A New World

When the church faces challenging times, it responds in different ways. Take, for example, the early 19th century. So, we may look back at the Puritan times in New England and say, well, look at the internal tensions, look at the difficulties, look at the struggles.

That's not what they were focused on. They were focused on their confidence that they would overcome these problems and the church would become ever more glorious and successful on earth. Sometimes the people living through a period in history can't see the significance of it. But with a careful eye, we can look back and see how the tumult of an era shaped the world. That's why Dr. W. Robert Godfrey taught the series American Presbyterians and Revival. With the advantage of hindsight, we hope to see our own time more clearly.

Here's Dr. Godfrey. Well, at the end of our last time together, I noted that at the time of the American Revolution in 1776, probably 90% of the American colonial population that had any religious commitment were committed to a vision of Protestantism that was basically Calvinistic. That would include the Anglicans. We need to remember that in the 18th century, the Anglicans had 39 articles that were their confession of faith. That was a Calvinistic statement. They had a liturgy written by Thomas Cranmer, who'd been a Calvinist, and it was a basically Calvinist liturgy. And although the Puritans had criticisms of Anglicanism to improve it and make it better, it surely ranks as one of the Reformed communities of faith. And when you add then to the Anglicans and the Dutch Reformed and others with the Puritans, you have 90% of the religious life in America in 1776 dominated by Calvinism. So what happened? How did things change so much from this broad consensus of Calvinism and a broad consensus that the church ought to be established and supported by the state to quite a new world by the time of the writing of the Constitution and the formation of the American Republic?

That's what we want to begin to look at. Part of what changed, as I said last time, was the influence of Enlightenment thought that particularly manifested itself in some of the founding fathers in America, as we call them, of the American Constitution, who had moved away from Christianity to a form of religion called deism. They believed in God. They believed that God had created the world, but they tended to believe that God had then left the world to run itself, and we were significantly on our own as human beings. That God didn't intervene. He didn't intervene miraculously.

He didn't intervene by the work of Christ or the Holy Spirit to make us different. They tried to sound as Christian as they could, so they would praise Jesus as a great moral teacher, but they had moved away from classic Christianity. And that Enlightenment emphasis was becoming an increasing influence on thinking in various parts of American life in the 18th century. The church, the Calvinistic churches, particularly the churches in New England, the Puritan churches, were not overly alarmed at this development.

It's always interesting what people in any given moment see as the important things going on in their own time, and very often we miss the really important things going on in our time and focus on other things that are not as important. Part of the reason that the Puritans were not greatly alarmed is that they were all committed to an eschatology that we call post-millennial. Post-millennial eschatology says that over time things will get better and better in the life of the church, that over time the church will be more and more successful and more and more influential. And therefore, if we hit bumps in the road, if we have difficult times, we don't need to overly worry about that because the future belongs to us as Christians, not just in terms of the return of Christ to make all things new, but in history itself Christ will be building his church in a way that the church will succeed. Wasn't the promise to Abraham that all the nations of the earth would be blessed in him?

And that continued to be the expectation. Weren't the apostles sent out to make disciples of all nations? So there was this sense that Christ would be building his church in and through nations and that the future would be good. This came to classic expression in what is known as the Savoy Declaration of 1658.

You all remember it well. This was the Puritan Congregationalist revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith. And in this revision, they changed what the Westminster Confession had said about the church and the future to express more clearly their post-millennial expectations.

So this is the Savoy Declaration that many of the Puritans in New England would have embraced. And this is what it says, as the Lord is in care and love towards his church, hath in his infinite wise providence exercised it with great variety in all ages for the good of them that love him and his own glory. So according to his promise, we expect that in the latter days, Antichrist being destroyed, which meant the pope, when the pope is destroyed, when the Jews are called, there was an expectation of a large conversion of Jews in the future, when the adversaries of the kingdom of his dear son are broken, the churches of Christ, being enlarged and edified through a free and plentiful communication of light and grace, shall enjoy in this world a more quiet, peaceable, and glorious condition than they have enjoyed. So this is their confidence that the future for the church in history will be more glorious than it's been.

Things are going to get better. So we may look back at the Puritan times in New England and say, well, look at the internal tensions, look at the difficulties, look at the struggles, look at the changing world that surrounds them. That's not what they were focused on. They were focused on their confidence that they would overcome these problems and the church would become ever more glorious and successful and influential on earth. So that confidence actually will stay with the church right into the 19th century.

We'll come back and talk about that later. But this confidence then seemed to be for many powerfully reinforced in the middle of the 18th century by the coming of what was known as the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening was one of the most profound and influential moments in the history of America, and it largely took place in the 1740s. And the two most famous names associated with the Great Awakening are Jonathan Edwards, who was a pastor and a preacher and a theologian. His preaching was used in the Great Awakening to lead many to a renewed interest in Christ, and he became the great theologian of the Great Awakening, talking about what was happening and how it should be understood. The even greater preacher of the Great Awakening was George Whitefield, an Englishman and a Calvinist. So here you have this great spiritual awakening taking place, many people coming to hear preaching, many people feeling they were regenerated by the preaching, many people coming to think more seriously about religious matters, and seemingly the awakening being very much what was expected in terms of a post-millennial view of the future.

