Artigo Revisado por pares

Is Evangelical Ecclesiology an Oxymoron? A Historical Perspective

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 7; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14742250701725702

ISSN

1747-0234

Autores

Bruce Hindmarsh,

Tópico(s)

American Constitutional Law and Politics

Resumo

Abstract Abstract This article traces the emergence of evangelicalism as an international and transdenominational movement under the uniquely modern political, material, and social conditions of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and then expounds the new understanding of the Church evident in the writings of the early evangelicals, using the well-travelled George Whitefield as the principal case study. As evangelicals identified with one another across national and denominational boundaries, they imagined the Church in new ways, subordinating church order to evangelical piety in an unprecedented way. There was no distinctively evangelical doctrine of church order and yet they seemed to see in their wider fellowship, a manifestation of the mystical Church, discernible among the divided visible churches. Tragically, though, the movement was itself dogged by separatism, even as it sought to bear witness to the deeper spiritual unity of the truly regenerate. Notes 1 It is true of course that in the process of history, every event is unique and unprecedented, on the one hand, and every event finds its genesis in prior influences and causes, on the other. I do want to concede both these points at the outset of my article. In particular, I do not mean to imply in any way that evangelicalism appears exceptional as the apogee of a historical process – the so-called Whig view of history in which historical events are seen invariably to justify and culminate in present arrangements. However, I do want to fasten attention on the anomalous character of evangelicalism, which is something we perhaps no longer appreciate for not seeing it against the situation from which it emerged. 2 An indication of the decisive importance of this moment in English evangelicalism is the way in which this confrontation between Stott and Lloyd-Jones is now being contested in the historiography of the event a generation later. For complex and contested reconstructions of the event and the surrounding issues, see, for example, Dudley-Smith, John Stott: A Global Ministry, 65–71; Murray, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, 522–528; McGrath, To Know and Serve God, 125; Barclay, Evangelicalism in Britain, 82–84. The text of the Lloyd-Jones address has been published under the title, 'Evangelical Unity: An Appeal', in Lloyd-Jones, Knowing the Times. 3 Steer, Guarding the Holy Fire, 224. Close reconstruction of the debate and analysis of the text of Lloyd-Jones' address make plain that he did not in fact make an explicit appeal on this occasion for evangelicals to secede from the Church of England and other 'mixed churches' to form a united church but, the public comments of Stott on the occasion, together with reports in the press and later developments clearly indicate that Lloyd-Jones' remarks were very widely perceived as a call for immediate secession and visible evangelical union. 4 Dudley-Smith, John Stott: A Global Ministry, 69; David Bebbington, 'Evangelicalism in Its Settings', 370. See also Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 267–268. 5 Rupp, Introductory Article, in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, Vol. 1, xvi. 6 Ward, Christianity under the Ancien Régime, 2–4. 7 The Westphalia Settlements were limited in a number of ways, and political tensions certainly continued after 1648. For example, in the Archbishopric of Salzburg, which was outside the Westphalia agreements, religious intolerance would resurface dramatically when 30,000 Protestants suddenly found themselves expelled from the region and on the move as religious refugees in 1731–1732. Other Protestant minorities in Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, Silesia and Poland also found themselves without protection from Westphalia. The continued insecurity and religious experimentation of these minorities was an important background for the rise of a pan-Protestant evangelical awakening. See further Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening, 15–36. 8 Wesley, 'The Doctrine of Original Sin', in Jackson, The Works of the Reverend John Wesley, Vol. 9, 221. 9 John Wesley, 'Catholic Spirit', in Outler and Heitzenrater, John Wesley's Sermons, 304. Wesley certainly goes on to explain that he means by this 'catholic spirit' no easy latitudinarianism, and his sermon raises all the questions of the paradoxical nature of evangelical ideals of union in Christ that I return to below, at the conclusion of this article. 10 Ward, Protestant Evangelical Awakening, 51. 11 Cyprian, De Cath. Eccl. Unitate, 6; Augustine, On Baptism, 4. 17. 12 See, for example, the ecclesiology of John Rogers (1627–1665?), a Fifth Monarchist in Dublin, who published his views in Ohel or Beth-shemesh: A Tabernacle for the Sun, or, Irenicum Evangelicum. An Idea of Church Discipline, In the Theoretick and Practick Parts (1653). 13 Walsh, 'Religious Societies,' 279–302. 14 Podmore, The Moravian Church in England, 162. See also Snyder, Signs of the Spirit, 123–180. 15 The eclectic nature of Zinzendorf's ecclesiology is well presented in Ward, 'The Renewed Unity of the Brethren,' 112–129. 16 Dreyer, in The Genesis of Methodism, argues that Methodism itself is best explained as a form of the Moravian Diaspora. This fails to account for the wider genesis of English evangelicalism outside of the Wesleyan movement, but it indicates something of the importance of Moravianism as a catalyst to the Evangelical Revival and the rise of Methodism. See also, Walsh, 'Origins of the Evangelical Revival,'Articles in Modern English Church History, 157. 17 Edwards, 'A Faithful Narrative'. 18 Margaret Austin to Charles Wesley, 19 May 1740, Early Methodist Volume, John Rylands Library, Manchester. 19 Original Letters from the Reverend John Newton to the Rev. W. Barlass, 52. 20 Cf. Crawford, Seasons of Grace, 13–14. 