The History of Protestant Denominations in Early America

So, let's go Baptist distinctives now. Uh, and I and I actually changed up how I wanted to work through this by using the Baptist distinctives to demonstrate that African-American Baptists are not some sort of splinter group over there. They're really, um, in the thick of what it means to be Baptist.

So, uh, we think of freedom of conscience, freedom of uh, freedom liberty of conscience. So, this is the fundamental Baptist distinctive. So, each individual person is responsible before God under the supreme lordship of Jesus Christ. And no church, political state, family member or other person can represent an individual before God. So, but if you think about the Anabellum period, this this means that someone's master did not represent them before God. How about that? So, what the master said of them is not the final word on them. What God says about them and their relationship to God based upon Christ is the final word on them.

[music] It wasn't the fact that the constitution later said that they're three-fifths of a person. It was the fact that God has sent his son to die for them. They are now sons and daughters of the king. Yeah. Yeah. The true king.

[music] Four Protestant traditions are represented on the White Horse in we've had for 30 years uh this round table with Baptist, Lutheran, Anglican, and Reformed representatives. And since it's the 250th anniversary of this country, we wanted to talk about how our traditions came to the United States or how they came to the colonies and what is still in our DNA today from immigrants and slaves who came to uh be so much a part of uh our traditions in America. To de we'll ask these questions together and uh Bob Hiller, our resident Lutheran, why don't we start with you?

All right. Well, great. So, I think it's appropriate to start with Lutheranism in America as it is the least influential denomination of this country [laughter] represented at this table. Uh, but very populist. Yeah. Yeah. We're uh pretty fascinating stuff. So, all right. I'll I'll see how quick I can do this. I'm going to give you the German immigrants and what they've their impact. You're going to leave out the Scandooian. I am because I don't know much about it. So, I' I've got a good buddy who I I reached out to saying, "Hey, give me some resources." So, if you want the Scandinavian stuff, uh, he recommended two books. Eugene Febled's Norwegian Lutheranism in America, which is totally out of print and super expensive, but you'll like it is what he said. And then, uh, Mark Granquist just recently wrote a book, uh, Lutherans in America: A New History. And, uh, that's one I haven't got my hands on yet, but I'm I'm looking forward to it. So, uh, that would kind of give you the Norwegian picture, but the German picture is is going like this. 17th century, uh, Lutheran kind of start to trickle over, uh, and you get some Germans kind of along the east coast and moving on into the 18th century, um, they realize there's a bunch of Lutherans here, but there's no organization for it. So, there's a gentleman by the name of Henry Melquire Muenberg, uh, who starts to organize, uh, Germans together, trying to to get a bunch of Lutheran people together. The Lutheran at this point are finding anybody for church who can speak German. They didn't really come over here primarily for religious reasons at this time. So Muenberg works really hard to organize them all together and they get something together called the general council I believe. And so it's a bunch of different groups. Uh it starts with the Pennsylvania ministerium. That's uh that's Muenberg's ministerium. And then some people up in New York say, "Oh, well, we want to be a part of that." And Muenberg says, "Well, I'm not so sure." They said, "Well, we'll start our own uh ministerium." And Muenberg says, "Well, you can't do that. We have the Pennsylvania ministerium. Uh so we start getting all these little like pockets of Lutheran ministeriums and denominations. At one point I I believe I read there were 52 of them. This is this is uh madness. And so what Muenberg says, "All right, we we got to organize this thing." And so they put this general council together. And within the general council, you've got a variety of confessional attitudes. In Germany at this time, confessionalism is coming back into vogue and people are trying to figure out how do we engage the Lutheran confessions in light of the new learning we have going on in light of rationalism. This is the time when pyotism is taking a great uh hold in Germany. What are the confessions? What role do they play in this? Well, coming over to America, the question becomes, what role do the confessions play in the new world? Uh and really maybe we just need new confessions and maybe we need to update the Lutheran confessions. And so within the general council, uh what you have is two groups. Some who are very confessional and see the confessional documents as sort of the teaching documents of the church. Uh and then you've got another group, uh led by a gentleman unfortunately named Samuel Simon Schmucker, uh which is just a fantastic last name for insults. And Schmucker must be [laughter] right. That's right. Uh he says, "Oh, no, no, no. We need to kind of update the Auxburg confession and make it new so it fits in with everybody here. I mean, there's a lot of new things going on over here that are kind of exciting, you know, and so we want to be a part of like Charles Finny, right? Yeah, he did. Yes. And so they're very interested in what's happening with the awakening and things like this. Gentleman by the name of Charles Porterfield Kra, great book. Uh, the conservative reformation. If you can get your hands on that thing is fantastic. Kra vehemently opposes this. And so there's this big debate going on.

