bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Democratic Rights in The Roman Catholic Tradition
Authors: Garrison W. E.
Published: April 2006

The concept of “democratic rights” does not greatly differ, I suppose, from that of human rights as these are understood by persons of democratic mind and temper. But the existence of human rights is recognized also by persons who could not, even with the most elastic use of words, be described as favorable to democratic principles. Some ambiguities and some prejudicial implications might have been avoided if the term “democratic” had not been used in the title. It seems to presuppose the superiority of a democratic order. That is a popular idea in our political and cultural climate, and I myself hold it with strong conviction; but it is not an axiom upon which a discussion of the rights of man can be based. Particularly, it is not an axiom from which one may profitably or properly begin a consideration of human rights as defined and defended in the Roman Catholic tradition. For while the idea of human rights has an important place in the general course of that tradition, the concept of democracy has a very small place.
Highlights of the Hungarian Reformation
Authors: Toth William
Published: April 2006

I propose, in this essay, to present some of the more significant highlights of the Reformation in Hungary. Significantly, little is known with regard to what transpired within the borders of what was the last frontier of the Reformation in eastern Europe. If what Lindsay says is true—and it is definitely—, i.e., “The rise, continuance, and decline of these Churches (in Bohemia, Hungary and the neighbouring lands) are so inseparably connected with the peculiar social and political conditions of the countries, that no adequate or informing account of them could be given without largely exceeding the limits of space at my disposal,” the task should have appeared all the more engaging. The fact is, however, that the difficulties of mastering the Hungarian language have stood as a perpetual barrier to any intensive study of the Hungarian Reformation among scholars outside the land, and those within have devoted lamentably little energy to the task of attracting the attention of the outside world.
Servetus and the Genevan Libertines
Authors: Bainton Roland H.
Published: April 2006

The defenders of John Calvin have sought to excuse his share in the execution of Servetus by resorting to the type of apologetic employed by Catholics in defense of the Inquisition. The victims, we are told, were politically and socially subversive and would have been suppressed in any age. In the case of Servetus this charge cannot be substantiated from his writings, since he did not reject the oath, nor the authority of the magistrate, neither did he counsel immorality. The only recourse for the apologists is to connect Servetus with Calvin's political opponents, the so-called Libertines. The argument has assumed slightly different forms in different hands, but three main contentions emerge: 1) that Servetus plotted with the Libertines for the overthrow of Calvin's régime; 2) that the Libertines endeavored to bring about the acquittal of Servetus; and 3) that they communicated with him to that end during the course of his trial.
Latin Church of the Early Crusades
Authors: Spinka Matthew
Published: April 2006

With the conquest of Jerusalem on July 15, 1099, the preliminary objective of the First Crusade was attained. The victors who owed their astonishing success largely to negative factors—disunion and weakness of the Islamic forces—were thereupon confronted with the formidable task of consolidating their possessions and securing their power against Turkish counter-attacks.
The Contribution of the Protestant Churches to Religious Liberty in Colonial America
Authors: Miller Perry G. E.
Published: April 2006

While endeavouring to formulate these remarks I have come to suspect that there may possibly lurk in the title of my paper a misleading implication. The word “contribution” would seem to connote on the part of the Protestant churches a deliberate and concerted effort toward the triumph of religious liberty. Those of us who today prize ecclesiastical freedom would like to feel that our colonial ancestors of their own free will and choice undertook the march to liberty. Liberal-minded historians in particular are prone to sing the praises of this individual or that church for furthering this advance; they are inclined to gloss over or to apologize for the men and the institutions that hindered it.
The Language Problem in the Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania 1742–1820
Authors: Weng Armin George
Published: April 2006

The Lutheran church in America has always been faced with the problem of language. Because Lutherans have come to America from continental Europe, there has been the question from earliest colonial days as to which language, or languages, would be used in the services of worship.
Post-War Protestantism
Authors: Schneider Herbert W.
Published: April 2006

The theme I propose to develop in this paper is that in the victorious and neutral nations the dominant ideals of post-War Protestantism have been carried over from before the War, that these led in the direction of Catholicism, but that in spite of its catholic ideals, Protestantism since the war has actually become more Protestant than before, not only in Germany where Protestantism has become aggressive, but also in the other nations where it is less self-conscious. In other words, Protestantism has been revived by force of circumstance in ways not of its own choosing; or, to use Protestant language, it has been saved by grace, not justified by faith.
The Rise of Theological Schools in America
Authors: Sweet William Warren
Published: April 2006

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.
Conception of the Anabaptists
Authors: Friedmann Robert
Published: April 2006

