CHRISTIANITY TAKES ROOT IN AMERICAGonzalez, Chaps. 25-26

The Thirteen Colonies

Virginia Colony • Jamestown (1607)

The Mayflower & Plymouth Colony (1620)

The Northern Puritan Colonies

Rhode Island & the Baptists (1644)

Maryland Colony (1632)• Founded by Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore

The Mid-Atlantic Colonies• New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware

The First Great Awakening• Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

The “Half-Way Covenant” Controversy (1662)

• New England Congregationalism• The idea of “partial church membership” was promoted by Solomon

Stoddard, the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards• Many felt that the second and third generations of immigrants were

lax in their Puritan zeal for religion• Massachusetts law thus required a “personal experience of

conversion” for full membership – Full-Covenant Keepers; those who could not fully accept the terms of church membership could not have their children baptized

• The Half-Way Covenant allowed for the children and grandchildren of those who could not fully accept the terms of membership to be baptized anyway, in hopes that in time and under the influence of the church’s preaching they would be converted

• This controversy provided the impetus behind the later Great Awakening

The First “Great Awakening”• Pietist ideas flowing into the New World• New Hampton, MA (1734) – Jonathan Edwards began to

preach on the need for a personal experience of conversion; the response to this idea among Edwards’ peers was mixed

• Many people began to respond enthusiastically to this message, some with emotional outbursts, but many with profoundly changed lives

• Movement swept the area and reached into Connecticut, then began to subside after three years

• New impetus was given to it by George Whitefield, who was invited to preach at Edwards’ church in New Hampton

The Great Awakening spreads to other colonies and denominations• Whitefield’s popularity gave new impetus to the

movement, and its influence spread throughout the colonies

• Originally affecting only Congregationalists, the movement now spread to Anglicans and Presbyterians as well; the Awakening brought new zeal to the pulpits

• “Old Light” vs. “New Light” controversies in various denominations; (“Old Side” vs. “New Side” in Presbyterianism)

• Controversy caused a temporary split within Presbyterianism

Baptists embrace the Great Awakening

• At first, the Baptists opposed the movement, calling it frivolous and superficial

• However, the Great Awakening had an unanticipated affect on the early American theological landscape: the theology of “conversion experience” seemed best suited for the practice of “believer’s baptism” (recall the “Half-Way Covenant” controversy)

• As a result of the Great Awakening, many Congregationalists and even Anglicans and Presbyterians would eventually reject infant baptism, and become Baptists

The American Frontier• The Great Awakening had its most dramatic effect on the

western frontier• The Baptists and the Methodists quickly took advantage

of this, and thus were the big “winners” with respect to number of conversions

EVENTS THAT SHAPED THE NATION

THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES

The effects of independence on the denominations• Anglicans suffered due to their association with Great

Britain; remaining parishes organize into the Protestant Episcopal Church (1783-1789)

• Methodism at first suffered for the same reasons as Anglicanism; organized in 1784 (Christmas Conference)

• Despite the widespread influence of the Great Awakening, Congregationalism stayed mainly in New England

• Baptists grew quickly in Virginia and the southern states, penetrating into the new territories of Tennessee and Kentucky

• New “homegrown” denominations (e.g. Disciples of Christ) grew out of response and reaction to denominationalism (i.e. The Restorationist Movement)

Disciples of Christ• Thomas Campbell (1763-1854)• Alexander Campbell (1788-1866)

The effects of immigration in 18th – 19th centuries

• Unprecedented immigration from Europe from the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century; particularly from Germany; due partly from the Napoleonic Wars

• Continuing slave trade brought many unwilling immigrants from Africa

• The Catholic Church, once a small minority, quickly became the largest religious body as immigrants came in from France, Germany, Poland and later from Ireland (1846 – Great Famine)

• The growth of the Catholic Church provoked strong anti-Catholic sentiment and reaction

• Lutheranism also grew rapidly, as immigrants from Scandinavia poured into the frontier

• Others: Mennonites, Moravians, Eastern Orthodox, Jews

THE “SECTS”Those who aspired to live into the ideal of religious community

The “Shakers”• Founder: Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784)

The Moravians• Lititz, PA

Schwarzenau Brethren (Dunkers)• Dunkers Church, Antietam, MD

Ephrata, Pennsylvania• 1732, Founded by the Mystic Order of the Solitary

(“Seventh-Day” Dunkers)

