Transcript CHRISTIANITY TAKES ROOT IN AMERICA Gonzalez, Chaps. 25-26 The Thirteen Colonies Virginia Colony • Jamestown (1607)

CHRISTIANITY TAKES
ROOT IN AMERICA
Gonzalez, 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
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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 “HalfWay 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
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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
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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 antiCatholic 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
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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
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(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
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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:
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The Inerrancy of Scripture
The Divinity of Jesus
The Virgin Birth
Jesus’ substitutionary death
Imminent return of Christ
Dispensationalism
• John Nelson Darby (1800-1882)
• Cyrus I. Scofield (1843-1921)
The Social Gospel
• William Rauschenbush (1861-1918)