Host/Moderator

Most Christians have heard the term justification, but how does the Protestant view of justification differ from the Roman Catholic view? In this free download, what's the difference between justification and sanctification? You'll explore the vital difference between justification and sanctification and how maintaining this distinction gives Christians joy and freedom in the gospel. Whether you're new to the topic or seeking deeper understanding, this resource will help you think carefully about justification and its place in the Christian, Christian life. Download your free digital copy today@solamedia.org offers

African American Baptist Scholar

so let's go Baptist distinctives now. And I, and I actually changed up how I wanted to work through this by using the Baptist distinctives to demonstrate that African American Baptists are not some sort of splinter group over there. They're really in the thick of what it means to be Baptist.

Lutheran Representative

Yeah.

African American Baptist Scholar

So we think of freedom of conscience. Freedom, liberty of conscience. So this is the Fundamental Baptist is distinctive. So each individual person is responsible before God under the supreme lordship of Jesus Christ. And no church, political state, family member or other person can represent an individual before God. So but if you think about the Anabellum period, this, this means that someone's master did not represent them before God.

Lutheran Representative

How about that?

African American Baptist Scholar

So what the master said of them is not the final word on them. What God says about them and their relationship to God based upon Christ is the final wor on them. It wasn't the fact that the Constitution later said that they're three fifths of a person. It was the fact that God has sent his son to die for them. They are now sons and daughters of the king.

Lutheran Representative

Yeah, yeah.

African American Baptist Scholar

The true king.

Host/Moderator

Applying the riches of the Reformation to the modern church. This is White Horse Zen, a weekly roundtable discussion about theology and culture.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

Poor Protestant traditions are represented on the White Horse Inn. We've had for 30 years this roundtable with Baptist, Lutheran, Anglican and Reformed representatives. And since it's the 250th anniversary of this country, we wanted to talk about how our traditions came to the United States or how they came to the colonies and what is still in our DNA today from immigrants and slaves who came to be so much a part of our traditions in America. We'll ask these questions together. And Bob Hiller, our resident Lutheran, why don't we start with you?

Lutheran Representative

All right. Well, great. So I think it's appropriate to start with Lutheranism in America as it is the least influential denomination of this country represented at this table, but very populous. Yeah, yeah. We're pretty fascinating stuff.

African American Baptist Scholar

So.

Lutheran Representative

All right, I'll see how Quick, I can do this. I'm going to give you the German immigrants and what they've. Their impact.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

You're going to leave out the scandal.

Lutheran Representative

I am, because I don't know much about it. So I've got a good buddy who I reached out to, saying, hey, give me some resources. So if you want the Scandinavian stuff, he recommended two books, Eugene Feld's Norwegian Lutheranism in America, which is totally out of print and super expensive, but you'll like it is what he said. And then Mark Granquist just recently wrote a book, Lutherans in A New History. And that's one I haven't got my hands on yet, but I'm looking forward to it. So that would kind of give you the Norwegian picture, but the German picture is going like this. 17th century Lutherans kind of start to trickle over, and you get some Germans kind of along the east coast and moving on into the 18th century. They realize there's a bunch of Lutherans here, but there's no organization for it. So there's a gentleman by the name of Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg who starts to organize Germans together, trying to get a bunch of Lutheran people together. The Lutherans at this point are finding anybody for church who can speak German. They didn't really come over here primarily for religious reasons at this time. So Muhlenberg works really hard to organize them all together, and they get something together called the General Council, I believe. And so it's a bunch of different groups. It starts with the Pennsylvania Ministerium. That's. That's Muhlenberg's ministerium. And then some people up in New York say, oh, well, we want to be a part of that. And Muhlenberg says, well, I'm not so sure. They said, well, we'll start our own ministerium. And Muhlenberg says, well, you can't do that. We have the Pennsylvania Ministerium. So we start getting all these little, like, pockets of Lutheran ministeriums and denominations. At one point, I. I believe I read there were 52 of them. This is. This is madness. And so what Muhlenberg says is, all right, we got to organize this thing. And so they put this General Council together. And within the General Council, you've got a variety of confessional attitudes. In Germany at this time, confessionalism is coming back into vogue, and people are trying to figure out, how do we engage the Lutheran confessions in light of the new learning we have going on, in light of rationalism. This is the time when pietism is taking a great hold in Germany. What Are the Confessions, what role do they play in this? Well, coming over to America, the question becomes, what role do the Confessions play in the new world? And really, maybe we just need new Confessions and maybe we need to update the Lutheran Confessions. And so within the General Council, what you have is two groups, some who are very confessional and see the confessional documents as sort of the teaching documents of the church. And then you've got another group led by a gentleman, unfortunately named Samuel Simon Schmucker, which is just a fantastic last name for insults. And Schmucker must be good.

