Navigating Change: The Journey of Reformed Christianity

Presbyterians in America, in the first half of the nineteenth century, were living in a world of rapid transitions, and we live in a world of rapid transitions. And I think we'll find that as we study what people in the past have gone through in times of transition, how they've faced transition, where they've been successful in facing transition, where they haven't been successful in facing transition we'll be helped in living in the world in which we find ourselves. [00:47:36]

Christianity is not about a particular political, cultural, social agenda in the first place. Christianity is a religion about the relationship of human beings to God. And Christianity as a religion has been able to exist and, indeed, to flourish in every imaginable political and social situation. Christianity has survived in democracies, but it's also survived in dictatorships. Christianity has survived where there's been a lot of freedom, and it's survived and flourished where there has been no freedom at all. [00:119:92]

Christianity does not require any particular political or social system to be Christianity. Now, that's not to say that Christianity doesn't have implications for politics or for social life, or cultural life. It does have implications, and it does have an impact where it is particularly successful. And we'll talk about that a little bit as we go along too. But I think it's important to remember, particularly in times of transition, when things are changing, when established norms are shifting that we don't have to despair about the survival of Christianity. [00:190:72]

Reformed Christianity came to America in the seventeenth century initially, primarily by Puritan immigrants from England, although that was not the only Reformed influence. There was a numerically smaller influx of Dutch Reformed people to New York and to New Jersey, but the dominant influence was English Puritans in New England. And they came with eager expectations that they really understood the gospel, they really understood the Bible, they really understood how the church and how society ought to work, and they believed that they would be able to establish, in New England, "a city built on a hill," "a light in the wilderness," the "errand into the wilderness." [00:255:12]

From 325 in the West, Christianity had been in one form or another supported by the government. When the Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity, he began to favor Christianity. He began to give Christianity special privileges in law, special privileges in taxation. In a variety of ways, Christianity began to be favored by governments in the West. And by the latter part of the fourth century, particularly under Emperor Theodosius, Christianity is becoming the legal religion. Increasingly, Christianity is not just favored, but Christianity is being regarded as the only true religion. [00:344:88]

With the coming of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, the church was divided into churches, and that posed a dilemma for governments. What church do we support? What church is the true church? What organizations calling themselves churches now have to be opposed because they're false churches? And this sixteenth and seventeenth-century dilemma caused extreme difficulty for governments, and increasingly for churches. It led to what was known in Europe in the sixteenth century to "Wars of Religion," where factions of governments would fight other factions of government in the name of one church or another church. [00:466:40]

The Puritans who came to New England, by and large, were particularly serious and committed Puritans who really wanted to see a new world. They not only came to the New World, but they wanted to create a new world. And they came still very much committed to what I've called "imperial Christianity." Let me read from the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 23, "On the Civil Magistrate." This is the original version. Those of you who may belong to churches that subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith almost certainly belong to a church that no longer holds to the original version. [00:593:60]

The Half-Way Covenant said, "If you are a baptized member of the church, and if you are living an outwardly godly life, even if you have not joined the church fully, you may present your children for baptism." So, baptized members could present children for baptism. This is a compromise, and do you feel the tension? The whole point of this great experiment in the New World was we wouldn't have to compromise anymore. We'd be able to do it right. And yet, the very ideal had within it problems that ultimately couldn't be reconciled. [00:1147:04]

The king of England revoked the charter of Massachusetts as a colony. The charter that had said, you have to be a member of the church to participate in the life of politics in the colony. The king revoked that charter and when, seven years later, in 1691, he granted the new charter, the new charter said to be involved in politics, you have to own property. It had nothing to do with the church anymore. It had nothing to do with religion anymore. And the staunch Puritans were distraught that the very foundation of what they had been trying to build was being undermined. [00:1237:28]

The seventeenth century, late seventeenth century, was beginning to see the emergence of philosophies that were trying to unite society in some other way than by religion, because religion wasn't succeeding in uniting people any longer. And this is what came to be known in the eighteenth century, particularly, as "The Enlightenment," looking for natural laws, looking for common human experience as a basis for unity. And it would be this new reality that would lead eventually, towards the end of the eighteenth century, to the American Revolution. [00:1316:56]

The American Revolution was sparked not so much really by Puritan and Christian principles as by Enlightenment principles and a new vision of what a society ought to look like. So, the Reformed in America began in a position of great strength and influence. And as one historian has put it, at the time of the American Revolution in 1776, seventy-five percent of the colonial population in all the colonies had been influenced by Puritan Christianity. If they were Christians, they were Christians of the Puritan character, generally speaking. [00:1368:16]

At the time of the American Revolution that was the presence and the power and the influence of the Reformed in America. But that didn't continue. And that's what we're going to take up next time. Why did things begin to shift? Why did that huge Reformed influence begin to diminish? And how was America changing from a vision of imperial, established Christianity to something new? That's what we'll begin to look at next time. [00:1431:52]