|
VOW
|
THE CHURCH'S
Forty years ago, there were many calls for higher standards for membership in American Protestant churches. Some came from World War II veterans who returned from military service and often from terrible battlefield experiences and were dissatisfied with a church which seemed to be merely formal, which appeared to have no live connection with the Kingdom of God, whose faith seemed to be more nominal than real. Such men--and women of like thinking--wanted churches whose members’ lives were actually changed, who spent their time and their money in ways which proclaimed the Gospel. 1 These people actually tried to put their ideas and yearnings into practice. Some of them began such missionary enterprises as the East Harlem Protestant Parish in New York City, where a nucleus of ministers tried to gather churches from among the poorest of the poor. Others started churches with high standards for membership from the beginning, such as the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D. C. 2 There was a sense among many that there was a new movement in American churches. Some even dared to call it a revival. At the same time, American church membership was growing very rapidly among the residents of new suburban housing developments. And these churches were not at all based on a more demanding standard of membership. Church membership was touted as good for business, good for children, and good for family life. DEMANDING STANDARDS NOT HIGH ON THE CHURCH'S AGENDA Forty years later, it is clear which of these movements was the wave of the future. Today, as always, of course, there are church radicals. But church radicals today sound more like the social gospellers of the 1930's than the commitment advocates of the ‘50's and ‘60's. They want to save the environment and have more female executives. The idea that membership in the church should be seriously demanding for every member is not high on their agenda. And when the church begins to be dissatisfied with a neglect of the essential Gospel, we pay attention to the church growth movement and want to start more new churches. More stringent membership standards are seldom suggested and more seldom adopted. Of course, our churches do have membership standards on paper, and many of them appear serious, if not stringent. In The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), for example, there must be a profession of faith in Christ and the session is “to judge, after careful examination, the readiness of those who apply for active membership.” 3 In fact, such “careful examination” happens rarely if ever. And what is under discussion is admission to active membership, not to the Lord’s Supper, which is open even to children. 4 The invitation to the Lord’s Supper rejects the very idea that there might be a “standard” to meet: The invitation to the Lord’s Supper is extended to all who have been baptized, remembering that access to the Table is not a right conferred upon the worthy, but a privilege given to the undeserving who come in faith, repentance, and love. In preparing to receive Christ in this Sacrament, the believer is to confess sin and brokenness, to seek reconciliation with God and neighbor, and to trust in Jesus Christ for cleansing and renewal. Even one who doubts, or whose trust is wavering may come to the Table in order to be assured of God’s love and grace in Jesus Christ. 5There are, of course, churches which ask if the candidate for membership or for communion has been converted, or if he has “asked Jesus into [his] heart,” but it is doubtful whether such questions mean in practice any more than the mainline requirement of a “profession of faith.” Few if any evangelical churches attempt to go beneath someone’s report of a conversion to discover whether or not it is authentic. Consequently church membership requirements seem to be only another variation on the common theme of a “feel good” culture. The emphasis has become highly subjective. DISSATISFACTION WITH THE STATE OF THE CHURCH Yet there is a great deal of dissatisfaction with the state of our churches. Mainline denominations are in turmoil, unable to agree on what they believe or what they ought to do. Jeremiads bewail the loss of faith and integrity among churches which consider themselves “evangelical.” There are many reports of ignorance of and indifference to the actual content of the Bible among church members of every persuasion. There are signs of a loss of nerve among American Christians, in particular, in the face of the challenge of a resurgent Islam. WOULD MORE DEMANDING MEMBERSHIP STANDARDS REVITALIZE THE CHURCH? Would a more demanding standard for church membership help revitalize the church’s mission, as so many believed forty years ago? Is purifying our membership by weeding out the uncommitted the path to a more authentic witness? Is it the way of faithfulness? At the crudest level, would it work? THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PURITANS The experience of the Puritan movement may instruct us. The Puritans arrived in North America as a tightly-knit brotherhood (and sisterhood) of religious zealots. Their commitment to Christ and to the Puritan cause was not in question. They had made enormous sacrifices for their faith. But very soon the population of the Massachusetts Bay colony began to change. Between fifteen and twenty thousand people came to New England in the first ten years and by no means all of them were Puritans. In fact, some of the original settlers even talked about moving farther into the hinterland in order to separate themselves once again from wickedness. They did not do this. What they did do was separate themselves spiritually and visibly from the "mixed multitude." They adopted a stricter standard of church membership. 