A History of American Christianity

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In these circumstances, it is no wonder that at the conference of 1778,
at Leesburg, Va., at which five circuits in the most disturbed regions
were unrepresented, there was a decline in numbers. The members were
fewer by 873; the preachers fewer by 7.

But it is really wonderful that the next year (1779) were reported
extensive revivals in all parts not directly affected by the war, and an
increase of 2482 members and 49 preachers. The distribution of the
membership was very remarkable. At this time, and for many years after,
there was no organized Methodism in New England. New York, being
occupied by the invading army, sent no report. Of the total reported
membership of 8577, 140 are credited to New Jersey, 179 to Pennsylvania,
795 to Delaware, and 900 to Maryland. Nearly all the remainder, about
eighty per cent. of the whole, was included in Virginia and North
Carolina. With the exception of 319 persons, the entire reported
membership of the Methodist societies lived south of Mason and Dixon's
line. The fact throws an honorable light on some incidents of the early
history of this great order of preachers.

In the sixteen years from the meeting in Philip Embury's house to the
end of the War of Independence the membership of the Methodist societies
grew to about 12,000, served by about 70 itinerant preachers. It was a
very vital and active membership, including a large number of "local
preachers" and exhorters. The societies and classes were effectively
organized and officered for aggressive work; and they were planted, for
the most part, in the regions most destitute of Christian institutions.

* * * * *

Parallel with the course of the gospel, we trace in every period the
course of those antichristian influences with which the gospel is in
conflict. The system of slavery must continue, through many sorrowful
years, to be in view from the line of our studies. We shall know it by
the unceasing protest made against it in the name of the Lord. The
arguments of John Woolman and Anthony Benezet were sustained by the
yearly meetings of the Friends. At Newport, the chief center of the
African slave-trade, the two Congregational pastors, Samuel Hopkins,
the theologian, and the erudite Ezra Stiles, afterward president of Yale
College, mutually opposed in theology and contrasted at every point of
natural character, were at one in boldly opposing the business by which
their parishioners had been enriched.[204:1] The deepening of the
conflict for political liberty pointed the application of the golden
rule in the case of the slaves. The antislavery literature of the period
includes a printed sermon that had been preached by the distinguished
Dr. Levi Hart "to the corporation of freemen" of his native town of
Farmington, Conn., at their autumnal town-meeting in 1774; and the poem
on "Slavery," published in 1775 by that fine character, Aaron
Cleveland,[204:2] of Norwich, hatter, poet, legislator, and minister of
the gospel. Among the Presbyterians of New Jersey, the father of Dr.
Ashbel Green took the extreme ground which was taken by Dr. Hopkins's
church in 1784, that no person holding a slave should be permitted to
remain in the communion of the church.[204:3] In 1774 the first society
in the world for the abolition of slavery was organized among the
Friends in Pennsylvania, to be followed by others, making a continuous
series of abolition societies from New England to Maryland and Virginia.
But the great antislavery society of the period in question was the
Methodist Society. Laboring through the War of Independence mainly in
the Southern States, it publicly declared, in the conference of 1780,
"that slavery is contrary to the laws of God, man, and nature, and
hurtful to society; contrary to the dictates of conscience and pure
religion, and doing that which we would not that others should do to us
and ours." The discipline of the body of itinerants was conducted
rigorously in accordance with this declaration.

It must not be supposed that the instances here cited represent
exceptions to the general course of opinion in the church of those
times. They are simply expressions of the universal judgment of those
whose attention had been seriously fixed upon the subject. There appears
no evidence of the existence of a contrary sentiment. The first
beginnings of a party in the church in opposition to the common judgment
of the Christian conscience on the subject of slavery are to be referred
to a comparatively very recent date.

