By: Jonathan Harris
Originally posted at: www.abbevilleinstitute.org
On October 31, while many parents whisk their little ones from house
to house in the pursuit of temporal tasty treats, a large portion of
Christendom will be observing the 500
th anniversary of the
Protestant Reformation, a movement which arguably changed the very
course of Western Civilization up through the present. Many Protestant
denominations, seminaries, churches, and para-church organizations are
sponsoring trips and teachings, hosting conferences and conviviality in
recognition of the great
Solas that inspired the Reformers to
separate from the Roman Catholic Church. If one were to attend an
average American evangelical service on any given Sunday during the
month of October, one would likely hear a sermon on one or more of the
five Solas:
Sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”),
Sola fide (“faith alone”),
Sola gratia (“grace alone”)
Solo Christo (“Christ alone”),
Soli Deo gloria (“glory to God alone”).
The common narrative usually goes something like this: Over time the
Roman Catholic church became corrupt, with regard to the doctrine of
salvation. While there were individuals and movements that attempted to
self-correct, they were of no lasting significance, that is, until
Martin Luther posted 95 thesis to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany
on October 31, 1517. Luther’s “Here I Stand” speech, four years later
at the Diet of Worms serves as the climax of the divine drama.
Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason – I
do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have
contradicted each other – my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I
cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is
neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.
Sola scriptura was the great principle Luther championed. It was upon this cornerstone that the other
Solas
were supported and defended. In telling this story, American
Evangelicals will often call Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox to the stage for
the next scene of the providential production. Their influence, like
Luther’s, spread far and wide, eventually culminating in a small group
of Bay Staters known as the Puritans. This connection cannot be
overemphasized. Reading the Puritans is often viewed as a necessary
credential for being “truly” Reformed. If the survey happens to make its
way to the shores of the New World, this is usually where the story
ends. Puritans have become the American vanguards of Reformation
theology with a straight line linking them to Reformed leaders of our
day such as John Piper, John MacArthur, and R.C. Sproul. But what about
the 245 years separating John Piper’s
Desiring God from Jonathan Edward’s
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God? Is the New England of 1741 really where the story of the Reformation ends for America?
Religious adherence in 1776 was roughly at 20% for Northeastern,
Middle, and Southern colonies respectively (this percentage may seem low
by today’s standards, but it must be remembered that many living on the
frontier had limited access to a local church). Congregationalism
dominated New England, while the Middle and Southern Colonies depicted
much more denominational diversity. In the South, Baptists
Episcopalians, and Presbyterians claimed the lion’s share of Sunday
morning pews. With less than 2% of American congregants belonging to the
Roman Catholic Church (mainly in Maryland), early America was certainly
dominated by Protestantism. From the time of the War for Independence
to the War Between the States, this basic perception of a Protestant
society is not altered significantly. It was this belief that inspired
John C. Calhoun to observe in 1850 that “The cords that bind the States .
. . are [in large part] spiritual or ecclesiastical.” In his second
inaugural, Abraham Lincoln himself appealed to what he saw as the common
ground of a protestant nation when he famously remarked, “Both [sides]
read the same Bible, and pray to the same God.” Though Immigration
boosted the small number of Roman Catholics and Jews, religious
adherence itself increased to as much as 70%, and the Second Great
Awakening had granted a numerical advantage to Baptists and Methodists
on the frontier. America unmistakably wore the protestant brand.
However, sporting a brand and believing a theology are two different
things. Though undetected at the time by census and denominational
enumerations, a shift away from the
Solas was underway in the land of the Puritans.
Perhaps the clearest way to recognize the declining influence of
Reformed theology in the North is to survey the rise of Unitarianism. An
old adage describing Unitarian theology is as follows: “Universalists
think God too good to damn them, while Unitarians think they are too
good to be damned.” The innate goodness of man, the denial of the
Trinity, and the exchange of scriptural authority in favor of human
Reason were hallmarks of Unitarian thought.
