History of the Reformation and Reformed Churches — Unit 8: Reformed Churches in America: Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed; Princeton

Key Verse

"And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." (2 Timothy 2:2, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Describe how Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian churches began in North America and who the main groups of settlers were.

2. Explain the Great Awakening, name its main figures, and state how it divided and then shaped the Presbyterian church.

3. Explain the origin of Princeton College and Princeton Theological Seminary and name their leading teachers.

4. Describe the major divisions among American Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed churches in the nineteenth century, including the division over slavery.

5. State the main historians' debates and objections about these churches and answer them from the Reformed side.

The Voice of This Course

This course is written from inside the Reformed tradition for students who belong to it. It is conservative and confessional. When it says "we," it means the Reformed and Presbyterian churches that hold Scripture to be the inspired and inerrant Word of God and that confess the doctrines of grace. Where historians disagree, or where other Christians see matters differently, we state their views fairly and then give our answer. Where our own churches have sinned, we say so plainly. The Reformed tradition has always taught that churches can err and must be reformed again by the Word.

Why Study the American Story?

Many students in Latin America and elsewhere read books from American Reformed writers and use materials from American seminaries. Some of the denominations named in Course 1's later units grew from American missions. A pastor should know where these books came from, what was good in them, and where the churches that produced them went wrong. This unit is not a claim that America is the center of the Reformed world. It is part of the story, and the story has lessons for every country.

The Dutch Reformed in New Netherland

Among the earliest settled Reformed churches in North America were Dutch. The Dutch West India Company planted a colony called New Netherland, with its center at New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, in the 1620s. In 1628 a congregation was organized there, and the Reformed Church became the church of the colony. Other congregations followed up the Hudson River, in what is now New York, and in New Jersey. These churches used the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort, which you studied in Unit 6, and a church order based on the Dort order.

England took over the colony in 1664. The Dutch church continued under the new rule, kept its Dutch language for generations, and later became the Reformed Church in America. Its history shows that a church can survive a change of government if it holds a confession and a settled order.

In the nineteenth century a new wave of Dutch immigrants came to the Midwest. In 1847 Albertus van Raalte led a group to Holland, Michigan. Some of these newcomers had left the state church of the Netherlands because of its drift from the confessions. A number of them were unhappy with the Reformed Church in America that they found, and in 1857 a group formed the Christian Reformed Church. Both churches had a Dutch origin, but they grew apart. The founders of the Christian Reformed Church wished to hold more strictly to the confessions.

Presbyterians: Scots, Irish and New England Puritans

The Presbyterians in America came from several sources. Scottish and Scots-Irish settlers came in large numbers in the eighteenth century. There were also English Puritans in New England, who were mostly Congregational, and some of whom became Presbyterian in the middle colonies. Francis Makemie, an Irish-born minister, labored in Maryland and Virginia, and with others organized the first presbytery in Philadelphia in 1706. From that presbytery grew a synod, and later the whole Presbyterian church.

In 1729 the Synod passed the Adopting Act. It required ministers to accept the Westminster Confession and Catechisms as containing the essential and necessary articles of the faith. There was a long argument about how strictly this should be taken. Some wished a full subscription to every word; others wished to allow room for conscience in matters not essential. The Act gave a compromise that left matters partly unsettled and caused debate for generations. This is a lesson. A confession that is not clear about how it binds will be argued over, as Course 3 will show.

The Great Awakening

In the 1730s and 1740s a wave of revival moved through the colonies. It is called the Great Awakening. Its major figures included:

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), the Congregational pastor of Northampton, Massachusetts, where a revival took place in 1734-35. He was a Calvinist of the highest rank. He preached the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in 1741 and later wrote The Religious Affections (1746), a careful book that asks how to tell true work of the Spirit from false.

George Whitefield, the English preacher, who traveled widely through the colonies from 1739 and who held the doctrines of grace. He preached to great crowds in the open air.

