William Warren Sweet

The Churches as Moral Courts of the Frontier

colonial period there were undoubtedly more unchurched people in North America, in proportion to the population, than were to be found in any other land in Christendom. It is also well known that the Revolution, together with the two decades following, was a period of religious and moral deadness throughout the United States. Never was religion at such low ebb. Among the churches in America the Episcopalian had undoubtedly suffered most as a result of the Revolution. Many of its chief supporters had been loyalists, and during the conflict they had been proscribed, and following the war were under both a political and social ban. Just to belong to the old established church in the years immediately following the Revolution was enough in itself to mark one as a suspicious character. Such rabid opposition to the Episcopalians, it is true, soon subsided, but it subsided largely because it was generally considered that as a sect it was

The Protestant Churches

Out of the Reformation there emerged two distinct types of Protestantism. The first has come to be designated as right-wing Protestantism, since it represented the conservative wing of the Reformation. The great reformersLuther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Cranmerwere conservative leaders, and the parties they led were composed of upper middle-class people. They became the founders of the great Protestant state churches, with their official confessions of faith and their elaborate forms of

The American Colonial Environment and Religious Liberty

There is nothing inherent in Christianity itself which calls for a close relationship with the state. Primitive Christianity “demanded the complete separation of church and state,” asserting that each must be recognized as having its own distinct and independent mission to perform. For the first three hundred years of Christian history the church existed entirely apart from the state, and indeed had not even a legal status. Then came a time during which the church became little more than a branch of the state, and in this period it lost practically all independence of development, and was largely diverted from its proper work to serve political ends. It was as a result of this danger that the church developed, during the next period in its history, the doctrine of its independence of state control, and in the great investiture struggle, maintained it with success, against Roman emperors and German kings. Then the church having secured its independence of state control, and having perfected its organization to a high degree, and having grown strong and aggressive, it went a long step further and asserted the right of the church to control the state. But it needs no argument to prove that both the control of the church by the state and the control of the state by the church are equally foreign to the teaching of Christianity as such.

The Rise of Theological Schools in America

Professional Schools in the United States, whether of medicine, law, engineering, or theology, are of relatively recent orgin. It is a matter of interest that the ministry was the first profession in America for which a technical and standardized training was provided. While the first law school in America was founded in the same year as the oldest theological seminary (1784), the courses were loosely organized and there was no definitely prescribed amount of work required of graduation and no academic requirement for the practice of law. In all the institutions where there were law departments or law schools, even as late as the middle of the last century, the law students were considered as distinctly inferior to the regular college students.

BRADSHAW, MARION J. Free Churches and Christian Unity: A Critical View of the Ecumenical Movement and the World Council of Churches. Pp. xiv, 225. Boston: Beacon Press, 1954.

mary of his encounter; gives further evidence of his own integrity; and shows the shameful incompetence of the Velde Committee. Verbatim extracts from the hearing, interspersed with interesting commentaries, comprise the major part of the book. The Bishop organizes these data around eight specific protestations, beginning with an acrid denunciation of the use of the House floor to broadcast falsehoods under the protection of congressional immunity. In this connection, he singles out Representative Donald L. Jackson’s crass accusation that Oxnam &dquo;served God on Sunday and the Communist front for the balance of the week&dquo;-a charge that led the Bishop to demand a public hearing to clear his name. In characteristic fashion, the author does not mince his words in dealing with Jackson; he flays the California Republican as &dquo;a smooth talking, superficial opportunist.&dquo; The Methodist prelate condemns many other undemocratic and unethical practices as well. He gives abundant testimony to the Velde Committee’s ignorance and inefficiency, its &dquo;Big Bully&dquo; attitude, and its frantic efforts to manufacture headlines. He castigates its practice of releasing, under its letterhead, unverified and incomplete material which is frequently inaccurate and usually misleading. He points out a fact generally unknown to the public: that the Committee obtained much of its &dquo;in-

