If you study the history of American Christianity, as I have been doing over the past couple of months, one of the themes that appears again and again is the emphasis on conversion. It is not an emphasis that has faded over time, either—even today many Christians continue to hold to the idea that one must have a definable moment of conversion followed by a decision on their part to follow Christ in order to legitimately be considered a Christian.

In the 18th and 19th century, during a period of revivalism, men like Charles Finney made this emphasis the cornerstone of their preaching. These preachers would constantly urge their listeners to make a decision to follow Christ in the hopes of seeing many conversions take place on the spot, much like the modern "altar call." Predictably, there was strong reaction against this from certain quarters. Back in 1902, for example, the Reformed Church in the United States had published an edition of the Heidelberg Catechism (rather unoriginally titled The Heidelberg Catechism of the Reformed Church in the United States, 20th Century Edition) in which it was made clear that while some people would legitimately be able to point to a time when they first believed, this was not something that every Christian had to articulate (contrary to the opinion of Finney, et. al.). Under the heading "On Confirmation, Catechism, and Conversion," was this:

What are the qualifications for full [communicant] membership?

Answer: an intelligent, cheerful, humble, sincere, earnest 'yes' to the three confirmation vows of repentance, faith, and obedience.

Need I tell you that this fitness is conversion? Some persons, not understanding our church life and customs, foolishly think that we confirm our young people no matter what their state of mind and heart is, and that we do not believe in conversion. This is a great mistake. We require a high degree of fitness for confirmation, namely, an intelligent, sincere, and unreserved taking of three most searching and far-reaching vows in the name of the holy Trinity.

Then, too, this fitness for confirmation may be called 'a change in heart,' though this is only another name for conversion. This change is not sudden, but runs through years. You have not had any wonderful religious experiences, such as you hear about in others; but the Holy Ghost has done much in you in a very quiet way.

Nor need you doubt your conversion, your change in heart, because you cannot tell the day when it took place, as many profess to do. It did not take place in a day, or you might tell it. It is the growth of years (Mark 4:26-28), and therefore all the more reliable. You cannot tell when you learned to walk, talk, think, and work. You do not know when you learned to love your earthly father, much less the heavenly.

This the Reformed doctrine of 'getting religion.' We get religion, not in bulk but little by little. Just as we get natural life and strength, so spiritual life and strength, day by day.

To this fitness, this preparation of heart and mind, you profess to have come. You are about to take your vows, turning your back to the Devil, the world, and the flesh, while you look heavenward. Fix your whole heart upon Christ. Consecrate yourself fully to his service, realizing that with body and soul, in life and in death, you are his.

I found this to be very interesting, not least for its emphasis on the idea that precisely because you cannot point to a specific time of conversion, you should consider it all the more reliable. One did not need a Damascus Road experience to be certain of their faith, for the work of God in the heart of the believer was a gradual, ongoing process. Religion does not come in bulk, it is here argued. What do you think?

*Thanks to my professor, John Muether, for sending this my way.

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The doctrine of sola Scriptura has long been contentious, for any number of reasons. In the early American period, with a Christianity greatly influenced by populism and democratic ideals, it served as a license for people to interpret the Bible free of any traditional authorities such as ordained clergy and confessional standards. To put it bluntly, it gave them a license to do whatever they wanted. Nathan O. Hatch, in The Democratization of American Christianity, observes this:

Any number of denominations, sects, movements, and individuals between 1780 and 1830 claimed to be restoring a pristine biblical Christianity free from all human devices. 'In religious faith we have but one Father and one Master,' noted the Universalist spokesman A. B. Grosh, 'and the Bible, the Bible, is our only acknowledged creed-book.' 'I have endeavored to read the scriptures as though no one had read them before me,' claimed Alexander Campbell, 'and I am as much on my guard against reading them to-day, through the medium of my own views yesterrday, or a week ago, as I am against being influenced by any foreign name, authority, or system whatever.'