Who is an Anabaptist? There seems to be a certain amount of confusion with regard to this term and its conception, and a lack of objectivity is still here and there to be met. Emotional prejudices, misleading tradition, insufficient research material, and a mixture of different groups and attitudes prevented church history scholars almost to the present time from reaching a just judgment of these Christian radicals in Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. To find out the right place of Anabaptism in history it might be useful to begin with some negative statements.
The Lady and the Emperor: A Study of the Domitian Persecution
Authors: Knudsen Johannes
Published: April 2006

The lady is Flavia Domitilla of the imperial Roman family and the emperor is Domitian, the traditional “second persecutor” of the Christians. We know little about their relationship, save that they were relatives, but the story goes that Domitian killed the lady's husband, Flavius Clemens the consul, and sent the lady into exile. This was by no means an unusual thing for Domitian to do, but with this event is inseparably connected the question of whether or not Domitian persecuted the Christians. To the “persecution” are again tied various matters of importance for church history and the study of New Testament. The problem of the lady and the emperor therefore assumes significance for critical study. Furthermqre, it offers us a good vehicle for a survey of the development of church-historical writing and research, partly because of its fascinating character which has attracted many prominent scholars, and partly because it has been rather free from theological prejudices. Its treatment does not exhaust the critical problems of the “Domitian persecution,” which would be impossible in a paper of this nature, but it does offer us a representative discussion of the issues involved. We shall therefore proceed to a description of the weaving of this ancient tapestry and shall then follow the unraveling of its threads which has taken place through four centuries of historical effort.
The Protestant Quest For a Christian America 1830–1930
Authors: Handy Robert T.
Published: April 2006

American Christianity is so diversified and confusing and its material is of such vast extent that the scholars who have worked at the broader aspects of its history have had to bring to their study certain interpretative theses in order to find their way through the material at all. These interpretative theses, some implicitly held and others explicitly stated, some relatively adequate and others fairly weak, have paved the way for a great deal of intensive research, so that the young discipline of American Church History has a solid and illuminating body of material. Out of the research thus far undertaken have sprung new themes of interpretation, so that what may be called an “historiographical cycle” operates. This interaction of research and interpretation has functioned sufficiently well so that the overall picture of American Christian history grows steadily clearer. The process of clarification has, however, proceeded satisfactorily only to a point—to the Civil War. For the years since the Civil War, the picture has not yet come into sharp focus. The interpretative theses thus far proposed have had serious limitations, and as a result the historiographical cycle has not operated to best advantage. The excellent monographic studies that have been done remain therefore somewhat unrelated and leave us with a rather fragmentary understanding of religious history since 1865. Yet in these years occurred decisive developments which must be further probed and clarified if we are to understand more fully the contemporary American religious scene, now so important a part of the total life of the world church. To be sure most of the significant movements of the period have received some attention, but they can be fully understood and their significance grasped only as they are delineated as part of the total history of American Christianity with the interconnections traced and the polarities analyzed. More fruitful and better-directed monographic studies will follow from the setting forth of fresh and rounded themes of interpretation; the historiographical cycle will then operate to better advantage for this important period.
Images of Religion in America
Authors: Brauer Jerald C.
Published: April 2006

In recent years, it has become fashionable in scholarly and journalistic circles to employ the image concept as a means of describing and interpreting historical, political, or social realities. A number of attempts have been made recently to sketch the picture or to present the image of America. It is both interesting and puzzling that the image concept should be so widely employed; yet it is, in some sense, understandable. We live in an era of communications through images. We are confronted by them on all sides through the media of mass communication such as television, press, billboards, and radio. Professor Daniel Boorstin recently pointed out that our age is dominated not by ideas but by images. This has had already and will have increasingly momentous consequences both for our national self-understanding and for our stance before the world.
European Archival Resources for the Study of California Catholic History
Authors: McGloin John Bernard
Published: April 2006

Many of the giants of American Catholicism were born in Europe and this is seen rather strikingly in the case of the American period of Roman Catholicism in California, which period dates from 1850. When, on December 6 of that year, a young Dominican friar, newly consecrated in Rome as Bishop of Monterey, arrived through the Golden Gate in San Francisco, he brought with him strong European traditions and background.
The Theological Basis of Digger Communism
Authors: Elmen Paul
Published: April 2006

The Diggers who broke the turf on St. George's Hill Sunday morning, April 1, 1649, have an importance far larger than the number of people involved would suggest, for their action was the first effort to bring into being a socialist Utopia. Their bold combination of theoretical and practical communism baffled their contemporaries, and historians ever since have failed to see them in the totality of their meaning.*** Were they simply hungry men, agrarian revolutionaries filing one more protest against economic and social injustice? Or were they religiously inspired men who used the most dramatic means at their disposal to portray the sinfulness of man and the possibility of redemption? The ambiguity of the Digger experiment has lent color to both explanations.
Christian Missions to the Indians of Oregon
Authors: Jessett Thomas E.
Published: April 2006

