Hello. My name is James Bratt. I'm a professor of history at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I'm going to be talking briefly today about Calvinistic influences in the United States. Over the past two centuries. obviously this is a very big topic, so I'm going to be giving you a rough outline a bird's eye view from way up in the sky. In the hopes that it can help you do your own reading and study. up closer to the ground. It's a big topic, but a fascinating one. So, let's start. I'm going to divide my presentation into two parts. one the 19th century and the other the 20th century. In the 19th century, we see three lines of Calvinistic influence in American public life. Each supported by a coherent and full Calvinist or reform theology. In the 20th century on the other hand. Reformed theology as a coherent whole is present only in smaller kind of bre, breakoff denominations. Calvinist theology is still of interest in Presbyterian and reform seminaries, but in broader popular movements, we see its theme segmented off and wrapped up with what we might call outside materials. So, let's look at the 19th century first. Calvin's influence in 19th century America, I think we can see dividing into three different streams. Each one aimed at one of John Calvin's orginial principles or goals. And each one was concentrated in 19th century America in a particular region. the first region we'll look at is New England. And it's diaspora, the spread of New Englanders over the 19th century across upstate New York, across the upper parts of the Midwest. This band of New England or we call it, Yankee Immigration, carried along the old puritan, colonial dream of a righteous society. Not just born again, or saved people, but an ideal of a bible commonwealth grounded in a covenanted community. But now in the United States in the 19th century, of course, we have religious disestablishment. The so called separation of church and state. So if you're going to have a righteous society. You're going to have to proceed by voluntary organizations and people like Lyman Beecher and his daughter Harriet Beecher Stowe, the great novelist of Uncle Tom's Cabin organize these these campaigns to promote revival and moral social reforms. Some of these were agencies to promote home eh, home missions. To found colleges and seminaries to reform the prisons. The more controversial organizations were aimed at prohibiting alcohol, or the so called temperance movement. And most controversial of all of course was anti slavery. Lymon Beecher was a great champion of temperance. Harriett Beecher Stowe of course, was the great anti-slavery novelist. But even they were fairly conservative compared to the real radicals that came out of this movement. And those were the outright abolitionist. The third party people and so forth. So the New England Band and the the dream of a righteous society. The second stream we can look at our, our more in the middle stage. The, the middle band of America. rooted in the, Presbyterian and reformed churches in New, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And here we have a dream of constitutional order, hearkening back to that classic Calvinist demonstration in France, as well as England and Germany. About constitutional rights. In these states, and in the western movement that came out of these states we have, we see high levels of ethnic and religious pluralism. There's no hope of any one denomination, any one theology dominating the entire society as was true in New England. Plus, as we move west, we see high levels of turbulence, disorder, often outright violence on the frontier. So, what's a Calvinist to do in this kind of environment? what they are to do, or what they did do, was to try to use a reason a rational basis for law that might uphold order. Creates stability and preserve liberty amid a contentious and fragmented society. The great model here is the Scots Presbyterian pastor, John Witherspoon, who came over to New Jersey in the 1760s to become president of Princeton College. His greatest student was James Madison, who was more than any other single person, the author of the United States Constitution. And, when you look at the the United States constitution in one light, you can see it as a secularized version, a radically secularized version of Calvinism. Trusting no one. Taking self interest or sin very seriously, not looking for any perfected society, but rather creating a way that we can all get along. another way that these middles band Calvinists middle-state Calvinists, worked was through education. Prior to the Civil War in the United States, there were some 200 colleges, or universities, 2 3rds of them had been founded by New Engl, New England Congregationalists or Presbyterian churches and, and laymen. and what this did was generate a huge body of local leadership across the landscape of America. local leaders trying to institute moral order, a stable, progressive, careful society. the great teacher here, the exemplary man was Charles Hodge. Who is for 50 years a professor of Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He trained more ministers and therefore more local leaders than any other single individual in mid 19th century America. So, education and constitutionalism. The third section we treat is in the lower south. Where we have a model of a radical separation between church and state in the interest of maintaining the purity of the church. Now the south of course, is premised upon slave labor. And is characterized by elite white rule with a very sharply hierarchical society. A very steep pyramid. This society is pervaded by domination and it is pervaded by the threat, the constant threat of violence needed to uphold the slave order. What is a Calvinist to do in this circumstance? the church cannot prevail against this hierarchical society. So, frankly, it doesn't try. Rather a leading South Carolina theologian James Hen, Henley Thornwell, creates a new theory to justify what Southern Presbyterians are going to do in the circumstance. He creates a theory called The Spirituality of the Church. It stipulates two things. First of all, everything related to gospel witness, must be done under direct ecclesiastical supervision. In other words, no para church evangelistic or educational enterprises a la New England. Secondly, the church may legitimately speak only to so called spiritual things. Not to civil affairs. Now, since slavery is defined as entirely a civil institution, ordained by the state. This means that the church in the South, has nothing to say about slavery. Now individual Christians may try to ameliorate the practices of the institution on a voluntary basis. But the church as church is a corporate body, has no witness on slavery. Instead the church is idealized as being kept pure. A pure island of love and orderliness, amid an