The Mennonites & The Amish

Oneida Community (New York)• Founded 1848

NEW RELIGIONS

“Latter Day Saints”: The Mormons• Founder: Joseph Smith, Jr.• Smith claimed to have been visited by an angel (Moroni)

who led him to a collection of golden tablets written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyths, as well as two “seer stones” with which it was possible to read the tablets

• Hidden behind a curtain, Smith dictated his translation of the sacred tablets to others who wrote it down; the result was the Book of Mormon (1830)

• Smith’s continuing visions led him and his followers further and further away from orthodox Christianity

• Founding an autonomous colony in Illinois, tensions grew between the Smith’s followers and the rest of society

Brigham Young takes over leadership• Smith fell afoul of a lynch mob in Illinois, resulting in his

“martyrdom”• The leadership of the movement fell to Brigham Young,

who led the Mormons to Utah; there they established an autonomous state until the United States took possession of the territory in 1850; war broke out in 1857

• The state of Utah was admitted into the union in 1890 when the Mormon church officially abandoned the practice of polygamy

Joseph Smith & Brigham Young• Smith (1805-1844)• Young (1801-1877)

Watchtower Society: “Jehovah’s Witnesses”

• The 18th century was a period of wild speculation on biblical prophecy (i.e. Adventist movement); most of this speculation occurred within the context of essentially traditional orthodox teaching

• Charles Taze Russell, a popular Bible teacher, declared that there were three “great Satans”: government, business, and the church; he also rejected the doctrine of the Trinity

• Disappointed that the Second Coming of Christ did not visibly occur in 1874 (as he and other adventist teachers had come to believe); he revised his beliefs to say that Christ’s return was “invisible,” and that he had been ruling from the heavens ever since. He went on to say that the present age of the “Gentiles” would end in 1914

Jehovah’s Witnesses• Russell interpreted the outbreak of World War I as the

beginning of Armageddon • Needless to say Russell’s predictions did not come to

pass as they thought they would, leading to yet further revisions in the beliefs of his followers

• Russell died in 1917; Joseph F. Rutherford (“Judge Rutherford”) took control of the movement, turning it into a missionary society and reinterpreting Russell’s teaching after the fiasco of 1914

Charles Taze Russell (1852-1916)

Christian Science• Founder: Mary Baker Eddy; suffered repeated illnesses

and addiction to morphine for the pain• Went to P.P. Quimby, who claimed that illness was error,

and knowledge of truth sufficed to cure it; Eddy was cured by Quimby and became his follower until his death

• Several years later she published Science and Health, with a Key to the Scriptures (1875)

• Eddy reinterpreted many traditional Christian terms in “gnostic” fashion; her main teaching was the illness was a mental error, which only proper knowledge could cure

• The Church of Christ, Scientist was officially founded in 1879

Mary Baker Eddy (1821 -1910)

SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

Second Great Awakening• New England, late 18th century• Not marked by great emotional outbursts, but rather by a

sudden earnestness in Christian devotion and living• Did not have the anti-intellectual overtones that overtook

the First Great Awakening

Timothy Dwight (1752-1817)• President of Yale; grandson of Jonathan Edwards

Societies and movements that were founded…

• American Bible Society (1816)• American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

(1810)• Baptist General Convention• American Colonization Society (1816)• American Society for the Promotion of Temperance (1816)• Women’s Christian Temperance Union

Cane Ridge Revival (1801)• Cane Ridge, Kentucky

Barton Stone (1772-1884) • Founder, along with Alexander Stone, of the Disciples of

Christ (Christian Church) Movement

Restorationist Movement• “Stone-Campbell” Movement

• Disciples of Christ• Christian Church• Churches of Christ

• Sought to restore the primitive church• Weekly Lord’s Supper• No clergy• Baptism of believers only – necessary for salvation

Camp Meeting Movement

Manifest Destiny• President James Monroe (1823) – the “Monroe Doctrine”• “Manifest Destiny” coined in 1845 – impetus for the

western expansion of the United States all the way to the Pacific Ocean

• The Republic of Texas was annexed to the United States in 1845

• Oregon territory (disputed with Great Britain) finally resolved in 1846

• Mexican territory was the only obstacle to realizing “Manifest Destiny”

Churches begin to divide over two important issues• Manifest Destiny & Slavery• The War with Mexico was seen as both naked aggression

and as an attempt to re-institute slavery in lands where it had been banned (Mexico had banned slavery in 1824)