Historians who have been concerned with Christian missions to the Indians of Oregon have generally limited their writings to denominational histories or to biographies glorifying the missionaries. Little has been done to correlate the efforts of the various individuals and denominations involved, in the light of the economic and political situation, so necessary for the presentation of a complete picture of the total missionary enterprise in the proper perspective. In this brief paper an attempt will be made to do just this.
Saints in Arms: English Puritanism as Political Utopianism
Authors: Simpson Alan
Published: April 2006

I propose to confine myself to exhibiting certain Utopian features in English Puritanism which displayed themselves during that classic tragedy in the politics of enthusiasm, the English Civil War.
The Wilderness and Paradise in the History of the Church
Authors: Williams George Huntston
Published: April 2006

In his now classic “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” read before the American Historical Association in 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner quoted fromA New Guide for Emigrants to the West(second edition; Boston, 1837), written by the pioneer Baptist missionary and founder of seminaries, John Mason Peck, who died just a century ago. Peck had distinguished three types of Westerners: the pioneers, the settlers, and “the men of capital and enterprise.” Turner found this typology useful and adapted it in his succession of studies that have helped to shape our understanding of American history.
The Sacramental Presuppositions of Anselm's Cur Deus Homo
Authors: Williams George Huntiston
Published: April 2006

The completion of F. S. Schmitt's critical edition of the Opera omnia of St. Anselm of Canterbury, with its elimination of a good many spurious meditations and prayers and with its recalendaring of the old and the newly identified correspondence, has stimulated widespread interest in the father of scholasticism. In the present study I wish to show that Anseim's Cur Deus Homo is a “penitential-eucharistic,” as distinguished from a “baptismal,” theory of the atonement. This is a terminology which must be explained at once.
Chiliasm and the Hussite Revolution
Authors: Kaminsky Howard
Published: April 2006

“… non estimemus fabulam illam quasi veram, quam quidam dicunt, quod instabit seculum bonum, in quo nullus erit malorum, et quod nihil paciantur, sed gaudio ineffabili sint prediti.” (From a Taborite commentary on Apocalypse, c. 1425.)

In the years following John Hus' martyrdom the movement he had led developed from a Prague University reform movement into a national reformation. Ideas that had formerly existed as topics for discussion among university intellectuals were established as actual religious practice among large groups of people, of all estates and with widely varying interests and viewpoints. As each such group entered the national movement it necessarily contributed its own viewpoint, with the result that every extension of the reform involved almost as many difficulties for the Hussites as for the Catholics. Of course there had always been differences among the university masters themselves, the inevitable conservative-radical dichotomy based ultimately on differences of spiritual temperament that exist within any group. But far more significant was the social polarization that took form as the concept of reform held by the upper estates was opposed by programs deriving from the point of view of artisans, peasants, and “the poor.”
John Trevor and the Labor Church Movement in England, 1891–1900
Authors: Pierson Stanley
Published: April 2006

In the history of Protestant Christianity, sectarian movements have often served to bridge the gulfs which have opened between conventional forms of religious life and new secular aspirations among the lower classes. The emergence of the Labor Church movement in England during the closing decade of the last century may be seen in part as an attempt at such a reconciliation. For it was dedicated to the idea that the emancipation of the working classes from capitalism was a religious movement, that the improvement of social conditions was as important as the development of personal character. And yet its leader, John Trevor, repudiated the dogmatic implications of the sectidea and viewed the Labor Church as a search for a truly free religion. In fact it quickly severed all ties with the traditional faith and embarked on a quest for radically new religious meaning.
The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology
Authors: Ahlstrom Sydney E.
Published: April 2006

The Scottish Philosophy is no longer in good repute despite its proud reign in another day. Indeed, few, if any, schools of philosophy have been given such disdainful treatment by historians as Common Sense Realism; and few, if any, philosophers have had to suffer such ignominious re-evaluations as Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart, who were once lionized as the founders of a great and enduring philosophical synthesis. Yet the very decisiveness of this reversal creates at least two challenging problems, one philosophical and the other historical. First, was the Scottish Philosophy as undistinguished as posterity has judged it to be? (To this I would answer with a qualified negative, but the subject is outside the purview of the present essay.) Second, why, when its ultimate rejection was so complete, did the Scottish Philosophy for over a century play such a large and variegated role in Western thought, being in its origins a forceful liberalizing religious movement, in France the near-official “middle-way” of the Restoration and July Monarchy, and in America the handmaiden of both Unitarianism and Orthodoxy? The account which follows is directed to this second question as well as to the factors in Scottish and American intellectual history which demonstrate the importance of asking it.
The Papacy and the Greeks (1122–1153) (Part II)
Authors: Rowe John Gordon
Published: April 2006