African American Baptist Scholar

That's right.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

That's right.

Lutheran Representative

He says, oh, no, no, no. We need to kind of update the Augsburg Confession and make it new so it fits in with everybody here. I mean, there's a lot of new things going on over here that are kind of exciting, you know, and so we want to be a part of it.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

He liked Charles Finney, right?

Lutheran Representative

Yeah, he did, yes. And so they're very interested in what's happening with the Awakening and things like this gentleman by the name of Charles Porterfield Kraut. Great book. The Conservative Reformation, if you can get your hands on that thing, is fantastic. Great. Krauth vehemently opposes this. And so there's this big debate going on. All right, in the meantime, while all of this is happening with the General Council, there are other Germans who are deciding it's time to come over. These ones are from Saxony. You got to remember, Germany at this time is not one big country. It's a bunch of little states basically, that are kind of loosely associated, and they have their own little kingdoms and their own kings. In Prussia, the worst thing you can possibly imagine has taken place. There is a reformed king. Oh, heavens. And he decides. He marries a Lutheran woman because, you know, wisdom. And so he decides. What we need to do is we need to unite these split churches in Germany. When 30 years war is over, we're done with that. We need to have one united church in Prussia. And so they impose a liturgy on the church and basically say, this is how you will preach and worship. And from our perspective, I don't know the reform perspective, but from the Lutheran perspective, we lost the way which the sacrament was spoken about, all that stuff. You weren't allowed to speak of it in a Lutheran way. What's more, if you did, you'd go to jail. There was actual consequences for this. And so there's a lot of Lutherans in the area who are saying this is dangerous stuff. Among them, in another state is called Saxony. There's a guy named Martin Stefan. And Stefan is noticing now that that kind of thinking is creeping over into their own. Their own Saxony. And so he's like, we need to. We need to leave. Well, Martin Stefan's a fascinating character who's very influential. You want to think of German, European celebrity preacher. Everybody likes him. He's got a huge following and there's some indiscretions. So he's got a lot of people who are very upset with him in the higher places, and they're seeking to arrest him. And Stefan says, all this theological oppression, we need to leave. And so he decides to take a team with him to America. Among the people with him, there is a guy named C.F.W.

Host/Moderator

walther.

Lutheran Representative

Walther is just this phenomenal force in American Lutheranism. But Walter had gone to college to become a pastor. His dad's pastor says, you're going to be a pastor. Walter gets very sick while in college, is up for. Laid up for six months and just devours. Luther gets really caught up in sort of the confessional revival and says, I love Luther. I love the Confessions. But he's also very concerned about his own soul. He's worried that he's not pious enough, he's not holy enough. He's very influenced by pietism. So he. He writes a letter. Someone says, you should write this Stefan guy to see what he can help you with. And Stefan writes him back with spiritual counsel. That just changes Walter's life. He realizes, oh, the gospel's for me. Stefan says, you got the law down, you got it figured out, but you need to know the gospel. And distinguishes law and gospel for Walter, which will be very significant. That's the whole thing for him.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

Treatise on this.

