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The Presbyterian Church During the Great Awakening a Look at the Problems That Tore Presbyterianism in Two at the Time of the Great Awakening in the 1740S

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The Presbyterian Church During the Great Awakening a Look at the Problems That Tore Presbyterianism in Two at the Time of the Great Awakening in the 1740S Division, Dissension, and Compromise: The Presbyterian Church during the Great Awakening A look at the problems that tore Presbyterianism in two at the time of the Great Awakening in the 1740s. by Marilyn Westerkamp ON MAY 27, 1745, THE SYNOD OF PHILA- Within four years, the synods began consid- delphia accepted, with some grace, the de- ering plans of union, testifying to the dedica- cision of the Presbytery of New York to join tion of the moderate party. Nine years later, with the Presbytery of New Brunswick in a in 1758, the reunited Synod of New York separately organized Synod of New York. and Philadelphia met and formally healed The Presbyterian community was not a par- the schism. ticularly large one at this time—six Controversy was not new to the colonial presbyteries with some fifty-four ministers church. Scarcely forty years old at the time serving congregations from Long Island to of this schism, the Synod of Philadelphia had New Castle. An outsider might well think already weathered three major controver- that this reasonably small population and sies. In 1722, the nature and authority of geography could have been managed by a judicatories was debated. One group envi- single synod, but such an observer would be sioned a hierarchical scheme of congrega- forgetting the large personalities involved— tion, presbytery, and synod, with the latter personalities too vibrant, too doctrinaire, bodies granted the authority to set church too righteous to govern themselves together. policies and in that way maintain orthodoxy During the previous ten years of spiritual and order. Others challenged such a politi- revitalization, two increasingly intractable cal system as a potential encroachment upon parties had battled in the presbyteries and their consciences. Seven years later several synods over the best ways to spread the ministers proposed that subscription to the gospel and serve the people, with one party Westminster Confession be required of all managing to oust the other at a poorly at- clerics as a guarantor of orthodoxy within a tended synod meeting in 1741. In addition community troubled by the arrival of un- to these two obstinate clerical factions, a sound ministers from overseas. Once again, group of moderates had worked to maintain opponents complained that this demand peace. Following the exclusion of 1741, a would force clergymen to subscribe articles meeting which they had not attended, this they conscientiously opposed. In both cases, third party sought rapprochement between compromise proved attainable through the the others for three years. When both proved simple expedient of accepting the system in unbending, the moderates sided with those general, while allowing particular excep- excluded as those more justifiably aggrieved tions. A third controversy over the preaching and whose spiritual vision they shared. of Samuel Hemphill set the Presbyterians as Dr. Westerkamp is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Journal of Presbyterian History 78:1 (Spring 2000) 4 Journal of Presbyterian History a church against the latitudinarian opinions pastors to congregations, as well as remove of Hemphill, uniting those who opposed them, lay persons found many ways of driv- subscription with more traditional defend- ing an unwanted pastor out of their congre- ers of orthodoxy against the gross errors of gation, including withholding salary and/or yet another unsound minister from overseas. filing charges of misconduct or heresy with In all three cases, problems had been re- the presbytery. Salary games were tricky to solved and the church was able to move play and could backfire, but presbyteries forward. took morals and heterodoxy charges quite The battle of 1741 was different. Al- seriously. Any small group of determined though couched in the language of presby- lay persons could make life miserable for terial rights and judicature authority, the their minister. During these eighteenth-cen- conflict engaged individual ministers at the tury years of religious renewal, many con- very heart of their being and their callings. gregations did just that. They ran after popu- An intense religious furor had touched the lar preachers, fled stolid ministers to form laity, arousing congregations to heights of new congregations, refused to pay one or emotion and Christian commitment and two who did not support revival, and filed bringing more people into the churches them- charges of immorality against others. selves. This “Great Awakening,” which swept Ten years ago, in Triumph of the Laity: the Mid-Atlantic and New England colonies Scots-Irish Piety and the Great Awakening,1 during the 1730s, 1740s and 1750s, in- I argued that the overwhelming support of spired many clerics to rethink their own the laity for the Great Awakening pushed the spirituality and