American Church

Review: Turning Points in American Church History

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Cover image of "Turning Points in American Church History" by Elesha J. Coffman

Turning Points in American Church History, Elesha J. Coffman, foreword by Mark A. Noll. Baker Academic (ISBN: 9780801097492) 2024.

Summary: Shows ways the church contributed to American history through 13 key events over four centuries.

If we have taken a history course in college, we may have read a text that tried to cover every significant event and date within its scope. While comprehensive, at least in a superficial sense, it was usually a bore. Elesha J. Coffman, following an example of Mark Noll (who contributes the foreword) takes a different approach to the subject of American church history. Specifically, she chooses thirteen key events that may be considered turning points in American church history. By doing so, she can both zoom in on the real human history, while setting the turning points in a broader context and showing subsequent developments and impacts in American history.

From the table of contents, here are the thirteen events covered:

1. The Old World Order Upended
The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588
2. The Limits of Religious Freedom
Roger Williams Banished from Massachusetts, 1635
3. A Collision of Cultures
King Philip’s War, 1675-76
4. Evangelicalism Sweeps America
George Whitefield Sparks the First Great Awakening, 1740
5. A Faith for Enslaved and Free
First African American Church Founded at Silver Bluff, South Carolina, 1773
6. Far from Rome
John Carroll Elected First Roman Catholic Bishop in the United States, 1789
7. The Benevolent Empire
American Bible Society Founded, 1816
8. Houses Divided
Methodist Church Splits over Slavery, 1844
9. Muscular Missions
Student Volunteer Movement Launched, 1886
10. Los Angeles Fire
Azusa Street Revival Catalyzes Pentecostalism, 1906
11. Science versus Religion?
The Scopes “Monkey” Trial, 1925
12. Civil Rights and Uncivil Religion
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, 1963
13. Religion Moves Right
Ronald Reagan Elected President, 1980

To illustrate her approach, I will take the chapter on the first African American church. Each chapter opens with a representative piece of hymn or song lyrics. This chapter opens with “There is a Balm in Gilead.” She traces the first church to Silver Bluff, North Carolina, the preaching of white revivalist, Wait Palmer on George Galphin’s estate, although George Liele, from a slave background, had previously preached to the slaves. Liele served as presiding elder after the initial sacraments, administered by Palmer.

Coffman then backs out, discussing the early history of slavery, Richard Allen and the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal churches as well as the informal revivalist experiences, including the unique form of the “ring shout.” She discusses the fears of uprising and how much Christian activity was covert. And she includes a sidebar from Frederick Douglass on false and true Christianity. Each chapter concludes with a prayer, in this case, from a message of the Rev. Absalom Jones. Finally, each chapter also includes a bibliography for further reading.

I personally found several chapters particularly interesting. I had not thought about the significance of the defeat of the Spanish Armada for the English settlement of the colonies. And I appreciated the history of Bishop John Carroll, having lived near the university that bore his name. Growing up in a heavily Catholic neighborhood, I did not always appreciate what it was like for Catholics as a minority in a heavily protestant country. Working in collegiate ministry, I appreciated the inclusion of the chapter on the Student Volunteer Movement, a predecessor to the organization I worked with. And I reflected as I read the final chapter on the rise and decline of evangelicalism, of how I had lived in that history from the “year of the evangelical” as a college student down to the present. Sobering.

The author admits that one weakness is that some important developments get overlooked. In the American context, one element that I wish had been included was the importance of ethnic church communities, including Asian ethnicities, Latino ethnicities, and African churches in our contemporary context. On the other hand, I was impressed with how these thirteen key events covered so much ground. And they were interesting!

This book could serve as a good text, or supplemental text, in American church history. It will also work well for an adult Christian education course. And the breadth of stories helps us realize the amazing mosaic that is the American church.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: A History of Evangelism in North America

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A History of Evangelism in North America, Thomas P. Johnston, editor. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2021.

Summary: An account of the history of evangelism in North America through a compilation of articles on key figures, movements, and organizations from the colonial period to the present.