Yeah, there may be these problems. Yes, the churches seem to be weakening in their influence in a variety of ways, and now comes this great revival. Look at all the people interested in religion. Awakening was a technical Puritan term, speaking of people who had been asleep and uninterested in religious matters and now have been awakened to interest in religious matters. It didn't necessarily mean they were regenerated, but it meant that they had interest suddenly in religion where they'd never had it before. And this happened throughout the colonies in the South as well as in New England, and this shook the whole fabric intellectually, religiously, culturally in America. It dominated life in the 1740s for many, many people, and many Puritans, including Jonathan Edwards, thought that this was, if not the beginning of the glory days of the church, at least in anticipation that these glory days were coming. And I think we can say that although the Great Awakening itself only lasted six or seven years, it remained for decades thereafter, certainly well into the 19th century. It remained the model of what people hoped for, what people prayed for, what people expected.

The whole idea of longing for revival was very much reinforced by the Great Awakening and continued in America through the 19th and 20th century. You could really say in a lot of ways Billy Graham was an expression of this kind of expectation. How will God work in America?

Well, he'll often work through a powerful preacher that will gather the attention of the whole country, and the anticipation is it may be that God will use him to completely revive the country. Now, by the time of Billy Graham, there wasn't so much post-millennial expectation anymore, but there was still a notion that God works through revivals and through special events and special preachers and special moments. And that was all very much modeled for American Christians by the Great Awakening. And it enabled many Puritans to think our basic outlook is right. We don't face any fundamental changes taking place in society because Christ is going to build his church and glorify his church in history, and we're at the center of that. So, they didn't see that in point of fact imperial Christianity in America was coming to an end.

It was coming to an end, and the Great Awakening in some ways marked the transition. Many of the people living at the time didn't see that. Jonathan Edwards still lived in a world where the congregational church in New England was established. It was still the legal church. It was still the government-supported church.

That would continue into the 19th century. We as Americans usually forget that because the Constitution says the Congress shall make no laws establishing religion. And that was to stop the Congress from interfering with Episcopalians in Virginia and Congregationalists in Massachusetts. Establishment in states continued sometimes for a decade or two into the 19th century. It eventually all ended, but the Constitution didn't end it.

The states themselves made those decisions. So, still in the 18th century, many Puritans could believe nothing fundamental was changing. But great changes were taking place, and the greatest change that the Great Awakening marked was a shift from religion being dominated in America by the clergy to religion being dominated in America by the laity. And again, that wasn't a shift that was broadly observed immediately.

It was not immediately recognized. Although some of the Puritan critics of the Great Awakening, there were some Puritans in New England who didn't like the Awakening. They thought it was too emotional. They thought it wasn't rational enough.

It was dangerous in its explosive emotional dimensions. And part of what they were concerned about, they said, is going to undermine the old standing order of the influence of ministers. And it turns out, although on a lot of religious matters they weren't right, these critics, they were right about that. Up until the Great Awakening in America, and of course this didn't all shift overnight, but up until the Great Awakening in America, if you were a lay person, you would be inclined to say when religious questions came up, well, the ministers will know that. The ministers will lead us in what we ought to believe, what we ought to do, how we ought to practice religion. There was a confidence in the ministry.

There was a hesitancy to criticize the ministers. And, you know, this continued perhaps longer in the Dutch Reformed churches in my background than was true in Presbyterian churches, which were more Americanized early. But many Dutch Reformed people would go to church and say, well, the minister must know about that. I'm not supposed to criticize the minister. Remember back in the 70s, still a preacher in a Dutch Reformed church would sometimes hear, I really like that sermon.

I know I shouldn't say that. And sometimes guest preachers will say, why shouldn't you say that? Well, if I can tell you it's a good sermon this week, I can tell you it's a bad sermon next week, and that's not my place. Now, you see, that's not an American attitude at all, is it? Nothing is more likely than a lay person who will look a minister in the eye and say, that's a bad sermon.

What's the matter with you? That shift of attitude really can be traced very much to the Great Awakening. And it can almost be traced to one single document, the danger of an unconverted ministry, which said to lay people, you have to figure out if your minister is converted or not. There are ministers out there who are not converted. They're like caterpillars.

They go around looking for every green thing to devour it. Wherever there's life, they're opposed to it. Well, you see the dramatic shift. Before the Great Awakening, most American Christians were very content to go to their neighboring church. Think what church you'd go to if you went to the church nearest to where you live.

