History of American Christianity — Chapter XXII Tendencies Toward a Manifestation of the Unity of the American Church, Part 1

TENDENCIES TOWARD A MANIFESTATION OF THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH.

The three centuries of history which we have passed under rapid review comprise a series of political events of the highest importance to mankind.

We have seen, from our side-point of view, the planting, along the western coast of the Atlantic Ocean, without mutual concert or common direction, of many independent germs of civilization.

So many of these as survived the perils of infancy we have seen growing to a lusty youth, and becoming drawn each to each by ties of common interest and mutual fellowship.

Releasing themselves from colonial dependence on a transatlantic power, we find these several communities, now grown to be States, becoming conscious, through common perils, victories, and hopes, of national unity and life, and ordaining institutes of national government binding upon all.

The strong vitality of the new nation is proved by its assimilating to itself an immense mass of immigrants from all parts of Europe, and by expanding itself without essential change over the area of a continent.

It triumphs again and again, and at last in a struggle that shakes the world, over passions and interests that threaten schism in the body politic, and gives good reason to its friends to boast the solid unity of the republic as the strongest existing fact in the political world.

The very great aggrandizement of the nation has been an affair of the last sixty years; but already it has recorded itself throughout the vast expanse of the continent in monuments of architecture and engineering worthy of the national strength.

The ecclesiastical history which has been recounted in this volume, covering the same territory and the same period of time, runs with equal pace in many respects parallel with the political history, but in one important respect with a wide divergence.

As with civilization so with Christianity: the germs of it, derived from different regions of Christendom, were planted without concert of purpose, and often with distinct cross-purposes, in different seed-plots along the Atlantic seaboard.

Varying in polity, in forms of dogmatic statement, and even in language, the diverse growths were made, through wonders of spiritual influence and through external stress of trial, to feel their unity in the one faith.

The course of a common experience tended to establish a predominant type of religious life the influence of which has been everywhere felt, even when it has not been consented to.

The vital strength of the American church, as of the American nation, has been subjected to the test of the importation of enormous masses of more or less uncongenial population, and has shown an amazing power of digestion and assimilation.

Its resources have been taxed by the providential imposition of burdens of duty and responsibility such, in magnitude and weight, as never since the early preaching of the gospel have pressed upon any single generation of the church.

Within the space of a single lifetime, at an expenditure of toil and treasure which it is idle to attempt to compute, the wide and desolate wilderness, as fast as civilization has invaded it, has been occupied by the church with churches, schools, colleges, and seminaries of theology, with pastors, evangelists, and teachers, and, in one way or another, has been constrained to confess itself Christian.

The continent which so short a time ago had been compassionately looked upon from across the sea as missionary ground has become a principal base of supplies, and recruiting-ground for men and women, for missionary operations in ancient lands of heathenism and of a decayed Christianity.

So much for the parallel.

The divergence is not less impressive.

In contrast with the solid political unity into which the various and incongruous elements have settled themselves, the unity of the Christian church is manifested by oneness neither of jurisdiction nor of confederation, nor even by diplomatic recognition and correspondence.

Out of the total population of the United States, amounting, according to the census of 1890, to 62,622,000 souls, the 57,000,000 accounted as Christians, including 20,000,000 communicant church-members, are gathered into 165,297 congregations, assembling in 142,000 church edifices containing 43,000,000 sittings, and valued (together with other church property) at ,000,000; and are served in the ministry of the gospel by more than 111,000 ministers.

[400:1] But this great force is divided among 143 mutually independent sects, larger and smaller.

Among these sects is recognized no controlling and coördinating authority;

neither is there any common leadership; neither is there any system of mutual counsel and concert.

The mutual relations of the sects are sometimes those of respect and good will, sometimes of sharp competition and jealousy, sometimes of eager and conscientious hostility.

All have one and the same unselfish and religious aim--to honor God in serving their fellow-men; and each one, in honestly seeking this supreme aim, is affected by its corporate interests, sympathies, and antipathies.