If in our previous section, we attempted to show how the Papacy discovered the possibilities which the East-West alliance possessed with regard to the healing of the schism, this final section will indicate how the East-West alliance became pregnant with menace for the Roman Church and thus destructive of all hopes for a reconciliation between Rome and Constantinople. Indeed, as we shall show, all plans for church union, on either side, now disappear into a welter of conflicting ambitions whose focus was southern Italy and the Norman Kingdom of Roger II.
God and Thomas Hobbes
Authors: Glover Willis B.
Published: April 2006

Atheists were even rarer and more obscure in seventeenth-century England than communists are in the modern United States. The scarcity of atheists, however, rather enhanced than restricted the term as an expression of loathsomeness and evil beyond accurate description. Those who seemed obviously wrong-headed on matters of the most serious import, and who were yet exasperatingly hard to prove wrong, must be in the power of some unnatural evil. Thus Thomas Hobbes was denounced as an atheist; and the accusation was as honest and almost as irrational as the accusation heard recently in many parts of the Southeast that the NAACP is communistic.
Heresy, The Social Order, and English Deism
Authors: Emerson Roger L.
Published: April 2006

Two recent essays dealing with Deism and the religious environment from which it emerged in England have done something to correct accounts which emphasize the philosophic, scientific, or latitudinarian background of English Deism. I refer to Gerald C. Brauer's “Puritan Mysticism and the Development of Liberalism,”Church History, Vol. XIX (September, 1950), and to George L. Mosse's “Puritan Radicalism and the Enlightenment,”Church History, Vol. XXIX (December, 1960). Both articles argue that there were current in 17th century Puritanism elements which could lead to Deism and which “helped to prepare the English scene for the arrival and triumph of liberalism” and Deism.
Edward Gibbon and Byzantine Ecclesiastical History
Authors: Geanakoplos Deno J.
Published: April 2006

It is generally acknowledged that Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ranks as one of the supreme masterpieces of historical writing. Yet surprisingly enough, more than a third of his entire narrative, that portion dealing with the later Roman or Byzantine Empire, has been badly neglected by historiographers. Now Gibbon as a Byzantinist must needs be an ecclesiastical historian as well, given the nature of Byzantine civilization with its close identification of the religious and the political. But here again, though sharp controversy has for long raged over Gibbon's judgment of early Christianity, especially its responsibility for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, his treatment of medieval Greek Christianity has been almost ignored by critics, except for sporadic, general remarks by Bury, Dawson, Giarrizzo—remarks which have added little to the traditionally accepted view that Gibbon was contemptuous of Byzantine civilization.
Protestant Concepts of Church and State: A Review Article
Authors: Hudson Winthrop S.
Published: April 2006

Few books purporting to be serious historical and theological analyses miss the mark as widely as Thomas G. Sanders' Protestant Concepts of Church and State, a “study” sponsored by the National Council of Churches and the Fund for the Republic. Far from clarifying Protestant thinking in this area, the author compounds the confusion and does little to enhance the reputation of either the sponsoring agencies or the publisher. Both sponsoring agencies have sufficient resources to have provided the author with competent counsel, and it is usual publishing practice to submit manuscripts to outside readers for criticism in order to avoid obvious gaffes. Apparently this responsibility was not taken seriously.
The Election of Pope Hadrian I
Authors: Hallenbeck Jan T.
Published: April 2006

It would be difficult to find an aspect of eighth-century papal history that has been more thoroughly studied than the early pontificate of Hadrian I (772–795). A host of scholars—among them Duchesne, Caspar, Kleinclausz, Kehr, Halphen and Hodgkin—have scrutinized each of the highly significant developments which unfolded between Hadrian's election on February 1, 772, and Charles the Great's assumption of the Lombard crown in June, 774: Hadrian's vigorous measures against the Roman supporters of the Lombard king, Desiderius (757–774); his appeal to Charles for Frankish military assistance to counter Desiderius' offensive in the papal duchy of Rome; and Hadrian's conference with Charles in Rome in April, 774, which resulted in Charles' donation of 774 and his subsequent deposition of Desiderius and installation of himself as rex Langobardorum.
Parsons, Priests, and the People: The Rise of Irish Anti-Clericalism 1785–1789
Authors: Burns R. E.
Published: April 2006

