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Commenting on Christendom, culture, history, and other oddities of life from an historic Protestant perspective.

Friday, June 05, 2015

Today in Church History: Old School-New School Division

On June 5, 1837, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. separated into Old School and New School divisions.

The split involved a series of issues related to theology, polity, and social reform (especially debate on the Presbyterian response to slavery). The Old School consisted of doctrinal conservatives mainly in the Mid-Atlantic states and the South; the New Schoolers were progressives concentrated in New York, New England, and the western frontier. The 1837 General Assembly, meeting with an Old School majority, abrogated its 1801 Plan of Union with the Congregationalists, it pronounced that action retroactive, and it thereby declared that four New School Presbyterian synods brought in by that plan “to be out of the ecclesiastical connection of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America.”

This Assembly action launched a 32-year division between Old School and New School Presbyterians. In 1869, the two parties were united in the North, soon after the end of the Civil War. In the words of Princeton historian Lefferts Loetscher, the reunion of 1869 resulted in a “broadening church,” where organizational efficiency eclipsed theological precision. By the close of the nineteenth century, northern Presbyterians would experience both significant growth and advancing secularization.

- John Muether

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Friday, May 29, 2015

Today in Church History: Synod of Dort

On May 29, 1619, the Synod of Dort was adjourned at the conclusion of its one hundred eightieth session.

Convened on November 13, 1618, in the Dutch city of Dordrecht, the international Reformed council answered the Arminian heresy through its canons, arranged according to five heads of doctrine, that affirmed the sovereignty of God in salvation. Contrary to popular modern impressions, the Canons of Dort were not a “rigid statement of monolithic Calvinism,” according to Robert Godfrey. Instead, they should be understood as “a moderate, inclusive compromise drawing all Calvinists together around the essentials of the faith and preventing the movement from fragmenting over peripheral matters.”

The Canons of Dort joined the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism as the three-fold doctrinal standard in the Dutch Reformed tradition. In analyzing the significance of the Synod, Cornelius Van Til wrote, “The followers of Dort, together with their brethren, the followers of Westminster, alone have the wherewithal with which to proclaim the gospel of the sovereign grace of God at all.”

--John Muether

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Monday, May 25, 2015

Today in History: Memorial Day

Memorial Day, the last Monday of May, is the day we honor Americans who gave their lives in military service.

The holiday was originally called Decoration Day and honored soldiers who had died during the Civil War. Immediately after the war, various towns in the North and South began to set aside days to decorate the soldiers’ graves with flowers and flags. Those earliest memorial observances occurred in Waterloo, New York; Columbus, Mississippi; Richmond, Virginia; Carbondale, Illinois; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, and several other places.

The first widespread observance of Decoration Day came on May 30, 1868, which Maj. Gen. John A. Logan proclaimed as a day to honor the dead. General James Garfield (later the twentieth U.S. president) gave a speech at Arlington National Cemetery in remembrance of fallen soldiers, saying that “for love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.” Afterward, 5,000 people helped decorate the graves of more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers.

Over the years the day became an occasion to remember the dead in all American wars, and came to be known as Memorial Day.

On the Thursday before Memorial Day, in a tradition known as “Flags-in,” the soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry place small flags before more than a quarter million gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol twenty-four hours a day to make sure each flag remains standing throughout the weekend. On Memorial Day the president or vice president lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the cemetery.

According to the U.S. flag code, American flags should be flown at half-staff until noon on Memorial Day, then raised to the top of the pole. At 3:00 p.m. local time, all Americans are asked to pause for a moment of remembrance.

American History Parade

1539 - Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto lands in Florida.

1806 - In Kentucky, Andrew Jackson kills lawyer Charles Dickenson in a duel for allegedly insulting Jackson’s wife.

1868 - Memorial Day is widely observed for the first time.

1896 - In New York City the first recorded car accident occurs when a motor wagon collides with a bicycle.