This situation is too characteristic of America, and too distinctly connected with the whole course of the antecedent history, not to be brought out with emphasis in this concluding chapter.

In other lands the church is maintained, through the power of the civil government, under the exclusive control of a single organization, in which the element of popular influence may be wholly wanting, or may be present (as in many of the "Reformed" polities) in no small measure.

In others yet, through government influence and favor, a strong predominance is given to one organized communion, under the shadow of which dissentient minorities are tolerated and protected.

Under the absolute freedom and equality of the American system there is not so much as a predominance of any one of the sects.

No one of them is so strong and numerous but that it is outnumbered and outweighed by the aggregate of the two next to it.

At present, in consequence of the rush of immigration, the Roman Catholic Church is largely in advance of any single denomination besides, but is inferior in numerical strength and popular influence to the Methodists and Baptists combined--if they _were_ combined.

And there is no doubt that this comminution of the church is frankly accepted, for reasons assigned, not only as an inevitable drawback to the blessings of religious freedom, but as a good thing in itself.

A

weighty sentence of James Madison undoubtedly expresses the prevailing sentiment among Americans who contemplate the subject merely from the political side: "In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.

It consists, in the one case, in the multiplicity of interests, and, in the other, in the multiplicity of sects.

The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects."

[402:1] And no student of history can deny that there is much to justify the jealousy with which the lovers of civil liberty watch the climbing of any sect, no matter how purely spiritual its constitution, toward a position of command in popular influence.

The influence of the leaders of such a sect may be nothing more than the legitimate and well-deserved influence of men of superior wisdom and virtue; but when reinforced by the weight of official religious character, and backed by a majority, or even a formidable minority, of voters organized in a religious communion, the feeling is sure to gain ground that such power is too great to be trusted to the hands even of the best of men.

Whatever sectarian advantage such a body may achieve in the state by preponderance of number will be more than offset by the public suspicion and the watchful jealousy of rival sects; and the weakening of it by division, or the subordination of it by the overgrowth of a rival, is sure to be regarded with general complacency.

It is not altogether a pleasing object of contemplation--the citizen and the statesman looking with contentment on the schism of the church as averting a danger to the state.

It is hardly more gratifying when we find ministers of the church themselves accepting the condition of schism as being, on the whole, a very good condition for the church of Christ, if not, indeed, the best possible.

It is quite unreservedly argued that the principle, "Competition is the life of business," is applicable to spiritual as well as secular concerns; and the "emulations" reprobated by the Apostle Paul as "works of the flesh" are frankly appealed to for promoting the works of the spirit.

This debasing of the motive of church work is naturally attended by a debasement of the means employed.

The competitive church resorts to strange business devices to secure its needed revenue.

"He that giveth" is induced to give, not "with simplicity," but with a view to incidental advantages, and a distinct understanding is maintained between the right hand and the left.

The extent and variety of this influence on church life in America afford no occasion for pride, but the mention of them could not rightly be omitted.

It remains for the future to decide whether they must needs continue as an inevitable attendant on the voluntary system.

Sectarian divisions tend strongly to perpetuate themselves.

The starting of schism is easy and quick; the healing of it is a matter of long diplomatic negotiations.

In a very short time the division of the church, with its necessary relations to property and to the employment of officials, becomes a vested interest.

Provision for large expenditure unnecessary, or even detrimental, to the general interests of the kingdom of Christ, which had been instituted in the first place at heavy cost to the many, is not to be discontinued without more serious loss to influential individuals.

Those who would set themselves about the healing of a schism must reckon upon personal and property interests to be conciliated.

This least amiable characteristic of the growth of the Christian church in America is not without its compensations.

The very fact of the existence, in presence of one another, of these multitudinous rival sects, all equal before the law, tends in the long run, under the influence of the Holy Spirit of peace, to a large and comprehensive fellowship.