During the eighteenth century the major problem confronting the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was that of survival. Throughout most of the century the Irish Catholic clergy had to live and work under a code of laws designed to destroy the ecclesiastical organization of their church and, thereby, to end Catholic religious observances in Ireland. In their effects, however, the Popery laws failed their purpose. Ireland was not transformed into a state, “Protestant and past all danger of relapsing again into Popery.” In all of their respective parts, the laws against priests were impossible to enforce, perhaps never even meant to be enforced. Although the laws were sufficiently enforced to affect profoundly Catholic religious institutions and religious practices, Ireland's Catholic environment was never destroyed and never replaced by a Protestant one. The Irish language, divisions among Protestants, self-interest, jobbery, politics, missed opportunities, and stupidity combined to prevent rigorous enforcement of the laws and to frustrate the missionary and educational schemes planned by the leaders of the Established Church.
Missions and the Presbyterian Schism of 1837
Authors: MacCormac Earl R.
Published: April 2006

Professor Kenneth Scott Latourette has long maintained that church historians must take into account the role that missions have played in ecclesiastical history. His point is especially well taken in considering the Presbyterian Schism of 1837.
Erasmus and the Fathers: Their Practical Value
Authors: Peters Robert
Published: April 2006

“Indeed to lay in a state of ancient knowledge the studious master must go straight to the Greeks: to Aristotle, Theophrastus, Plotinus: to Origen, Chrysostom, Basil. Of the Latin Fathers, Ambrose will be found the most fertile in classical allusions: Jerome has the greatest command of the Scriptures.” Thus does Erasmus assess the Fathers in 1514, in the second edition of De Ratione Studii. They are a group of ancient writers coming within the horizon of those who enthusiastically “searched out, read and discovered the Greek and Roman literary classics in the two centuries between the death of Dante and the death of Machiavelli.”
An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
Authors: Pelikan Jaroslav
Published: April 2006

On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed it to be “a dogma divinely revealed that the immaculate Mother of God, the Ever-Virgin Mary, when the course of her earthly life was run, was assumed in body and in soul to heavenly glory.” Unlike some earlier definitions of dogma, the promulgation of the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin did not provoke any widespread controversy within the Roman Catholic communion about the substance of the doctrine. It had been generally believed by the people and taught by the theologians for a long time, and petitions signed by millions of the faithful had been importuning successive popes throughout this century and before to define it as binding de fide upon the entire Church.
Jonathan Edwards and the Theology of the Sixth Way
Authors: Whittemore Robert C.
Published: April 2006

This, with Edwards, is established, that mind cannot conceive a state of perfect nothing. Something, somewhere, there must be; for if we say that there is absolutely nothing, we talk nonsense, inasmuch as we imply a disjunction where there is none. “Either being or absolute nothing is no disjunction, no more than whether a triangle is a triangle or not a triangle. There is no other way but only for there to be existence. There is no such thing as absolute nothing.” Some being, therefore, some place necessarily and eternally is. And if at some place then in all places, since it is no less meaningless to affirm that nothing is in some one place than it is to say that nothing is at all. “So that we see this necessary, eternal being must be infinite and omnipresent.” But if omnipresent then not solid, for solidity is nothing but resistance to other solidities, all of which we can with ease conceive as not existing, whereas this omnipresent being “is the very thing that we can never remove and conceive of its not being.” What is this being, then, that no amount of mental effort can deny? It is, says Edwards, space.
Modern Interpretations of Nestorius
Authors: Braaten Carl E.
Published: April 2006

Nestorius continues to be a problem for modern historians of doctrine. The Problem arose in the fifth century when the church acting at the Council of Ephesus (431 A.D.) anathematized Nestorius, the Bishop of Constantinople, and pronounced Nestorianism a christological heresy. The decisions of the Council of Ephesus were accepted and re-affirmed at the Fourth (451 A.D.) and Fifth (553 A.D.) Ecumenical Councils. It must be said that “Nestorianism” as a special kind of doctrine could have been condemned as heretical could be called “dyoprosopatism.” But such was not the case. Nestorius was condemned and exiled as a heretic, and he was judged on the basis of certain doctrines which he was accused of holding. From the moment of his excommunication until the present time there have been many expressions of uncertainty as to whether he really taught and believed what was defined and condemned as Nestorianism. Somewhat epigrammatically historians have been asking whether Nestorius himself was a Nestorian.
Landmarkism: Doctrinaire Ecclesiology Among Baptists
Authors: Wamble Hugh
Published: April 2006

The mid-nineteenth century, which spawned numerous doctrinaire systems, witnessed the rise, among Baptists in Trans-Appalachia and the Southwest, of a doctrinaire ecciesiology which is consistent and rigid, and which calls for denominational exclusivism.
Religious Liberty: Roger Williams and the Revolutionary Era
Authors: Moore LeRoy
Published: April 2006

The classical period for the establishment of the legal guarantees of religious freedom in America is the final quarter of the eighteenth century, otherwise known as the Revolutionary Era. Yet, enshrined in our national memory as the great hero of liberty of conscience is not a man of this classical period, but a doughty seventeenth century colonial—Roger Williams. The object of the present study is to view this hero in time and space—in that particular time remembered as the Revolutionary Era and that particular space occupied by thirteen colonies out to become a nation.
The Spiritual: Soul of Black Religion
Authors: Moore LeRoy
Published: April 2006