King’s Chapel in
Boston had become the first American church to adopt a Unitarian liturgy
in 1785. Twenty years later Harvard University elected a Unitarian as
Hollis Professor of Divinity. It was not long until Congregational
churches throughout the Northeast were compromised. One bishop observed
that by 1843 “there were one hundred and thirty Unitarian Congregational
churches in Massachusetts hardly twenty of which were Unitarian in
their origin.” Harriet Beecher Stowe tells us of her experience in
Boston between 1826 and 1832:
All the literary men of Massachusetts were Unitarian; all
the trustees and professors of Harvard College were Unitarian; all the
elite of wealth and fashion crowded Unitarian churches; the judges on
the bench were Unitarian.
Even the First Church of Boston, founded by John Winthrop, went Unitarian.
Given these facts, the obvious questions become, “Why was the
Reformation halted in New England, while its influence continued in
other regions?” The short answer is that the North, by the time of the
early nineteenth century, was ripe for the picking. Jonathan Edwards
himself feared that the influence of the First Great Awakening was
temporary at best. The Puritans had carried with them from England the
optimistic view that society could be perfected through human action. In
a sermon entitled
A Model of Christian Charity, Massachusetts
Bay Governor John Winthrop famously declared,“We shall be as a city upon
a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” At the time of Winthrop’s
sermon, the foundation was
sola scriptura, and the form human achievement—but the form far outlasted the foundation.
Utopian schemes such as Oneida Community and Brook Farm were only to
be found in Northern soil. Transcendentalist thought permeated even
mainline denominations through what Historian Gregg Singer calls, the
“New England Theology.” In the “Burned Over District” Charles Finney’s
evangelistic methods had impacted local congregations so much so that
even Presbyterian churches were practicing decisional regeneration.
Sola pragmaticam was replacing
Sola scriptura.
In the Northern academy, scholars like Unitarian minister Joseph
Stevens Buckminster were directly attacking the authority of Scripture
by introducing German Higher Criticism. In 1839, one of Philadelphia’s
most eminent physicians, Samuel George Morton, published
Crania Americana,
in which he “presumed that the Bible had been misread. Caucasians and
Negroes were too different to both be descended from Adam through Noah.”
Sixteen years later two of Morton’s students published,
Types of Mankind which
“proved” that blacks were a separate species than whites. One of the
authors claimed “that science—not the Bible—must decide the true origins
of mankind. . . [proposing] that God must have made separate races of
men, just as He had made separate species of animals.” While these ideas
gained wide acceptance in the North, the reception was anything but
favorable in the South where
Sola scriptura was still alive and well.
To illustrate, after teaching at Northern institutions, Unitarian
theologian Thomas Cooper became president of South Carolina College in
1821. Cooper held to biblical higher criticism and an animalistic view
of man. In 1834 however, Cooper resigned due to continued resistance. A
young Presbyterian pastor named James Henley Thornwell opposed Cooper’s
ideas and later succeeded him as president of the institution.
Countering “scientific” claims supporting racial inequality, Thornwell
wrote,
Science, falsely so called, may attempt to exclude him
[negroes] from the brotherhood of humanity . . . but the instinctive
impulses of our nature combined with the plainest declarations of the
word of God, lead us to recognize in his form and lineaments—his moral,
religious and intellectual nature—the same humanity in which we glory as
the image of God. We are not ashamed to call him our brother.
Likewise, Samuel George Morton’s major critic was John Bachman, a
Charleston minister. Presbyterian Thomas Smyth, another Charleston
minister, countered
Types of Mankind with
Unity of the Human Race which
The Watchman and
Observer of Richmond,
Southern Baptist and
Southern Baptist Advocate published.
In fact, Southerners had grown so concerned about the undermining of
Scripture that most educational institutions in the South adopted a
Christian apologetics program. As a result, 25-50% of total reading
content in primary and secondary education became religious. Though many
institutions for higher learning at that time have since been
abolished, it is known that six major colleges and universities
incorporated
Evidences of Christianity into their curriculum from the period of 1798 to 1860. The
Evangelical and Literary Magazine, a Southern publication, countered higher criticism when it encouraged parents to:
1) Express their own view on religion to their children,
2) Distribute Christian apologetic material in public,
3) Promote “intelligent men to promote their cause,”
4) Support institutions that subscribed to orthodox Christianity, and
5) Pray for the integrity of the colleges.