[404:1] The widely prevalent acceptance of existing conditions as probably permanent, even if not quite normal, softens the mutual reproaches of rival parties.

The presumption is of course implied, if not asserted, in the existence of any Christian sect, that it is holding the absolute right and truth, or at least more nearly that than other sects; and the inference, to a religious mind, is that the right and true must, in the long run, prevail.

But it is only with a high act of faith, and not as a matter of reasonable probability, that any sect in America can venture to indulge itself in the expectation of a supremacy, or even a predominance, in American Christendom.

The strongest in numbers, in influence, in prestige, however tempted to assert for itself exclusive or superior rights, is compelled to look about itself and find itself overwhelmingly outnumbered and outdone by a divided communion--and yet a communion--of those whom Christ "is not ashamed to call his brethren"; and just in proportion as it has the spirit of Christ, it is constrained in its heart to treat them as brethren and to feel toward them as brethren.

Its protest against what it regards as their errors and defects is nowise weakened by the most unreserved manifestations of respect and good will as toward fellow-Christians.

Thus it comes to pass that the observant traveler from other countries, seeking the distinctive traits of American social life, "notes a kindlier feeling between all denominations, Roman Catholics included, a greater readiness to work together for common charitable aims, than between Catholics and Protestants in France or Germany, or between Anglicans and nonconformists in England."

[405:1] * * * * * There are many indications, in the recent history of the American church, pointing forward toward some higher manifestation of the true unity of the church than is to be found in occasional, or even habitual, expressions of mutual good will passing to and fro among sharply competing and often antagonist sects.

Instead of easy-going and playful felicitations on the multitude of sects as contributing to the total effectiveness of the church, such as used to be common enough on "anniversary" platforms, we hear, in one form and another, the acknowledgment that the divided and subdivided state of American Christendom is not right, but wrong.

Whose is the wrong need not be decided; certainly it does not wholly belong to the men of this generation or of this country; we are heirs of the schisms of other lands and ages, and have added to them schisms of our own making.

The matter begins to be taken soberly and seriously.

The tender entreaty of the Apostle Paul not to suffer ourselves to be split up into sects[405:2] begins to get a hearing in the conscience.

The _nisus_ toward a more manifest union among Christian believers has long been growing more and more distinctly visible, and is at the present day one of the most conspicuous signs of the times.

Already in the early history we have observed a tendency toward the healing, in America, of differences imported from over sea.

Such was the commingling of Separatist and Puritan in New England; the temporary alliance of Congregationalist and Presbyterian to avert the imposition of a state hierarchy; the combination of Quaker and Roman Catholic to defeat a project of religious oppression in Maryland; the drawing together of Lutheran and Reformed Germans for common worship, under the saintly influence of the Moravian Zinzendorf; and the "Plan of Union" by which New Englander and Scotch-Irishman were to labor in common for the evangelization of the new settlements.

[406:1] These were sporadic instances of a tendency that was by and by to become happily epidemic.

A

more important instance of the same tendency was the organization of societies for charitable work which should unite the gifts and personal labors of the Christians of the whole continent.

The chief period of these organizations extended from 1810, the date of the beginning of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to 1826, when the American Home Missionary Society was founded.

[406:2] The "catholic basis" on which they were established was dictated partly by the conscious weakness of the several sects as they drew near to undertakings formidable even to their united forces, and partly by the glow of fraternal affection, and the sense of a common spiritual life pervading the nation, with which the church had come forth from the fervors of "the second awakening."

[406:3] The societies, representing the common faith and charity of the whole church as distinguished from the peculiarities of the several sects, drew to themselves the affection and devotion of Christian hearts to a degree which, to those who highly valued these distinctions, seemed to endanger important interests.

And, indeed, the situation was anomalous, in which the sectarian divisions of the Christian people were represented in the churches, and their catholic unity in charitable societies.

It would have seemed more Pauline, not to say more Christian, to have had voluntary societies for the sectarian work, and kept the churches for Christian communion.