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engaging parts of his work was his activity in the field of medicine. Although he remained under the influence of Galen and &dquo;did not attain an understanding of the circulation of the blood through the body,&dquo; he did, however, give &dquo;an accurate delineation of the course of the blood in the heart and lungs. His first correction of Galen was the result of dissection.&dquo; For him scientific knowledge could also lead to greater knowledge of God. The dramatic climax of Servetus’ life story comes, of course, with the writing of the tract on The Restoration of Christianity, dissemination of his contentions, and the violent reaction to them, especially in Geneva circles, which led ultimately to his death at the stake in 1553. In connection with this tragic affair Calvin has had

EDWARDS, JONATHAN. Puritan Sage: Col lected writings of Jonathan Edwards. Edited by Vergilius Ferm. Pp. xxvii, 640. New York: Library Publishers, 1953.

of Watertown in Massachusetts Bay colony, secured the proprietary rights to sixteen islands off the coast of Cape Cod, the two largest being Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket. The Mayhews thus became not only the owners but also the rulers of these previously unoccupied islands. The early history of the settlement of these islands serves to exemplify the transitional stage between the Old World feudalism and the rising democracy of the New World. This phase of the story is here set forth clearly and interestingly. Though coming to the islands as a feudal lord and to better his economic position, Thomas Mayhew soon found himself drawn to attempt to uplift the degraded Indians who numerously inhabited the islands. This work, in fact, came to be his first and constant concern, and it is upon his activity and success as an Indian missionary that his enduring fame rests. His success in dealing with the red men was far above that of any other British Governor in North America. For five generations the Mayhew family furnished Christian leadership to the Indians of the Massachusetts islands, and it is a story of heroism and devotion which should find a larger place in American history. Though careful in his statement of fact the author gives evidence of being an amateur in the art of history writing. While noting some of his principal sources in the Preface a detailed Bibliography and footnote references would have added greatly to the usefulness of this volume. The absence of an Index, in a volume which contains so much the student will desire to refer to again, is also to be regretted.

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ever, an increasing number of such theses have been produced, with the result that a much more adequate picture of American life is now possible than ever before. The present volume was prepared as a Doctors thesis at Harvard University. The student who attempts to understand the course of Presbyterian history in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century will soon find himself involved in a complicated maze of influences which

Thomas Mayhew: Colonial Governor and Indian Missionary

The study of American religious history is not only important and profitable for its own sake, but also because of the sidelights and even direct illumination which such study will throw upon the social, economic, and political life of the nation. I propose in this paper to treat one of the most familiar and dramatic incidents in American history from what I term, for want of a better word, the religious angle, with the hope that such a treatment may serve as an illustration of what may be expected, in a general way, from such an approach. Negro slavery, as an economic and political problem for the thirty years previous to the Civil War, is familiar enough to us. We think of it in terms of the Wilmot Proviso, of the Compromise of 1850, of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and the Dred Scott Decision; or economically in terms of the invention of the cotton gin, of the rapid increase in cotton culture, and of the rising value of slaves, and the growing importance of the cotton export trade. But running along parallel with these outstanding political and economic facts are such happenings as the slavery schism in the churches, with the resulting strengthening of antislavery sentiment in the northern churches, and pro-slavery sentiment in the southern churches; the struggle between the churches North and South for the retention of the border, and the rise of religious antislavery propaganda. All these are parts of the same stupendous human drama which was being enacted on the great stage of the American republic in the middle of the nineteenth century. To understand this absorbing drama in all its many parts we

Methodist College Education

American religious history has been largely the work of amateurs and neglected by the trained historians. But it is only common sense which suggests that the total life of the nation cannot be adequately or truthfully portrayed unless the religious forces are given their due of recognition. This paper points out four significant factors in American church history. The first is that the colonial churches were established by religious radicals. On coming to America the colonists left behind them the restraining influences of high civil and church officials, and thus America became a fruitful field for religious experiment. Numerous sects, each contending for the right to live, were the result, and the natural outcome was religious liberty and the separation of church and state. A second factor is the parallels between American political and religious history, showing that the same general conditions determined the trend in both church and nation. Another factor is that of the frontier, which developed a distinct type of revivalism and such institutions as the camp-meeting and the small denominational college, and supplied that appeal to the heroic which has been the driving force of much of the missionary enterprise. The last factor noticed is that of negro slavery, which was responsible for the largest and most significant schisms and for the creating of other conditions distinctively peculiar to America.