All right. In the meantime, uh, while all of this is happening with the general counsel, there are other Germans who are deciding it's time to come over. Uh, these ones are from Sax. And you got to remember, Germany at this time is not one big country. It's a bunch of little states basically that are kind of loosely associated and and they have their own little kingdoms and their own kings. Uh, in Prussia, uh, the worst thing you can possibly imagine has taken place. There is a reformed king. Oh, heavens. And uh [laughter] he decides he marries a a Lutheran woman because you know wisdom. And so uh he decides what we need to do is we need to unite these split churches in Germany. Uh 30 years war is over. We're done with that. We need to have one united church in Prussia. And so they impose a liturgy on the church and basically say this is how you will preach and worship. And um from our perspective, I don't know the reform perspective, but from the Lutheran perspective, we lost um the the way the which the sacrament was spoken about, all that stuff, you weren't allowed to speak of it in a Lutheran way. What's more, um if you did, you'd go to jail. Uh [clears throat] there was there's actual consequences for this. And so there's a lot of Lutheran in the area who are saying this is this is dangerous stuff. Among them, in another state is called Saxony. Uh there's a guy named Martin Stefon. And Stefan is noticing now uh that that kind of thinking is creeping over into their own their own Saxony. And so he's like, "We need to we need to leave." Well, Martin Stefan's a fascinating character who's um very influential. You want to think of a German European celebrity preacher. Everybody likes him. He's got a huge following and there's some indiscretions. So he's got a lot of people who are very uh uh upset with him in the higher places and they're seeking to arrest him. And Stefan says, "Oh, all this theological oppression, we need to leave." And so he decides to take a team with him to America. Among the people with him there is a guy named CFW Walther. Uh Walther is just this phenomenal uh force in American Lutheranism. Uh but Walter had gone to college to become a pastor. His dad's a pastor. Says, "You're going to be a pastor." Walther uh gets very sick while in college is up for laid up for 6 months and just devours Luther. Uh gets really caught up in sort of the uh confessional revival and says I I love Luther. I love the confessions. But he's also very concerned about his own soul. He's he's worried that he's not pious enough. He's not holy enough. He's very influenced by pyotism. So he he writes a letter. Someone says, "You should write this Stefan guy to see what he can help you with." And Stefan writes him back with spiritual counsel that just changes Walter's life. He realizes, "Oh, the gospel's for me." Stefan says, "You got the law down. You got it figured out, but you need to know the gospel and distinguishes law and gospel for Walter, which will be very significant." That's the whole thing for him, the treatise on this. It's the go-to, the book uh on law and gospel from American Lutheranism. And so, so they come over, they get over here. Turns out uh on the way over, Stefan is uh elected bishop there on the boat. And they all believe that it gets really sacraidal to the point where it's almost as if if we don't have Stefan, we don't have access to God. Well, it turns out Stefan doesn't leave old habits behind. He gets accused of mismanagement of funds. He gets accused of mistreatment of women, uh, indiscretions, uh, and is kicked out. So they take him, they put him on a boat and they push him across the Mississippi River from Missouri to Illinois and kind of wave at him as he gets off for his excommunication. Um, and but then they realize, we don't know what we going what are we going to do? And for two years they're trying to figure out, do we even still have a church here? We don't have a bishop any longer. Who's got the power in the church? And this becomes a very significant moment for uh Missouri Senate Lutheranism in confessional Lutheranism in America. uh they have this thing called the Altonberg debate and the debate is who has the power in the church, the ley or the clergy. A guy named Marbach comes and he represents the ley. He's a lawyer and and Walter comes in representing the clergy. So they sit down to have the debate. This will solve the problem. And Walther stands up and says it's the wrong question. He says this is a law question. We need to deal with this from the perspective of the gospel. What is it that makes the church? It's not the power of the lady. It's not the power of the clergy, but it's