Lutheran Representative

It's the go to the book on law and gospel from American Lutheranism. And so they come over, they get over here. Turns out on the way over, Stefan is elected bishop there on the boat. And they all believe that. It gets really sacerdotal, to the point where it's almost as if if we don't have Stefan, we don't have access to God. Well, it turns out Stephan doesn't leave old habits behind. He gets accused of mismanagement of funds. He gets accused of mistreatment of women, indiscretions, and is kicked out. So they take him, they put him on a boat, and they push him across the Mississippi river from Missouri to Illinois and kind of wave at him as he gets off for his excommunication. But then they realize, we don't know what we're going to do. And for two years, they're trying to figure out, do we even still have a church here? We don't have a bishop any longer who's got the power in the church. And this becomes a very significant moment for Missouri Senate Lutheranism in confessional. Lutheranism in America. They have this thing called the Altenburg debate. And the debate is, who has the power in the church, the laity or the clergy. A guy named Marbach comes, and he represents the laity. He's a lawyer. And Walter comes in representing the clergy. So they sit down to have the debate. This will solve the problem. And Walther stands up and says, it's the wrong question. He says, this is a law question. We need to deal with this from the perspective of the gospel. What is it that makes the church? It's not the power of the laity, it's not the power of the clergy, but it's the preaching of the word and sacrament. And Marbach says, well, do you preach, Walther? And he says, I do. He says, do you administer the sacrament, Walter? He says, I do. And Marbach goes, oh, well, I guess we got a church. It's like, I guess we're fine. So we've got a church here in America. And this is great. Walter starts writing this thing called Der Lutheraner, the Lutheran. And it gets into the hands of another guy whose name. I'll be real quick with this. Another guy whose name is Winiken. Winiken is also trying to organize German Lutherans, is terrified with what's happening with the general counsel. He writes to a guy named Loa over in Germany and says, we need missionaries over here because all the Germans are either becoming German Methodists or they're under the influence of Schmucker and the council. We can't have this. We need confessional Lutheranism. He gets his hands on Walther's Der Lutherner, and he's like, I think the quote is, thank God there are more Lutherans here. They all start coordinating, talking, getting together. They find other disparate Lutheran groups. They start organizing. Finally, mid-1800s, they come together for a few meetings. They get together in Chicago, 1847, and that establishes what we now call the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate, I believe at the time it was called the German Lutheran Senate of Missouri, Ohio, and other states, which just rules right off the tongue. And that's kind of what organized it. That's kind of what got it going. They tried to have some friendship with the general counsel, folks like Krause, but there was a big Debate over predestination. And that's a very significant debate in the history of American Lutheranism. But nonetheless, that's kind of how we come about. That's where my tradition comes from. That's pretty broad, but I think I can stop there.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

So taking the confessional view of unconditional election, Rod Rosenblatt used to say was like how the Missouri Synod was formed.

Lutheran Representative

That is correct.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

Over against the Buffalo.

Lutheran Representative

The Buffalo Senate. The Iowa. Well, the Iowa Senate is the kind of almost the ELCA of the day, but yeah, because what they were saying was God elects in view of faith intuit fide, so God knows who will believe. That's how he decides to elect. And Walther vehemently fights against this. His stuff on predestination is Lutheran confessionalism at its finest. It's worth reading. So that and his stuff, interesting stuff on priesthood of all believers. I would recommend that sort of stuff, too.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

I love hearing about Walder because not knowing the history until getting to know you. Years ago, I knew the book.

Lutheran Representative

Yeah.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

I was like, okay, who's this CFW Walder person? I didn't know Lutheran history in America. And then he's also. And we'll talk about this some other time. Really important for ministry to survivors. There's some stories in his life of what he did pastorally to women who were abused by their husbands, protecting children.

Lutheran Representative

Interesting.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

And he has this whole thing about law and gospel and how that applies pastorally in a situation. Interesting. So I've always had this great respect for Walder and to hear the background is awesome. Thank you.

Lutheran Representative

Pretty cool stuff. So that's Lutheranism. And by the way, there are about nine of us throughout the whole thing. Nine Lutherans in America at this time. I just named most of them. So it has not. Lutheranism has not had the impact on America that your traditions have. Just because the reasons why we came over, religious persecution wasn't like the primary thing, the places they located. It's just not the same influence. I think the biggest thing is Muhlenberg. I believe his son was one of Washington's generals, which is kind of a cool thing, but you just don't have a lot of Lutheranism. So it'd be curious for me to hear the rest of you guys in here.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

But today, how many lutherans are there?

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

12.

Lutheran Representative

12, Mike. You know, I don't know. In the Missouri Synod, I think we're just hovering around 2 million. I think we're less than that now. And then the Wisconsin Senate is smaller than that. But still, I Don't think that's right. I've got to check.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

Yeah.