Another of the great conflicts of the modern church was impending. But
it was only to prophetic minds in the middle of the eighteenth century
that it was visible in the greatness of its proportions. The vice of
drunkenness, which Isaiah had denounced in Samaria and Paul had
denounced at Ephesus, was growing insensibly, since the introduction of
distilled liquors as a common beverage, to a fatal prevalence. The
trustees of the charitable colony of Georgia, consciously laying the
foundations of many generations, endeavored to provide for the welfare
of the nascent State by forbidding at once the importation of negro
slaves and of spirituous liquors; but the salutary interdict was soon
nullified in the interest of the crops and of the trade with the
Indians. Dr. Hopkins "inculcated, at a very early day, the duty of
entire abstinence from intoxicating liquids as a beverage."[206:1] But,
as in the conflict with slavery, so in this conflict, the priority of
leadership belongs easily to Wesley and his itinerants. The conference
of 1783 declared against permitting the converts "to make spirituous
liquors, sell and drink them in drams," as "wrong in its nature and
consequences." To this course they were committed long in advance by the
"General Rules" set forth by the two Wesleys in May, 1743, for the
guidance of the "United Societies."[206:2]

An incident of the times immediately preceding the War of Independence
requires to be noted in this place, not as being of great importance in
itself, but as characteristic of the condition of the country and
prophetic of changes that were about to take place. During the decade
from 1760 to 1775 the national body of the Presbyterians--the now
reunited synod of New York and Philadelphia--and the General Association
of the Congregational pastors of Connecticut met together by their
representatives in annual convention to take counsel over a grave peril
that seemed to be impending. A petition had been urgently pressed, in
behalf of the American Episcopalians, for the establishment of bishops
in the colonies under the authority of the Church of England. The
reasons for this measure were obvious and weighty; and the protestations
of those who promoted it, that they sought no advantage before the law
over their fellow-Christians, were doubtless sincere. Nevertheless, the
fear that the bringing in of Church of England bishops would involve the
bringing in of many of those mischiefs of the English church
establishment which neither they nor their fathers had been able to bear
was a perfectly reasonable fear both to the Puritans of New England and
to the Presbyterians from Ireland. It was difficult for these, and it
would have been even more difficult for the new dignitaries, in colonial
days, to understand how bishops could be anything but lord bishops. The
fear of such results was not confined to ecclesiastics. The movement was
felt by the colonial statesmen to be dangerously akin to other British
encroachments on colonial rights. The Massachusetts Assembly instructed
its agent in London strenuously to oppose it. In Virginia, the
Episcopalian clergy themselves at first refused to concur in the
petition for bishops; and when at last the concurrence was voted, it was
in the face of a formal protest of four of the clergy, for which they
received a vote of thanks from the House of Burgesses.[207:1]

The alliance thus occasioned between the national synod of the
Presbyterian Church and the Congregationalist clergy of the little
colony of Connecticut seems like a disproportioned one. And so it was
indeed; for the Connecticut General Association was by far the larger
and stronger body of the two. By and by the disproportion was inverted,
and the alliance continued, with notable results.

FOOTNOTES:

[182:1] See G. P. Fisher, "History of Christian Doctrine," pp. 394-418;
also E. A. Park in the "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," vol. iii., pp.
1634-38. The New England theology is not so called as being confined to
New England. Its leading "improvements on Calvinism" were accepted by
Andrew Fuller and Robert Hall among the English Baptists, and by
Chalmers of the Presbyterians of Scotland.

[184:1] Of what sort was the life of a church and its pastor in those
days is illustrated in extracts from the journal of Samuel Hopkins, the
theologian, pastor at Great Barrington, given in the Memoir by Professor
Park, pp. 40-43. The Sabbath worship was disturbed by the arrival of
warlike news. The pastor and the families of his flock were driven from
their homes to take refuge in blockhouses crowded with fugitives. He was
gone nearly three months of fall and winter with a scouting party of a
hundred whites and nineteen Indians in the woods. He sent off the
fighting men of his town with sermon and benediction on an expedition to
Canada. During the second war he writes to his friend Bellamy (1754) of
a dreadful rumor that "good Mr. Edwards" had perished in a massacre at
Stockbridge. This rumor was false, but he adds: "On the Lord's day P.M.,
as I was reading the psalm, news came that Stockbridge was beset by an
army of Indians, and on fire, which broke up the assembly in an instant.
All were put into the utmost consternation--men, women, and children
crying, 'What shall we do?' Not a gun to defend us, not a fort to flee
to, and few guns and little ammunition in the place. Some ran one way
and some another; but the general course was to the southward,
especially for women and children. Women, children, and squaws presently
flocked in upon us from Stockbridge, half naked and frighted almost to
death; and fresh news came that the enemy were on the plains this side
Stockbridge, shooting and killing and scalping people as they fled. Some
presently came along bloody, with news that they saw persons killed and
scalped, which raised a consternation, tumult, and distress
inexpressible."