Early Christian Protests against Slavery

• As early as 1776, Quakers had expelled from their communities everyone who insisted on holding slaves

• Christmas Conference of 1784, which had organized American Methodism, also banned slaveholding among its members

• Many early Baptists had taken a similar stance, though early on they lacked a national organization to enforce it

• However, of all the early protests, the Quakers were the only ones to remain firm; Methodists and Baptists began to attract southern slaveholders

• The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, while declaring its opposition to the slave trade, also declared its opposition to abolition

Abolition Movement• Early in American history the feelings towards abolition

were uniform throughout the country (north and south), with significant abolitionist sentiments throughout

• American Colonization Society (1817)• Republic of Liberia

• Overtime the Abolition Movement became stronger and stronger in the north; the opposite was happening in the south

Church Splits over Slavery• The Methodist Church split in 1844 when the General

Conference condemned the bishop of Georgia for holding slaves

• The Southern Baptist Convention was formed when the Home Mission Society refused a missionary candidate recommended by the Georgia Baptist Convention on the grounds that he owned slaves

• In 1861, southern presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church founded their own denomination

• The only denominations able to weather the storm without schism were the Catholics and the Episcopalians

The American Civil War (1861-1865)

African-American Churches• African-Methodist Episcopal Church (1816)

Richard Allen (1760-1831)• Licensed Methodist preacher, (1784)• Founder, Free African Society (1787); African Methodist

Episcopal Church (1794)

Absalom Jones (1746-1818)• Helped found St. Thomas’ Church with Richard Allen• Ordained Episcopal deacon (1795) and priest (1804)

St. Thomas’ African Episcopal Church

Bethel A.M.E. Church (1794)

John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, New York City• Freedmen leave in 1799 to form own congregation

James Varick (1750-1828)

A.M.E. Zion Church (1821)

Christian Methodist Episcopal Church• Originally, “Colored Methodist Episcopal Church” • Formed in 1870 with the support of the Methodist

Episcopal Church, South

National Baptist Convention (1880)

POST-BELLUM AMERICA

YMCA & YWCA

Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899)

The Salvation Army (1865)• Founded by William and Catherine Booth

Holiness churches• Free Methodist Church• Church of the Nazarene• Christian Missionary & Alliance• Wesleyan Church• Wesleyan Methodist Church• Church of God (Anderson)• Church of God (Holiness)

Distinctive Beliefs of the Holiness Movement

• Emphasized John Wesley’s teaching on Christian Perfection

• Regeneration by grace through faith, with assurance of salvation by the witness of the Holy Spirit

• Entire Sanctification as a second work of grace, received through faith, and accomplished by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, by which one is empowered to live a holy life

• This baptism of the Holy Spirit is a second work of grace, subsequent to conversion

Charles Parham (1873-1929)

William J. Seymour (1870-1922)• Parham’s greatest student

Azusa Street Revival (1906)

Bishop Charles H. Mason (1866-1961)

• Founder, “Church of God in Christ” (1897)• Baptized in the Spirit at Azusa Street (1906)

Problems in Pentecostalism• The distinctive belief of Pentecostalism that baptism of the

Holy Spirit was accompanied and evidenced by the gift of Speaking in Tongues and other spiritual gifts caused tension with other denominations

• A “second” or “final” work of grace? The Holiness Pentecostals would opt for three works of grace; the “Baptist” Pentecostals would insist on only two

• After such a promising beginning in Azusa Street, the movement would quickly split along racial lines: e.g. Church of God in Christ; Assemblies of God (founded in 1914)

Seventh Day Adventism• William Miller predicts Christ’s return in 1843

Ellen Harmon White (1827-1915)• Gathered the remnant of Miller’s followers; organized the

Seventh Day Adventists (1868)

Evangelical Alliance (Founded 1846)• Response to Liberalism; Darwin’s theory of Natural

Selection• 1895 Meeting in Niagara Falls, New York: The Five

Fundamentals:1. The Inerrancy of Scripture

2. The Divinity of Jesus

3. The Virgin Birth

4. Jesus’ substitutionary death

5. Imminent return of Christ

Dispensationalism• John Nelson Darby (1800-1882)• Cyrus I. Scofield (1843-1921)

The Social Gospel• William Rauschenbush (1861-1918)