1911 - Ray Harroun wins the first Indianapolis 500 auto race.

1922 - The Lincoln Memorial is dedicated in Washington D.C.

1958 - Unidentified soldiers killed in World War II and the Korean War are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The American Patriot's Almanac: Daily Readings on America

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Saturday, May 23, 2015

"Stram" and The Feast Day of St. Didier


From Forgotten English . . .

Stram

Any sudden, loud and quick sound; so to stram the doors means to shut them with noise and violence. Hence, a bold and unexpected lie that greatly surprises the hearer is called a strammer, and hence also to strammer means to tell great and notorious lies.

Frederick Elworthy’s Specimens of English Dialects; Devonshire Glossary, 1879

The Feast Day of St. Didier

Let me be the first to wish each of my readers a happy feast day of St. Didier!

St. Didier was invoked to protect against liars. A story is told about a preacher who concluded his sermon one Sunday by instructing his congregation to read Mark 17 as background for his next sermon, whose topic would be insincerity. The following week, when he asked how many had read the biblical passage in question, most of the congregants’ hands immediately went up. The preacher looked both shocked and determined, “You are just the people I want to talk to,” he declared, “as there is no ‘Chapter 17’ of Mark!”

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Thursday, May 21, 2015

Today in Church History: Harry Emerson Fosdick


On May 21, 1922, Harry Emerson Fosdick preached the famous sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” from the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church in New York City.
Although a Baptist, Fosdick was serving as the preaching minister of the prominent Fifth Avenue church, and his sermon has been generally regarded as the “Fort Sumter” of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy in the Presbyterian Church. Though ostensibly a plea for tolerance within the northern church, the widely distributed sermon served to warn fundamentalists that they could not “drive out from the Christian churches all the consecrated souls who do not agree with their theory of inspiration.”
In an earlier (1916) letter, J. Gresham Machen had described Fosdick’s preaching as “just dreadful! Just the pitiful stuff about an undogmatic Christianity.” By 1923, Machen would emerge as modernism’s most formidable critic with the publication of Christianity and Liberalism. Fosdick, however, would recede from Presbyterian prominence. In 1925 he resigned his post under pressure, and in 1930 he became pastor of the newly built Riverside Church in New York City.
John Muether

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Monday, May 18, 2015

Today in History: In God We Trust


On May 18, 1908, congress mandated that the motto “In God We Trust” be minted on certain coins. The motto evidences one of the reasons why America is different from her peers: our rights come not from the government or the crown, but from God. This is important because if our rights come from God, then the government can’t take them away. Conversely, if our rights come from the government then the government givith, the government taketh away.

In God We Trust is one of the pillars of what columnist and radio talk show host and columnist Dennis Prager calls The American Trinity: E Pluribus Unum (out of many one), In God We Trust, and Liberty. All three of these appear on our currency and all three of these, taken together, define our country’s values—and it is this value system that makes America exceptional, as Mr. Prager explains in this short video:


--The Catechizer

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Sunday, May 17, 2015

Today in Church History: Carl McIntire

On May 17, 1906, Carl McIntire was born in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

The son of a Presbyterian minister, McIntire followed his mentor, J. Gresham Machen, to Westminster Seminary (where he graduated in 1931) and into the Orthodox Presbyterian Church at its founding in 1936. Soon, however, he would have a falling out with Machen and the "un-American" theology emanating from Westminster, represented in the likes of R. B. Kuiper, John Murray, Ned Stonehouse, and Cornelius Van Til. In 1937 he led an exodus from the OPC and formed the Bible Presbyterian Church and Faith Theological Seminary, committed to a more rigorous form of separatism.

McIntire's fiery combination of fundamentalist theology and conservative politics expanded steadily in popularity during the height of the America's cold war. His Collingswood, New Jersey, church grew to 1,200 members, his Christian Beacon newspaper claimed 100,000 subscribers, and his "Twentieth Century Reformation Hour" was broadcast on over 600 radio stations. Through these media he took on Catholics, communists, and evangelicals " especially Billy Graham. McIntire also led in the formation of the American Council of Christian Churches (1941) and the International Council of Christian Churches (1948).

