A History of American Christianity

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Transcriber's notes:

Greek words in this text have been transliterated and placed
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Words in italics are surrounded with underscores.

A list of corrections made is at the end of the text.

The American Church History Series

Consisting of a Series of Denominational Histories Published Under the
Auspices of the American Society of Church History

General Editors

REV. PHILIP SCHAFF, D. D., LL. D.
RT. REV. H. C. POTTER, D. D., LL. D.
REV GEO. P. FISHER, D. D., LL. D.
BISHOP JOHN F. HURST, D. D., LL. D.
REV. E. J. WOLF, D. D.
HENRY C. VEDDER, M. A.
REV. SAMUEL M. JACKSON, D. D., LL. D.

Volume XIII

American Church History

A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY

by

LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON

New York
The Christian Literature Co.
MDCCCXCVII
Copyright, 1897, by
The Christian Literature Co.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
CHAP. I.--PROVIDENTIAL PREPARATION FOR THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 1-5

Purpose of the long concealment of America, 1. A medieval
church in America, 2. Revival of the Catholic Church, 3,
especially in Spain, 4, 5.

CHAP. II.--SPANISH CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 6-15

Vastness and swiftness of the Spanish conquests, 6. Conversion
by the sword, 7. Rapid success and sudden downfall of missions
in Florida, 9. The like story in New Mexico, 12, and in
California, 14.

CHAP. III.--FRENCH CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 16-29

Magnificence of the French scheme of western empire, 16.
Superior dignity of the French missions, 19. Swift expansion
of them, 20. Collision with the English colonies, and triumph
of France, 21. Sudden and complete failure of the French
church, 23. Causes of failure: (1) Dependence on royal
patronage, 24. (2) Implication in Indian feuds, 25. (3)
Instability of Jesuit efforts, 26. (4) Scantiness of French
population, 27. Political aspect of French missions, 28.
Recent French Catholic immigration, 29.

CHAP. IV.--ANTECEDENTS OF PERMANENT CHRISTIAN COLONIZATION 30-37

Controversies and parties in Europe, 31, and especially in
England, 32. Disintegration of Christendom, 34. New experiment
of church life, 35. Persecutions promote emigration, 36, 37.

CHAP. V.--PURITAN BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH IN VIRGINIA 38-53

The Rev. Robert Hunt, chaplain to the Virginia colony, 38.
Base quality of the emigration, 39. Assiduity in religious
duties, 41. Rev. Richard Buck, chaplain, 42. Strict Puritan
regime of Sir T. Dale and Rev. A. Whitaker, 43. Brightening
prospects extinguished by massacre, 48. Dissolution of the
Puritan "Virginia Company" by the king, 48. Puritan ministers
silenced by the royal governor, Berkeley, 49. The governor's
chaplain, Harrison, is converted to Puritan principles, 49.
Visit of the Rev. Patrick Copland, 50. Degradation of church
and clergy, 51. Commissary Blair attempts reform, 52.
Huguenots and Scotch-Irish, 53.

CHAP. VI.--MARYLAND AND THE CAROLINAS 54-67

George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, 54; secures grant of Maryland,
55. The second Lord Baltimore organizes a colony on the basis
of religious liberty, 56. Success of the two Jesuit priests,
57. Baltimore restrains the Jesuits, 58, and encourages the
Puritans, 59. Attempt at an Anglican establishment, 61.
Commissary Bray, 61. Tardy settlement of the Carolinas, 62. A
mixed population, 63. Success of Quakerism, 65. American
origin of English missionary societies, 66.

CHAP. VII.--DUTCH CALVINISTS AND SWEDISH LUTHERANS 68-81

Faint traces of religious life in the Dutch settlements, 69.
Pastors Michaelius, Bogardus, and Megapolensis, 70. Religious
liberty, diversity, and bigotry, 72. The Quakers persecuted,
73. Low vitality of the Dutch colony, 75. Swedish colony on
the Delaware, 76; subjugated by the Dutch, 77. The Dutch
evicted by England, 78. The Dutch church languishes, 79.
Attempts to establish Anglicanism, 79. The S. P. G., 80.