indelibly and incorrigibly harsh and sordid world. So the three streams of the 19th century. When we move to the 20th century, we see Calvinist theology more diffused in the larger Presbyterian and congregational denominations. Calvinist theology as a complete and coherent whole, still controls some smaller. Kind of break off denominations like the Orthodox Presbyterian church, the Christian Reform church, some parts of the Presbyterian church in America. But in the big so-called mainline churches we have a more diffused sense of Calvinism. and particularly in the broader culture, we see Calvinist themes sort of spinning off separately. Joining or mixing in with some other materials to influence American society. we can look especially at the great along the dividing line of the great liberal fundamentalist argument, across the 20th century in the United States. So, on the liberal side of the ledger, we see the social gospel. The social gospel it's greatest single voice was Walter Rauschenbusch, a New York Baptist clergyman and, and seminary professor. But the strongest rank and file of the social gospel movement came from congregational and Presbyterian churches and their leadership. The social gospel said this, look it, we're all pretty good decent people, we church goers. We don't need to be born again so much as to take now our religious energies and devote them entirely to taming and correcting the abuses, the suffering, the injustices of the great industrial machine that is emerged in the post Civil War world. So, what are, what is Jesus call you to do? not to get your soul straight because that's already happened or that perhaps, could be taken for granted, but to measure all things and to dedicate your entire self, body, soul and all its energies to the realization of the Kingdom of God. Nicely, history is progressing upward. history is progress. This is the great progressive era, yeah. so our efforts have a realistic chance of bringing the Kingdom of God closer. On the fundamentalist side, on the other hand, at least in the first half of the 20th century, we see people who are very Much more pessimistic about history, and more alienated from the new order of the industrial city. They thought it was quite unlikely that this world is going to be turned any time soon or ever into the kingdom of our God. Rather they read secular history as degeneration. the later things are, the worse they are. And the sooner the, the, the worse they are soon to be. power is in the hands of the ungodly. Against this fundamentalist rose up to to create a separate witness, almost a whole separate world they developed over the course of the 20th Century. And a couple of their major presuppositions to their major theological commitments drew off classic Calvinism. One was the theory of biblical inerrancy a new upgraded version of the old notion, Calvin's old notion of biblical authority. Now biblical inerrancy coined by the great Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield. biblical inerrancy gave fundamentalists a strong authority with which to stand against, The teachings of science that seem to contradict the classic theology of Scripture or of the Christian tradition. And also gave a strong sense of, thou shalt, or thou shalt not a moral absolutistic stand to take up against moral relativism. Besides biblical inerrancy another key doctrine of the fundamentalist movement was a long term called dispensational premillennialism, dispensational premillennialism. this theory on the one hand broke with traditional reformed understandings. Of God's work in history. Calvin and, and all the reformed tradition says that God has one continuous work from Old Testament to New to the Perusia. and dispensationalists instead chop that up into very different radically segmented acts of God over time. On the other hand, under laying this whole dispensationalist concept is a very strong assertion of a familiar role of Calvinist theme. Mainly God's sovereignty over history. Now it may appear the contrary. that tie, that things are degenerating, that the forces of evil, the forces of secularism, the forces of Atheism or unbelief are gaining power, are gaining control, but dispensationalism says, nonetheless, God is still upholding his rule over history. God still presides as a righteous judge, sure to punish the wicked and reward the faithful at the end of time. A third strand that has very strong reformed or Calvinist echoes in a 20th century America. Is the theological school, the school of social ethics called neo-orthodoxy. Those of you who are Euro of European background are more familiar with connected with Karl Bark and his so called crisis theology. Neo-orthodoxy is the version of crisis theology. for America is represented above all by Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr. children of a German clergyman in Missouri. what the Orthodoxy did was revive the spirit of Augustine and in fact the spirit of Calvin. if not the letter of their theologies. New orthodoxies said, in these hard and harrowing times and it flourishes in the 1930s, 1940s, and the 50s. In the hard and harrowing times of the Great Depression, the total war of World War II. the, the collective evil of Nazi Germany, the purge trials in the Soviet Union, so forth and so on, and in the great tension times of the Cold War. In these difficult times, hard doctrines tell us the truth about our society and ourselves. And the first thing they say is that sin is, and evil are not just a matter of individual bad choices. Sin and evil are structural. They're in the collectivities, they're in the, the framework of things. We sin as individuals, but we also act on the side of evil. sometimes almost necessarily so as part of our collective lives. And secondly, it says that there's no such thing as a finished quality, finished quantity good person. We are all creatures, even the saints among us, are all creatures with mixed and hidden motives. Sometimes, the worst things we do come out of the, our best motivations. I personally summarize Reinhold Niebuhr social ethics this way. beware of sinners, says Reinhold Niebuhr, for they will try to deceive you. But beware especially the saints, for they deceive themselves. this was a gospel tailor made for secular leaders, secular believers. In a very difficult time of of, of American history. The perpetual crisis times of the mid 20th century. So I hope that this rough overview. three streams in the 19th century, three different movements in which Calvinism has an appearance in the 20th century. Gives you a rough map of how the, how the spirit and influence of John Calvin still lives on in the United States. and I hope you'll get down follow this map and explore some of these movements and influences in closer detail. It's a fascinating story. the one that deserves to be better known. Thank you.
