RELG 330 - History of Christianity
Course Notes
Chapter 29
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Page 411 - George Whitefield - his name is pronounced "WHIT-field". See pages 417-418
Page 411 - the Anglican / Episcopal Church in North America. The Church of England is also called the Anglican Church. After the American Revolution the name of the Anglican Church in the USA was changed to the Episcopal Church, to reflect its retention of bishops as Church leaders, and to indicate its independence from the English system.
The early Anglican churches in North America were under the jurisdiction of the bishop of London, but he did not go America himself. Failure to provide a local bishop for the Anglican Church in North America was due to the English Parliament being involved in the appointment of bishops, and the turbulent political and religious conditions in England during the English Civil War and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. The first bishop in the Episcopal Church was eventually consecrated in Scotland in 1784; further bishops were consecrated in England later.
Page 412 - Map. The Red crosses in Maryland, Virginia and Maine denote Roman Catholic churches. The Red crosses around New York (New Amsterdam) denote Presbyterian churches. Although the map says that the first colonists were the Pilgrim Fathers (1620), the English had already established colonies in New England, and brought the Anglican Church with them.
The map does not show the churches in Canada (Quebec, 1608, Roman Catholic)
Page 413 - the Cambridge Platform of 1648 was a statement of doctrine agreed upon by Puritan Congregationalist churches in New England. A synod of ministers from Massachusetts and Connecticut met to make a formal statement and confession of faith in answer to Presbyterian claims. The Cambridge Platform endorsed most of the statements of the Westminster Confession (except for ecclesiastical organization) and upheld the Congregational model of Church organization and authority.
Page 413 - the Stuarts were the royal dynasty in England and Scotland during the seventeenth century. James I of England and VI of Scotland (reigned Scotland 1567-1625, and England 1603-1625, Charles I (reigned 1603-1649, beheaded), Charles II (reigned 1660-1685), and James II (reigned 1685-1688, became a Roman Catholic and was deposed)
Page 415 - Solomon Stoddard, the pastor of the Congregational church at Northampton, MA, was the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards, who also became pastor of that same church (see page 417)
Page 415 - Theodore Frelinghuysen's name is pronounced "Fray-ling-HOUSE-en"
Page 416 - Jonathan Edwards was dismissed from his pastorate of the Congregational church at Northampton, Massachusetts because he wanted to exclude from communion people whom he judged to be unconverted.
Page 418 - the Holy Club (see page 424) The Holy Club was a group of young men at Oxford University, led by John Wesley. They met each evening to study the Bible and to pray. They became known as "Methodists" because of their disciplined methods of devotion. John Wesley used the same methods for his followers, and they formed the Methodist Church.
Page 413 - George Whitefield had to return to England to be ordained as a priest, because there was no Anglican bishop resident in the colonies. The Bishop of London was responsible for looking after the Anglican Church in the New World, but he did not go there. In order to become an priest in the Church of England one had to be ordained by a bishop.
Page 413 - the Cambuslang Revival - see Page 429
Page 413 - the Countess of Huntingdon. Selina Hastings (1707-1791), Countess of Huntingdon, joined the Wesley's Methodist society in 1739. Her husband died in 1746, and she was then able to devote herself to religious and social works. She ws mainly responsible for bringing Methodism to the upper classes of England. In 1768 she founded Trevecca House in Wales, as a Methodist seminary. At that time Methodism was a movement within the Church of England - the division which gave rise to the formation of the Methodist Church did not start until 1784. She helped to spread Methodism by recruiting Methodists who were priests and appointing them as chaplains for chapels which she founded. She claimed that, as a member of the English peerage, she had the right to appoint Church of England priests as her chaplains and give them duties to preach publicly. However, the Church of England disputed her claims and disallowed them in 1779. She got around that by registering her chapels as dissenting places of worship, under the Toleration Act of 1689, and founded a network of Calvinistic Methodists known as "The Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion".
Page 421 - Domenico Feti's painting "Ecce Homo" ("Behold the Man")
Page 423 - "We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord" is the beginning of the "Te Deum", a canticle of praise used in the daily service of Morning Prayer in the Anglican Church
Pages 425 & 425 - John Wesley (1703-1791) was an Anglican clergyman who is credited with founding Methodism. As an undergraduate at Oxford University, John and his brother Charles founded a club with other young men, for methodical Bible Study. Those who made fun of them called them Methodists. After he was ordained, John Wesley set out to work in America, where his mission was not very successful. While crossing the Atlantic the ship he was on was caught in a storm and was in danger of sinking. A group of Moravians were also on the ship, and Wesley was struck by their peace and faith in God in the middle of the storm. He attended the Moravian Chapel in Aldersgate in London on May 24, 1738, where he heard a reading of Martin Luther's teaching on Romans, when, according to Wesley "I felt my heart strangely warmed" as he realized that there was nothing he could do to earn God's favor - he just had to accept by faith that Jesus had already made the atonement for his sins.
Wesley became a committed Christian and a dynamic preacher. When Church authorities would not permit him to preach in their churches, he started preaching in the open air, to groups of miners and mill-workers. This resulted in a great revival of Christianity amongst the lower classes. To help them continue in their Christian discipleship, Wesley organized local groups for study and worship together.