You might be alarmed at the thought. But after the Great Awakening, lay people were told they had the responsibility to figure out where should they go to church. Well, if some of the ministers are unconverted, you can't just go to your minister and ask where to go to church. You have a whole new responsibility placed on you, a responsibility that's an individual responsibility. Suddenly, religion becomes much more individual in its focus and a responsibility that is focused on the laity in a way that had never been true before.

And, you know, this is a shift taking place that is very much in harmony with the spirit of the age generally and the coming of the American Revolution. The American Constitution does end imperial Christianity in America, and it reflects a growing reliance upon individuals who will vote. Now, it's not radically modern because not everybody in America could vote, according to the Constitution. Women couldn't vote. Children couldn't vote. Slaves couldn't vote.

Only men of a certain age could vote who were not slaves. And so it isn't a completely radical democratization and individualization of American life, but it's a huge shift. It's a huge shift away from the world in which Europeans lived. Now, I raised the question, why does Calvinism seem to lose so much of its influence if 90% of Americans were in some broad sense Calvinistic at the time of the Revolution, 1776?

What happened? You may have noticed 90% of Americans today are not Calvinists. I don't want to shock you or disillusion you, but it's true. It's only maybe 85?

No. What happened? Well, part of what happened is that after the excitement of the Great Awakening in the 1740s, the attention of lots of Americans was, or colonists then, was drawn away from religion to politics. In the decades after the 1740s, more and more political issues were being raised leading up to the American Revolution. So, Americans were distracted, we could say, and in fact, churches were weakened. Church attendance was weakened in America because so much energy and time and consideration was being given to the matter of the Revolution. After the Revolution, it was a new world.

Not a radically new world, but a new world. A world now that didn't look primarily to England for life, for direction, for news, for what was important, but now a new country had been formed, a new sense of connection had taken place. The Great Awakening contributed to that because when the Great Awakening was taking place, people in Massachusetts asked, what's going on in Virginia religiously? What's going on in the Carolinas religiously? And the Virginians said, what's going on in New York?

Is somebody actually believing in New York? That was questionable, but up in Massachusetts, in New England, there was a great stirring, and so suddenly people were not just looking back to England for news, they were looking north and south for news in the colonies. It helped create a sense of connection and identity. Before that, you were first of all a Virginian and then an Englishman, or you were first of all a Massachusettsite, whatever they are, and an Englishman.

But now suddenly you're an American, you're part of a colonial connection, and that led the way to revolution, and it led the way to a new world, and it led the way to a sense of a whole new experiment, a whole new experiment. And while imperial Christianity had come to an end in the country as a whole, the country as a whole remained decidedly Christian in its culture, in its orientation, in its thought, and what happens in America is significantly different from what happened in Europe at the same period, late 18th century on into the 19th century. In Europe, in many places, the church remained established. It maintained its wealth. It maintained its institutional life.

It maintained the very visible presence of its buildings. It maintained a clergy that was educated and well supported by the state, but it was an institution cut off from the people in many ways. Increasingly in Europe, Christianity wasn't really popular.

It wasn't grounded in the convictions and the life and the belief of the people. In America, it became clear by the end of the 18th century that the church needed to be connected to the people, and the church did become connected to the people because of this shift from the Great Awakening towards laypeople feeling they needed to be involved to make decisions to be active in directing the whole life of the church. Many churches in Europe, and we could see the result of that today even more clearly, many churches in Europe could continue to flourish in the sense of having buildings and clergy with nobody attending because all the bills were paid by the state. In America, the state wasn't going to pay many church bills. If you were going to survive, you had to have people coming to make voluntary contributions to support the life of the church.

This is the new world. This is the new world of post-imperial Christianity in America, and we want to next time start to look at what that new world is really like and how it influences the Reformed in America. Were the Puritans overconfident? They certainly didn't seem to be overly alarmed by the Enlightenment thinkers who were having so much influence.

Should they have refuted their ideas more soundly? These are the kinds of questions we begin to ask when we study church history, and they help us evaluate our own churches today. Dr. Robert Gottfried's series American Presbyterians and Revival is our focus this week on Renewing Your Mind. In 11 messages, we learn how Reformed churches of the 19th century thought through theological controversies, cultural tensions, and even civil war. We will send you the two DVDs when you contact us with a donation of any amount today.

You can call us at 800-435-4343, or you can make your request online at renewingyourmind.org. And when you make your request, we will add a digital copy of the study guide to your online learning library. Just request American Presbyterians and Revival by Dr. Robert Gottfried. And here's a preview of tomorrow's lesson. Almost from the beginning of the growth of Presbyterianism in 18th century America, the Presbyterians had to face the fact they were not going to be in charge, and they were not going to want the civil government then to enforce what the civil government would be inclined to enforce as true religion. American Christians were quite different from what these Scottish immigrants were used to. Dr. Gottfried will show us how they dealt with those differences tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. I hope you'll join us. Thank you.