If one is to give a full account of American church history, it is difficult to do so without discussing the various evangelistic movements and significant evangelists and revivalists who birthed church and parachurch organizations and contributed to their expansion across the country. This work offers an account of those evangelists, those movements and organizations that fueled successive waves of growth and renewal in American Christianity.

This is not a comprehensive history of evangelism in North America compiled by a single author as the title might suggest but rather an edited volume of twenty-two articles covering key figures and movements from the 1700’s to the present. The work begins with Jonathan Edwards offering a much more extensive study of Edward’s preaching than we often get in truncated versions of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Subsequent chapters discuss other early figures: Brainerd’s efforts among native peoples, John Wesley and his use of preaching conferences to multiply his efforts, George Whitefield’s method for effective evangelizing and Francis Asbury and his organization of circuit riders that led to the explosive growth of American Methodism. We also learn about the important role of Bible societies in the spread of the scriptures that accompanied the gradual spread of American literacy.

The revivalist movement of the early 1800’s is represented by Shubal Stearns and the Sandy Creek Association, Cane Ridge as representative of the camp meeting movement, and the revival of 1800 centered around the lawless region of Logan County, Kentucky. The mid-19th century is covered with discussions of the methodical approach to evangelism of J. Wilbur Chapman including prayer, intentional evangelistic effort, outreach strategies, and systematic efforts to render hospitality and contact prospects. By contrast, John Mason Peck’s efforts focused around education of workers, epitomized in his Shurtleff College and Rock Creek Seminary.

The book then jumps to the post World War 1 era covering Henrietta Mears Sunday School movement and her influence on a generation of evangelical leaders including Bill Bright and Billy Graham, who are also subjects of individual chapters. Other chapters include a wonderful summary of the work of Dawson Trotman of the Navigators and Shadrach Meshach Lockridge, one of the foremost black evangelists who ministered at Calvary Baptist Church in San Diego.

The latter part of the twentieth century was marked by a revival among counter-culture youth in the early seventies, with Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel serving as an epicenter of a movement that spontaneously sprang up around the country. There are also chapters on D. James Kennedy and Evangelism Explosion, Donald McGavran and C. Peter Wagner on church growth, John Piper and evangelism among the “Young-Restless-and-Reformed”. The book concludes with Southern Baptist methodologies and a concluding chapter on Twenty-first century developments.

It was striking to me that there were no chapters either on Charles Finney or D. L. Moody, both of whose methods shaped the “crusade evangelism” of the twentieth century. Billy Sunday is only mentioned as an antecedent of Billy Graham. No women, such as Aimee Semple McPherson or Kathryn Kuhlman are mentioned. While various movements in different church traditions are covered, the flavor is contemporary Southern Baptist, which may account for some of these lacuna.

While this text is framed as a history, the writing and effort to draw practical lessons from different evangelists and movements, which suggests that this text might be used as part of an adult forum on evangelism or as a seminary text as part of a course on evangelism. There are recurring themes of the importance of prayer, confidence in the scriptures and clarity in the message, going out to reach the lost in intentional outreach, the work of the Holy Spirit in conviction, conversion, and empowering of the preacher, and the necessity of making disciples and not just converts.

In an age that prefers presence to proclamation and is squeamish about any of the cognates of “evangel,” this book reminds us that this was not always so, and that many have found faith and passed from death to life through evangelism movements of the past. It reminds us of the transforming power of the gospel. We may need new wineskins, but this book reminds us that the wine is good.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The Scandal of the Church in America: Part Two

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claude_vignon_-_the_lament_of_saint_peter

Claude Vignon, Lament of St. Peter CC BY-SA 3.0

Yesterday I made the contention that the scandal of the Church in America is that it is deeply divided within itself, that we have deeply rent the body of Christ, and that these divisions reflect the divisions in our country rather than the unity of people across our differences in Christ.

So what can and must be done?

I am not proposing that we all just try to gather in some kind of circle around a campfire, hold hands, and sing “Kumbaya.”