CHAP. VIII.--THE CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND 82-108

Puritan and Separatist, 82. The Separatists of Scrooby, 83.
Mutual animosity of the two parties, 84. Spirit of John
Robinson, 85. The "social compact" of the Pilgrims, in state,
87; and in church, 88. Feebleness of the Plymouth colony, 89.
The Puritan colony at Salem, 90. Purpose of the colonists, 91.
Their right to pick their own company, 92. Fellowship with the
Pilgrims, 93. Constituting the Salem church, and ordination of
its ministers, 95. Expulsion of schismatics, 97. Coming of the
great Massachusetts colony bringing the charter, 98. The New
England church polity, 99. Nationalism of the Puritans, 100.
Dealings with Roger Williams, Mrs. Hutchinson, and the
Quakers, 101. Diversities among the colonies, 102. Divergences
of opinion and practice in the churches, 103. Variety of sects
in Rhode Island, 106, with mutual good will, 107. Lapse of the
Puritan church-state, 108.

CHAP. IX.--THE MIDDLE COLONIES AND GEORGIA 109-126

Dutch, Puritan, Scotch, and Quaker settlers in New Jersey,
109. Quaker corporation and government, 110. Quaker reaction
from Puritanism, 113. Extravagance and discipline, 114.
Quakerism in continental Europe, 115. Penn's "Holy
Experiment," 116. Philadelphia founded, 117. German sects,
118. Keith's schism, and the mission of the "S. P. G.," 119.
Lutheran and Reformed Germans, 120. Scotch-Irish, 121.
Georgia, 122. Oglethorpe's charitable scheme, 123. The
Salzburgers, the Moravians, and the Wesleys, 124. George
Whitefield, 126.

CHAP. X.--THE EVE OF THE GREAT AWAKENING 127-154

Fall of the New England theocracy, 128. Dissent from the
"Standing Order": Baptist, 130; Episcopalian, 131. In New
York: the Dutch church, 134; the English, 135; the
Presbyterian, 136. New Englanders moving west, 137. Quakers,
Huguenots, and Palatines, 139. New Jersey: Frelinghuysen and
the Tennents, 141. Pennsylvania: successes and failures of
Quakerism, 143. The southern colonies: their established
churches, 148; the mission of the Quakers, 149. The gospel
among the Indians, 150. The church and slavery, 151.

CHAP. XI.--THE GREAT AWAKENING 155-180

Jonathan Edwards at Northampton, 156. An Awakening, 157.
Edwards's "Narrative" in America and England, 159. Revivals in
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 160. Apostolate of Whitefield,
163. Schism of the Presbyterian Church, 166. Whitefield in New
England, 168. Faults and excesses of the evangelists, 169.
Good fruits of the revival, 173. Diffusion of Baptist
principles, 173. National religious unity, 175. Attitude of
the Episcopal Church, 177. Zeal for missions, 179.

CHAP. XII.--CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL ERA 181-207

Growth of the New England theology, 181. Watts's Psalms, 182.
Warlike agitations, 184. The Scotch-Irish immigration, 186.
The German immigration, 187. Spiritual destitution, 188.
Zinzendorf, 189. Attempt at union among the Germans, 190.
Alarm of the sects, 191. Muehlenberg and the Lutherans, 191.
Zinzendorf and the Moravians, 192. Schlatter and the Reformed,
195. Schism made permanent, 197. Wesleyan Methodism, 198.
Francis Asbury, 200. Methodism gravitates southward and grows
apace, 201. Opposition of the church to slavery, 203; and to
intemperance, 205. Project to introduce bishops from England,
resisted in the interest of liberty, 206.

CHAP. XIII.--RECONSTRUCTION 208-229

Distraction and depression after the War of Independence, 208.
Forlorn condition of the Episcopalians, 210. Their republican
constitution, 211. Episcopal consecration secured in Scotland
and in England, 212. Feebleness of American Catholicism, 214.
Bishop Carroll, 215. "Trusteeism," 216. Methodism becomes a
church, 217. Westward movement of Christianity, 219. Severance
of church from state, 221. Doctrinal divisions; Calvinist and
Arminian, 222. Unitarianism, 224. Universalism, 225. Some
minor sects, 228.

CHAP. XIV.--THE SECOND AWAKENING 230-245

Ebb-tide of spiritual life, 230. Depravity and revival at the
West, 232. The first camp-meetings, 233. Good fruits, 237.
Nervous epidemics, 239. The Cumberland Presbyterians, 241. The
antisectarian sect of The Disciples, 242. Revival at the East,
242. President Dwight, 243.

CHAP. XV.--ORGANIZED BENEFICENCE 246-260

Missionary spirit of the revival, 246. Religious earnestness
in the colleges, 247. Mills and his friends at Williamstown,
248; and at Andover, 249. The Unitarian schism in
Massachusetts, 249. New era of theological seminaries, 251.
Founding of the A. B. C. F. M., 252; of the Baptist Missionary
Convention, 253. Other missionary boards, 255. The American
Bible Society, 256. Mills, and his work for the West and for
Africa, 256. Other societies, 258. Glowing hopes of the
church, 259.