Eventually, several church splits (largely stemming from his domineering personality) and legal battles with the FCC would greatly diminish his following. He retired after over 60 years in the ministry, and he died on March 20, 2002, at the age of 95.

John Muether

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Sunday, May 10, 2015

Today in History: Mother’s Day

Credit for starting Mother’s Day goes to a schoolteacher named Ana Jarvis. Here campaign to organize a holiday began as a way to honor the memory of her own mother, Anna Maria Reeves Jarvis. The elder Jarvis had devoted much of her life to the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church of Grafton, West Virginia, and in May 1908, at Anna Jarvis’s urging, the church held a service honoring mothers. Anna Jarvis, who lived in Philadelphia, also convinced merchant John Wanamaker to join her cause in establishing Mother’s Day, and he held an afternoon service in his store. Within just a couple of years, the custom had spread to other states.

At one of the first Mother’s Day services, Jarvis distributed white carnations, her mother’s favorite flower. Many people still follow the tradition of giving and wearing carnations on Mother’s Day—white flowers in memory of deceased mothers, and brightly colored ones for living mothers.

Jarvis and her supporters convinced ministers, politicians, and businessmen to support the goal of starting a national observance. On May 8, 1914, Congress passed a joint resolution designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. The next day, President Woodrow Wilson issued the first Mother’s Day presidential proclamation, calling for “a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.”

American History Parade

1541 - Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River.

1846 - General Zachary Taylor wins the first major battle of the Mexican War at Palo Alto, Texas.

1884 - Harry S. Truman, the thirty-third U.S. president, is born in Lamar, Missouri.

1886 - Druggist John S. Pemberton sells the first Coca-Cola at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia.

1914 - Congress establishes the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

1945 - Americans celebrate victory in Europe over Nazi Germany (VE Day).

The American Patriot's Almanac: Daily Readings on America

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Friday, May 08, 2015

Today in Church History: John Murray

On May 8, 1975, John Murray died in Bonar Bridge, Scotland, the town where he was born on October 14, 1898.

Long-time professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary, where he taught from 1930 to 1967, Murray was also an active Orthodox Presbyterian churchman. He attended meetings of the Presbytery of New York and New England whenever possible, and he served on several General Assembly committees, including the Committee on Foreign Missions, the Committee on Local Evangelism, the Committee on Texts and Proof Texts to the Westminster Standards, and the Committee to Revise the Form of Government and Book of Discipline. In 1947, along with William Young, he presented a Minority Report of the Committee on Song in Public Worship, where he argued that the Psalter was the exclusive hymnbook for the New Testament church. His most popular book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (1955), began as articles published in the Presbyterian Guardian, where he was a frequent contributor.

The Banner of Truth described Murray's funeral in this way:

The dignity and simplicity of the service, in true Reformation style, was just as Professor Murray would have desired. John Murray had gone forth from this small community to become one of the world's leading theologians. Having finished his course and kept the faith, it now seemed fitting that the small cemetery on the shores of the Kyles of Scotland should contain the remains of this worthy servant of Christ until the day break and the shadows flee away.

John Muether

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Sunday, May 03, 2015

Today in Church History: Cornelius Van Til


On May 3, 1895, Cornelius Van Til was born in Grootegast, Groningen, the Netherlands.

After immigrating to the United States with his family in 1905, Van Til studied at Calvin College and Seminary before enrolling at Princeton Seminary, where he studied under Geerhardus Vos, C. W. Hodge, and Robert Dick Wilson. In 1927 he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. Following a brief pastorate in the Christian Reformed Church, Van Til became a member of the original faculty at Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929, teaching apologetics until his retirement in 1972. In 1936, he transferred his ministerial membership into the newly-formed Orthodox Presbyterian Church where he remained throughout his life, declining several invitations to return to Calvin Seminary and the CRC.