First of all, I believe we must awaken. I wonder whether most of us are all that disturbed that the Church in America is divided within itself and that we often include fellow believers in “the enemies” we are fighting and attacking (even when we’ve been told that our warfare is not to be against flesh and blood). I wonder if we are caught up so much with the urgency and the grievances of our particular tribe of Christians, and those with whom we have made common cause that we are woozy like boxers who have been punching each other too long.

Second, I believe we need to lament our sad state. We may not have a clue how we can mend the wounds between us. That tells us how desperate things are. It acknowledges that we need an intervention from on high. Lamenting takes us into a place where we realize our desperate need for God, and that to go on in the way we have is increasingly intolerable.

Third, as we begin to grasp our own contribution to the deep divisions that exist among believers, and the ways we have wronged in word, thought, and deed, in personal acts and unjust structures, we need to repent. Repenting is to call our own sins for what they are, to acknowledge them to God, and the wronged person as wrong, to come to terms with the real hurt and harm we have caused, and to acknowledge our intent, with God’s help to live differently and to determine what that difference will look like. Often we need to do this with the offended.

Repenting is hard, particularly when we think the other might have more to repent of than do we. Often the others think it the other way around. The question sometimes is simply, who will end the rounds of accusations and begin the process of repentance and restoration?

Fourth, we can begin to engage with our fellow believers across our differences and often at this point, what is most needed is simply to attend.  To attend is to listen to understand rather than to refute. Can we listen well enough that we can repeat what is said in a way that the other recognizes that we understood them? We may have to ask ourselves beforehand whether we are truly open to such dangerous listening, because it may open us to different ways of seeing things.

Fifth is that I believe there is a necessity at times to contend. We cannot start here, I think, because I think so many of the things we would contend for are things in which we are deeply invested. The process of awakening, lamenting, repenting, and listening, may help us discern where we are healthily and unhealthily invested, enabling us to advocate for the right reasons, as well as with the right demeanor. But there are things where we really do disagree. The question is whether we will ever seek to come to a meeting of the minds, or at least to identify what we can agree upon and work from that. So often, differing parties only contend in their books and talks directed toward those who agree with them.

Sixth, this may lead us to amend our ways toward each other and toward how we address each others concerns.

I dream of several changes that might flow out of this:

  • I hope this would lead our churches into a similar process of listening deeply to God, the Holy Scriptures, and one another, more intensely than to the political echo chambers that form many of our views.
  • I would hope public Christian leaders would sit down with those who differ greatly to practice these steps and model them for others. Imagine if Franklin Graham, from Samaritan’s Purse, and Jim Wallis from Sojourners met each other as believers and modeled this effort toward coming to a common mind and communion of heart.
  • I dream of the day when Christians, instead of aligning with one political party or another, would line up together to advocate for public policies that reflect the whole of the counsels of the Bible and challenge both parties to end the either-or approaches that characterize so much of our politics that set our people against each other.

As I wrote yesterday, I am convinced that if we do not work at composing and reconciling our differences in the American Church, we have little right or hope of expecting our American politicians to do it. I believe this is urgent for several reasons:

  • Christ is grieved and not glorified by how we have torn asunder his Body.
  • Our divisions sow seeds of doubt about the power of our gospel.
  • Our children are abandoning many of our churches because of our behavior around these divisions.
  • If we allow our divisions across race, gender, economics, and politics to continue, we will only aid and abet the inflaming of differences that could lead to a very scary future, and not one from powers outside our country.

Where am I beginning? I’ve decided that from now through Lent I am not going to post political posts or comments in social media in order to work on the six steps above in my own life. I’ve become increasingly aware of my own participation in the divisions about which I’ve written. I’m also going to look for at least a few fellow believers with views different from mine who would be open to practice this with me (anyone interested?).

Do me a favor, would you? If you think these posts on target, pass them along to church leaders you know, locally or nationally. I don’t want to see our generation repeat the error of church leaders in the pre-Civil War era. I hope instead they will say, “we must reconcile our differences and lead our country in doing the same.”