It was at this moment that the South stood by itself as the vanguard
of American Reformation tradition. Historian Eugene D. Genovese
described it this way:
At the very moment that the northern churches were
embracing theological liberalism and abandoning the Word for a Spirit
increasingly reduced to personal subjectivity, the southern churches
were holding the line for Christian orthodoxy.
The thesis had been nailed. The “Here I stand,” moment came when
Southerners formed their own denominations and broke away from their
Northern counterparts. The reason was simple.
Sola scriptura.
The first denomination to splinter were the “Old School
Presbyterians”, primarily represented in the South. Since 1801, the
denomination’s conservatives did not approve of carrying out missionary
work with Congregationalists who advocated the “New England Theology”.
As time progressed, many “New School” Presbyterians also challenged the
doctrine of original sin and traditional ecclesiology. In addition, a
growing insistence among many “New School” Presbyterians especially,
that the relationship between master and slave was innately sinful added
to the strain. The synod of South Carolina responded to this allegation
by chiding, “whosoever has a conscience too tender to recognize this
relation as lawful, is righteous over much, is wise above what is
written . . . and leaves the infallible word of God for the fancies and
doctrine of men.” The conservative wing had enough, and formed their own
denomination in 1837.
At this point it is important to note that Southern Christians viewed
the role of government much differently than their Northern
counterparts. Politically, this was the time of the “American System,”
resisted by many Southerners and supported by many Northerners. A
central bank, government-funded infrastructure projects, and high
protectionist tariffs were supposed to move the country in the direction
of “progress.” In such a religious culture, it should come as no
surprise that political agendas often veiled theological motivations.
James Brewer Stewart describes the attitude of Northern Christians this
way:
Men and women again saw themselves playing dynamic roles
in their own salvation and preparing society for the millennium. By the
thousands they flocked to the Tract Society, the Sunday School Union,
the temperance and peace organizations, and the Colonization Society.
Many Northerners saw organized human action that included the role of
government as a way to progress mankind. The South on the other hand,
viewed government, in the words of James Henley Thornwell, as an
“institute of heaven . . . designed to realize the idea of justice.”
Social change through government action was not mandated by God. Only
the application of divine justice according to the boundaries set in
Scripture. They followed the Augustinian “Two Kingdom” model. When it
came to the institution of slavery, Southern Christians believed that
since “slavery was a political institution,” their only duty was to, as
the Presbyterian synods of South Carolina and Georgia affirmed,
“inculcate the duties of master and slave, and to use lawful and
spiritual means to have all, both bond and free, to become one in Christ
by faith.” Unlike Northern pulpits, Southern pulpits were not filled
with political speeches or candidate endorsements. Thus, when a modern
Christians asks why Southern pastors did not seek to eradicate slavery
politically, the answer has more to do with a Reformed view of
government than it does a political position on slavery. Even if
Southern preachers did feel so inclined they would not have thought it
their duty to leave their appointed sphere of authority for one to which
they held no biblical jurisdiction. But it was much more than a
Reformed view of government that eventually separated the remaining
American denominations. Northerners, in an effort to immediately abolish
the institution of slavery in the South traded the authority of
Scripture for the authority of human Reason.
It is imperative to realize that the theological motivation for
framing the slave-master relationship as sinful in and of itself, was
not Scripture driven in the least. There were many Christians in the
South who wanted to end slavery politically, but they could not go the
extra step the abolitionists took in condemning any person who owned a
slave as being “anti-gospel,” or living in perpetual sin. The words of
Presbyterian theologian B.M. Palmer are helpful here.
This spirit of atheism, which knows no God who tolerates evil, no
Bible which sanctions law, and no conscience that can be bound by oaths
and covenants, has selected us for its victims, and slavery for its
issue.
Slavery became the flashpoint for a much greater theological debate.