Lutheran Representative

More than us then ELCA is. Is. I still believe the. But they've been declining significantly. Like everybody has the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Evangelical Luther Church of America, which is the far more progressive side of Lutheranism. And I would suggest not particularly confessional or we'll stop there. But yeah. So that's kind of where we're at.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

The story of Lutheranism. And then Anglicanism in America is the other extreme because Anglicanism tried to set itself up as the national religion, which is ironic and we'll get to the whole story. But there's a chart early on where it had the President and the presiding Bishop and then it had governors and bishops and then you had the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops, which are, you know, the senators and House of Representatives. So you actually had this. They had set up a national cathedral in D.C. so it's quite the opposite of the. At least the gumption to try to do that. So that. That old chart is amazing to look at. But Anglicanism in America starts in 1607 in Jamestown. That's where the first service took place. And it was under the ship's sails and they prayed through the Book of Common Prayer. And many people look at that as the first Christian liturgy conducted in the English colonies. By the end of the 17th century you had Anglicanism was established in churches in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and even New York City. And they were not marginal outposts. Some of those churches still exist today are some of the most vibrant theological and ecclesiastical commitments come from the Elizabethan settlement which was in 1559 and it was highlighting Protestant doctrine and retaining but retaining Catholic ecclesiastical structures, the historic episcopate. So you had genuine reformational theology with these structures. And that's going to become important in the story. Colonial Anglicanism inherited that settlement comes with it with along with Richard Hooker on the laws of ecclesiastical polity, which was the intellectual framework. But he highlighted scripture is the authority. And everyone talks about the three legged stool of Hooker like well, he's got three Scripture, tradition and reason. And they're all equal. He's like, they're not even close Scripture. And then where scripture's not clear, let's look at traditional. And where Scripture and tradition aren't clear, let's use reason. So it was a pecking order. It was not a three legged stool. And so the challenge. There's one distinctive challenge for Anglicanism in the United States which is that the colonies had no bishops and Anglican Polity requires bishops for ordination, confirmation, and no bishops set foot in America during the entire colonial period. And so what you have is a chronic clergy shortage because you have to go all the way back to England, where you die on the way back to get ordained. And what that means is that it left colonial Anglicanism dependent on lay leadership. And this is the hallmark for American Anglicanism, which was unusual in a tradition that holds to a historic episcopate in the role of clergy. So you have this really amazing. It's very ironic. And I'll come back to that in a second. So that's just highlighting clergy shortage. Why did they come here? It wasn't to flee persecution. It wasn't Puritans because they're fleeing persecution, Baptists seeking liberty of conscience, Lutherans because they're an ethnic community preserving their language and liturgy. I'm not trying to minimize all of those.

Lutheran Representative

This is not the reason.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

But Anglicanism came because it was the established religion of English colonies. The motivation was expansion, settlement and mission. And so the church didn't choose America. The Empire brought it.

Lutheran Representative

Interesting, interesting.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

And then the revolution. So then you have this revolution taking place. And this is one reason why in the United States, our denomination is called the Episcopal Church, because it's easier to talk about the structure of government than Anglicanism, which is the Church of England, when you're having a revolution of that.

Lutheran Representative

So that's so interesting.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

The American Revolution created an existential crisis for colonial Anglicanism. And they faced this impossible choice, which is loyalty to their ordination vows or loyalty to the new republic. And a majority of the American clergy were Loyalists, and many of them left during and after the war. And then you have Samuel Seabury argued against the revolution. New York clergyman becomes the first bishop, but he argues against the Revolution. You have Alexander Hamilton, a lay clergyman who was clearly in favor of the revolution. And so clerical loyalism paired with lay revolutionary leadership collides.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

Singing God Save the King Yes.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

So the most prominent revolutionary Anglican was George Washington. And he was not a rare case. And the paradox of this is interesting because the tradition most associated with the English Crown produced more leaders of the American Revolution than any other one. And so what happened was laity ran the vestries, laity managed the parishes, governed the church's temporal affairs. And so when the political crisis came, Anglican laymen were already practicing self governing. And you can see hints of that in the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention that was leading up to it. But then you have the revolution. The prayer book became a political liability because you had to do prayers for the king, the royal family, in the middle of a revolution. So some people would omit it. This was not a minor editorial problem. It was an act of treason. If you did this during a revolution, praying for the king. And so the crisis forced a creative reckoning. And that's where the formation of the Episcopal Church comes up. In 1784, Samuel Seabury, who I just from of Connecticut actually, sorry, he was the one who opposed the revolution, traveled to Scotland and was consecrated, ordained as a bishop by Scottish bishops in Scotland who received their orders from bishops who had themselves been marginalized for reasons of political conscience. And so they were separated from the threat of England. There was some conflict there. And so the first was through a Scottish line. And then the next two were William White and Samuel Provost. They were consecrated by Archbishop of Canterbury in 1787. And so you actually have these two distinct lines of succession. The first one from Scottish and the other two from English. And then in 1789 you have the General Convention which brought these strands together, organized the Protestant Episcopal Church, which was the official Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. And now they were called the Episcopal Church with constitutions, canons, a revised Book of Common Prayer, which is the same year that the U.S. constitution was ratified. So the story of Anglicanism and the story of America is just interwoven, especially making a revolt against the church that was the national religion, national church, and then actually trying to become that very thing. But the relationship between church and state was fundamentally redrawn. American Anglicanism had to be persuasive and could not compel. And so what you see, what was gained, what was gained in this whole story with the revolution, clergy shortage, lay leadership was self governing, mission minded and shaped by the principles that you had to persuade and you couldn't compel. And so in the marketplace of religions you had to be, you had to compete. Yeah, it was built in the Anglicanism in the United States. What was gained? I think? Well, the defining tension is between church order and evangelical freedom, Episcopal authority, which there was none or very little, and lay self governance. And that's rooted into the United States Episcopal, Anglican expression. We have a House of deputies. When you were talking about the distinction House of Deputies and a House of Bishops and nothing gets passed unless both agree on it. There's a significant role for a laity in the Episcopal Church, especially in America. When you start talking about the debate early on and how insignificant the role plays in America, the counter to that is what Anglicanism was doing and dealing with. But the same debate where authority lies.