CHAP. XVI.--CONFLICTS WITH PUBLIC WRONGS 261-291

Working of the voluntary system of church support, 261.
Dueling, 263. Crime of the State of Georgia against the
Cherokee nation, implicating the federal government, 264.
Jeremiah Evarts and Theodore Frelinghuysen, 267. Unanimity of
the church, North and South, against slavery, 268. The
Missouri Compromise, 270. Antislavery activity of the church,
at the East, 271; at the West, 273; at the South, 274.
Difficulty of antislavery church discipline, 275. The southern
apostasy, 277. Causes of the sudden revolution of sentiment,
279. Defections at the North, and rise of a pro-slavery party,
282. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill; solemn and unanimous protest of
the clergy of New England and New York, 284. Primeval
temperance legislation, 285. Prevalence of drunkenness, 286.
Temperance reformation a religious movement, 286. Development
of "the saloon," 288. The Washingtonian movement and its
drawbacks, 289. The Prohibition period, 290.

CHAP. XVII.--A DECADE OF CONTROVERSIES AND SCHISMS 292-314

Dissensions in the Presbyterian Church, 292. Growing strength
of the New England element, 293. Impeachments of heresy, 294.
Benevolent societies, 295. Sudden excommunication of nearly
one half of the church by the other half, 296. Heresy and
schism among Unitarians: Emerson, 298; and Parker, 300.
Disruption, on the slavery question, of the Methodists, 301;
and of the Baptists, 303. Resuscitation of the Episcopal
Church, 304. Bishop Hobart and a High-church party, 306. Rapid
growth of this church, 308. Controversies in the Roman
Catholic Church, 310. Contention against Protestant
fanaticism, 312.

CHAP. XVIII.--THE GREAT IMMIGRATION 315-339

Expansion of territory and increase of population in the early
part of the nineteenth century, 315. Great volume of
immigration from 1840 on, 316. How drawn and how driven, 316.
At first principally Irish, then German, then Scandinavian,
318. The Catholic clergy overtasked, 320. Losses of the
Catholic Church, 321. Liberalized tone of American
Catholicism, 323. Planting the church in the West, 327.
Sectarian competitions, 328. Protestant sects and Catholic
orders, 329. Mormonism, 335. Millerism, 336. Spiritualism,
337.

CHAP. XIX.--THE CIVIL WAR 340-350

Material prosperity, 340. The Kansas Crusade, 341. The revival
of 1857, 342. Deepening of the slavery conflict, 345. Threats
of war, 347. Religious sincerity of both sides, 348. The
church in war-time, 349.

CHAP. XX.--AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 351-373

Reconstructions, 351. The Catholic Church, 352. The Episcopal
Church, 352. Persistent divisions among Methodists, Baptists,
and Presbyterians, 353. Healing of Presbyterian schisms, 355.
Missions at the South, 355. Vast expansion of church
activities, 357. Great religious and educational endowments,
359. The enlisting of personal service: The Sunday-school,
362. Chautauqua, 363. Y. M. C. A., 364. Y. W. C. A., 366. W.
C. T. U., 367. Women's missionary boards, 367. Nursing orders
and schools, 368. Y. P. S. C. E., and like associations, 368.
"The Institutional Church," 369. The Salvation Army, 370. Loss
of "the American Sabbath," 371.

CHAP. XXI.--THE CHURCH IN THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE 374-397

Unfolding of the Edwardean theology, 374. Horace Bushnell,
375. The Mercersburg theology, 377. "Bodies of divinity," 378.
Biblical science, 378. Princeton's new dogma, 380. Church
history, 381. The American pulpit, 382. "Applied
Christianity," 385. Liturgics, 386. Hymns, 387. Other
liturgical studies, 388. Church music, 391. The Moravian
liturgies, 394. Meager productiveness of the Catholic Church,
394. The Americanizing of the Roman Church, 396.

CHAP. XXII.--TENDENCIES TOWARD A MANIFESTATION OF UNITY 398-420

Growth of the nation and national union, 398. Parallel growth
of the church, 399; and ecclesiastical division, 400. No
predominant sect, 401. Schism acceptable to politicians, 402;
and to some Christians, 403. Compensations of schism, 404.
_Nisus_ toward manifest union, 405. Early efforts at
fellowship among sects, 406. High-church protests against
union, 407. The Evangelical Alliance, 408. Fellowship in
non-sectarian associations, 409. Cooperation of leading sects
in Maine, 410. Various unpromising projects of union: I. Union
on sectarian basis, 411. II. Ecumenical sects, 412. III.
Consolidation of sects, 413. The hope of manifested unity,
416. Conclusion, 419.