My subject is the religion of the black American and my thesis is twofold: that the black man's religion is a religion of soul and that the soul of the black man's religion is his music. My concentration is on the spirituals. The paragraphs that follow are in part an abstract of my paper and in part a bibliographical essay indicating some studies or interpretations on which I draw or to which I am indebted.
Charles G. Finney and a Theology of Revivalism
Authors: Johnson James E.
Published: April 2006

Charles Grandison Finney appeared on the American religious scene in the early 1820's, and following a rather dramatic conversion experience he determined to enter the ministry. With some tutoring from his pastor, the Reverend George W. Gale, but no formal theological training, he began to preach in the “burned-over district” of upper New York State. His early successes in attaining conversions led him to adopt a pragmatic approach to the problems of theology and thus to be quite impatient with the Calvinistic theological system.
An American Errand into the South African Wilderness
Authors: Etherington Norman A.
Published: April 2006

The flowering of foreign missions in nineteenth-century America owed so much to evangelical Protestantism in Europe, that historians looking for uniquely American features in missionary enterprises have had very little to go on. Historians who have attempted to identify the uniqueness of American missions have generally seized upon the links between the missionary spirit and ideas of manifest destiny. Ralph Gabriel taught a generation of historians to see American missions as one aspect of a “mission of America” with ramifications that went far beyond preaching to the heathen. Perry Miller traced the roots of the mission of America to the Plymouth Colony itself and rewrote the history of American development in terms of an “perrand into the wilderness.” Nineteenth-century foreign missions were for Miller the most typical expression of national self-consciousness.
Theology in Church and University: the Post-Reformation Development
Authors: Scharlemann Robert
Published: April 2006

In the post-Reformation period one of the most significant developments concerns the understanding of the nature of theology and its relation to church and university. This development, which was related to a dual definition of theology and to a new distinction between the realms of reason and faith, began with Luther and Melanchthon and attained a preliminary crystallization with John Gerhard of the University of Jena, who was one of the chief representatives of seventeenth-century Protestant scholasticism. In this paper I wish to trace that development, which has failed to receive its due attention in accounts of Protestant theological history.
Anglican Chaplaincies in Post-Napoleonic Europe: A Strange Variation on the Pax Britannica
Authors: Pinnington John E.
Published: April 2006

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars took the English into Europe in unprecedented numbers, and, once there, they stayed. Commerce and industry followed inevitably in the wake of the armies; colonies of Englishmen sprang up in places not previously centres of international trade; English industrialists promoted factories and railways, operated and maintained by English workmen. The new industrial aristocracy chose to spend its vacations in Europe, usually at the fashionable watering places, and some were sent by their physicians into more or less permanent European exile. Not without reason did the Christian Remembrancer ask rhetorically, in 1845, if there was yet a square yard of ground in all the five continents which the restless curiosity of the English traveller had not raked over. Yet, if psychologically, there was no longer “any such thing as a foreign country” for the affluent nineteenth century Englishman, Europe remained for all practical purposes the limit of the horizon: and it was within this ambit that the transformation was most substantial. Sporting members of parliament had their château in Provence or their schloss in Hungary where their forebears had been content with a shooting-box on the Yorkshire moors, and undergraduates went off fly-fishing during the long vacation to Norway rather than to Wales. Altogether, the knowledgeable Anglo-German, George Biber put the English population on the continent in 1845 at between 200,000 and 300,000.1 There was no doubt about it; whatever government policy was to be, England's psychological isolation from Europe was at an end.
The Image of Mixed Liquids in Late Medieval Mystical Thought
Authors: Lerner Robert E.
Published: April 2006

“It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.” Whatever relevance this gnomic saying of Jorge Luis Borges may have to universal history, it can serve as the motto for the following investigation of the relationship between mysticism and the Free Spirit heresy in the later Middle Ages. Scholars are accustomed to regard the socalled heresy of the Free Spirit assui generis, an aberrant and scandalous religious deviation preached by nihilists, lechers, and megalomaniacs, but this interpretation is not borne out by the sources, as we will see in the story of a simile.
The Dutch Reformed Church and Negro Slavery in Colonial America
Authors: De Jong Gerald Francis
Published: April 2006

Current attitudes of religious organizations toward the civil rights movement prompt the raising of various historical questions. These concern, among others, the attitude of the churches toward the slave trade and the use of slave labor in the American colonies. Did the churches ignore slavery or did they object to it but were unable to change it because of vested economic interests? Were there any individual clergymen who raised particularly loud voices of protest against the use of slave labor and the buying and selling of human beings? Did the churches make any effort to convert the Negroes to Christianity? The examination of such questions with reference to a specific religious denomination, the Dutch Reformed Church, sheds light on this subject.
Between Evangelicalism and a Social Gospel: The Case of Joseph Rayner Stephens
Authors: Johnson Dale A.
Published: April 2006