the preaching of the word and sacrament. And Marbach says, "Well, do you preach, Walther?" And he says, "I do." He says, "Do you administer the sacrament, Walter?" He says, "I do." And Marbach goes, "Oh, well, I guess we got a church." It's like, "I guess we're fine." So, we've got a church here in America. And this is great. Walter starts writing this thing called the their Lutheran, uh, the Lutheran. Uh, and it gets into the hands of another guy whose name, I'll be real quick with this, another guy whose name is Winnick. Winn is also trying to organize German Lutheran is terrified with what's happening with the with the general council. He writes to a guy named Loa over in Germany and says, "We need missionaries over here because all the Germans are either becoming German Methodists or they're under the influence of Schmucker in the council. We can't have this. We need confessional Lutheranism." He gets his hands on Walther's Dar Lutheraner and he's like I I think the quote is, "Thank God there are more Lutheran here." They all start coordinating, talking, getting together. They find other disperate Lutheran groups. They start organizing. Finally, mid 1800s. Uh they come together for a few meetings. They get together in Chicago 1847. And that establishes uh what we now call the Lutheran Church, Missouri Senate. I believe at the time it was called um the German Lutheran Senate of Missouri, Ohio, and other states. Um, which is rolls right off the tongue. Uh and that's kind of that's kind of what organized it. That's kind of what got it going. They tried to have some friendship with the general counsel, folks like uh Kra, but there was a big debate over predestination. Uh and that's a very significant debate in the history of American Lutheranism. And um but nonetheless, [clears throat] that's kind of how we come about. That's where my tradition comes from. Uh that's pretty broad, but I I think I can stop there.

So taking the conventional view of unconditional election, Rod Rosenblot used to say was like how how the Missouri Senate was formed. That is correct. Over against the Buffalo, the Buffalo Senate um uh the Iowa well the Iowa Senate is the kind of the almost the ELCA of the day. But yeah, cuz what they were saying was God elects in view of faith into it feday. So God knows who will believe that's how he decides to elect. And Walther vehemently fights against this. uh his stuff on predestination is is Lutheran confessionalism at its finest. It is it's worth reading. So that and uh his stuff interesting stuff on priesthood of all believers. I would recommend that sort of stuff too. I love hearing about Walder because not knowing the history until getting to know you years ago. I knew the book. Yeah. I was like, "Okay, who's this CFW person?" I didn't know Lutheran history in America. And then he's also, and we'll talk about this, you know, some other time, really important for, you know, ministry to survivors. There's some stories in his life of what he did pastorally to women who were abused by their husbands, protecting children. And he has this whole thing about law and gospel and how that applies pastorally in that situation. So, I've always had this great respect for Walder and to hear the background is awesome. Thank you. Pretty cool stuff. So, that's Lutheranism. And uh by the way, there were about nine of us throughout the whole thing. There nine Lutheran uh in America at this [laughter] time. I just named most of them. So uh it has not Lutheranism has not had the impact on America that your traditions have. Uh just because the reasons why we came over um religious persecution wasn't like the primary thing, the the places they located, it's just not the same influence. I think the biggest thing is Muenberg, I believe his son was one of Washington's generals, which is kind of a cool thing. Um, but you just don't have a lot of Lutheranism. So, it'd be curious for me to hear the rest of you guys in here. But today, how many Lutheran are there? 12. 12 [laughter] Lutheran. Uh, Mike, you know, I I don't know. In the Missouri Senate, I think we're just hovering around 2 million. I think we're less than that now. And then the Wisconsin Senate. Wisconsin is smaller than that. It's not bad. But still, I don't think that's right. I I've got to check. Got more than us then. ELCA is is I still believe the largest, but they've been declining significantly like everybody has. Um, the Evangelical Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, which is the far more progressive side of of Lutheranism. Um, and I would suggest not particularly confessional or um we'll stop there, but yeah, so that's kind of where we're at.

