Foreword

by Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe

This volume in the Mercersburg Theology Study Series brings together writings by John Williamson Nevin on ecclesiology, the theological topic that he and his colleague Philip Schaff considered the primary issue of their day in the American church. The essays bristle with the same intellectual energy on the page today as they did when originally published more than a century and a half ago. Edited by Nevin scholar Sam Hamstra, who has previously published an edition of Nevin’s lectures on pastoral theology,¹ this collection provides essential materials for historians, theologians, and church leaders to explore the enduring relevance of Mercersburg Theology. As these documents reveal again, Nevin’s writings stand as a brilliant expression of Reformed theology that deserve deeper examination on their own terms and as a prophetic theological voice crying out in the wilderness in the twenty-first century.

Trained at Princeton Theological Seminary, and having taught there during a sabbatical of his teacher Charles Hodge and at the Presbyterian seminary in Pittsburgh, in 1840 Nevin moved to south-central Pennsylvania to assume the position of professor of theology at the tiny seminary of the German Reformed Church (officially, the Reformed Church in the United States). In 1844 Schaff, Swiss-born and educated at three of Germany’s elite universities, emigrated to America to join Nevin on the Mercersburg Seminary faculty. Schaff’s inaugural lecture, published as The Principle of Protestantism (1845), made it clear that the two were kindred spirits in their theological understanding of the church and its ministry. Nevin had launched his first salvo in 1843 with The Anxious Bench and continued to preach sermons and publish articles in The Mercersburg Review and in other publications on the church question for the next two and a half decades. Although he retired from his Mercersburg post and moved to Lancaster in 1852, Nevin continued active involvement in theological and educational work for the denomination, including service as president of Franklin and Marshall College.

The organic approach that Nevin and Schaff developed with regard to history, Christology, liturgy, sacramental theology, soteriology, catechesis and the experience of grace and salvation, along with their doctrine of the church, thoroughly rubbed against the grain of prevailing American Protestant culture. Since all these elements of theology are integrally connected, as the writings in this volume demonstrate, each one bears directly in very practical ways on that final category of ecclesiology. Because the Mercersburg Theology was not a religious movement focused on a single issue particular to the nineteenth century, but constituted a school of thought that radically reconceptualized the Reformed tradition as a whole, its understanding of the nature of the church remains both controversial and instructive to this day.

Mercersburg Theology insisted that history—and therefore tradition, the church’s development over time—substantively and spiritually matters. Their position stood in stark contrast to American evangelicalism’s more typical embrace of a back to the Bible primitivism. Nevin and Schaff exposed the quest somehow to restore a repristinated New Testament church both as naïve and, because of its inherent sectarianism, as schismatic—ironically destructive of the unity of the church as the Body of Christ, as Nevin argued forcefully in Antichrist: or, The Spirit of Sect and Schism (1848). Similarly, nineteenth-century evangelical preaching tended to focus so exclusively on the Cross and Atonement, the gospel message that Christ died for our sins, that the doctrine of the Incarnation was lost or at least relegated to insignificance. While it was during this period that Christmas began to be observed more widely in American Protestant churches, domestic life, and popular culture, Mercersburg’s Incarnational theology went far deeper than that. Nevin’s elevated role for the doctrine of the Incarnation was, again, integral to his emphasis on the church as the Body of Christ over time and in the world today. The idea of an organic theological connection between Christology and ecclesiology set the movement wholly apart from the American Protestant norm.

Nevin and Schaff are perhaps best known for their blistering critique of revivalism as the standard method of transmitting the faith, and this, too, was bound up with Mercersburg Theology’s doctrine of the church. The revivalist focus on a single moment of decision reinforced the individualism and voluntarism of the American sense of selfhood, minimizing the fact that the gospel is proclaimed by the church and that sinners come to Christ and grow in grace within communities of faith. While Nevin upheld the power of personal conversion experiences (and had experienced this himself as a young man), he insisted that children, youth, and adults develop most fully and reliably as believers through the gradual process of catechism within the fellowship and worship of the Christian church. Mercersburg Theology took seriously the fact that in orthodox Christianity the church is not a secondary byproduct of likeminded individuals clubbing together (even if expressed in theological terms as covenanting) but is an essential article of faith. As recited in the Apostles’ Creed, I believe in . . . the holy catholic church; and in the Nicene Creed, I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. The Mercersburg theologians went so far as to reclaim in the American Protestant context the traditional Catholic understanding of the church as the mother of the faithful. For Nevin, believers do not create the church, the church gives birth to believers. This understanding of the church was therefore fundamentally at odds with the voluntary principle of church organization.

