To understand the dominant Protestant paradigm and its characteristics that existed in 1870, we must understand the main currents of Christianity in America that began with the Pilgrims and developed through the three Great Awakenings. The first current began with the early Reformation churches planted in America in the early seventeenth century. These were the Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians (Anglican), but their religious fervor and commitment cooled as native-born second and third generation colonists replaced their European-born parents during the last half of the 1600s. The second current grew from the stirrings of revival that blossomed within the church during the 1720s. These stirrings became a renewal movement called evangelicalism and birthed the First Great Awakening that began in the 1730s. Evangelical churches emphasized a revivalist style of preaching, personal conversion, personal devotion and holiness, and individual access to God which deemphasized the importance and authority of the church.[1] Separate from these two currents was another group known as confessional churches which did not participate in the revivalist movements but emphasized their official and churchly characteristics. Confessional churches included Catholics, Lutherans, German Reformed, Dutch Reformed, and Old Side Presbyterians.[2]

The evangelical […] Continue Reading…

Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah…[Isaiah 62:4. KJV]

For all of its history, a principal battle for the Christian church has been the preservation and defense of biblical truth. For centuries the European church fought among themselves and with their respective governments or kings all the while accumulating wealth, power, and worldliness. Following centuries of neglect, compromise, and corruption of the sustaining power of pristine biblical truth, the decline of the church worsened as it came under the influence and eventual domination of eighteenth century Enlightenment thought and its religion of humanism. For many of the faithful, Europe and the state churches had become wicked Babylon and a new colony at the edge of the vast American wilderness was seen as a Beulah land, a new Jerusalem favored and blessed by the Lord. And so it was to be for a season.

It all began as a tiny ship approached the shores of a primitive continent called America. Historian Paul Johnson in his massive A History of the American People called the arrival on December […] Continue Reading…

The Reformation churches establish themselves in Europe

The outworking of the Reformation was unique within each country in continental Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. The extent of reform depended on the strength of opposition from the Roman Catholic Church and the attitudes of the populace toward the church in each of the affected countries. It also depended on which branch of the Reformation churches became the most influential in the affairs of reforming the church. Some may have been directly influenced by the work of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and other early reform leaders while other late-comers to the Reformation were influenced by the followers of those early leaders.

Although the reformers readily affirmed their allegiance to “the scriptures alone” as the authority of the church and living the Christian life, it was far more difficult matter to shed centuries of church practices that conflicted with or undermined faithful adherence to the scriptures. Therefore, the implementation of the reforms in the new Protestant churches often carried with it many of the old ways of doing the business of church. By 1550, the church in the west had settled into three branches: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism […] Continue Reading…

Calls for reformation within the church occurred over several centuries and produced a complex series of events that challenged the authority of the church hierarchy. Calls for reformation began with the Waldenses in the twelfth and thirteen centuries and continued with Wycliffe, Hus, and the Brethren of the Common Life in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. When Luther nailed the ninety-five theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church in 1517, he called into question certain practices of the church and sought to change them. Initially his actions were not meant to divide the church but to rid it of the practices that many in the church felt were doctrinally contrary to the tenets of the New Testament. What many define as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in 1517 may be more correctly viewed as a step (although the major one) in a centuries-long process that eventually led to the irrevocable separation of the Western church into its Catholic and Protestant branches.[1]

Martin Luther

Luther (1483-1546) received a Master’s degree from the University of Erfurt. Subsequently, he began studying law but changed to theology. In 1507, he was ordained a priest and […] Continue Reading…