A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER I.

PROVIDENTIAL PREPARATIONS FOR THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA--SPIRITUAL
REVIVAL THROUGHOUT CHRISTENDOM, AND ESPECIALLY IN THE CHURCH OF SPAIN.

The heroic discovery of America, at the close of the fifteenth century
after Christ, has compelled the generous and just admiration of the
world; but the grandeur of human enterprise and achievement in the
discovery of the western hemisphere has a less claim on our admiration
than that divine wisdom and controlling providence which, for reasons
now manifested, kept the secret hidden through so many millenniums, in
spite of continual chances of disclosure, until the fullness of time.

How near, to "speak as a fool," the plans of God came to being defeated
by human enterprise is illustrated by unquestioned facts. The fact of
medieval exploration, colonization, and even evangelization in North
America seems now to have emerged from the region of fanciful conjecture
into that of history. That for four centuries, ending with the
fifteenth, the church of Iceland maintained its bishops and other
missionaries and built its churches and monasteries on the frozen coast
of Greenland is abundantly proved by documents and monuments. Dim but
seemingly unmistakable traces are now discovered of enterprises, not
only of exploration and trade, but also of evangelization, reaching
along the mainland southward to the shores of New England. There are
vague indications that these beginnings of Christian civilization were
extinguished, as in so many later instances, by savage massacre. With
impressive coincidence, the latest vestige of this primeval American
Christianity fades out in the very year of the discovery of America by
Columbus.[2:1]

By a prodigy of divine providence, the secret of the ages had been kept
from premature disclosure during the centuries in which, without knowing
it, the Old World was actually in communication with the New. That was
high strategy in the warfare for the advancement of the kingdom of God
in the earth. What possibilities, even yet only beginning to be
accomplished, were thus saved to both hemispheres! If the discovery of
America had been achieved four centuries or even a single century
earlier, the Christianity to be transplanted to the western world would
have been that of the church of Europe at its lowest stage of decadence.
The period closing with the fifteenth century was that of the dense
darkness that goes before the dawn. It was a period in which the
lingering life of the church was chiefly manifested in feverish
complaints of the widespread corruption and outcries for "reformation of
the church in head and members." The degeneracy of the clergy was
nowhere more manifest than in the monastic orders, that had been
originally established for the express purpose of reviving and purifying
the church. That ancient word was fulfilled, "Like people, like priest."
But it was especially in the person of the foremost official
representative of the religion of Jesus Christ that that religion was
most dishonored. The fifteenth century was the era of the infamous
popes. By another coincidence which arrests the attention of the reader
of history, that same year of the discovery by Columbus witnessed the
accession of the most infamous of the series, the Borgia, Alexander VI.,
to his short and shameful pontificate.

Let it not be thought, as some of us might be prone to think, that the
timeliness of the discovery of the western hemisphere, in its relation
to church history, is summed up in this, that it coincided with the
Protestant Reformation, so that the New World might be planted with a
Protestant Christianity. For a hundred years the colonization and
evangelization of America were, in the narrowest sense of that large
word, Catholic, not Protestant. But the Catholicism brought hither was
that of the sixteenth century, not of the fifteenth. It is a most
one-sided reading of the history of that illustrious age which fails to
recognize that the great Reformation was a reformation _of_ the church
as well as a reformation _from_ the church. It was in Spain itself, in
which the corruption of the church had been foulest, but from which all
symptoms of "heretical pravity" were purged away with the fiercest zeal
as fast as they appeared,--in Spain under the reign of Ferdinand and
Isabella the Catholic,--that the demand for a Catholic reformation made
itself earliest and most effectually felt. The highest ecclesiastical
dignitary of the realm, Ximenes, confessor to the queen, Archbishop of
Toledo, and cardinal, was himself the leader of reform. No changes in
the rest of Christendom were destined for many years to have so great
an influence on the course of evangelization in North America as those
which affected the church of Spain; and of these by far the most
important in their bearing on the early course of Christianity in
America were, first, the purifying and quickening of the miserably
decayed and corrupted mendicant orders,--ever the most effective arm in
the missionary service of the Latin Church,--and, a little later, the
founding of the Society of Jesus, with its immense potency for good and
for evil. At the same time the court of Rome, sobered in some measure,
by the perilous crisis that confronted it, from its long orgy of simony,
nepotism, and sensuality, began to find time and thought for spiritual
duties. The establishment of the "congregations" or administrative
boards, and especially of the _Congregatio de Propaganda Fide_, or board
of missions, dates chiefly from the sixteenth century. The revived
interest in theological study incident to the general spiritual
quickening gave the church, as the result of the labors of the Council
of Trent, a well-defined body of doctrine, which nevertheless was not so
narrowly defined as to preclude differences and debates among the
diverse sects of the clergy, by whose competitions and antagonisms the
progress of missions both in Christian and in heathen lands was destined
to be so seriously affected.