The transition from Pietism and Evangelicalism to a social gospel in the thought and activities of a number of Christians, occurring as it did in the nineteenth century, was a transition largely provoked by the impact of the Industrial Revolution on landscape and people. Yet those who were among the earliest to respond to the new industrial and geographical situation often retained an older vision of life and society and left to others the task of developing a more effective response.Joseph Rayner Strphens (1805–79), sometime Methodist, notorioue revolutionary of the late 1830s, advocate of the Ten Hours Bill and vigrous opponent of the factory system in nineteenth-century England, was just such a person; he provides and illumination case study in the stryggle to carve out a social gospel which was virtually without precedent at the time.
The Christian Church in Cilician Armenia: Its Relations with Rome and Constantinople to 1198
Authors: Frazee Charles A.
Published: April 2006

The national church of Armenia has enjoyed an autonomous status within the community of Christian churches since the late fourth century. At that time King Pap broke its ties with Caesarea of Cappadocia, the city in which Gregory the Illuminator, the apostle of Armenia, had received his mandate and consecration. Thereafter the hierarchy of the church was chosen within the nation according to its own rules. The head of the church, the catholicos, was the chief bishop of the Armenians and, like the kingship, the catholicate became an hereditary office according to a custom established by Gregory himself.
Politics and Apolitical Religion: The Great Urban Revivals of the Late Nineteenth Century
Authors: Sizer Sandra
Published: April 2006

The treatment of late nineteenth-century revivalism by historians of American Christianity has generally been rather unsystematic, despite the inclusion of the great revivals in survey histories like William G. McLoughun's Modern Revivalism and Bernard Weisberger's They Gathered at the River. There have been a few good biographies of major evangelists, such as James Findlay's of Dwight L. Moody. Early nineteenth-century revivalism has received a larger share of attention because of its close connections with social reform movements, which seem to be more interesting to liberally- inclined historians than do the later revivalists with specifically conversionist aims. From more “conservative” religious scholars, understandably, the treatment of such material has tended to be more expository and theological than analytical. In all, the revivalist tradition after 1850 has been given rather short shrift as representing only a backwash of American religion, perhaps associated with lower socioeconomic classes or marginal groups. That, unfortunately, has left us with a wide gap between event and explanation when the late sixties and seventies brought a resurgence of conservative and “Spirit-filled” evangelicalism among middle-class Christians, and when 1976 revealed a strong evangelical strain even in the political arena.
Wealth, War and Religion: The Perfecting of Quaker Asceticism 1740–1783
Authors: Marietta Jack D.
Published: April 2006

Athough Quakers had always cautioned their brethren about the perils of wealth, in late eighteenth-century America a generation of Quakers arose that criticized wealth far more severely than any of its forebears had. These critics included John Woolman and Anthony Benezet, two of the most renowned Quakers since George Fox, as well as a score of Friends who were the liveliest members of the church in the eighteenth century. That these men should focus their critical attention on the spiritually corrosive effect of wealth, when their predecessors had not, may be explained in part by the passing of a century in which Friends used the time to accumulate fortunes, in part by some deeply quietistic Friends' discovery of an inherent conflict between materialism and spiritual religion and in part by the political situation of late eighteenth-century American Friends, which illuminated the tension between Friends' devotion to their property and their devotion to their religious ethics.
Jacob Tengstrom, First Archbishop of Finland
Authors: Harjunpaa Toivo
Published: April 2006

The Reformation of the sixteenth century dealt a heavy blow to the historic episcopal government of the church. Only two of the national churches which embraced the Protestant Reformation succeeded in retaining their old primatical sees and episcopal polity: the Church of England and the Church of Sweden-Finland. For centuries before the Reformation, the Finnish church had been ecclesiastically part of the province of Uppsala (an archbishopric since 1164) just as Finland itself was politically part of the Kingdom of Sweden. Thus there was no need to establish a Finnish archdiocese while union with Sweden continued. But with Napoleon's concurrence (the Tilsit pact of 1807), the Russians invaded Finland in 1808 and met with such success that all Finland was ceded by Sweden to Russia in 1809.
The Americanness of the Social Gospel; An Inquiry in Comparative History
Authors: Hutchison William R.
Published: April 2006

In an essay of the early 1920s, the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner offered alternative phrasings for the Protestant liberalism against which his generation was in revolt: one could speak of “the evolutionistic optimism of world-betterment,” or simply of “Christian Americanism.”
Athens and Jerusalam Revisited: Reason and Authority in Tertullian
Authors: González Justo L.
Published: April 2006