6 To some, the Puritans were already strict enough or possibly too strict. The established churches of Europe counted everyone born in a parish a member of the parish church. The notion of "gathering" churches as only a part of the whole community was novel and, to many, offensive. Even the Protestant Reformation had retained the parish system. 7 Non-separatist Puritans did not gather churches while they were still in England. That was what made them non-separatists. Once they emigrated, however, the difference between Separatists and non-separatists faded, and the latter found themselves organizing new churches. They then had to answer the question, who is to be admitted to these churches? What are the qualifications? The basis for church membership was faith in Jesus Christ. That is standard Reformation doctrine. The Heidelberg Catechism, for instance, defines "the holy catholic church" as the community gathered and chosen by the Son of God "in the unity of the true faith" (Answer to Question 54). The Scots' Confession, written by John Knox, says that the "Kirk" is "the company and multitude...chosen by God, who rightly worship and embrace him by true faith in Christ Jesus" (Chapter XVI). 8 The Reformation churches were, however, distinguished from the Anabaptists by, among other things, their retention of the practice of baptizing babies. Infants were "in" and not "out." As baptized infants grew up, the church taught them, looking for each child eventually to express the faith which defines the church member. The foundation of that faith was, of course, the work of God, above all in Jesus Christ. Its germ in the individual was marked by his or her baptism. The Reformation churches believed that a child must grow up to know and confess what he had become in his baptism. They did not believe that these children would be or needed to be "converted" in the sense that they needed to be changed from nonchristians to Christians. 9 For example, the catechism John Calvin wrote to use in the French refugee congregation in Strasbourg, contains these exchanges: Are you, my son, a Christian in fact as well as in name? Yes, my father.How do you know yourself to be? Because I am baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
TRUE FAITH Somewhere along the line, the Puritans lost confidence in the Reformers' solution. At some point, saving faith became a question rather than an affirmation, a source of worry rather than of comfort. Perhaps it happened because the Puritans were disillusioned by the Church of England. After all, the Anglican Catechism asked the catechumen whether or not he was "bound" to believe and to affirm what his sponsors had promised at his baptism. The reply is neither hesitating, nor doubtful: "Yes, verily; and by God's help so I will." 14 But, as the Puritans saw it, he didn't -- at least, not often enough to rescue the church from corruption. The Reformation appeared to make "true faith" too easy or too automatic. It assumed too much. The Puritans knew better. True faith required conversion, and conversion was a factual, describable process, with distinct stages. The affirmations so confidently asserted by the catechisms were possible only for one who had gone through these stages. And even such a man of faith could affirm his status only amid much doubt, fear, and trembling. Always he must be on guard, lest he rest in a false or carnal assurance. 15 CONVERSION AS A PUBLIC QUESTION All this began in England, before the establishment of Massachusetts Bay. But in Massachusetts, church membership became an issue. Churches were being gathered. So the issue of conversion became not merely an individual's wrestling with his personal state before God. It became a public question. It was necessary to be sure that candidates for church membership had gone through the stages of conversion. It became important even for baptized children of the church to be sure that they had done this. Otherwise the churches of North America might be no better than those of old England. And they might be no churches at all, if the faith on which they were built should prove not to be genuine. Thus there arose the requirement that people who became members of the church tell the stories of their own conversions. How had God worked on them? What had been their experiences of conviction and humiliation and release? First the ministers and later the congregations needed to hear these stories. They could even ask questions about them to be as sure as might be that the conversions were not bogus. The entire system received a kind of quasi-recognition in the law in 1636. 16 UNCONVERTED CHILDREN OF BELIEVERS The church, the Puritans perhaps believed, was now safe from corruption. Not that it was perfect. They universally repudiated the Anabaptist attempt to build a sinless, or pure church, but they thought it of vital importance to reduce "hypocrisy" to a bare minimum. 