Protestants from Luther to Wesley had been forced to define carefully what they meant by sola Scriptura. They found it an effective banner to unfurl when attacking Catholics but always a bit troublesome when common people began to take the teaching seriously. For the Reformers, popular translations of the Bible did not imply that people were to understand the Scriptures apart from ministerial guidance. Thus when dealing with a scholar such as Erasmus, Luther could champion boldly the perspicuity of Scripture, its clarity for all: 'Who will maintain that the public fountain does not stand in the light, because some people in a back alley cannot see it, when everybody in the market place can see it quite plainly?' Yet when confronted with headstrong sectarians, he withdrew such democratic interpretations and admitted the danger of proving anything by Scripture: 'Now I learn that it suffices to throw many passages together helterskelter whether they fit or not. If this is the way to do it, I certainly shall prove with Scripture that Rastrum beer is better than Malmsey wine' (179-180).

Abraham Kuyper once wrote, in his Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, that it would be foolish for someone to attempt to hike through the mountains of Switzerland without the help of a guide or a map. That is analogous, of course, to saying neither is it wise for someone to take up the Bible and attempt to interpret it apart from the wisdom of the Church throughout the ages. "In its rich and many-sided life, extending across so many ages," Kuyper wrote,

the Church tells you at once what fallible interpretations you need no longer try, and what interpretation on the other hand offers you the best chances for success. On this ground the claim must be put, that the investigator of the Holy Scriptures shall take account of what history and the life of the Church teaches concerning the general points of view, from which to start his investigation, and which paths it is useless to further reconnoitre.

Kuyper's sentiments are entirely antithetical to most of American Christianity, both past and present. As much as democratic ideals have done good things for America as a political entity, insofar as people have allowed those ideals to shape the Church in America, they have done a great disservice. Like I said in my last post, God grants authority to the Church, not the individual. He gives Scripture to His covenant people that it may reveal their Lord and shape and govern their life according to His will. To be sure, the individual must appropriate Scripture for himself (Deut. 6:4-9; Psalm 119; 2 Tim. 3:16-17, etc.), but never in a vacuum.

Our identity as Christians is not primarily that we are individuals saved by Christ. This is true, but it is not primary. What is first is that God has called a people to Himself, has redeemed them and brought them into a covenant relationship with them. Individual believers consitute that people, but not atomistically; their corporate identity as the body of Christ is at the fore. It follows here, then, that our reading of Scripture is to be done in this covenant community and not apart from it. This is not to say individuals should not read their Bibles on their own, of course, but that when they do so they should read it through what Kuyper calls the "consciousness of the Church." The Bible is, after all, God's covenant document with the Church.

When I was in college, Albert Wolters once said something like, "Don't worry, you can't come up with any new heresies. They've all been tried already." I'm not sure if that was intended to comfort us, but the point was that if we set ourselves some theological boundaries and recognize that the Church throughout history has already tried a myriad of interpretations, approving some and disapproving others, we have ourselves a pretty reliable guide as we travel today.

History matters, tradition matters, and the Church matters. They are gifts. Lean on them.

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Writing on the legacy of post-Revolutionary era Christianity in America in his book, The Democratization of American Christianity, historian Nathan Hatch attempts to determine what the driving force was behind it all. He notes that American Christians certainly did not develop "a genius for ecclesiastical organization...[but instead] muddled along in a state of anarchic, free-market pluralism." It did not have leaders of great prestige, nor "an ability to make faith plausible to the modern world" (212-213). So what was the driving force, then?

A central force [in American Christianity] has been its democratic or populist orientation. America has lived in the shadow of a democratic revolution and the liberal, competitive culture that followed in its wake. Forms of popular religion characteristic of that cultural system bound paradoxical extremes together: a reassertion of the reality of the supernatural in everyday life linked to the quintessentially modern values of autonomy and popular sovereignty. American Christians reveled in freedom of expression, refused to bow to tradition and hierarchy, jumped at opportunities for innovative communication, and propounded popular theologies tied to modern notions of historical development. No less than Tom Paine or Thomas Jefferson, populist Christians of the early republic sought to start the world over again. By raising the standard 'no creed but the Bible,' Christians in America were the foremost proponents of individualism even as they expected the open Bible to replace an age of sectarian rivalry with one of primitive harmony. Like the egalitarian credo of the early republic, this vision has taken a powerful hold on the American imagination despite the disparity between the quest for unity and actual religious fragmentation and authoritarianism (213).