The Tennents. William Tennent trained young ministers in a small school at Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, which was mocked as the "Log College." His son Gilbert Tennent was a leader in the revival. In 1740 Gilbert preached a sermon called "The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry," which angered those who thought it attacked their own ministers.

The Awakening was a gift to the church, and the Reformed churches of America grew. But it also caused division. Some ministers feared the emotional excess they saw and the way some itinerant preachers entered parishes uninvited. Others thought those ministers were cold. In 1741 the Presbyterian Synod divided into Old Side and New Side. The Old Side stressed order and education. The New Side stressed the new birth and revival. The two sides reunited in 1758, after seventeen years apart, and the reunited church kept both emphases.

Historians do not all agree on how to describe the Awakening. Older writers presented it as one great event across all the colonies. Later historians, such as Jon Butler and Frank Lambert, have argued that the idea of a single "Great Awakening" was shaped partly by the revivalists themselves and by later writers, and that local revivals differed greatly. We do not need to settle every question of historical description. We hold that the Lord revived many souls by the preaching of His Word, and we also hold, with Edwards, that every revival must be tested by Scripture. John writes, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God" (1 John 4:1).

The Founding of Princeton

The New Side Presbyterians founded the College of New Jersey in 1746, which later became Princeton University. Its purpose was to train ministers and educated men in sound learning and true piety. Jonathan Edwards became its president in 1758 and died soon after. Later, John Witherspoon, a Scottish minister, became president in 1768. He taught many future leaders of the nation, and he signed the Declaration of Independence.

In 1789, after American independence, the Presbyterians organized their first General Assembly. They adopted a revised form of the Westminster Standards, changing the chapters that treat the civil magistrate, so that the church would not look to the state to control religion.

Princeton Theological Seminary

In 1812 the General Assembly founded Princeton Theological Seminary to train ministers with learning and piety together. Archibald Alexander was its first professor. Its teaching passed down to a long line of pastors and scholars. Among them were:

Charles Hodge (1797-1878), who taught for decades and wrote the three-volume Systematic Theology (1872-73), a Reformed textbook used in many lands.

Benjamin B. Warfield (1851-1921), a learned defender of the full inspiration of Scripture, who wrote on the person of Christ, on Scripture and on the Westminster Standards. With A. A. Hodge he wrote an influential article on inspiration in 1881.

This school is often called Old Princeton. It aimed to form pastors who were learned, prayerful and loyal to the Standards. It also trained missionaries, and some of them carried the Reformed faith to Latin America, Africa and Asia, as Unit 9 will show.

Two debates about Old Princeton deserve a fair statement. Some historians, such as Jack Rogers and Donald McKim, argued in 1979 that Princeton's teaching on the Bible was shaped more by Scottish "common sense" philosophy than by the older Reformed tradition. Others, such as John Woodbridge, answered that the older Reformed writers, including Augustine and Calvin, taught the Bible's truthfulness in all it affirms. We answer that every school uses the philosophy and the language of its time, and the Princeton men sometimes did so, but their conviction came from Scripture's own claim: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Timothy 3:16). The truthfulness of Scripture is not a Princeton invention.

A second charge says that Princeton's orthodoxy was cold. Our answer. The first teachers of the seminary belonged to the revival tradition. Alexander taught that theology must be joined to prayer and personal religion. The charge is true of some students and some times. It is not a fair judgment of the best of the school.

Division in the Nineteenth Century

The American Presbyterian church divided more than once.

Old School and New School (1837). The church divided over doctrine, mission methods and church order. Old School Presbyterians, such as Hodge, stood strongly for the Westminster Standards. New School Presbyterians accepted wider and more flexible methods. One famous revivalist, Charles Finney, was ordained a Presbyterian in 1824, but he rejected the Reformed doctrines of original sin and the inability of the sinner, and he taught that revival can be produced by right methods. Old School Presbyterians opposed this teaching because they believed it set aside the sovereignty of God in conversion. Fair-minded readers should note that many New School ministers were godly and zealous. The two branches later reunited in each region, in the North in 1869.