After the American War of Independence the Anglican Church (The Church of England) took several years trying to reorganize its relationship with the American Churches which were left without clergy and a bishop. Wesley did not want to leave his followers without spiritual oversight, so in 1784 he appointed Thomas Coke to be a superintendent of the American Methodists. Wesley maintained that he did not "ordain" or "consecrate" Thomas Coke, but that he prayed over him and laid hands on him to dedicate him for his ministry in America. Wesley was still a priest in the Church of England. In the Anglican Church, the 'laying on of hands' with prayer is the prerogative of bishops, and is used for confirmation, for the ordination of deacons and priests, and for the consecration of other bishops. Consecration as a bishop requires that at least three other bishops take part in the consecration. So Wesley could not have "ordained" or "consecrated" Coke legally.
However, when Coke reached America, he claimed that he had been ordained, and there was nothing that Wesley or the Church of England could do about it.
Wesley continued his ministry in Britain until he was 87. He died in 1791
Page 427 - Francis Asbury (1745-1816) was a Methodist preacher, born in England, but who came to America in 1771 and stayed there. John Wesley appointed him (along with Thomas Coke) as leaders of the Methodist Church in America. He was a great preacher, and founded the Methodist Circuit Riders (preachers who were responsible for riding and preaching over a large area of the frontier), and also founded schools and colleges for preachers and missionaries.
Page 428 - the Methodists leave the Church of England. There had been a tension from the beginning, between members of the established Church of England and the new Methodist groups. The Wesleys were often not given permission by local clergy or bishops to use parish churches for their preaching, When that happened, and they preached in the open air, those who gathered to hear them were usually the lower working classes - coal miners, mill-workers, ship-builders, laborers, navvies (canal-builders, or 'navigators'). When such people were converted they wanted to attend worship services, but did not feel comfortable going to the local Anglican parish churches which their employers attended, and where they were unwelcome and looked down upon. So the local meetings of the Methodist societies began to take on the functions of a church gathering, both for pastoral support and for preaching.
When Wesley sent Thomas Coke to become a superintendent for the American Methodist societies he laid hands on his head and prayed for him. Coke claimed that this constituted consecration as a bishop, and took the title of Bishop when he was in America. Wesley himself claimed that he had intended only to pray for Coke and his ministry, not to consecrate him as a bishop (which he was not authorized to do). However, Coke was in America, and Wesley was in England and did not have control over what was happening in America. This was such a serious breach of Anglican discipline that the break between Anglicanism and Methodism was assured. Coke went on to "ordain" Francis Asbury as another bishop, and the Methodist societies in America organized themselves into the 'Methodist Episcopal Church'.
Page 428 - Henry Venn (1725-1797) was Secretary of the CMS (Church Missionary Society) of the Church of England, and formulated "Three selves principle", that missionaries should found churches which were self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating - rather than the usual attitude of his time, which was to send out a missionary to persuade "the heathen" to dress and act like an Englishman (or woman).
Henry Venn was one of the founders of the Clapham Sect (this was not a sect in the modern meaning of the term - they did not form a separate denomination or religion. The name was given to them by their opponents, to make it seem that they were break-aways). They were called that because they were based in Clapham (a district of London). Most of them were members of the Church of England, but were very concerned with social reforms, which many of their contemporaries scorned. Amongst their concerns was the abolition of slavery - they founded Freetown in Sierra Leon, as a place for freed slaves to return to Africa. Also, they worked at spreading the Scriptures and the Gospel throughout the world - they founded the Church Missionary Society to support missionaries, and the British and Foreign Bible Society to publish scriptures. They succeeded in getting the slave trade banned (in 1807) and in getting slaves emancipated and slavery abolished in Britain (in 1833), and worked to abolish slavery throughout the world.
Page 428 - William Grimshaw (1708-1763) of Haworth in Yorkshire was an Anglican priest who would begin his church services by telling the congregation to start reading Psalm 119 (the longest Psalm in the Bible) aloud while he went up to the local beer house and drove the drinkers out to church with his riding whip. His methods worked, and revival broke out in Haworth.
The Rectory at Haworth was later home to the Brontė sisters (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne), women writers of the Victorian era, whose father was rector of Haworth. The rectory is now a museum, where some of Grimshaw's writings can be seen, along with Brontė memorabilia.
Page 429 - 'New Light' refers to the new styles of preaching and worship associated with the Great Awakening in America. 'Old Light' ministers were those who did not accept the new styles.
Page 430 - Robert Raikes (1736-1811) was instrumental in getting Sunday Schools started so that poor children could have some education. Children from poor families usually got no education (there was virtually no free or subsidized education), and had to work six days a week - the only day they did not work was Sunday. Raikes was the editor of a local paper, the "Gloucester Journal", and so was able to publicize his ideas and publish news of others who were working to educate children, As a result of his work, the "Society for the Establishment of Sunday Schools" was formed in 1834.
Page 430 - William Wilberforce (1759-1833) (see also pages 480-481) was a politician who used his position for Christian purposes - he worked for the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire. He and some other Christian friends were members of the "Clapham Sect" (so-called by their adversaries, because of where Wilberforce lived) - active in social reform.
Copyright © 2005 Shirley J. Rollinson, all Rights Reserved