The story of Lutheranism and then Anglicanism in America is the other extreme because Anglicanism tried to set itself up as the national religion which is [clears throat] ironic and we'll get to the whole story but there's a chart early on where it had the president and the presiding bishop and then it had uh governors and bishops and then you had the house of deputies and the house of bishops which are you know the the the senators and house of representatives. So you actually had this they had set up a national cathedral in DC. Uh so it's quite the opposite of the at least the gumption to uh try to do that. So that that old chart is amazing to look at. But uh Anglicanism in America starts in 1607 in Jamestown. That's where the first service took place and it was under the ship's sails and they prayed through the book of common prayer and many people look at that as the first Christian liturgy conducted in the English colonies. By the end of the 17th century you had uh Anglicanism was established in churches in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and even New York City. And they were not marginal outposts. Some of those churches still exist today are some of the most vibrant theological and ecclesiastical commitments come from the Elizabethan settlement which was in 1559 and it was highlighting Protestant doctrine and retaining u but retaining Catholic ecclesiastical structures the historic episcopies. So you had genuine reformationational theology with these structures and that's going to become important in the story. uh colonial Anglicanism inherited that settlement comes with it with along with Richard Hooker on the laws of ecclesiastical polity which was the intellectual framework but he highlighted scripture is the authority and everyone talks about the three-legged stool stool of hooker like oh he's got three scripture tradition and reason and they're all equal he's like they're not even closed scripture and then where scripture is not clear let's look at tradition and where scripture and tradition aren't clear, let's use reason. So, it was a pecking order. It was not a three-legged stool. And so, the the the challenge, there's one distinctive challenge for Anglicanism in the United States, which is that the colonies had no bishops in Anglican polity requires bishops for ordination, confirmation, and no bishops uh set foot in America during the entire colonial period. And so what you have is a chronic clergy shortage because you'd have to go all the way back to England where you die on the way back to get ordained. And what that means is that it left colonial Anglicanism dependent on lay leadership. And this is the hallmark for American Anglicanism which was unusual in a tradition that that that holds to a historic episcopate in the role [laughter] of clergy. So you have this really amazing and I'll come back to that in a second. So that's just highlighting clergy shortage. The why why did they come here? It wasn't to flee persecution. It wasn't Puritans because they're fleeing persecution. Baptists seeking liberty of conscience. Uh Lutheran because they were an ethnic community preserving their language and liturgy. I'm not trying to minimize all of those. Yeah, this is not the reason. Uh but but Anglicanism came because it was established religion of English colonies. Uh the motivation was expansion, settlement, and mission. And so uh the church didn't choose America, the empire brought it. Interesting. Interesting. And then the revolution. So then you have this revolution taking place. And this is one reason why in the United States uh our denomination is called the Episcopal Church because it's easier to talk about the structure of government than Anglicanism, which is the church of England when you're having a revolution [laughter] with that. So that's so interesting. The American Revolution created an existential crisis for colonial Anglicanism and they faced this impossible choice which is loyalty to their ordination vows or loyalty to the new republic. And a majority of the American clergy were loyalists and many of them left during and after the war. And then you have Samuel Seabberry argued against the revolution. New York clergyman. He becomes the first bishop, but he argues against the revolution. You have Alexander Hamilton, a lay clergyman who uh was clearly in favor of the revolution. And so clerical loyalism paired with lay revolutionary leadership collides singing God saved the king. Yes. And so the most prominent revolutionary Anglican was George Washington. And he was not a rare case. And the the paradox of this is interesting because the tradition most associated with the English crown produced more leaders of the American Revolution than any other one. That's amazing. Uh and so what happened was Ley ran the vesties. Ley managed the parishes governed the church's temporal affairs. And so when the political crisis came, Anglican layman were already practicing self-governing. And you can see hints of that in the Continental Congress and the constitutional convention that was leading up to it. But then you have the revolution. Uh the prayer book became uh a political liability because you had to do prayers for the king, the royal family in the middle of a revolution. So some people would admit it, omit it. This was not a minor editorial problem. It was an act of treason if you uh did this in during a revolution praying for the king. And so the crisis forced a creative reckoning and that's where the formation of the Episcopal Church comes up. In 1784, Samuel Seabberry, who I just from of Connecticut, actually, sorry. Um, he was the one who opposed the revolution, traveled to Scotland and was consecrated, ordained as a bishop by Scottish bishops in Scotland who received their orders from bishops who had themselves been marginalized for reasons of political conscience. And so, they were separated from the threat of England. there was some conflict there. And so the first was through a Scottish line and then the next two were William White and Samuel Provost. They were consecrated by Archbishop of Canterbury in 1787. And so you actually have these two distinct lines of succession. The first one from Scottish and the other two from English. And then in 1789 you have the general