In all of his work Van Til consistently championed the apologetic approach of presuppositionalism. "The issue between believers and non-believers in Christian theism cannot be settled by a direct appeal to 'facts' or 'laws' whose nature and significance is already agreed upon by both parties to the debate," he wrote. Van Til vigorously challenged traditional approaches to apologetics, both Catholic and evangelical, because they conceded too much to non-Christian ways of thinking and denied God as the ultimate judge of reality. In works such as The New Modernism (1946), he also warned against the seductive teachings of Karl Barth and the emerging neo-orthodox movement.

John Muether

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Friday, May 01, 2015

Today in History: National Day of Prayer


The first Thursday in May is the National Day of Prayer, a day that encourages Americans to pray for the United States, its people, and its leaders.

The tradition of a National Day of Prayer dates to 1775, when the Second Continental Congress set aside a day for Americans to pray to “be ever under the care and protection of a kind Providence” as they began the struggle for independence. In the following decades, Congress and the president set aside various days for prayer. In 1863, for example, Lincoln proclaimed “a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer” to help the country get through “the awful calamity of civil war” and for “the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.”

In 1952 Congress and President Truman established a National Day of Prayer as a yearly event. Truman called for a day “on which all of us, in our churches, in our homes, and in our hearts, may beseech God to grant us wisdom to know the course which we should follow, and strength and patience to pursue that course steadfastly.”

In 1988, President Reagan designated the first Thursday in May as the National Day of Prayer, urging Americans to ask God for “His blessings, His peace, and the resting of His kind and holy hands on ourselves, our Nation, our friends in the defense of Freedom, and all mankind, now and always.”

American History Parade

1749 - George Washington receives his surveyor’s license from the College of William and Mary.

1809 - Mary Kies of Connecticut becomes the first woman to receive a U.S. patent, for a technique for weaving straw with silk and thread.

1864 - The Battle of the Wilderness begins in Spotsylvania Country, Virginia.

1925 - John T. Scopes is arrested in Tennessee for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution.

1961 - Astronaut Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into space during a fifteen-minute suborbital flight.

1988 - The first Thursday in May is designated the National Day of Prayer.

The American Patriot's Almanac: Daily Readings on America

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Thursday, April 30, 2015

Today in History: President Washington’s First Official Act


On April 30, 1789, George Washington took office in New York as the first president of the United States. In his inaugural address, he began his duties by giving thanks to the Almighty for the blessings the new country had received during the Revolution and making the Constitution:

It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own. . . . No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency. And in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government, the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage.

American History Parade

1789 - George Washington takes office as the first U.S. president.

1803 - The United States concludes negotiations with France for the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the young republic for $15 million.

1812 - Louisiana becomes the eighteenth state.

1939 - Lou Gehrig plays his last game with the New York Yankees, ending his streak of 2,130 consecutive games played.

1939 - Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the first president to appear on TV as he opens the World’s Fair in New York City.

1975 - The last Americans evacuate Saigon as South Vietnam surrenders to the Vietcong.

The American Patriot's Almanac: Daily Readings on America

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Sunday, April 26, 2015

Today in History: Jamestown, Virginia


On April 26, 1607, three small ships from England named the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery sailed into the Chesapeake Bay in what now is Virginia. On board were 104 colonists who came ashore, erected a wooden cross, and gave thanks to God for their passage across the Atlantic. In the following days they ventured inland along a wide river they name the James, after their king, and established themselves on a low island sixty miles from the bay’s mouth. Jamestown would turn out to be the first permanent English settlement in North America——the very beginning of what would become the United States.

That the colony survived comes close to being a miracle. The land the settlers chose was swampy and mosquito infested. The drinking water was bad. Malaria, typhoid, and dysentery took their toll, as did the clashes with the Indians. Some of the colonists were ill prepared for frontier life. At times they spend more energy looking for gold than trying to stay alive. During the first summer, fifty died.