Was Scripture to guide the church, or Scripture plus human Reason? The
famous Southern theologian R. L. Dabney, who became Stonewall Jackson’s
chief of staff, could recognize that the slave trade was as an
“iniquitous traffick” in light of Exodus 21:16. But a biblical view of
providence also compelled him to observe that, “This much-abused system
has thus accomplished for the Africans, amidst universal opposition and
obloquy, more than all the rest of the Christian world together has
accomplished for the rest of the heathen.” Dabney was here referring to
the reality that many slaves were exposed to the grace and love of
Christ and joyfully converted to Christianity. Many Christian slaves,
including Booker T. Washington, agreed with Dabney’s assessment. Such
fair mindedness and biblical respect could not be found in the ranks of
the radical abolitionists.
The Congregationalist turned atheist Elizur Wright, an editor for
many abolitionist publications, stated in 1833 that “It is the duty of
all men . . . to urge upon slaveholders immediate emancipation, so long
as there is a slave—to agitate the consciences of tyrants, so long as
there is a tyrant on the globe.’” Though William Lloyd Garrison was
“completely ignorant of the South,” he published in the
Liberator that
The slave master . . . debauched his women slaves, had
children by them, and in turn defiled his own children and sold them
into the slave market; the slave plantation was primarily a gigantic
harem for the master and his sons. . . Ministers of the gospel who owned
or sanctioned slavery were included in his sweeping indictment of
miscegenation and prostitution. In short, Garrison and the anti-slavery
societies which he launched, followed soon by Northern churchman,
stigmatized the South as a black brothel. . .
Dabney later countered in
A Defense of Virginia and the South, “That thing which Abolitionists paint as domestic slavery . . . [is] not domestic slavery, but the [abuse] of it.”
Still, Northern denominations answered Garrison’s call. In the late
1840s, Wesleyans, Baptist, and Congregationalists all started three
separate organizations “to send anti-slavery missionaries to the south
.”
Their mission: to inspire slaves to defy and escape their masters,
while forming congregations that preached the “whole gospel.” More and
more the gospel was seen as being tied to the abolition of slavery. From the 1830s onward, abolitionists denounced what they called a
proslavery gospel that either ignored the issue of slavery or actively
denied that Christian principles favored emancipation. In contrast, they
preached what they called a ‘whole,’ ‘pure,’ or ‘free,’ gospel,
emphasizing Bible precepts that non-abolitionists avoided.
Hinging the application of Christ’s merits upon a sinner’s ability to
keep the law (especially an extra-biblical law), was precisely what the
Reformers were reforming from! The abolitionist’s requirement that one
must denounce a practice that Scripture itself does not denounce in
order to be right with God, puts them at odds with the original
Protestants.
In 1831, and then again from 1843 to 1861, two “postal crisis”
flooded the South with millions of pro-abolition tracts. The appalling,
yet inaccurate (Harriet Beecher Stowe was also ignorant of the South)
cruelties portrayed in the best seller
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, did
not help Northern Christians perception of their Southern brothers and
sisters. When Julia Ward Howe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Lloyd
Garrison all payed glowing tributes to John Brown after his failure to
spark a violent slave insurrection in 1859, it was the South’s turn to
be horrified. But perhaps more horrifying to them was the way in which
abolitionists treated the Holy Scriptures.
Garrison praised the deist Thomas Paine for helping him get “beyond
the Bible” in 1845. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother Unitarian Rev. Henry
Ward Beecher “conceded, a defense of slavery could be teased out of
obscure, individual texts of Scripture, but surely the defining message
of the Bible was something else entirely.” As a result his daughter took
a rather cynical view of the Bible, and based her abolitionist
sentiment in something other than a biblical moral imperative. Albert
Barnes, a Presbyterian abolitionist wrote in
The Church and Slavery:
There are great principles in our nature, as God has made
us, which can never be set aside by any authority of a professed
revelation. If a book claiming to be a revelation from God, by any fair
interpretation defended slavery, or placed it on the same basis as the
relation of husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward, such a
book would not and could not be received by the mass of mankind as a
Divine revelation.
Thornton W. Stringfellow, a Baptist preacher from Virginia pointed out the flaw in such thinking.
Sin in the sight of God is something which God in his
Word make known to be wrong, either by perceptive prohibition, by
principles of moral fitness, or examples of inspired men, contained in
the sacred volume. When these furnish no law to condemn human conduct,
there is no transgression. Christians should produce a ‘thus saith the
Lord’ both for what they condemn as sinful, and for what they approve as
lawful, in the sight of heaven.