Lutheran Representative

Well, it's so interesting because both of our traditions come from a place where it's so tied to the state. I mean, Germany, Lutheranism, this is very ingrained in the culture. And then to come over here where you can't compel, you have to persuade people to believe, which is, I mean, theologically for Lutheranism, that's exactly what we would say. But practically throughout those few centuries. Yeah, you can't force anyone to believe. It's just if you don't, we'll drown you. So know, it's like, yeah, it's a compelling argument. So it's fascinating to come into a place where that sort of thinking is really put to the test for both traditions. Yeah.

Host/Moderator

Most of us consume more Christian media than ever. Podcasts, videos, social media. And yet slowing down and really thinking feels harder than it used to. Our newest project was designed with this in mind. Introducing the Sola newspaper, a quarterly print publication featuring articles on theology, the historic creeds and confessions, and reflections for the Christian life. Delivered straight to your mailbox for free. Subscribe@solarmedia.org newspaper and we'll send it to you at no cost. Read it, mark it up, leave it somewhere someone will find it. The Solar newspaper, free today@solarmedia.org newspaper.

African American Baptist Scholar

I guess the contrast to that is the Baptist, where all we have is persuasion. That's right. So, yeah, just to start the Baptist story in America, this takes us back to 1638, the First Baptist Church in Providence, Rhode Island. In fact, people still go to that church and visit it regularly.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

What dates again? 16.

African American Baptist Scholar

Yeah, 1638.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

Okay.

African American Baptist Scholar

And that's Roger Williams, and that's the person who everybody talks about when they talk about Baptist life and its beginnings in America. I was asked to talk about African American Baptists in particular, but it's kind of hard to talk about African American Baptist as a sub dominant group without first talking about the dominant group that sort of set the table for their emergence in America. And so we start with Roger Williams there, First Baptist Church, Providence, Rhode Island. And then by 1701, the Middle Colonies, they really become the hub of particular Baptists. And then six years later, in 1707, the Philadelphia Baptist association is formed. And that's formed out of five churches in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and then Delaware. And they had actually a very robust missionary strategy to take the gospel everywhere again, because we're not used to having, you know, a place where the. The government is, is kind of intertwined with what we do. Yeah, yeah, we're the ones who push back against that which I'll get to our distinctives in a moment. But by 1760, the Philadelphia association, they had a presence in Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, and they added Virginia and West Virginia. And then by 1751 the Philadelphia association, they began to expand down into the Carolinas. And so then that's in particular Charleston, where that's one of the first Southern Baptist churches to emerge there. This emerged in Charleston in 1750s is actually significant because this environment is where is a context of the first Great Awakening. So we have Baptist life spreading all throughout the colonies, north and south and now pushing West Pennsylvan and so forth. And this is the moment when many African Americans became believers. There were several missiological attempts to engage people of African descent before that, but a lot of those were very liturgical expressions of the Christian faith. But if you think about it, people of African descent are an oral people and their illiteracy was necessitated by the law code. So the idea of having of people who are oral and their illiteracy was a function of law try to do liturgy, it just didn't sit well. So then Baptists come along and they had some success, you know, because of their style of worship, because it was more free and expressive. And if you think about African traditional expression, it's. There's a lot of improvisation there. It's a beautiful thing. And that improvisation is not willy nilly, it's actually very harmonious. And so their harmony yet non uniformity in cultural expression really found its roots in Baptist life in many ways in Baptist worship. Not even to mention that there was any an initial anti slavery sort of ethos amongst Baptists and also amongst Methodists, which is why early African Americans who were involved in denominational life became Baptist and Methodist disproportionately. Although we know that there was some shifting going on. And by 1864 or 5, the Southern Baptist Convention emerged as a slaveholding convention.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