More ships arrived with more colonists and supplies, but still it was a tough going. During the winter of 1609–1610, a siege by the Indians brought the “starving time.” One settler remembered that “many times three or four [died] in a night; in the morning their bodies trailed out of their cabins like dogs to be buried.” Out of about 214 colonists, only 60 survived. They decided to go back to England but had sailed only a few miles downriver when they met a new governor arriving with yet more settlers, so they turned around.

Jamestown endured partly due to the discovery of tobacco——a crop as good as gold——but largely because of dogged perseverance. By 1619 the colony had grown enough to elect its own House of Burgesses——the first representative legislative assembly in the Western Hemisphere.

American History Parade

1598 -An expedition led by Spanish explorer Juan de Onate reaches the Rio Grande.

1607 - English colonists come ashore at Cape Henry, Virginia, en route to founding Jamestown.

1865 - Federal troops surround and kill John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln, near Bowling Green, Virginia.

1961 - The integrated circuit is patented by Robert Noyce.

The American Patriot's Almanac: Daily Readings on America

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Saturday, April 25, 2015

Today in Church History: Edwin H. Rian

On April 25, 1947, Edwin H. Rian renounced the jurisdiction of the Presbytery of Philadelphia of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. On June 11 of that year he was re-ordained by the Presbytery of Philadelphia of the Presbyterian Church in the USA.

Rian had joined the OPC in 1936 as a constituting member at its first General Assembly. His 1940 book, The Presbyterian Conflict, defended the formation of the OPC. By 1947, however, Rian was frustrated over failures of the church to become more culturally engaged and particularly over the failure of efforts to form a Christian University. When he rejoined the PCUSA, Rian claimed that his study of Calvin's doctrine of the church persuaded him that the cause to which he was committed was sectarian. Its "self-righteousness," "intolerance," and "rigidity of doctrine" prompted a fight within the church over "non-essentials." His reassessment of the mainline church was a dramatic shift from his previous claim that it was "apostate" and contained ministers who "deny the very essentials of the faith." Moreover, in leaving the OPC he departed a church which he had characterized in this way in the Presbyterian Conflict:

In the formation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Calvinism was given a new impetus in America. The spiritual heritage of Reformed teaching which had been stifled in the Presbyterian Church in the USA received a welcome in this church body, and the great doctrines of the Reformation, such as the sovereignty of God and salvation by grace alone, came to life again. Upon this high biblical ground the Orthodox Presbyterian Church stands, convinced that God will be pleased to use her to his glory and to the advancement of his kingdom.

- John Muether

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Thursday, April 23, 2015

Going Whole Hog?

Did you ever wonder where the term “go the whole hog” came from? Probably not. But in case you ever find yourself a contestant on Jeopardy, here’s the skinny from A Phrase a Week:

Meaning

To perform some act or adopt some opinion fully and thoroughly.

Origin

'Go the whole hog' is an American expression. Whilst the word 'hog' has been in use in England since the 14th century, by the time that the phrase was coined, 'hog' had been largely superseded there by 'pig'. No one in the UK 'went the whole hog' until the phrase migrated east from the USA in the 1830s.

The expression derives from a rather obscure satirical work by the English poet and hymn writer, William Cowper. Written at a time when Christian authors felt no misgivings about poking fun at other religions, the piece teases Muslims over the supposed ambiguity of the restrictions against eating pork as specified in the Qur'an. The gist of the poem is that, while sampling each part of a hog to test which part wasn't permissible to eat, the whole hog is eaten.

The Love of the World Reproved: or, Hypocrisy Detected, William Cowper, 1782:

Thus says the prophet of the Turk;
Good musselman, abstain from pork!
There is a part in every swine
No friend or follower of mine
May taste, whate'er his inclination,
On pain of excommunication.