There is no doubt that we continue to see this legacy today in American Christianity. I find it particularly interesting that while we so often attribute the problem of individualism to Enlightenment thought and its vindication of autonomous man, Hatch here demonstrates that, in American culture at least, individualism is in part owing to the forms of Christianity which gained such prominence in the early years of the republic.

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A friend and I are doing a bit of a research study on the history of Christianity in America, and one of the books we are working through is The Democratization of American Christianity by Nathan O. Hatch. His book has been recognized by many scholars as one of the foremost works on the history of Christianity in America. The main thesis, which comes out a little in the paragraph I've quoted below, is that religious groups, led by the common people, both fostered democracy and profoundly shaped American culture in the early 19th century.

America's nonrestrictive environment [in the late 18th and early 19th centuries] permitted an unexpected and often explosive conjunction of evangelical fervor and popular sovereignty. It was this engine that accelerated the process of Christianization within American popular culture, allowing indigenous expressions of faith to take hold among ordinary people, white and black. This expansion of evangelical Christianity did not proceed primarily from the nimble response of religious elites meeting the challenge before them. Rather, Christianity was effectively reshaped by common people who molded it in their own image and threw themselves into expanding its influence. Increasingly assertive common people wanted their leaders unpretentious, their doctrines self-evident and down-to-earth, their music lively and singable, and their churches in local hands. It was this upsurge of democratic hope that characterized so many religious cultures in the early republic and brought Baptists, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, and a host of other insurgent groups to the fore. The rise of evangelical Christianity in the early republic is, in some measure, a story of the success of common people in shaping the culture after their own priorities rather than the priorities outline by gentlemen such as the framers of the Constitution.

Because there are so many factors at work in the study of the history of Christianity in America, it is at the same time both fascinating and complex. Books like Hatch's are very helpful in navigating through the panoply of persons, events, and circumstances that gave shape to American Christianity.

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One blog I follow with interest is ThinkChristian.net. There are a number of contributors to the site, and they often provide thoughtful and stimulating content. Nathan Bierma's latest post is no exception, as he wrestles with the messiness of Church history. It can get ugly when you are honest about the history of the Church, but I think his point is neatly summed up when he writes, "The messiness of church history testifies to our utter reliance on Christ as the foundation of the church."

This was of particular interest to me because of my passion for studying the history of the Church. When you do a survey of that history you necessarily end up spending a lot of time looking at things that went terribly wrong. And you don't need to know a lot of the Church's history to know that there are some pretty ugly stains there. It can be discouraging and difficult to swallow. But at the same time, there is always cause for rejoicing because despite it all, the promise of Jesus Christ has proven true: "I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18).

The story of redemption and the story of history always has in view the work of God in preserving a remnant of His people, and this is no different with the Church. The last 2000 years of history serve as nothing more than a testament to God's sovereign work of providence, and without that understanding you are left to wonder how the Church ever survived—how she endured persecution at the hands of the Romans, how she sifted through the proliferation of theological error and heresy in the early Church, how she was preserved despite the decline of culture in the Dark Ages, how she recovered from the incredible degree of corruption in the leadership of the medieval Church, how she dealt with the splitting and dividing of the Church after the Reformation, and later worked to weed out the infiltration of Enlightenment thought and liberalism, among other things. 

How? It is really quite simple: "I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

When we look at the Church and only see the failings of man, we have missed the point. The Church is not about what man has done, but about what God has done and is doing. She is his bride whom He loves, protects, and cherishes. Nothing in this world, not even the gates of hell, shall prevail against it. The well-known hymn, "The Church's One Foundation," has this glorious verse which, although sung more infrequently than some of the other verses, sums up this point:

The Church shall never perish!
Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish,
Is with her to the end:
Though there be those who hate her,
And false sons in her pale,
Against both foe or traitor
She ever shall prevail.

We as God's people, the Church, are built up on Jesus, the chief cornerstone, and no one can lay any other foundation. With this assurance we can boldly proclaim, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it!"

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