Theology

views updated

THEOLOGY

Theology means, literally, knowledge of God. From the 1750s to the 1820s the number of American theologians grew rapidly. The most significant feature of the era was the rise of popular theology, apace with popular government: Americans by the thousands and later by the millions strove for and believed they attained knowledge of God's will for all aspects of religion. Although a few, such as Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, and Thomas Jefferson, questioned the authority of the Bible, the American denominations, from Baptists to Unitarians, continued to regard Scripture as divinely inspired, however they differed in interpretations. Plentiful English Bibles, the growth of literacy, and the political empowerment of ordinary people fed the theological zeal of Americans, as did the freeing of churches from government regulation, the rapid growth of population, and headlong westward expansion.

salvation, free will, and predestination

Theologians drew various conclusions from the Bible regarding the path to salvation (soteriology). Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, among others, practiced infant baptism (pedobaptism), catechized their young, and encouraged them to live according to Christian teachings. In these traditions one typically followed a lifelong course toward salvation. But revivalists and others continued to hold a stricter standard: church membership was a privilege only for adults who had earned it by their behavior, their belief, and, in many congregations, their testimony of a conversion experience. For the Baptists (literally antipedobaptists, though they disliked the term), conversion preceded baptism, which, following the New Testament, was by immersion and for adults. For Baptists, as for most Protestants, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper (Holy Communion) was not a means to salvation but a privilege for those who had proved themselves already among the sanctified.

Two giants of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther and John Calvin, agreed that all were born sinners and could not achieve salvation except through the free grace of God, enabled through the atonement of Christ. The Arminian notion, which gained ground throughout the eighteenth and triumphed in the nineteenth century did not deny this, but suggested that all persons could freely choose to apply for this divine gift by prayer and reformation of character. Many Calvinists, though they exhorted everyone to seek salvation—Anglican George Whitefield (1714–1770), Puritan-Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), and Baptist Isaac Backus (1724–1806) are striking examples—insisted that Christ's atonement was limited to those predestined for salvation. This doctrine has always seemed at best impractical, and at worst a spiritual elitism reminiscent of Christ's enemies as described in Scripture. To the devout predestinarian certain facts were inescapable: through original sin mankind was incapable of redemption without divine grace; the will to seek salvation was itself proof of the workings of that grace; the rejection of salvation by sinners proved that Christ's atonement was limited. How else explain the rejection of so precious a gift by so many? Underlying all these beliefs was the idea of the absolute sovereignty of God, who wrote the spiritual script for all mankind.

From the eighteenth century to the present, when Americans speak of Calvinism they often mean predestination; when they speak of free will, they mean Arminianism. It should be noted, however, that the denominations strictly in the Calvinist line—Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Reformed Churches (both Dutch and German) all had their divisions over this issue. Baptists were mostly predestinarian until the era of the American Revolution, when the Free Will Baptists emerged and flourished. And Whitefield, who never left the Church of England, remained a predestinarian, as did many other "low church" Anglicans and Episcopalians, well into the nineteenth century. On the other hand, most Anglicans were Arminian; John Wesley (1703–1791), the founder of the Methodist Episcopal Church, USA, who always considered himself a member of the Church of England, was a thoroughgoing Arminian.

persistent pietism

Another essential strand in Christianity was Pietism. Some denominations and sects embodied virtually all the elements of Pietism: a sincere effort to live in Christian love and harmony in both family and community, adhering to a strict code of personal behavior, and setting apart some time each day for religious devotions. German-speaking groups, mostly in Pennsylvania, including Mennonites, Dunkers, Moravians, and Schwenkfelders—strongly exemplified Pietism, as did the Quakers. But Pietism was present in all denominations, especially among Lutherans, Baptists, and Methodists. Wesley's mature faith was strongly shaped by his encounters with the Moravians. Wesley thus added Pietism to Arminianism, and capped his system with perfectionism: the belief that one could entirely transcend sinfulness in this world, even before graduating to the next. Both Pietism and perfectionism would grow and express themselves in different strands of American Christianity. The Second Great Awakening produced, along with a wave of revivals and their innovation, the camp meeting. It also produced a variety of reform agendas, led by missionary societies, Sunday schools, the temperance movement, and the early stirrings of the antislavery movement. The urge toward perfection began to suggest the approach of the Second Coming; theological speculation began to dwell on the possibility of the Millennium.

imitating the apostles: itinerant ministries

Itinerancy, the practice of traveling from town to town and province to province for the purpose of preaching, became an issue during the Great Awakening of the 1740s and after. Where churches were established by law, as in most of New England, Maryland, and Virginia, established ministers often prevented itinerants from preaching, either by refusing them the use of their churches or by having them arrested for preaching in barns or fields. Whitefield, the greatest itinerant of the century, proved unstoppable; the rest, occasionally silenced in one place, soon found another. Where new congregations could not find suitably ordained ministers, Methodism's apostle, Francis Asbury (1748–1816), authorized intelligent laymen to lead congregations. As the nation matured, circuit-riding ministers visited such congregations until they could find suitably educated ministers. Similarly, the Baptists chose intelligent and devout laymen as ministers, launching the age of the Baptist farmer-preacher. The Methodists and Baptists expanded with the frontier, becoming the largest Protestant denominations in the United States. Ministers of the formerly established churches often criticized them for their lack of education, to which they replied that Jesus and his twelve apostles were not college graduates but itinerant ministers. Furthermore, as quickly as possible Methodists and Baptists founded colleges and seminaries.

some leaders in thought and action

The most richly stored and original theological minds of the era either directly influenced religious developments or trained the ministers and laymen who did. Jonathan Edwards, of Connecticut and Massachusetts, was a revivalist as well as a theologian. He combined scientific insights from John Locke and Isaac Newton with traditional theology to write profound works on the religious affections and the sovereignty of God. John Wesley, who preached and wrote exhaustively to save the souls of millions, sent Francis Asbury, exactly the right man to make Methodists of Americans. Isaac Backus, successfully self-taught, led the Baptists in balancing Congregational independence with consistent beliefs and practices, while working for the complete freedom of churches from secular government. Yale's Nathaniel William Taylor (1786–1858) worked out a practical reconciliation between Calvinism and free will by redefining the doctrine of original sin. Not all developments were in this liberal direction. Archibald Alexander (1772–1851), from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, helped found the Princeton Seminary in 1812, and persuaded two generations of students that Presbyterians should return to their Calvinist roots in sixteenth-century Geneva. Earlier, Henry M. Muhlenberg (1711–1787) of Philadelphia succeeded in bringing order to the various forms of German and Scandinavian Lutheranism that arrived with various waves of immigrants. Samuel Seabury (1729–1796) of Connecticut and William White (1746–1836) of Philadelphia saved Anglicanism by successfully separating the Episcopal Church from the Church of England. Both progressives and conservatives earnestly believed they were restoring and realizing essential, traditional Christianity.

bibliography

Ahlstrom, Sidney E. A Religious History of the American People. 2nd ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004.

Bonomi, Patricia U. Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America. Updated ed. Oxford, U.K. and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989.

McLoughlin, William G. Isaac Backus and the American Pietistic Tradition. Edited by Oscar Handlin. Boston: Little, Brown, 1967.

Noll, Mark A. America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. Oxford, U.K. and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Robert McColley

Encyclopedia of the New American Nation