[188:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," pp. 191, 234; Dubbs, "German Reformed
Church," p. 271.

[188:2] See extracts from the correspondence given by Dr. Jacobs, pp.
193-195. Dr. Jacobs's suggestion that three congregations of five
hundred families each might among them have raised the few hundreds a
year required seems reasonable, unless a large number of these were
families of redemptioners, that is, for the time, slaves.

[190:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. 196. The story of Zinzendorf, as
seen from different points of view, may be studied in the volumes of
Drs. Jacobs, Dubbs, and Hamilton (American Church History Series).

[191:1] Acrelius, quoted by Jacobs, p. 218, note.

[194:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," pp. 215-218; Hamilton, "The Moravians,"
chaps, iii.-viii., xi.

[196:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. 289.

[198:1] Jacobs, pp. 227, 309, sqq.; Hamilton, p. 457. No account of the
German-American churches is adequate which does not go back to the work
of Spener, the influence of which was felt through them all. The author
is compelled to content himself with inadequate work on many topics.

[201:1] Dr. J. M. Buckley, "The Methodists," p. 181.

[202:1] The attitude of Wesley toward the American cause is set forth
with judicial fairness by Dr. Buckley, pp. 158-168.

[204:1] A full account of Hopkins's long-sustained activity against both
slavery and the slave-trade is given in Park's "Memoir of Hopkins," pp.
114-157. His sermons on the subject began in 1770. His monumental
"Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans, with an Address to
Slave-holders," was published in 1776. For additional information as to
the antislavery attitude of the church at this period, and especially
that of Stiles, see review of "The Minister's Wooing," by L. Bacon ("New
Englander," vol. xviii., p. 145).

[204:2] I have not been able to find a copy of this poem, the character
of which, however, is well known. The son of Aaron Cleveland, William,
was a silversmith at Norwich, among whose grandsons may be named
President Grover Cleveland, and Aaron Cleveland Cox, later known as
Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe.

[204:3] Dr. A. Green's Life of his father, in "Monthly Christian
Advocate."

[206:1] Park, "Memoir of Hopkins," p. 112.

[206:2] Buckley, "The Methodists," Appendix, pp. 688, 689.

[207:1] See Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," pp. 267-278, where
the subject is treated fully and with characteristic fairness.

CHAPTER XIII.

RECONSTRUCTION.

Seven years of war left the American people exhausted, impoverished,
disorganized, conscious of having come into possession of a national
existence, and stirred with anxious searchings of heart over the
question what new institutions should succeed to those overthrown in the
struggle for independence.

Like questions pervaded the commonwealth of American Christians through
all its divisions. The interconfessional divisions of the body
ecclesiastic were about to prove themselves a more effectual bar to
union than the political and territorial divisions of the body politic.
The religious divisions were nearly equal in number to the political.
Naming them in the order in which they had settled themselves on the
soil of the new nation, they were as follows: 1. The Protestant
Episcopalians; 2. The Reformed Dutch; 3. The Congregationalists; 4. The
Roman Catholics; 5. The Friends; 6. The Baptists; 7. The Presbyterians;
8. The Methodists; to which must be added three sects which up to this
time had almost exclusively to do with the German language and the
German immigrant population, to wit, 9. The German Reformed; 10. The
Lutherans; 11. The Moravians. Some of these, as the Congregationalists
and the Baptists, were of so simple and elastic a polity, so
self-adaptive to whatever new environment, as to require no effort to
adjust themselves. Others, as the Dutch and the Presbyterians, had
already organized themselves as independent of foreign spiritual
jurisdiction. Others still, as the German Reformed, the Moravians, and
the Quakers, were content to remain for years to come in a relation of
subordination to foreign centers of organization. But there were three
communions, of great prospective importance, which found it necessary to
address themselves to the task of reorganization to suit the changed
political conditions. These were the Episcopalians, the Catholics, and
the Methodists.