experiment with sermon style institutional church to schism and led to the and itinerancy as a way to bring new souls to ultimate victory of the pro-Awakening, New Christ. Such experiments succeeded beyond Light faction in the Plan of Union accepted all expectations in awakening people to a in 1757. I have not changed my mind about sense of their own sins, not only in the this conclusion, and the research of Eliza- privacy of their hearts, but in large, emo- beth Nybakken on the anti-Awakening Old tional, communal rituals of revivalism and Light community reinforces, through an “ex- piety. Although many complained that the ception proves the rule” sort of argument, effects of such excitement were ephemeral, that the laity were a major force in eigh- in congregations where such fervor was teenth-century Presbyterian politics, if for cultivated and guided, pastors claimed that moving their clergy in both directions.2 Re- the Holy Spirit had brought true transforma- cently, however, Bryan Le Beau’s new bio- tions of individuals and communities. graphical study of Jonathan Dickinson has The laity became deeply committed to led me to reconsider and perhaps reconfigure this revivalist religiosity to a degree never my own understanding of the clergy.3 approached in previous disputes, and Pres- I have maintained that Leonard Trin- byterians’ organization and their theology of terud’s argument that the New Lights repre- polity empowered, some might say overly sented a New England consciousness was empowered, the laity to prescribe the devel- too narrow. Ned Landsman identified an opment of the national church, perhaps even early Awakening-style revival in the Scottish change its direction. In congregations, the community at Freehold, New Jersey, pastored authority of pastors was buttressed and over- by John Tennent, and my own research seen by a body of elected elders; elders also found roots of New Light religiosity in the joined clerics in both presbytery and synod Presbyterian communities of seventeenth- as governors within these democratically- century Ireland and Scotland.4 Now Le Beau, run bodies. Churches called pastors to min- building upon the work of Leigh Eric Schmidt, ister to them through elections involving the has added another challenge to Trinterud’s entire male congregation. While presbyteries paradigm, namely that the New Englanders, were the only bodies who could ordain far from joining the intractable New Light The Presbyterian Church during the Great Awakening 5 ine the circumstances surrounding the divi- sion and reunification, consider again the causes for the division, and reevaluate the role played and authority exercised by the clergy. While I continue to assert that the laity played a pivotal role in promoting the Awakening and increasing the authority of New Light clerics, and I maintain that the laity was never completely under the con- trol of its favored clergy, I have come to believe that the congregations of the Presby- terian church did, in the end, fall back under the control of the clerical leadership. This reassertion of clerical authority through the establishment of the College of New Jersey, the reunification of the synods, and the calling of the Scot John Witherspoon to head the new college served to stabilize the insti- Rev. George Whitefield tutional organization even as it opened up party, played a role of moderation through- future centers of conflict and dissent among out the dispute, through the schism, and both clergy and laity. beyond.5 New Englanders may have ended up on the side of the New Lights; they I certainly believed that it was the Holy Spirit, rather than the delusions of George The first stirrings of revivalism that char- Whitefield, that swept through the colonies. acterized the Great Awakening appeared in However, they worked ceaselessly before the Mid-Atlantic and Chesapeake colonies, and after the years of crisis to maintain, then the region through which the Presbyterian reconstruct, then again maintain peace. Per- Church had extended its authority and influ- haps the remarkable feature of this mid- ence. There, amidst the new immigrants and eighteenth-century episode is not that this their pastors, the Awakening began early dispute brought schism, but that despite the and lasted longest, entertaining itinerant intensity, emotionalism, and personal stakes preachers and inspiring congregations until involved, the schism lasted only seventeen the political upheavals of the American Revo- years. In other words, in light of the extraor- lution replaced, at least temporarily, reli- dinary power of the Great Awakening, what gious enthusiasm with political protest. In is surprising is not the power of the laity to 1729 John Tennent’s Freehold congregation effect schism, but the ability of the clergy to became the first New Jersey community to bridge schism through a renewed commit- assert that “Regeneration is absolutely nec- ment to moderation. The very brevity of the essary in Order to obtain eternal Salvation,” split, the ability of a divided church to estab- and, more importantly, to experience that lish a college for the education of ministers, regeneration as a community.
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