17 In that they may have succeeded, but they created a problem which apparently few of them had anticipated. If a truly faithful man or woman was one who had gone though the stages of conversion identified and described by Puritan theologians, then this was a test that had to be applied, not only to non-Puritan immigrants applying for church membership, but also to the children of Puritans. Baptism of infants they retained. But full membership, including the privilege of voting and the right to participate in the Lord's Supper was for the faithful, that is, the converted, which now meant those who had not only experienced conversion according to the official formulae, but could describe their experience to the satisfaction of the members of the local church. Many in the next generation in Puritan families failed to have this experience. Baptized children became adults who had been baptized as children. Most of these adults did not become full members of the churches. Some did, of course, especially when they were contemplating marriage or when they became parents. But many more did not, so that, over time, only a quarter or fewer of the people who attended worship were entitled to sit at the Lord's table. 18 And there was another problem, foreseeable, we would think, but apparently not foreseen. The baptized, unconverted children of the Puritans became parents. What of this new generation? Were they in the church or out of it? Could they be baptized or not? If they could not, then soon most of the population of the colony would consist of unbaptized people. Most of the population would clearly be outside the church, not subject to church discipline or even influence. The holy commonwealth which had begun so hopefully in North America would have become a land of heathen! The thought was unbearable. 19 THE HALF-WAY COVENANT The solution adopted by a synod in 1662 was later termed "the half-way covenant" by its enemies, and it has been the target of both serious criticism and derision. It provided that the baptized children of the Puritans, who behaved as though they were Christians and said that they believed the gospel, could have their own children baptized. They still could not become full members of the church--communicants and voters--until they could relate credible conversion experiences. Thus they were "half-way members," in the church in some sense, yet not wholly in. 20 The supporters of this solution may have hoped that people would become dissatisfied with a status of baptized noncommunicant, and that God would use this dissatisfaction to begin the process of conversion. For some people, this may well have been how it worked. But others, surprisingly, were not dissatisfied at all. They found baptism for their children to be a reassuring evidence of God's goodness and love. But they found approaching the Lord's Supper to be dangerous, recalling Paul's warning that some people "eat and drink judgment on themselves" (I Corinthians 11:29). So they were quite happy with a compromise which gave their families access to baptism, while releasing them from the need to wrestle with the possible benefits and undoubted dangers of the Lord's Supper. In fact, many people who did become full members of the church still did not come to the Lord's Supper, at least for a considerable period. 21 DISSATISFACTION WITH TWO-TIER MEMBERSHIP It was and is difficult for a Protestant church to rest content with a two-tier membership. After all, we believe in the priesthoood of all believers. We recall Luther’s dictum that the serving maid with her broom serves God better than the monk at his prayers. The half-way covenant contained the germs of its own instability. After all, for how many generations could the church continue to baptize and count within God’s covenant the children of the unconverted children of unconverted grandparents? TWO RESOLLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM It is not surprising that the Puritan movement produced two resolutions of the problem. It is not surprising that these resolutions were diametrically opposed. What is somewhat surprising is that both solutions arose in the same congregation. And they were the brain children of a man and his grandson. STODDARDISM The grandfather was Solomon Stoddard, minister of the church in Northampton, Massachusetts for 60 years, ending at his death in 1729. Stoddard cut through the entire apparatus of two-stage or two-class church membership. God has established his church, beginning with ancient Israel. He has established it to tell his story and obey his commands. Those who are within it are called to faith and obedience. But they are not outsiders unless they become apostate or the part of the church to which they belong is "unchurched by God." In other words, the church is not even nearly pure or approximately pure. It is a mixed body, including all who "make a serious profession of the true religion," together with their children. All those "halfway members" who affirmed their belief in the Gospel when presenting their children for baptism are in reality full members of the visible church, as much members as anyone else. 22 The free admission to the Lord's supper previously described followed naturally from this. The requirements for having your children baptized and for admission to the Lord's Supper are identical. You are either in the church or you are out of it and, if you are in, you are in all the way. This was "Stoddardeanism." It was not totally new because some churches had always resisted the requirement that church members much relate their conversion experiences, but Stoddard, as the pastor of the largest inland church in Massachusetts made this an issue for every church in New England. The argument continued for decades, but it was settled early in most of western Massachusetts and much of Connecticut. From being a radical innovation it moved with surprising speed to become settled and orthodox policy. EDWARDS-ISM The grandson was Jonathan Edwards, who first assisted and then succeeded his grandfather Stoddard in the Northampton pulpit. Like Stoddard, Edwards rejected the two-tier church membership of the half-way covenant. But the grandson chose the alternate road. Edwards' proposal arises from his conviction that many, perhaps most of the church members he serves are hypocrites. They are not true believers. They are not real Christians. They are merely using the Christian faith and the church to mask their own desires and goals. 