21 Wesley, The Appeals to Men of Reason, 276. Likewise, in 1742, Whitefield wrote 'I believe there is such a work begun, as neither we nor our fathers have heard of. The beginnings are amazing; how unspeakably glorious will the end be!' (Tyerman, The Life of the Rev George Whitefield, Vol. 1, 553, quoting a letter written by Whitefield from London, 6 April 1742.) Jonathan Edwards wrote to Scotland in 1743, saying, 'We live in a day wherein God is doing marvellous things; in that respect we are distinguished from former generations', and he expected this only to increase: 'What he has now been doing is the forerunner of something vastly greater, more pure, and more extensive'. (Goen, The Great Awakening, 539–540.) 22 Wesley, Appeals to Men of Reason, 374. One of the places we can see this 'swiftness' and 'extent' is in the periodical press. By the early 1740s there were four major evangelical magazines in the English-speaking world that were regularly reporting on the 'progress of the gospel at home and abroad'. London had The Weekly History, Glasgow had The Glasgow Weekly History, Edinburgh had The Christian Monthly History, and Boston had The Christian History. The word 'history' in the title of each of these periodicals was not used in the sense of ancient history, but in the sense of current affairs – the weekly and monthly history of the gospel in the world. On 20 February 1742 the London magazine included a letter in which the writer said, 'If Conversion-work is a Miracle, being a thing done above Nature, what must such Numbers of such Conversions be? When a little one becomes a Thousand, and a small one a mighty Nation, who will doubt, it is the Lord that hastens it?' On 14 May 1743 the Boston magazine reported, 'How astonishing are the Dispensations of a provoked holy God in our Day! That, in the midst of Backslidings and Provocations from his Churches, he should come suddenly into his Temple, by a glorious Ministration of his Spirit with the Word, first in America, through the British Colonies there; then in Britain itself, and particularly in several Parts of the West of Scotland; whereby many are awakned [sic] and converted from Sin to God'. 23 Butler, 'Enthusiasm Described and Decried', 305–325, argued controversially that the Great Awakening was the invention of the 19th century historian, Joseph Tracy. It seems clear to me, on the contrary, that there is overwhelming evidence from both sides of the Atlantic that contemporaries recognised from the earliest days that myriad local revivals were evidence of one 'work' of God. As John Wesley commented on the American awakening, 'Evidently one work with what we have here'. (see Walsh, '''Methodism'' and the Origins of English-Speaking Evangelicalism', 19.) Superb evidence for early recognition of a united, global revival may be found in the hymn in 12 stanzas by the layman Joseph Humphreys, 'Of Intercession and Thanksgiving,' 89–92. The interpretation of Frank Lambert that the Great Awakening was 'invented' or constituted in language through the emerging 18th century print culture is parallel to what I am seeking to identify as a larger ecclesial consciousness. (Lambert, Inventing the 'Great Awakening'.) 24 Whitefield's extensive travel and the growth of transatlantic commerce is described in Lambert, Pedlar in Divinity. 25 Ward, 'John Wesley, Traveller', 249–263. 26 Ward, Protestant Evangelical Awakening, 2; Baker, Letters I, 1721–1739, 28–30. 27 Quoted in Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century, 193, 39. 28 To these material conditions we could add many more, including the development of hundreds of miles of navigable inland waterways that contributed to economic expansion, manufacturing and demographic change. Agricultural reform accelerated the movement of people from country to town, and the proportion of those living in urban centres approximately doubled during the century. Improvements in health and medicine contributed to rapid population growth generally. The popular press churned out more and more newspapers, book production rose sharply, and more people could read. The marketplace itself expanded such that historians have coined the phrase 'consumer revolution' to describe the new levels of disposable income and availability of retail goods in the period. The keynote of all these changes was that people were placed on the move and traditional roles were increasingly supplanted by a keener sense of individual agency. 29 This is different from the situation on the continent, where in most countries the three religions – Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed – were the only ones licensed by the State. Moreover, there was no legal basis for conversion between religions, and there was no legal recognition of Dissenters or Nonconformists, as in Britain. The terms Sekt ('sect') Sektierer implied much more opprobrium than the English equivalents. See further Otte, 'The Pietist Laity in Germany,' 50–51. 30 Wesley and the Moravians clashed in 1740 over the question of 'means' and this was one cause of their schism. Wesley regarded the Moravians as quietist for their alleged rejection of 'means', but in this the Moravians were even less 'constructivist' in their approach to religious identity than the Wesleyans. See further, Podmore, Moravian Church, 57–71; cf. Dreyer, Genesis of Modernism, 31–54. See also Wesley's sermon, 'The Means of Grace' (1746), 157–171. 31 Telford, Wesley's Veterans, Vol. 6, 28, 30. 32 Original Letters from John Newton to Barlass, 49. 33 Oxford English Dictionary (1933), s.v. 'order', no. 17. 34 Gillies, The Works of … the Revd. George Whitefield, Vol. 1, 81. 35 'The men who ushered in new ways of christianising their world, Spener and Francke, Baxter and Watts, Doddridge and Wesley all appeared as middle men of one kind or another. Someone needed to mediate between the world of ecclesiastical precision, and the world of spiritual nutriment. … [T]he mediators were going to have to go behind the scholastic Orthodoxies of recent generations to do it.' Ward, Protestant Evangelical Awakening, 49. 36 Ibid., 126. 37 Edwards defined religious affections as 'the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul', and insisted that 'true religion, in great part, consists in the affections' (Edwards, Religious Affections, 96, 99). 38 Gillies, The Works of the Revd George Whitefield, Vol. 2, 428–429. 39 Newton, The Works of John Newton, Vol. 5, 41. 40 Tyerman, The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, Vol. 2, 614.

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