convention which brought these strands together organized the Protestant Episcopal Church which was the official Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America and now they were called the Episcopal Church with constitutions, canons, the revised book of common prayer which is the same year that the US Constitution was ratified. So the story of Anglicanism and the story of America is just interwoven especially you know making a revolt against the church that was the national religion national church and then actually trying to become that very thing but the relationship between church and state was fundamentally redrawn. Uh American Anglicanism had to be persuasive and could not compel. And so what you see what was gained what was gained in this whole story with the revolution clergy shortage lay leadership was self-governing mission-minded and shaped by the principles that you had to persuade and you couldn't compel the and and so in the marketplace of religions you had to be um you had to compete yeah and it was built in to Anglicanism in the United States what was gained I think what what was well the defining tension is between church order and evangelical freedom, episcopal authority, which there was none or very little and lay self-governance. And that's rooted into the United States Episcopal Anglican expression. We have a house of deputies when you were talking about the the distinction house of deputies and a house of bishops and nothing gets passed unless both agree on it. There's a there's a significant role for a ley in the Episcopal Church, especially in America. when you start talking about the debate early on and and and how insignificant the role plays in America, the counter to that is what Anglicanism was doing and dealing with, but the same debate where authority lies.

Well, it's so interesting because both of our traditions come from a place where it's so tied to the state. I mean, Germany, Lutheranism, I mean, this is very ingrained in the culture. uh and then to come over here where you can't compel uh you have to persuade people to believe which is I mean, theologically for Lutheranism that's exactly what we would say but practically throughout those few centuries yeah you can you can't force anyone to believe it's just if you don't we'll drown you so [laughter] you know it's like yeah it's a compelling argument so it's fascinating to come into a place where that sort of thinking is really put to the test for both traditions yeah so the I guess the contrast to that is the Baptist where all we have is persuasion. That's [laughter] right. That's right.

So, uh, yeah, just to start the Baptist story in America, this takes us back to 1638. Uh, the first Baptist church in Providence, Rhode Island. Uh, in fact, people still go to that church and visit it regularly. Well, the date 16. Yeah. 1638. Okay. And that's Roger Williams. And that's the person who everybody talks about when they talk about Baptist life and its beginnings in America. Uh, I was asked to talk about African-American Baptists in particular, but it's kind of hard to talk about African-American Baptists as a subdominant group without first talking about the dominant group that sort of set the table for their emergence in America. And so, uh, we start with Roger Williams there, First Baptist Church, Providence, Rhode Island. And then by 1701, the middle colonies, they really become the hub of particular Baptists. And then six years later in 1707, the Philadelphia Baptist Association is formed. And that's formed out of five churches in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and then Delaware. And they had actually a very robust uh missionary strategy to take the gospel everywhere. Again, cuz we're not used to having, you know, a place where the the government is is kind of intertwined with what we do. We're we're the ones who push back against that, which I'll get to our distinctives in a moment. But uh by 1760, the Philadelphia Association, they had uh a presence in Connecticut, uh New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, and they added Virginia and West Virginia. And then by 1751, the Philadelphia Association, they begin to expand down into the Carolinas. And so, and then that's in particular Charleston where that's one of the first Southern Baptist churches to to to emerge there. this uh emergence in Charleston in 17 uh 1750s is actually significant because this environment is where is a context of the first great awakening. So we have Baptist life spreading all throughout the colonies north and south and now pushing west uh Pennsylvania and so forth. Uh, and this is the moment when many African-Americans became believers. There were several um mythological attempts to engage people of African descent before that, but a lot of those were very lurggical expressions of the Christian faith. But if you think about it, people of African descent are an oral people and [clears throat] their illiteracy was uh was necessitated by the law code. So it so the idea of having uh people who are oral and their illiteracy was a function of law try to do liturgy it just didn't sit well. So then Baptists come along and they had some success you know uh because of their style of worship because it was more free and expressive and if you think about uh African traditional expression uh it's there's a lot of improvisation there it's a beautiful thing and that improvisation is not willy-nilly it's actually very harmonious and so their harmony uh yet nonuniformity in cultural expression really found its roots in Baptist life in many ways in Baptist worship. Not even to mention that there was uh any an initial anti-slavery sort of ethos amongst Baptists and also amongst Methodists, which is why early African-Americans who were involved in denominational life became Baptist and Methodists disproportionately, although we know that there was some shifting going on. And by 1864 or five, the Southern Baptist Convention emerged as a slaveolding convention. M I don't want to slow down the story, but that's just an amazing point that you're making in history. I love that's why I love hearing these things [laughter] of of how does the liturgy and the law play out in the development of a church and just spectacular. Never knew that.