Much controversy straight arose,
These choose the back, the belly those;
By some 'tis confidently said
He meant not to forbid the head,
While others at that doctrine rail,
And piously prefer the tail.
Thus, conscience freed from every clog,
Mahometans eat up the hog.

Cowper may have had only a loose grasp of Islamic theology, but he did influence others who later took up the phrase 'the whole hog' to mean 'the whole thing'.

You can read the rest of the story here.

--The Catechizer

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Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Today in History: The National Motto

Look on any U.S. coin or paper and you’ll find America’s national motto, In God We Trust.

The suggestion to recognize God on U.S. money initially came during the Civil War from Pennsylvania minister M.R. Watkinson. “From my heart I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters,” Watkins wrote to Samuel Chase, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the treasure.

Chase thought the suggestion a good one, and he instructed the U.S. Mint to come up with a motto recognizing that “no nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense.” The resulting phrase, In God We Trust, may have had its inspiration in the fourth stanza of Francis Scott Key’s “The Star-Spangled Banner”: “Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’”

On April 22,1864, Congress passed legislation authorizing use of the phrase In God We Trust, and it first appeared on two-cent coins issued that same year.

For many years after that, the slogan appeared on some coins and not on others. In 1955 Congress ordered it placed on all U.S. currency, and in 1956 Congress made In God We Trust the official national motto. The phrase continues to remind us that our country has long found strength through faith in God, and that He has bestowed many blessings on America, including our freedom.

American History Parade

1864 - Congress authorizes use of the phrase In God We Trust on U.S. coins.

1876 - Baseball’s National League begins its first season with the Boston Red Stockings defeating the Philadelphia Athletics 6–5.

1889 - The Oklahoma Land Rush begins with thousands of homesteaders hurrying to stake claims on unassigned land.

1898 - In the first action of the Spanish-American War, the USS Nashville captures the Spanish ship Buena Vista off Key West, Florida.

1970 - Earth Day is observed across the country for the first time.

The American Patriot's Almanac: Daily Readings on America

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Friday, April 17, 2015

Today in Church History: Archibald Alexander, Princeton Theological Seminary

On April 17, 1772, Archibald Alexander was born near Lexington, Virginia.

Educated at Liberty Academy (now Washington and Lee University) and ordained in 1794, Alexander was president of Hampden-Sydney College and served as pastor of Third Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia for six years. In 1812, the General Assembly appointed him the first faculty member of the newly created Princeton Theological Seminary. As "Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology," he would soon be joined by Samuel Miller and Charles Hodge, and eventually by two of his sons, James Waddel Alexander and Joseph Addison Alexander, as well. He would serve at Princeton until shortly before his death in 1851.

Born of second-generation Scotch-Irish parents and converted through frontier revivals in the Shenandoah Valley, Alexander always considered Virginia his home. Although he was an opponent of the excesses of revivalism, he insisted on the importance of the experiential dimension of the Christian life, especially in his 1841 book, Thoughts on Religious Experience.

John Muether

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Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Today in Church History: Westminster Assembly of Divines

On April 14, 1648, the Westminster Assembly of Divines presented its Catechisms to Parliament: the Larger Catechism for pulpit exposition and the Shorter Catechism for the education of children.

When the 121 divines convened in 1643, they set out at first to review the Anglican -Nine Articles of Religion, which was considered essentially but not sufficiently Calvinistic. Soon the work of the Assembly expanded, and five years and 1,163 sessions later, it produced the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, the Directory for Public Worship, and the Form of Church Government.

In the words of John Murray, "The Westminster Confession and Catechisms are . . . the mature fruit of the whole movement of creed-formation throughout fifteen centuries of Christian history, and, in particular, they are the crown of the greatest age of confessional exposition, the Protestant Reformation. No other similar documents have concentrated in them, and formulated with such precision, so much of the truth embodied in the Christian revelation."