The application of Mercersburg Theology in the life of the church had practical implications that created a firestorm within the German Reformed denomination and, more widely, involved Nevin in a paper war with Hodge and others, especially with regard to liturgy, the authority and use of creeds, and sacramental theology. Nevin’s argument for the real spiritual presence of Christ in the sacrament, which in The Mystical Presence (1846) he demonstrated was Calvin’s own position, countered the low memorialist understanding of Holy Communion prevailing in much of American Protestantism. The Zwinglian view of what goes on in the Lord’s Supper held sway among many German Reformed pastors and congregations, where opposition to Mercersburg Theology developed under the banner of a more broadly evangelical Old Reformed movement. Further, while the German Reformed tradition had always been known as the church of the Heidelberg Catechism, Nevin’s writings placed that seminal 1563 expression of Reformed theology within the context of the whole confessional tradition of Christian orthodoxy reaching back to the theologians and councils of the early centuries of the church. Mercersburg Theology’s affirmation of the ongoing significance of the historic creeds burst onto the scene at the same time that Congregationalists and Presbyterians were wrestling with the contemporary relevance of their own Westminster Confession. Meanwhile, many other American Protestants renounced traditional denominational labels and claimed to be simply Christian. Such groups adopted a restorationist no creed but Christ posture that viewed eighteen hundred years of church tradition as nothing but unbiblical human invention. Within the overall mix of movements within nineteenth-century American Protestant Christianity, Nevin’s position has often been aptly described as countervailing.

High Christology and deep appreciation of confessional tradition blended in Nevin’s ecclesiology to energize the work of creating liturgies for the church that seemed more Catholic than Protestant to evangelical sensibilities. Indeed, in several pieces included in this volume, Nevin sought to rescue the very term catholic from what he considered the Roman Church’s sectarian appropriation of it. Not surprisingly, in those years of vehement and even violent anti-Catholicism in America, Nevin and those pastors who sought to implement Mercersburg-style worship in their churches were roundly accused of flirting dangerously with the foreign enemy in Rome. In fact, Nevin’s argument for a catholic conception of the church and the church’s mission in the world provide early, though usually unacknowledged, theological underpinnings for the social gospel and ecumenical movements of later generations. But the worship wars in the German Reformed Church sadly divided congregations, caused acrimony at synod meetings, and crippled mission efforts until a weary denomination found a way to live in peace in the 1870s, after the nation’s own Civil War.

The ecclesiological issues addressed head on by John Williamson Nevin and his Mercersburg colleagues have turned out to be perennial in American religious life. This edition of Nevin’s writings make this rich vein of theological thought accessible to scholars, pastors, thoughtful church members, and others seeking to understand what it might mean to be the church in the twenty-first century. As social scientists analyze steady declines in worship attendance, formal religious affiliation, general religious knowledge, and even religious identity, the distinctive perspective of Nevin and his colleagues could prove increasingly relevant. While it was never very successful as a church growth program, the Mercersburg Theology’s great strengths have always been its stringent critique of the theological and spiritual weaknesses of more popular religious movements and its offer of a strongly Christ-centered, historically-nurtured alternative. As the role of Christianity becomes increasingly relativized in a more thoroughly pluralistic society, it is imperative for Christian churches of all traditions to develop deeply rooted positive understandings of what it means to be the church of Jesus Christ. The theology developed by John Williamson Nevin and his Mercersburg colleagues offers valuable resources for this contemporary task.

Sam Hamstra’s substantial volume introduction to this edition of Nevin’s ecclesiological writings describes them in their historical context. The in-depth, detailed introductions for each of the documents will prepare scholars and general readers alike to grapple with Nevin’s provocative arguments. This collection of Nevin’s writings on the church question is a worthy addition to the Mercersburg Theology Study Series.

1. Sam Hamstra Jr., ed., The Reformed Pastor. Nevin is also a major source for Hamstra’s Principled Worship.

Editorial Approach and Acknowledgments

The purpose of this series is to reprint the key writings of the Mercersburg theologians in a way that is both fully faithful to the original and yet easily accessible to non-specialist modern readers. These twin goals, often in conflict, have determined our editorial approach throughout. We have sought to do justice to both by being very hesitant to make any alterations to the original, but being very free with additions to the original in the form of annotations.

We have decided to leave spelling, capitalization, and emphasis exactly as in the original, except in cases of clear typographical errors, which have been silently corrected. We have, however, taken a few liberties in altering punctuation—primarily comma usage, which is occasionally quite idiosyncratic and awkward in the original texts, but also other punctuation conventions which are nonstandard and potentially confusing today. In several articles the volume editor has added quotation marks to the original author’s quotes as required by modern conventions. We have also adopted standard modern conventions such as the italicization of book titles and foreign-language words. The entirety of the text has been re-typeset and re-formatted to render it as clear and accessible as possible; pagination, of course, has accordingly been changed. Original section headings have been retained; in articles which lacked any section headings in the original, we have added headings of our own in brackets.