An incident of the Catholic Reformation of the sixteenth
century--inevitable incident, doubtless, in that age, but none the less
deplorable--was the engendering or intensifying of that cruel and
ferocious form of fanaticism which is defined as the combination of
religious emotion with the malignant passions. The tendency to
fanaticism is one of the perils attendant on the deep stirring of
religious feeling at any time; it was especially attendant on the
religious agitations of that period; but most of all it was in Spain,
where, of all the Catholic nations, corruption had gone deepest and
spiritual revival was most earnest and sincere, that the manifestations
of fanaticism were most shocking. Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic
were distinguished alike by their piety and their part in the promotion
of civilization, and by the horrors of bloody cruelty perpetrated by
their authority and that of the church, at the instigation of the
sincere and devout reformer Ximenes. In the memorable year 1492 was
inaugurated the fiercest work of the Spanish Inquisition, concerning
which, speaking of her own part in it, the pious Isabella was able
afterward to say, "For the love of Christ and of his virgin mother I
have caused great misery, and have depopulated towns and districts,
provinces and kingdoms."

The earlier pages of American church history will not be intelligently
read unless it is well understood that the Christianity first to be
transplanted to the soil of the New World was the Christianity of
Spain--the Spain of Isabella and Ximenes, of Loyola and Francis Xavier
and St. Theresa, the Spain also of Torquemada and St. Peter Arbues and
the zealous and orthodox Duke of Alva.

FOOTNOTES:

[2:1] See the account of the Greenland church and its missions in
Professor O'Gorman's "History of the Roman Catholic Church in the United
States" (vol. ix. of the American Church History Series), pp. 3-12.

CHAPTER II.

SPANISH CONQUEST--THE PROPAGATION, DECAY, AND DOWNFALL OF SPANISH
CHRISTIANITY.

It is a striking fact that the earliest monuments of colonial and
ecclesiastical antiquity within the present domain of the United States,
after the early Spanish remains in Florida, are to be found in those
remotely interior and inaccessible highlands of New Mexico, which have
only now begun to be reached in the westward progress of migration.
Before the beginnings of permanent English colonization at Plymouth and
at Jamestown, before the French beginnings on the St. Lawrence, before
the close of the sixteenth century, there had been laid by Spanish
soldiers, adventurers, and missionaries, in those far recesses of the
continent, the foundations of Christian towns and churches, the stately
walls and towers of which still invite the admiration of the traveler.

The fact is not more impressive than it is instructive. It illustrates
the prodigious impetuosity of that tide of conquest which within so few
years from the discovery of the American continents not only swept over
the regions of South and Central America and the great plateau of
Mexico, but actually occupied with military posts, with extensive and
successful missions, and with a colonization which seemed to show every
sign of stability and future expansion, by far the greater part of the
present domain of the United States exclusive of Alaska--an
ecclesiastico-military empire stretching its vast diameter from the
southernmost cape of Florida across twenty-five parallels of latitude
and forty-five meridians of longitude to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The
lessons taught by this amazingly swift extension of the empire and the
church, and its arrest and almost extinction, are legible on the surface
of the history. It is a strange, but not unparalleled, story of
attempted cooeperation in the common service of God and Mammon and
Moloch--of endeavors after concord between Christ and Belial.

There is no reason to question the sincerity with which the rulers of
Spain believed themselves to be actuated by the highest motives of
Christian charity in their terrible and fatal American policy. "The
conversion of the Indians is the principal foundation of the
conquest--that which ought principally to be attended to." So wrote the
king in a correspondence in which a most cold-blooded authorization is
given for the enslaving of the Indians.[7:1] After the very first voyage
of Columbus every expedition of discovery or invasion was equipped with
its contingent of clergy--secular priests as chaplains to the Spaniards,
and friars of the regular orders for mission work among the Indians--at
cost of the royal treasury or as a charge upon the new conquests.

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