23 And Edwards thinks that, if he is permitted, he can correct this. He can make the church in Northampton, if not completely pure, at least a lot purer than it has hitherto been. He can discover who has had a real encounter with the Lord and who has not. And he regards it as nearly axiomatic that this would be a desirable thing to do. 24 It is not clear exactly how Edwards’ requirement for a profession of faith worked or would have worked, had he been permitted to carry it out. Certainly the forms of profession which he offered in the midst of controversy seem inadequate to accomplish much of anything, but they may not represent what he originally intended at all. 25 In any case, Edwards lost his job before he could carry out his project. There are those who say that he won the war, though he lost the battle, pointing to the paper requirements for church membership in many denominations today. If that is true, it is a serious question whether that war was worth winning. As we have seen, our churches do not appear to be phalanxes of the committed. In other words, if Edwards was victorious, his way did not work. Nonetheless, perhaps because of Edwards’ prestige as America’s most profound theologian, there is a widespread sense that he was right and that his way, if truly implemented, would have been and might still be the better way for American churches. WAS STODDARD'S SOLUTION BETER? What about the other way, the way of Solomon Stoddard? Is it possible that he had a better strategy for dealing with the reality of a less-than-fully converted, less-than-fully-committed church? After all, the question of how we are to proceed, once the church has lost its initial enthusiasm, is not unique to our time, was not unique to the 1700’s, and is not unique to North America. The question applied to the primitive church and has been real ever since. We got off to a roaring start. We found that the commitment to sustain it was not and is not present. What next? The significance of Solomon Stoddard is that he had an answer to this question. Most others simply beg it. The common answer, and what seems to have been Edwards’ answer, to the question, what do we do when enthusiasm has faded and commitment is questionable is, in substance, “Get more commitment.” But while we are waiting for this, what do we do? Do we pretend that everyone has made a commitment which in fact they have not--the stance of most mainline and many other churches today? Do we quit and go off to start a new, truly committed church--an ever present temptation? STODDARD SAW THE CHURCH AS A MISSION FIELD Stoddard’s response was basically to regard the church itself--the worshipers he faced each week--as a mission field. He abandoned the attempt to distinguish between presumably regenerated communicant church members and the presumably unregenerated remainder of the nominally Christian population. He considered the church to be the contemporary extension and equivalent, not of the committed band of first century Christians, but of ancient Israel.26 Ancient Israel had its committed remnant. But the ministry of its priests and prophets was to the whole body. That ministry always had as a major component what could be termed “evangelism.” Both Torah and prophets urge, rather than assume, commitment and repentance. Stoddard’s strategy for a church no more than half-converted was preaching which emphasized conversion, delivered, not outside, but within the church. That is, the minister functions more as a missionary than as the shepherd of a gathered flock. 27 EVANGELISM WITHIN THE CHURCH AS WELL AS WITHOUT This was a new departure in late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century New England, and it is not surprising that Stoddard had some difficulty in working out all its implications. For example, it was still necessary to gather churches. Therefore, it was still necessary to have some requirements for membership. During the debate which arose between Edwards and Solomon Williams, the then-current standard bearer for Stoddard’s position, it was relatively easy for Edwards to press for greater precision in those requirements and a somewhat confused response by Williams allowed Edwards to claim victory in the controversy. 28 The refining and defining of “historical faith” and “moral sincerity” became almost endless. The apparent inconsistencies in Stoddard’s and Williams’s insistence on a “visible saintship” which nonetheless assumed that many and perhaps most of those included were not in fact regenerate made it easy for Edwards to score debater’s points. But when the modern reader is tempted to believe that there was no real difference between the two sides, it is worth remembering that the controversy was not originally between Edwards and Williams, but between Edwards and the overwhelming majority of the Northampton congregation. The people of Northampton evidently were convinced that the dispute was real and important enough to cause them to fire their pastor. English Puritans had carried on their ministries along lines very similar to those advocated and practiced by Stoddard. Richard Baxter, for instance, wrote, “I frequently meet with those that have been my hearers eight or ten years, who know not whether Christ be God or man.” He was explaining why his ministry within the church had to be evangelistic. 