I don't want to slow down the story, but that's just an amazing point that you're making in history. That's why I love hearing these things of how does the liturgy and the law play out in the development of a church? And it's just spectacular. Never knew that.

African American Baptist Scholar

So let's go back to succinct just now. And I actually changed up how I wanted to work through this by using the Baptist distinctives to demonstrate that African American Baptists are not some sort of splinter group over there. They're really in the thick of what it means to be Baptist.

Lutheran Representative

Yeah.

African American Baptist Scholar

So we think of freedom of conscience. Freedom, freedom, Liberty of conscience. So this is the fundamental Baptist distinctive. So each individual person is responsible before God under the supreme lordship of Jesus Christ. And no church, political state, family member or other person can represent an individual before God. So but if you think about the antebellum period, this, this means that someone's master did not represent them before God.

Lutheran Representative

How about that?

African American Baptist Scholar

So what the master said of them is not the final word on them. What God says about them and their relationship to God based upon Christ is the final word on them. It wasn't the fact that the Constitution later said that they're three fifths of a person. It was the fact that God has sent his son to die for them. They are now sons and daughters of the king.

Lutheran Representative

Yeah, yeah.

African American Baptist Scholar

The true king, the Lord. And so, and then as we, there's a, you know, I, as a, as a Baptist, I'm always talking about preacher, the believer. But this is, this is always, this is a very significant point and very significant emphasis in Baptist life because this was, it was significant that every believer could read the Bible for themselves because people were getting the Bible interpreted for them in ways that are manipulative with the express purpose of utilizing Scripture to keep people docile and in their bondage. And so it was a curious moment when the master would read a story and then utilize it as a means of keeping a bit of slavery in the mouths of his slaves. But then the slaves would go back to the invisible institution, you know, the, the Hush harbor, the place where they would go and worship in the corners of the plantations. And then they would retell the stories. But their telling of the story was actually more commensurate with the intent of the. The divine author.

Lutheran Representative

Yeah.

African American Baptist Scholar

Than what the master gave them because the Bible is alive and active and sharper than any double edged sword. So the priests of the believer, freedom of conscience, these Baptist distinctives played a very powerful part of people being able to break out of the social political context and really commune with God in a very intimate and way. So believers, baptism is also part of this. This is a Baptist distinctive as well. So baptism was actually reminiscent of African purification rituals that were done in rivers. The fact that baptisms were happening during the Awakenings was. It was familiar. So, but I would say with missiologist Hendrik Kramer, this idea of these ritualistic purifications were subversively fulfilled is a Kramer language subversively fulfilled by the Christian faith. So there was something that was cultural that was actually, say that's familiar but then because of the faith, it was actually given its ultimate meaning, its maximal meaning. And so the idea of believers baptism was actually a very, a nice bridge for them that Christianity actually fulfilled. And everything about regenerative church membership, another Baptist, distinctive congregational governments, local church autonomy. This means that African Americans who would not, who would not otherwise be ordained in denominations, they could actually start their own churches.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

Yeah.

African American Baptist Scholar

So they didn't have to be ordained by anybody else. Believers got together, constituted a church, and then they said, hey, we're going to appoint our leaders. And they were able to worship outside of the watch of their slave masters or other, or other people in that way. So regenerate church membership. And then the ability to constitute local congregations and to develop leadership autonomously was a big part of that. And then religious liberty. So while government should not meddle in the affairs of the church, again Baptist, we didn't forego the opportunity to influence government or to let our faith impact government. And so amongst African Americans, you see the formation of the Underground Railroad, this network of safe houses that allowed people to get from the south to the north to go basically to freedom. This was done through the church networks. And so this was against the Fugitive Slave act and they were moving against that and even abolitionism. We think of Frederick Douglass as a secular figure, but he was a person deeply driven by his faith. And so anyway, angry that they weren't

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

in this country called Christian. It is so anti Christian.