So, let's go Baptist Distinctives now. Uh, and I and I actually changed up how I wanted to work through this by using the Baptist Distinctives to demonstrate that African-American Baptists are not some sort of splinter group over there. They're really um in the thick of what it means to be Baptist. Yeah. So uh we think of freedom of conscience, freedom of uh freedom liberty of conscience. So this is the fundamental Baptist distinctive. So each individual person is responsible before God under the supreme lordship of Jesus Christ. And no church, political state, family member or other person can represent an individual before God. So, but if you think about the Anabellum period, this this means that someone's master did not represent them before God. How about that? So, what the master said of them is not the final word on them. What God says about them and their relationship to God based upon Christ is the final word on them. It wasn't the fact that the constitution later said that they're three-fifths of a person. It was the fact that God has sent his son to die for them. They are now sons and daughters of the king. Yeah. Yeah. The true king, the lord. And so uh and then as we there's a you know I as a as a Baptist I'm always I'm a preacher as a believer but this is this is always this is a very significant point and very significant emphasis in Baptist life because uh this was it was significant that every believer could read the Bible for themsel because people were getting the Bible interpreted for them in ways that are uh manipulative and with with the express purpose of utilizing scripture to keep people docile. and in their bondage. And so it was a curious moment when the master would read a story and then utilize it as a means of keeping a bit of slavery in the mouths of his slaves. But then the slaves would go back to the invisible institution, you know, the the hush harbor, the place where uh they would go and worship in the corners of the plantations and then they would retell the stories. But their telling of the story was actually more commensurate with the intent of the the divine author. Yeah. Than what the master gave them because the Bible is alive and active and sharper than any double-edged sword. So the priesthood of the believer, freedom of conscience, these Baptist distinctives played a very powerful part of people being able to break out of the social political context and really commune with God in a very intimate and uh way. So uh believers baptism is also a part of this. This is a Baptist distinctive as well. So, um, baptism was actually reminiscent of African purification rituals that were done in rivers. The fact that baptisms were happening during the uh, awakenings was it was familiar. So, but I would say with myologist Hendrickk Kramer, the this idea of these ritualistic purifications were subversively fulfilled is a Kramer language subversively fulfilled by the Christian faith. So there was something that was cultural that was actually say that's familiar but then because of the faith it was actually given its ultimate meaning it maximal meaning and so so the idea of believers baptism was actually a very a nice bridge for them that Christianity actually uh fulfilled and then you think about uh regenerative church membership another baptist distinctive uh congregational governments local church autonomy uh this means that African-Americans who would not who would not otherwise be ordained in denominations, they could actually start their own churches. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, they didn't have to be ordained by anybody else. Uh believers got together, constituted a church, and then they said, "Hey, we're going to appoint our leaders, and they were be able to worship outside of the watch of their slave masters or or other other people in that way." So, uh, regenerate church membership and then the ability to constitute local congregations and to develop leadership autonomously was was a big part of that. And then um religious liberty. So while government should not meddle in the affairs of the church again Baptist, we didn't forego the opportunity to influence government or to let our faith impact government. And so amongst African-Americans, you see the formation of the Underground Railroad, this network of safe houses that allowed people to get from the south to the north to go uh basically to freedom. Uh this was done through the church networks. And so this was against the fus the fugitive slave act uh and they were moving against that and even abolitionism we think of Frederick Douglas as a secular figure but he was a person deeply driven by his faith and so um anyway angry that they weren't this in this country called Christian Mhm. it is so anti-Christian. Yeah. I mean, I'm struck by how driven he was by by a kind of Christian conviction that that America is is hypocritical in its profession. Yeah. Uh this his famous address, what to a slave is the 4th of July. He's saying he was saying, you know what, we were all excited about freedom and you've asked me to come speak on this day, but what is this day for us? There's no freedom here. There's no liberty. And so, so he was very he had he had a theological bur in his saddle uh based upon what it means to be meant to be an image bearer of God. And so here I'll I'll kind of give some formation of the National Baptist Convention real quick. Um, and so so the so there was a this emergence of African-American Christians. Many times they're worshiping within white churches, white le churches, but in segregated pews. There's all kinds of stuff that would go on. They're reading slave codes