29 James I. Packer suggests that this was because Baxter’s congregations were “captive congregations,” required by law and/or custom to attend worship.30 This was, of course, also true of Stoddard’s and Edwards’ congregations. It is not true today. But does this, as Packer suggests, mean that our voluntary congregations are more knowledgeable or more regenerate than were Baxter’s? Are we correct in our assumption that we can separate our presumably regenerate churches from the presumably unregenerate world? Or does evangelism have to occur today, as in Baxter’s Kidderminster and in Stoddard’s Northampton, inside the church, as well as in the now much larger world outside? _________ 1. See, among many others, Robert Spike, In But Not of the World (New York: Association Press, 1957). 2. The founding and early history of the Church of the Saviour are recounted in Elizabeth O’Connor, Call to Commitment (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1963). 3. Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)., Book of Order, G-5.0101. 4. Ibid., Directory for Worship, W-2.4011(b). 5. Ibid., 2.4011(a). 6. Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea (New York: New York University Press, 1963), 120. 7. But see Euan Cameron, “’The Godly Community’ in the Theory and Practice of the European Reformation,” in W. J. Sheils and Diana Woods, eds., Voluntary Religion (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 131-153. Cameron discusses attempts to form smaller communities of the especially committed in European Protestant parishes, especially in Strasbourg. 8. Constitution, Book of Confessions, 4.054, 3.16. 9. Calvin does use the term, “conversion,” but as a synonym for “repentance,” rather than as a movement from outside to inside the Christian faith or church. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battle, ed. John T. McNeill, the Library of Christian Classics, XX & XXI (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 3.3.5. 10. Hughes Oliphant Old, The Shaping of the Reformed Baptismal Rite in the Sixteenth Century (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing company, 1992), 206,207. 11. Constitution, Book of Confessions, 4.01. 12. John Gerstner writes, “the Reformed pastor of the Scottish-Princetonian Reformed tradition tended to regard baptized children as elect (and regenerate) unless there was evidence to the contrary.” John H. Gerstner, the Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Powhatan, VA.: Berea Publications and Orlando, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 1993), Vol. III, 429. 13. This is how Morgan, op. cit., describes the problem of predestinarian Protestants. He is representative of many writers on the question, but the catechisms show no trace of this concern. 14. The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other rites and ceremonies of the Church According to the Use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944), 577. 15. Morgan, 67-69. As an example of Morgan’s point, note the detailed tracing of the stages of preparation and the process (“work”) of conversion in Solomon Stoddard, A Guide to Christ (repr. Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1993, 1998). 16. Ibid., 72-105. 17. Ibid., 93. 18. Darrett B. Rutman, Winthrop’s Boston: A Portrait of a Puritan Town, 1630-1649, 1965, repr. New York, 1972, 147, cited in Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England, New York and Oxford, 1986, 58. 19. Perry Miller, “Solomon Stoddard, 1643-1729,” Harvard Theological Review, XXXIV (1941), 290,291. 20. Morgan, 130,131. 21. Anne S. Brown and David D. Hall, "Family Strategies and Religious Practice: Baptism and the Lord's Supper in Early New England," in David D. Hall, ed., Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 57,58. 22. Solomon Stoddard, The Doctrine of Instituted Churches Explained and Proved from the Word of God (London: Ralph Smith, 1700), repr. in Increase Mather vs. Solomon Stoddard: Two Puritan Tracts (New York: Arno Press, 1972), 6,7. 23. This is the intepretation which David Hall adopts. Hall, “Introduction,” Works of Jonathan Edwards, Yale Edition, Volume 12, 56. 24. Ibid., 62,65. 25. Scholars differ widely about the precise nature of Edwards’ intentions. See, for example, Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards,215 and Hall, “Introduction,”58. Certainly the insipid character of the professions of faith which Edwards termed acceptable make it difficult to be sure of his goals. E.G., this one: I hope, I do truly find a heart to give up myself wholly to God, according to the tenor of that covenant of grace which was sealed in my baptism, and to walk in a way of that obedience to all the commandments of God, which the covenant of grace requires, so long as I live.Yale Edition, Volume 12, 361. 26. Stoddard, Instituted Churches, 25. 27. Paul R. Lucas, “An Appeal to the Learned: The Mind of Solomon Stoddard,” William and Mary Quarterly, third series, 30 (1973), 380-385. 28. Jonathan Edwards, Misrepresentations Corrected in Ecclesiastical Writings, YE, Volume 12, 383,384. 29. Quoted in James I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1990), 307. 30. Ibid., 308.
|