Host/Moderator

Yeah.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

I mean, I'm struck by how driven he was by a kind of Christian conviction that America is hypocritical in its profession.

African American Baptist Scholar

Yeah. His famous address, what to a slave is the fourth of July, he was saying, you know what, we were all excited about freedom and you've asked me to come speak on this day, but what is this day for us? There's no freedom here. There's no liberty. And so, so he was very, he had, he had a theological bur in his saddle based upon what it means to be meant to be an image bearer of God. And so here I'll, I'll kind of give some formation of the National Baptist Convention real quick. And so, so the, so there was a, this emergence of African American Christians. Many times they're worshiping within white churches, white led churches, but in segregated pews. There's all kinds of stuff that would go on. They're reading slave codes after the church hours from the pulpits, almost utilizing the authority of the pulpit to sort of enforce the slave code. There was segregated Lord's Supper, you know, that which God has was using to demonstrate the people of God and the way with a broken body and shed blood that brings us together as a family. That was used as a medium of segregating, stratifying the people of God.

Lutheran Representative

It's literally what First Corinthians says. Don't do that. Literally, that's what he says.

African American Baptist Scholar

So it's with a broken heart.

Lutheran Representative

Steroids for sure.

African American Baptist Scholar

And so it's with a broken heart that Elias Camp Morris, he was the first president of the National Baptist Convention in his inaugural address in 1895. Because there were some associations that were emerging, but several different associations, like the National Baptist Education Convention, the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention of the United States, the American National Baptist Convention, they all came together out of a conviction and a concern for missions and education. They came together to form the National Baptist Convention and their inaugural presidential address done by Elias Camp Morris. E.C. morris is. How you say his name.

Lutheran Representative

He.

African American Baptist Scholar

He was a man who understood the necessity of the emergence of that denomination or that convention. But he was broken by its. The ne. The necessity of its existence. And he was so big on the brotherhood of man. He says this Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Not white sinners, nor black sinners, nor red sinners, but sinners. He goes on to explicitly state that Christ is not the savior of any particular race or class, but whoever may. Will take the water of life freely. And so he was saying, like, we have to exist because we have to worship in dignity and worship as image bearers. But we are worshiping in this way, in this convention because we've been excluded, we've been pushed out. We haven't been given that dignity. So it's better for us to do it this way. So that's the emergence of the National Baptist Convention, you know, sort of running parallel with the Southern Baptist Convention. And so here, that's the beginnings of Baptist in America.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

Okay.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

And just because. Let us do it for you. But you literally wrote the book on much of what you just said in Swing Low, Volume one, which is the history of.

African American Baptist Scholar

Yeah. So Swing Low is the. The history of black Christianity, United States of America.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

And volume two is the anthology.

African American Baptist Scholar

Yes.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

So make sure for all the. All the listeners are hearing this and going, well, I want to hear more about that. Well, there's two volumes you can snag on that.

African American Baptist Scholar

Yeah, appreciate that.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

Yeah. The history and then the readings.

African American Baptist Scholar

Yeah, yeah.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

The Reformed in origin were spread out throughout Europe, so it tended to be a city thing more than a national thing. It grew up in cities on The Continent. I guess the best place to start here is with the English first. And in the 1640s, the Presbyterians, those who believed that the church should have Presbyterian government, were Church of England. And the Anglicans too. The Anglicanism, until Archbishop Laud was Calvinistic, all the archbishops of Canterbury were Reformed and they considered themselves the Reformed Church of England. But the Presbyterians wanted to change the form of government and they also wanted, because there had now erupted the Arminian controversy. The canons of the Synod of Dort in 1618, 19 settled in the Dutch Reformed Church the foundation of the commitment of Reformed Christians to Calvinistic rather than Arminian doctrine. But they want to do the same thing in England and add to the 39 articles, articles on that controversy that had just erupted. So they wanted change in church government. They also wanted to really nail down their opposition to Arminianism. And so for a while, under Parliament, the Church of England was Presbyterian. And they wrote up the Westminster Confession and Catechisms again under government. The government called it, the Parliament called it. And then Cromwell came in and unseated all the Presbyterians from Parliament, put in his Congregational independent church folks. And so Presbyterians were actually, it felt like they were closer to the Episcopalians than they were to the Congregationalists. They thought Congregationalists were, you know, that independency was the source of all sectarianism and pietism and so forth. So anyway, it was the Congregationalists who came to America. They founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The separatists were the first who were here. They were the Mayflower folks. The Mayflower folks were not Puritans. They didn't want to purify the Church of England. They wanted to leave it. They were separatists, the Congregationalists. In New England, until 1845, the Congregational Church was the state church of Massachusetts. So very deep roots there. That's sort of the English. And then you have the Scottish, who obviously were Presbyterian and founded Princeton. And John Witherspoon came from Scotland, was the president a minister and was the president there. And he taught a whole host of future Supreme Court justices. He taught James Madison. Madison became a Presbyterian. And on the one hand, they didn't want to be independents. On the other hand, they didn't want a state church. So they didn't even where they were in the majority, like in New Jersey, for example, they didn't form a state church. In fact, what happened, it's kind of fascinating here. In 1788, the American Presbyterian Church revised the Westminster Confession. And here's the difference. Here's what they revised chapter 23 on the Civil Magistrate, 1646. The original Westminster version says the civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Yet he hath authority, and it is his duty to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God truly settled, administered, and observed for the better effecting whereof he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide whatever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God. So it's the same as you would have in the it's the Church of