after the church hours from the pulpits almost utilizing the authority of the pulpit to sort of enforce the slave code. They were segregated Lord's supper. Um, you know that which God has was using to demonstrate the the the people of God and the the way with a broken body and shed blood that brings us together as a family. That was used as a medium of of segregating stratifying the people of God. I think it's literally what first Corinthians says. Don't do that. Literally, that's what it says. [laughter] So, uh, so it's it's a broken steroid for sure. And so, it's with a broken heart that Elias Camp Morris, he was the first president of the National Baptist Convention, uh, in his inaugural address in 1895. Um, because there there were some association that were that were emerging but several different um association like the National Baptist Education Convention, the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention of the United States, the American National Baptist Convention, they all came together out of a conviction in a concern for uh for for missions and education. They came together to form the National Baptist Convention. uh in their their inaugural presidential address done by Elias Camp Morris, EC Morris is how you say his name. He he was a man who understood the necessity of the emergence of that denomination or that convention. But he was broken by its the nec the necessity of of its existence. And he was so big on the brotherhood of men. He says this Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. not white sinners, nor black sinners, nor red sinners, but sinners. He goes on to explicitly state that Christ is not the savior of any particular race or class, but whoever uh may will take the water of life freely. And so he was saying like we we have to exist because we have to worship in dignity and worship as image bearsers. But we are worshiping in this way in this convention because we've been excluded. We've been pushed out. we haven't been given that dignity. So, it's better for us to do do it this way. So, that's the emergence of the National Baptist Convention, you know, sort of uh running parallel with this Southern Baptist Convention and um so here that's the beginnings of the Baptist America as and just let us do it for you, but you literally wrote the book on much of what you just said and swing low in volume one, which is the history of Yeah. So, Swing Low is the the history of black Christianity, United States of America, and volume two is the anthology of that. So, make sure for all the all the listeners are hearing this and going, "Well, I want to hear more about that." Well, there's two volumes you can snag on that. Appreciate that. Yeah. The history and then the readings. Yeah. Yeah.

The reformed in, you know, in origin were uh [clears throat] spread out throughout Europe. So, there there was it was it tended to be uh a a city thing more than a national thing. Mhm. It it it grew up in in cities and uh on the continent. I guess the best place to start here is with the the English first. And uh the the in the 1640s the pre the Presbyterians, those who believe that the church should have Presbyterian government uh were Church of England, you know, and there there the the Anglicans too. the Anglicanism until Archbishop Lah was Calvinistic. They were all all the Archbishops of Canterbury were reformed and they considered themselves the reformed church of England. But our uh the the Presbyterians wanted to change the form of government and they also wanted because there had now erupted the Armenian controversy. uh the cannons of the Senate of Dort in 161819 settled in the Dutch reformed church uh the foundation of uh the commitment um of reformed Christians to Calvinistic rather than Armenian doctrine. But they wanted to do the same thing in England and add to the 39 articles uh articles on that controversy that had just erupted. Uh so they wanted change in church government. They also wanted to really to to really nail down their opposition to Armenianism. And so for a while uh under parliament the church of England was Presbyterian and they wrote up the Westminster confession and catechisms again under government the government called it the parliament called it and then uh Cromwell came in and unseated all the Presbyterians from parliament put in his congregationalist independent uh church folks and so Presbyterians were actually it felt like they were closer to the Episcopalians than they were to the congregationalists. They thought the congregationalists were, you know, that independency was the source of all sectarianism and uh pyotism and and so forth. So anyway, the it was the congregationalists who came to America. They they founded the you know the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The separatists were the first who were here. Uh they were the Mayflower folks. The Mayflower folks were not Puritans. They didn't want to purify the Church of England. They wanted to leave it. They were separatists. The congregationalists in in New England until 1845, the Congregational Church was the state church of Massachusetts. So very very deep roots there. Uh that's sort of the English and then you have um the Scottish who obviously were Presbyterian and uh founded Princeton and John Witherspoon came from Scotland uh was the president uh a minister and was the president there and he taught a whole host of um you know future Supreme Court justices and he taught James Madison. Madison became a Presbyterian. Um, and there there was on the one hand they didn't want to be independents. On the other hand, they didn't want a state church. So they didn't uh