It is no wonder that High-church champions, on one side and another, soon began to shout to their adherents, "To your tents, O Israel!"

Bishop Hobart played not in vain upon his pastoral pipe to whistle back his sheep from straying outside of his pinfold, exhorting them, "in their endeavors for the general advancement of religion, to use only the instrumentality of their own church."

[407:1] And a jealousy of the growing influence of a wide fellowship, in charitable labors, with Christians of other names, led to the enunciation of a like doctrine by High-church Presbyterians,[407:2] and contributed to the convulsive and passionate rending of the Presbyterian Church, in 1837, into nearly equal fragments.

So effective has been the centrifugal force that of the extensive system of societies which from the year 1810 onward first organized works of national beneficence by enlisting the coöperation of "all evangelical Christians," the American Bible Society alone continues to represent any general and important combination from among the different denominations.

For all the waning of interest in the "catholic basis" societies, the sacred discontent of the Christian people with sectarian division continued to demand expression.

How early the aspiration for an ecumenical council of evangelical Christendom became articulate, it may not be easy to discover[408:1] In the year 1846 the aspiration was in some measure realized in the first meeting of the Evangelical Alliance at London.

No more mistakes were made in this meeting than perhaps were necessarily incident to a first experiment in untried work.

Almost of course the good people began with the question, What good men shall we keep out?

for it is a curious fact, in the long and interesting history of efforts after Christian union, that they commonly take the form of efforts so to combine many Christians as to exclude certain others.

In this instance, beginning with the plan of including none but Protestant Christians, they proceeded at once to frame a platform that should bar out that "great number of the best and holiest men in England who are found among the Quakers," thus making up, "designedly and with their eyes open, a schismatic unity--a unity composed of one part of God's elect, to the exclusion of another; and this in a grand effort after the very unity of the body of Christ."

[409:1] But in spite of this and other like mistakes, or rather because of them (for it is through its mistakes that the church is to learn the right way), the early and unsuccessful beginnings of the Evangelical Alliance marked a stage in the slow progress toward a "manifestation of the sons of God" by their love toward each other and toward the common Lord.

It is in large part the eager appetency for some manifestation of interconfessional fellowship that has hastened the acceptance of such organizations as the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor; just as, on the other hand, it is the conscientious fear, on the part of watchful guardians of sectarian interests, that habitual fellowship across the boundary lines of denominations may weaken the allegiance to the sect, which has induced the many attempts at substituting associations constituted on a narrower basis.

But the form of organization which most comprehensively illustrates the unity of the church is that "Charity Organization" which has grown to be a necessity to the social life of cities and considerable towns, furnishing a central office of mutual correspondence and coördination to all churches and societies and persons engaged in the Christian work of relieving poverty and distress.

This central bureau of charitable coöperation is not the less a center of catholic fellowship for the fact that it does not shut its door against societies not distinctively Christian, like Masonic fraternities, nor even against societies distinctively non-Christian, like Hebrew synagogues and "societies of ethical culture."

We are coming to discover that the essence of Christian fellowship does not consist in keeping people out.

Neither, so long as the apostolic rubric of Christian worship[410:1] remains unaltered, is it to be denied that the fellowship thus provided for is a fellowship in one of the sacraments of Christian service.

A notable advance in true catholicity of communion is reported from among the churches and scattered missions in Maine.

Hitherto, in the various movements of Christian union, it was common to attempt to disarm the suspicions of zealous sectarians by urgent disclaimers of any intent or tendency to infringe on the rights or interests of the several sects, or impair their claim to a paramount allegiance from their adherents.

The Christians of Maine, facing tasks of evangelization more than sufficient to occupy all their resources even when well economized and squandering nothing on needless divisions and competitions, have attained to the high grace of saying that sectarian interests must and shall be sacrificed when the paramount interests of the kingdom of Christ require it.

[410:2] When this attainment is reached by other souls, and many other, the conspicuous shame and scandal of American Christianity will begin to be abated.