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| Format | Dissertation |
|---|---|
| Creator | Frantz, John B. |
| Title | Revivalism in the German Reformed Church in America to 1850, with Emphasis on the Eastern Synod |
| Dissertation Note (type -- academic institution) | Dissertation -- University of Pennsylvania |
| Date | 1961 |
| Extent of Work | 244 pp. |
| Abstract | PREFACE (Abbreviated) At the present time, interest in religion has reached a new high in the United States. Church membership has hit its highest peak in the history of the nation, and reports of increased church attendance are current in all parts of the country. Consequently, there are those who believe that we are on the verge of a great religious revival. For the most part, this view is based on evidence of increased vigor within the congregations and denominations. However, another phase of this increased interest in religion is the reappearence of the mass revival. Under the leadership of the noted evangelist, Billy Graham, mass revivalism has again come to play a significant role in American religious life. However, this is not a new phenomenon in the history of the Hebraic-Christian tradition, nor is it new to American church history. Revivalism, with its individualistic, subjective approach to religion has been a divisive factor in American Protestantism since the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century. During this and subsequent awakenings which occurred throughout the following century, new denominations were formed, and some of the older denominations divided into New Light - Old Light, or New School - Old School factions. In the history of the German Reformed Church in America, a study of the influence and effects of revivalism can be isolated to a degree not possible in other, larger denominations. For example, in the Congregational Church the issue was complicated by the theological controversies concerning rationalism, Unitarianism, and the New Haven theology. In the Presbyterian Church the issue was clouded by racial and sectional conflicts between the Scotch-Irish and English and between the northern and southern Presbyterians. Strange though it may seem today, even the Episcopal Church was affected by revivalism, but the issue was involved in the more complex controversy between the so-called "high-church" and "low-church" factions - a controversy which has agitated Anglicanism since the sixteenth century. It will be the purpose of this dissertation to examine revivalism in its course into and out of the German Reformed church. The reader should be prepared for a discussion of the attempts to revive the spiritual life of the German Reformed in this land. Among those involved in these attempts were the Moravians, the Pietistic German Reformed ministers who were called "the New Reformed," the "Otterbein people," the "Albright people," and the followers of John Winebrenner. At first glance, the examination of these "fringe movements" may seem irrelevant. However, it will be shown that leaders of each of these movements were members of the German Reformed Church, were influenced by it, and drew out of its membership adherents for their own religious groups. In addition, the numerical success and the apparent piety of these revivalistic groups was an influential factor in the eventual adoption of many of their techniques by the German Reformed Church itself. In this dissertation then, it is the purpose of the author to present a complete record of revivalism in the German Reformed Church in the East to about the year 1850, and show how in the end the denomination held on to its traditional concept of the Church as the Body of Christ rather than a mere fellowship, the organic continuation of the divine-human life of Christ in time for the salvation of men, rather than the mere body of the faithful as it was to the pietists and extreme members of the revivalistic forces. Actually it is a portrayal of the mourners or anxious "bench versus the Catechism," with "the book" scoring over "the bench!" In 1854, eleven years after his arrival in America, the eminent church historian, Dr. Philip Schaff, returned to his native Germany for a visit. At one point he addressed the German Church Diet, giving his impressions of the political, social, and religious characteristics of America, and of the denominations as he saw them. In describing the German Reformed Church, which he knew so well, because he was a teacher in its theological seminary, Schaff said, "One might make a book on the anxious-bench controversy in the German Reformed Church of America for the Reformed Church was also deeply agitated." This is the book! It is a record of how and why the German Reformed Church was "deeply agitated." |
| Notes | UMI, printed in 1988 ; book, in MadCat |
| Call Number | MKI dissertations |
| MKI Terms | Churches/ Germans/ Religion/ Reformed Church |