even where they they were in the majority like in New Jersey for example, they they didn't form a a state church. They they in fact what happened uh it's it's kind of fascinating here in uh six in 1788 the the uh American Presbyterian Church revised the Westminster confession and here's the difference here's what they revised chapter 23 on the civil magistrate 1646 the original Westminster version says the civil civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the word and sacraments or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Yet he hath authority, and it is his duty to take order that unity and peace be preserved in the church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God truly settled, administered, and observed. For the better affecting whereof he hath power to call cinnids, to be present at them, and to provide whatever is transacted in them, be according to the mind of God. So it's it's the the same as you would have in the it's the Church of England. [laughter] So say that sounds very interesting. Here's the American revision in 1788. Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the word and sacraments or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven or in the least interfere in matters of faith. [gasps and sighs] Yet as nursing fathers, it is the duty of the civil magistrates to protect the church of our common lord without giving preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full free and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions without violence and danger. And as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder the due exercise thereof among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians according to their profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people. in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever and to take order that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance. And then you have the Dutch. The Dutch came over very early. Um, in fact, New York was was called New Amsterdam. Yep. And uh it it was mainly to establish a beach head for missions for the Dutch Reformed Church. And it was basically uh that today the successor of that is the reformed church in America. And uh it was it once Britain took over New York most of the Dutch reformed became Anglicans. their liturgy was basically uh their in English was the book of common prayer. So that was natural. The same happened with the French hugenos when they came over like to Charleston and um they pretty quickly became assimilated into the uh Anglican fold as well. It was like this is our next of kin when they didn't have when they wanted something in English. Mhm. So that's what we get to the the Dutch. Another wave of the Dutch coming over was similar to uh your Germans. They came over partly because they didn't like the state of the state church. Um it had become a state church and they didn't it was the dominant church but they never wanted it to be a state church. and uh they started you know seeing signs of rationalism and and so forth. They also saw pyotism and this group wanted to be confessional. So they came they came over in a couple of waves all the way up to World War II after World War II and uh that's the denomination I'm a a part of is the fruit of that very confessional also very little impact because there was a worry that even if they if they their children learned English they would become Methodists or Baptists. Yep. We had the same. And so that was the difference between the RCA and the CRC. We have our own schools, Christian schools. And I [laughter] remember one of my friends in seminary even saying uh first time uh lived in Western Michigan and um a lot of Dutch Reformed people there. And he said growing up there uh in his Christian school uh a Presbyterian family moved in and he asked his mom, "What's a Presbyterian?" And she said, "I don't know. I think they're Methodists." [laughter] The answer to everything was, "I think they're Methodists." And at we he and I laughed because we're we were in seminary together at a seminary called Westminster. Yeah. So, lot of lot of different nationalities. uh uh there but um also that difficult relationship between the pious potist/puritan wing and the more confessional wing very definitely in the history of American reformed and Presbyterian life to the point where it it led it led finally to the split of the old school and new school Presbyterians. The new school basically leading to pro progressive liberal Christianity, Charles Finny first and then all the way to people denying the substitutionary atonement and so forth and the old school like Princeton Seminary that was committed to to the confession.

So you guys should have all become Lutheran. That's it. [laughter] That's where I was going to end it. No, I'm just kidding. This is great. or be faithful to your American heritage and come to the Episcopal church. Come to I I I think this was an interesting evangelistic effort from all of us. Uh [laughter] yeah. No, this is great. Uh this is really fascinating to see some of the similarities, some of the same questions coming up from because of the new world. This America is such a unique thing world. Yeah. And what does that mean for a church and our theological convictions? And so we continue to pray uh for the faithfulness of the church here in the country and uh thankful to be able to do that kind of [music] these have these kind of conversations and and uh pursue some sort of unified work here in the in the country. Um, but also working really hard still to to maintain our distinctives [music] and and fight for the truth of our confessions.