Lutheran Representative

England that sounds strange.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

Here's the American revision in 1788. Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, or in the least interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of the civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions without violence and danger. And as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder the due exercise thereof among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians according to their profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever, and to take orders that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance. And then you have the Dutch. The Dutch came over very early. In fact, New York was called New Amsterdam, and it was mainly to establish a beachhead for missions for the Dutch Reformed Church. And it was basically today the. The successor of that is the Reformed Church in America. And once Britain took over New York, most of the Dutch Reformed became Anglicans. Their liturgy was basically in English, was the Book of Common Prayer. So that was natural. The same happened with the French Huguenots when they came over like to Charleston, and they pretty quickly became assimilated into the Anglican Fold as well. It was like, this is our next of kin. When they didn't have. When they wanted something in English. So that's what we get to the Dutch. Another wave of the Dutch coming over was similar to your Germans. They came over partly because they didn't like the state of the state church. It had become a state church and it was the dominant church. But they never wanted it to be a state church. And they started seeing signs of rationalism and so forth. They also saw pietism. And this group wanted to be confessional. So they came over in a couple of waves all the way up to World War II. After World War II. And that's the denomination I'm a part of, is the fruit of that very confessional. Also. Very little impact. Because there was a worry that even if their children learned English, they would become Methodists or Baptists.

Lutheran Representative

Yep, we had the same.

Reformed/Presbyterian Representative

And so that was the difference between the RCA and the crc. We have our own schools, Christian schools. And I remember one of my friends in seminary even saying, first time lived in western Michigan and a lot of Dutch Reformed people there. And he said growing up there in his Christian school, a Presbyterian family moved in. And he asked his mom, what's a Presbyterian? And she said, I don't know. I think they're Methodists. The answer to everything was, I think they're Methodists. And he and I laughed because we were in seminary together at a seminary called Westminster. Yeah. So a lot of different nationalities there. But also that difficult relationship between the pietist Puritan wing and the more confessional wing. Very definitely in the history of American Reformed and Presbyterian life, to the point where it led finally to the split of the Old School and New School Presbyterians. The New School basically leading to progressive liberal Christianity. Charles Finney first. And then all the way to people denying the substitutionary atonement and so forth. And the old school like Princeton Seminary, that was committed to the confession.

Lutheran Representative

So you guys should have all become Lutherans.

Host/Moderator

That's it.

Lutheran Representative

That's what I was going to end it.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

No, I'm just kidding.

Lutheran Representative

This is great.

Episcopal/Anglican Representative

Don't be faithful to your American heritage and come to the Episcopal Church.

Lutheran Representative

I think this is an interesting evangelistic effort from all of us. Yeah. No, this is great. This is really fascinating to see some of the similarities, some of the same questions. Questions coming up from. Because of the new world, America is such a unique thing. Do whatever you want to do. Yeah. And what does that mean for a church and our theological convictions? And so we continue to pray for the faithfulness of the church here in the country and thankful to be able to do that kind of these, have these kind of conversations and and pursue some sort of unified work here in the in the country, but also working really hard still to to maintain our distinctives and fight for the truth of our confessions.

Host/Moderator

This is a production of Sola Media. This podcast is made possible by generous listeners like you. If you enjoy the show and want to help us continue this work, consider giving today@solarmedia.org donate.