In one respect all the various orders of churches were alike. They had
all suffered from the waste and damage of war. Pastors and missionaries
had been driven from their cures, congregations had been scattered,
houses of worship had been desecrated or destroyed. The Episcopalian and
Methodist ministers were generally Tories, and their churches, and in
some instances their persons, were not spared by the patriots. The
Friends and the Moravians, principled against taking active part in
warfare, were exposed to aggressions from both sides. All other sects
were safely presumed to be in earnest sympathy with the cause of
independence, which many of their pastors actively served as chaplains
or as combatants, or in other ways; wherever the British troops held the
ground, their churches were the object of spite. Nor were these the
chief losses by the war. More grievous still were the death of the
strong men and the young men of the churches, the demoralization of camp
life, and, as the war advanced, the infection of the current fashions of
unbelief from the officers both of the French and of the British armies.
The prevalent diathesis of the American church in all its sects was one
of spiritual torpor, from which, however, it soon began to be aroused
as the grave exigencies of the situation disclosed themselves.

Perhaps no one of the Christian organizations of America came out of the
war in a more forlorn condition than the Episcopalians. This condition
was thus described by Bishop White, in an official charge to his clergy
at Philadelphia in 1832:

"The congregations of our communion throughout the United
States were approaching annihilation. Although within this
city three Episcopal clergymen were resident and officiating,
the churches over the rest of the State had become deprived of
their clergy during the war, either by death or by departure
for England. In the Eastern States, with two or three
exceptions, there was a cessation of the exercises of the
pulpit, owing to the necessary disuse of the prayers for the
former civil rulers. In Maryland and Virginia, where the
church had enjoyed civil establishments, on the ceasing of
these, the incumbents of the parishes, almost without
exception, ceased to officiate. Farther south the condition of
the church was not better, to say the least."[210:1]

This extreme feebleness of Episcopalianism in the several States
conspired with the tendencies of the time in civil affairs to induce
upon the new organization a character not at all conformed to the ideal
of episcopal government. Instead of establishing as the unit of
organization the bishop in every principal town, governing his diocese
at the head of his clergy with some measure of authority, it was almost
a necessity of the time to constitute dioceses as big as kingdoms, and
then to take security against excess of power in the diocesan by
overslaughing his authority through exorbitant powers conferred upon a
periodical mixed synod, legislating for a whole continent, even in
matters confessedly variable and unessential. In the later evolution of
the system, this superior limitation of the bishop's powers is
supplemented from below by magnifying the authority of representative
bodies, diocesan and parochial, until the work of the bishop is reduced
as nearly as possible to the merely "ministerial" performance of certain
assigned functions according to prescribed directions. Concerning this
frame of government it is to be remarked: 1. That it was quite
consciously and confessedly devised for the government of a sect, with
the full and fraternal understanding that other "religious denominations
of Christians" (to use the favorite American euphemism) "were left at
full and equal liberty to model and organize their respective churches"
to suit themselves.[211:1] 2. That, judged according to its professed
purpose, it has proved itself a practically good and effective
government. 3. That it is in no proper sense of the word an episcopal
government, but rather a classical and synodical government, according
to the common type of the American church constitutions of the
period.[211:2]