North and South (1861). The Civil War divided the church along geographic lines. Southern Presbyterians formed their own church in 1861. Behind the division lay the question of slavery. Many Southern ministers defended slavery from Scripture, and some of the best-known Presbyterians did so. This was a grievous error. The Bible teaches that all people are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and it forbids the stealing of men (Exodus 21:16). We should be honest about this. A Reformed church that held the Bible high still twisted it to defend an evil system. The remedy is not to loosen our grip on Scripture, but to read it more carefully and with humility. Many Black Presbyterian believers and many abolitionists, including some Presbyterian pastors, spoke against slavery in their own day.

The North and South churches remained separate for more than a century. Unit 10 will carry the story forward.

Objections and Answers

Objection 1: Revival and confession cannot live together. Some say that a church that values doctrine will have no warmth, and a church that values revival will lose doctrine. Our answer. The Reformed tradition at its best joined both. Edwards was both a theologian and a revival preacher. Princeton was founded by revival men who wanted learning. Where one was lost, the church suffered. The way is to hold both.

Objection 2: Reformed churches in America are ethnic churches. Historians note that Dutch and Scottish immigrants kept their churches as homes of their own culture, so the faith looked foreign. Our answer. This is a real danger, and it is why the Reformed faith has had to learn to speak in other languages and cultures. The gospel is not Dutch or Scottish. It belongs to all nations, as Unit 9 will show.

Objection 3: Dutch and Presbyterian divisions show that the confessions fail to unite. Our answer. Divisions are a sorrow. But the major divisions of this unit were over matters of real importance: the new birth, the authority of the confessions, faithfulness to Scripture and the evil of slavery. Not every division was right, and the Reformed tradition has prayed for unity. Truth and unity must be held together.

Pastoral Application

A pastor in a Presbyterian church in Latin America has received an invitation from his congregation. A visiting evangelist has offered to lead a week of meetings, and several members are excited by the large crowds and strong feelings that he promises. One elder asks, "Can we trust it?"

First, the pastor does not mock the desire. The hunger of his people for revival is good, and Reformed believers have prayed for it from the days of Edwards.

Second, he asks what the evangelist will preach. He reads 1 John 4:1 with the elders and applies the test: Does the preaching hold Christ crucified and risen? Does it call for repentance, faith and holiness? Does it honor the Scripture?

Third, he asks about the follow-up. Who will teach the new believers, and which church will care for them? Here he remembers 2 Timothy 2:2.

Fourth, he decides with his session, not alone, and then speaks kindly of the evangelist whatever the decision is.

Summary

Reformed churches in North America began with the Dutch in New Netherland, who organized a congregation in New Amsterdam in 1628, and with Scottish, Irish and English settlers who formed Presbyterian bodies, beginning with the presbytery of 1706. The Adopting Act of 1729 asked ministers to accept the Westminster Standards. The Great Awakening brought revival through Edwards, Whitefield and the Tennents, and also division into Old Side and New Side from 1741 to 1758. The College of New Jersey (1746) and Princeton Theological Seminary (1812) trained ministers in learning and piety, under teachers such as Alexander, Hodge and Warfield. Churches divided over doctrine and method in 1837 and over the Civil War and slavery in 1861, and the Dutch Reformed divided in 1857. We admit the errors of these churches, especially the defense of slavery, and hold that the Reformed faith, tested by Scripture, needs both warm piety and sound doctrine.

Further Reading

• Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (1872-73).

• A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield, "Inspiration" (1881), and B. B. Warfield, The Plan of Salvation (1915).

• Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746).

• Westminster Confession of Faith, Larger and Shorter Catechisms (1646-47).

• Heidelberg Catechism (1563) and Canons of Dort (1619).

• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (1845).

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