John Muether

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Monday, April 13, 2015

Revivalism and Higher Criticism

The First Great awakening was largely Calvinistic and moored to the historic confessions of the church. The Second Great awakening was Arminian in nature and adrift in a sea of emotionalism. Why the difference? A significant event occurred between the two: the American Revolution. It’s significant to the church because not only did the people throw off the bonds of a king, but they also threw off the bonds of the church. Experience and subjectivism would rule the day, not creeds and doctrine.

In the void left by the removal of the confessions came an assault by the higher critics, something the emotionalism upon which the Second Great Awakening was based could not defend. Those charged with guarding the historic faith’s hen house were too drunk on Finney’s new wine to notice the fox, sporting a “Schleiermacher is my Homeboy” tee-shirt, running off with the Scriptures. An unfortunate legacy we’re still living with today.

Over at at Historia Ecclesiastica, A. Ian Hugh Clary provides an interesting look at the link between revivalism and higher criticism:

Andrew Holmes, Lecturer in Modern Irish History at Queen’s University Belfast, wrote an article on the causes and consequences of the Ulster Revival of 1859. Near the end of the piece he draws an illuminating link between the role of religious experience and the acceptance of higher criticism within evangelicalism. He says that when “pietistic spirituality”—that emphasizes personal conversion, holiness, and experience—is placed at the centre of theological enquiry, the bible can be characterized as a “record of the developing spiritual experience” rather than a manual of doctrine. This opens the doors for critical views of Scripture to enter in. Theological liberals separated the text and its historicity from spiritual experience and value. For evangelicals who were caught up in the ecstatic experience of revival (especially in Ulster’s case), a pietistic spirituality could be maintained while aberrant views of the bible were shuffled in. Holmes says, “It is significant that those figures most closely associated with modern biblical criticism within the Irish Presbyterian Church were also supporters of modern revivalism.”

Holmes goes on to say that theologians who espoused higher criticism in Scotland were happy to draw the link with revivalism—especially the visits of D. L. Moody—and sought further revivals and religious experience. For instance, J. E. Davey, an evangelical who embraced higher criticism, used revivalism and religious experience in his defence during his trial for heresy in 1926-1927.

This is helpful for historians as we consider the benefits and pitfalls of revival, especially in its more recent forms. It should also temper us as Christians in our labours for revival—we need to make sure that the methods we espouse do not lead us to elevate religious experience to the role of doctrinal credibility. Rather, we need to maintain fidelity to the truths of the gospel handed down to us from our forebears, including those who experienced revival yet remained faithful.

--The Catechizer

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Saturday, April 04, 2015

Today in History: “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”


On the evening of April 4, 1968, thirty-nine-hear-old Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was struck down by an assassin’s bullet while standing on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee.

King had been receiving death threats for more than a decade, but he never shied away from making public appearances. The night before his death, he’d spoke at a Memphis church. “We’ve got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop,” he said. “And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life, Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land."

The following evening, Dr. King was leaning over a balcony railing at the Lorraine Motel, where he was staying, when a shot sounded, and he fell dead. James Earl Ray, a drifter and escaped convict, was convicted of the assassination.

As reports of King’s murder were broadcast, riots broke out in hundreds of cities and towns. In some places looting and burning continued for days until the National Guard restored order.

Those were times when America felt like a runaway-train ride. But even as millions mourned the loss of an extraordinary leader, they redoubled their efforts to make their country a place which King would be proud.

A memorial plaque at the site of the assassination quotes Genesis 37:19–20. It reads: “They said one to another, Behold, here cometh the dreamer. Let us slay him and we shall see what becomes of his dreams.” The inscription challenges each of us to “see what will become of his dreams.”

American History Parade

1841 - President William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia one month after his inauguration.

1850 - The city of Los Angeles is incorporated.

1887 - Susanna M. Slater of Argonia, Kansas, becomes the first women elected mayor of an American town.

1949 - The United States and eleven other Western nations sign a treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

1968 - The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., age 39, is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

The American Patriot's Almanac: Daily Readings on America

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