The objections which only a few years before had withstood the
importation into the colonies of lord bishops, with the English common
and canon law at their backs, vanished entirely before the proposal for
the harmless functionaries provided for in the new constitution. John
Adams himself, a leader of the former opposition, now, as American
minister in London, did his best to secure for Bishops-elect White and
Provoost the coveted consecration from English bishops. The only
hindrance now to this long-desired boon was in the supercilious
dilatoriness of the English prelates and of the civil authorities to
whom they were subordinate. They were evidently in a sulky temper over
the overwhelming defeat of the British arms. If it had been in their
power to blockade effectively the channels of sacramental grace, there
is no sign that they would have consented to the American petition.
Happily there were other courses open. 1. There was the recourse to
presbyterial ordination, an expedient sanctioned, when necessary, by the
authority of "the judicious Hooker," and actually recommended, if the
case should require, by the Rev. William White, soon to be consecrated
as one of the first American bishops. 2. Already for more than a
half-century the Moravian episcopate had been present and most
apostolically active in America. 3. The Lutheran Episcopal churches of
Denmark and Sweden were fully competent and known to be not unwilling to
confer the episcopal succession on the American candidates. 4. There
were the Scotch nonjuring bishops, outlawed for political reasons from
communion with the English church, who were tending their "persecuted
remnant" of a flock in Scotland. Theirs was a not less valid succession
than those of their better-provided English brethren, and fully as
honorable a history. It was due to the separate initiative of the
Episcopalian ministers of Connecticut, and to the persistence of their
bishop-elect, Samuel Seabury, that the deadlock imposed by the
Englishmen was broken. Inheriting the Puritan spirit, which sought a
_jus divinum_ in all church questions, they were men of deeper
convictions and "higher" principles than their more southern brethren.
In advance of the plans for national organization, without conferring
with flesh and blood, they had met and acted, and their candidate for
consecration was in London urging his claims, before the ministers in
the Middle States had any knowledge of what was doing. After a year of
costly and vexatious delay in London, finding no progress made and no
hope of any, he proceeded to Aberdeen and was consecrated bishop
November 14, 1784. It was more than two years longer before the English
bishops succeeded in finding a way to do what their unrecognized Scotch
brethren had done with small demur. But they did find it. So long as the
Americans seemed dependent on English consecration they could not get
it. When at last it was made quite plain that they could and would do
without it if necessary, they were more than welcome to it. Dr. White
for Pennsylvania, and Dr. Provoost for New York, were consecrated by the
Archbishop of Canterbury at the chapel of Lambeth Palace, February 4,
1787. Dr. Griffith, elected for Virginia, failed to be present; in all
that great diocese there was not interest enough felt in the matter to
raise the money to pay his passage to England and back.

The American Episcopal Church was at last in a condition to live. Some
formidable dangers of division arising from the double derivation of the
episcopate were happily averted by the tact and statesmanship of Bishop
White, and liturgical changes incidental to the reconstitution of the
church were made, on the whole with cautious judgment and good taste,
and successfully introduced. But for many years the church lived only a
languishing life. Bishop Provoost of New York, after fourteen years of
service, demitted his functions in 1801, discouraged about the
continuance of the church. He "thought it would die out with the old
colonial families."[213:1] The large prosperity of this church dates
only from the second decade of this century. It is the more notable for
the brief time in which so much has been accomplished.

* * * * *

The difficulties in the way of the organization of the Catholic Church
for the United States were not less serious, and were overcome with
equal success, but not without a prolonged struggle against opposition
from within. It is not easy for us, in view either of the antecedent or
of the subsequent history, to realize the extreme feebleness of American
Catholicism at the birth of our nation. According to an official
"Relation on the State of Religion in the United States," presented by
the prefect apostolic in 1785, the total number of Catholics in the
entire Union was 18,200, exclusive of an unascertainable number,
destitute of priests, in the Mississippi Valley. The entire number of
the clergy was twenty-four, most of them former members of the Society
of Jesuits, that had been suppressed in 1773 by the famous bull,
_Dominus ac Redemptor_, of Clement XIV. Sorely against their will, these
missionaries, hitherto subject only to the discipline of their own
society, were transformed into secular priests, under the jurisdiction
of the Vicar Apostolic of London. After the establishment of
independence, with the intense jealousy felt regarding British
influence, and by none more deeply and more reasonably felt than by the
Catholics, this jurisdiction was impracticable. The providentially fit
man for the emergency was found in the Rev. John Carroll, of an old
Maryland family distinguished alike for patriotism and for faithfulness
to Catholic principles. In June, 1784, he was made prefect apostolic
over the Catholic Church in the United States, and the dependence on
British jurisdiction was terminated.

When, however, it was proposed that this provisional arrangement should
be superseded by the appointment of a bishop, objections not unexpected
were encountered from among the clergy. Already we have had occasion to
note the jealousy of episcopal authority that is felt by the clergy of
the regular orders. The lately disbanded Jesuits, with characteristic
flexibility of self-adaptation to circumstances, had at once
reincorporated themselves under another name, thus to hold the not
inconsiderable estates of their order in the State of Maryland. But the
plans of these energetic men either to control the bishop or to prevent
his appointment were unsuccessful. In December, 1790, Bishop Carroll,
having been consecrated in England, arrived and entered upon his see of
Baltimore.

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