After the Presbyterians divided in 1837, the debate over biblical
authority as it related to slavery continued. In 1857, and then in 1861,
both Northern and Southern wings of the Old and New School
denominations split once again, this time exclusively over the issue.
The Methodists followed suit. In 1836, Northerners attempted to foil
the election of William Capers to the position of bishop simply because
he owned slaves. Capers predicted perhaps more than he realized when he
encouraged unity the following year in the
Southern Christian Advocate.
In the present state of the country, we believe it to be
of the utmost importance to the country itself that the churches be kept
together. Let the bonds once be severed which hold the churches of the
North and South together and the Union of these states will be more than
endangered, it will presently be rent asunder.
Regrettably, Caper’s call went unheeded. First, the Wesleyan Church
broke off in 1843 denouncing slaveholding as intrinsically sinful. The
next year, when Bishop James Osgood Andrew received slaves by marriage,
Northern Methodists demanded his suspension though he was not in
violation of any rule. William Capers and a band of Southerners left the
denomination to form their own in 1845. Capers had changed his tune. He
exclaimed, “We denounce the principles and opinions of the
abolitionists in toto. . . We consider and believe that the Holy
Scriptures . . . do unequivocally authorize the relation of master and
slave.”
The same scenario took place in the Baptist Church during the same
year. In the wake of a failed slave insurrection in 1822, the president
of the Baptist State Convention of South Carolina, Richard Furman,
assured the governor that the uprising was not inspired by Holy
Scripture, but rather by Northern agitators. Furman summarized
Scripture’s teaching.
Had the holding of slaves been a moral evil, it cannot be
supposed, that the inspired Apostles . . . would have tolerated it, for
a moment, in the Christian Church. . . They would have. . . required,
that the master should liberate his slave in the first instance. But,
instead of this, they let the relationship remain untouched, as being
lawful and right, and insist on the relative duties.
The Alabama Baptist convention of 1835 declared that:
[Abolitionist] activities were “inconsistent with the
gospel of Christ.” Abolitionists will “oppress the slave, . . . arm the
assassin to shed the blood of the good people of our State; and . . .
alienate the people in one State from those in another, thereby
endangering the peace and permanency of our happy Republic.
In 1843, when two missionaries were discovered to own slaves,
anti-slavery Baptists insisted that they be investigated by the
Triennial Convention board. A year later, James Reeve was denied entry
to the national board of the American Baptist Missionary Union for
owning slaves. It was this action that precipitated Georgians and
Virginians to establish the Southern Baptist Convention the following
year.
Like the Reformers of the sixteenth century, the pastors and theologians of the antebellum South also stood for
Sola scriptura
in the face of political repercussion. The gospel of grace could not be
compromised by joining it to the work of abolitionism, or any
extra-biblical law. The authority of Scripture had to stand against the
God of human Reason. It was for this cause that in July of 1851 the
Southern Literary Messenger published portions of an address by the prominent Southern Presbyterian James Henley Thornwell.
The parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists
and slave-holders—they are atheists, socialists, communists, red
republicans, jacobins, on the one side, and the friends of order and
regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the
battleground— Christianity and Atheism the combatants; and the progress
of humanity the stake.
Historian Greg Singer points out that “Thornwell, Dabney, and their
contemporaries…saw in abolitionism a threat to Calvinism, to the
Constitution, and to the proper ordering of society.” Seemingly good
intentions can often harbour ill motives, the consequences for which are
unrealized until much later. The morality of slavery was not the issue.
Sola Scriptura was, as it continues to be in our day. The
changes that have taken place since the mid-nineteenth century have
proven the fears of Southern theologians to be correct. Christianity is
practically nonexistent in the Northeastern region of the country, and
every modern moral social crusade seems to threaten the moral authority
of God and influence of His Church where it still exists. Southern
churches are not exempt from this threat. Today is the day to rekindle
the dim flame of the Reformation where it still happens to burn. There
is a place called Dixie, where it’s tradition to defend the
Solas. May God in His great providence keep it that way for generations to come. Happy Reformation Day!