Original footnotes are retained, though for ease of typesetting, they have been subsumed within the series of numbered footnotes which includes the annotations we have added to this edition. Our own annotations and additions, which comprise the majority of the footnotes, are wholly enclosed in brackets, whether that be within a footnote that was original, or around an entire footnote when it is one that we have added.

Source citations in the original have been retained in their original form, but where necessary, we have provided expanded citation information in brackets or numerated footnotes, and have sought to direct the reader toward modern editions of these works, where they exist. Where citations are lacking in the original, we have tried as much as possible to provide them in our footnotes.

In the annotations we have added (generally in the footnotes, though very occasionally in the form of brackets in the body text), we have attempted to be comprehensive without becoming cumbersome. In addition to offering citations for works referenced in the original, these additions fall under four further headings:

1.

Translation

2. Unfamiliar terms and historical figures

3. Additional source material

4.

Commentary

We have attempted to be comprehensive in providing translations of any untranslated foreign-language quotations in these works, and have wherever possible made use of existing translations in standard modern editions, to which the reader is referred.

Additional annotations serve to elucidate any unfamiliar words, concepts, or (especially) historical figures to which the authors refer, and where applicable, to provide references to sources where the reader may pursue further information (for these additional sources, only abbreviated citations are provided in the footnotes; for full bibliographical information, see the bibliography).

Accordingly, we have sought to shed light on the issues under discussion. Although most commentary on the texts has been reserved for the General Introduction and the Editor’s Introductions to each article, further brief commentary on specific points of importance has occasionally been provided in footnotes to facilitate understanding of the significance of the arguments.

We hope that our practice throughout will help bring these remarkable texts to life again for a new century, while also allowing the authors to be heard in their own authentic voices.

Acknowledgments

Volume Editor

As volume editor, I thank Bradford Littlejohn, the founding editor of this series, for the opportunity to edit this volume and, thereby, make a small contribution to the Mercersburg Theology Study Series. I thank David W Layman for his excellent editorial assistance in bringing this volume to completion. I thank Charles Hambrick-Stowe for his contribution to this volume. I also take this opportunity to thank Charles for his positive contribution to my life. While serving as Academic Dean of Northern Seminary in Lombard, IL, Charles hired me to join his teaching team. I thank Patrick Carey of Marquette University. When I informed Patrick that I wanted to focus my doctoral studies on American Protestant ecclesiology, he introduced me to John Nevin; he then wisely directed my dissertation—John Williamson Nevin: The Christian Ministry (1990). I thank Linden DeBie, editor of the first two volumes in The Mercersburg Theology Study Series, for paving the way for the editors who follow in his impressive wake. I frequently referred to Linden’s first two volumes for editorial guidance and quickly gave up on trying to keep up with the depth and breadth of his editorial comments. I thank Wipf & Stock for its commitment to Mercersburg Theology; this volume marks our third project together on that subject. I thank the Mercersburg Society for its support; I have been a member nearly since its inception and have benefited immensely from The New Mercersburg Review and the society’s annual conferences. Finally, I thank by wife Debbie for her support throughout the project.

General Editor

David Layman thanks Brad Littlejohn for the energy and passion that initiated this project, and for his continued counsel and assistance. He is grateful that Lee Barrett has been available to share the task of continuing this invaluable work as fellow general editor. The first text—The Anxious Bench—initiated the general editor into the Mercersburg tradition, and he is particularly happy for the opportunity to assist the volume editor in pulling it and the other texts out of dusty tomes and obscure reprints into a contemporary scholarly edition. Sam Hamstra Jr. took on an enormous task; the general editor primarily limited his contributions to providing cross-references to the growing body of texts and commentary within the Mercersburg Theology Study Series, along with tracking down especially obscure references—a task that would have been impossible without the assistance of Google Books, a searchable digital repository of texts written before the twentieth century. This volume now fills out the first six volumes in the projected series, which is identified throughout by the abbreviation MTSS.

The general editor also thanks the A. R. Wentz Library of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for making available Lutheran Observer, a periodical essential to the interpretation of The Anxious Bench. He also made regular use of the Philip Schaff Library of Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Theological Seminary and the Archives of the Evangelical and Reformed Historical Society. Finally, he thanks his daughter, Karen Louise Layman, for assistance in the final copy editing.

General Introduction

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

1740

s 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