Very few ancient Christian writers have been as maligned by posterity as Tertullian has been. This is understandable, for Tertullian made little effort to endear himself to either his contemporaries or his future readers. His conversion to—many still say “lapse into”—Montanism was not calculated to make him popular with Catholic historians. His so-called legalism has become a favorite straw man for Protestant writers. The disappearance of both Montanism and the ancient African church destroyed the two logical communities where his name might have been venerated. In the sixteenth century a number of scholars became sufficiently interested in him to produce editions of his works; but although his rhetorical ability attracted some attention from the humanists, they found his manner and spirit too uncouth. Protestant rigorists who ought to have welcomed his stringency rejected him because of his emphasis on tradition. Catholic polemicists who could be expected to welcome such an emphasis ignored him because of his apparent denial of the authority of tradition in becomeing a Montanist. Rationalist scholars who ought to have enjoyed his wit and his unflinching logic were unable to sympathize with the seemingly illogical consequences of that logic. The result of these various biases has been a surprising agreement on a generally negative evaluation of Tertullian as a thinker and as a person.
The Southern Aid Society and the Slavery Controversy
Authors: Howard Victor B.
Published: April 2006

During the 1830s American society was swept by a reform movement that had as its goal the improvement and uplift of humanity and human institutions in all facets of personal and associated conduct. The antislavery cause was one of the most dynamic areas of reform, and by the 1840s the movement against human bondage became almost entirely a campaign of the northern advocates against the peculiar institution of the South. One of the basic sources of this antislavery sentiment was religious in its orientation, and the crusade against slavery secured its enduring strength from the revivalism of the Presbyterian, Congregational and Baptist churches, from the perfectionism which reinforced it among the Methodist and independent Congregationalists, and from the radicalism of the Unitarians and Quakers. After the Mexican War, the questions revolving around the sectional controversy became the all-absorbing preoccupation of a concerned nation, but while the slavery controversy was only one of the questions involved in the political arena, the morality of slavery was the total issue within religious circles and the churches.
Ebenezer Devotion: Religion and Society in Revolutinary Connecticut
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: April 2006

Ebenezer Devotion was born into the family of a Congregational minister in Suffield, Connecticut (then Massachusetts), on May 8, 1714, graduated from Yale College in 1732, and on October 22, 1735 was installed as the first pastor of the Third Ecclesiastical Society in Windham (later Scotland), Connecticut.1 His active ministry began about the time that Jonathan Edwards' parishioners in Northampton were first sensing that all was not right with their souls, and five short years before Whitefield and the great revival would sweep through New England. Ebenezer Devotion died on July 16, 1771 as another consuming excitement, this one political, took shape in America.
The Fear of Cultural Decline: Josiah Strong's Thought about Reform and Expansion
Authors: Meyer Paul R.
Published: April 2006

Congregational minister and onetime home missionary Josiah Strong (1847–1916) is perhaps best known for his militant advocacy of American expansion. He was also, however, an early leader of the Social Gospel movement who urged the reform of society to cope with the problems of an industrial era. Throughout the thirty-year period during which Strong set forth his views in print (1885–1915) expansion and reform were important themes in his thought, although significant changes appeared in his treatment of both; this was symptomatic of a basic attitudinal shift toward American society.
The Anabaptist Understanding of the Separation of the Church
Authors: Klaassen Walter
Published: April 2006

It is the purpose of this paper to determine whether Anabaptists were schismatics as was charged, to do this in the context of Protestant and especially Reformed attitudes towards Catholics, other Protestants and Anabaptists, and to describe the reasons for the separation of Anabaptism from Protestantism. The discussion will be limited primarily to the Anabaptists who had conversations with the Reformed tradition during the years 1523–1540. Much in the position of this segment of Anabaptism will apply to other parts of the movement as well.
The Polish National Catholic Church: An Inquiry Into Its Origions
Authors: Platt Warren C.
Published: April 2006

The last decade of the nineteenth century witnessed a number of trends in the American Catholic religious scene with special reference to new immigrants:

(a) The immigrants developed a cohesion and identity based on language that tended to obscure provincial loyalties and to transcend village patriotism.

(b) This new sense of identity, a product of nationalist ideology and the influence of the American experience, received its primary expression in the ethnic church. This institution, founded primarily on linguistic lines, encompassed those who spoke the same tongue and resided within the same ghetto or patch.
The Church as Societas Perfecta in the Schemata of Vatican I
Authors: Granfield Patrick
Published: April 2006

Over the course of a century, the self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church has undergone a dramatic change, as seen, for example, in the contrasting ecclesiologies of the last two ecumenical councils. The following juxtaposition of representative texts from Vatican I and Vatican II reveals this radical shift.