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The Church of the United Brethren in Christ: a Reluctant Denomination

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The Church of the United Brethren in Christ: a Reluctant Denomination Methodist History, 39:4 (July 2001) THE CHURCH OF THE UNITED BRETHREN IN CHRIST: A RELUCTANT DENOMINATION K. JAMES STEIN There may be certain advantages at a specialized conference to one's presenting the last paper on the last morning, but I cannot think of any. Some of the conference participants by that time have already left. All whose bod­ ies are still present in the room have their minds already 100 miles down the road. The previous speakers have either touched upon or virtually utilized key points to be made in the address. The lecturer could in some despair feel it the better part of wisdom to say to the decimated audience like many a traveler returning fro1n abroad has confessed to U.S. customs officials, "I have nothing to declare." Seriously, however, I am delighted to be asked to speak at this significant event and gladly accept the challenge of presenting the final lecture. Yesterday at Long's Barn we United Methodists trod upon some of our sacred soil. Otterbein's "Wir sind Bruder" utterance as he embraced Martin Boehm in a haymow full of worshippers at the "Grosse Versammlung" (the Great Meeting) that Pentecost Sunday probably in 1767, was a pivotal state­ ment. It evangelically affirmed the Gospel and it ecumenically offered rec­ onciliation across denominational barriers. No wonder some in the congre-..., gation praised God aloud and the greater part "were bathed in tears." 1 Still, despite this ringing unitive affirmation, nothing seems to have resulted immediately. We might well imagine that Otterbein and Boehm would have pulled out their date books and have scheduled a joint strategy session. While it is possible that over the next 22 years they may have met and encouraged each other's ministries, there is no evidence that they reached a formal agreement regarding union. 2 Thus, a generation's time elapsed in the 33-year period between 1767 and 1800, when the Church of the United Brethren in Christ would take on f orn1al organization through the holding of the first regular annual confer­ ence exactly 200 years ago yesterday and today, not far fron1 where we are sitting. Maybe this sweep of time was not that unusual. Someti1nes what we label signal events produce little fruit and other occasions happening un- 1John Lawrence, The History of the Church qf the United Brethren in Christ (Dayton. Ohio: United Brethren Publishing House, 1890) I, 174. 2J. Bruce Behney and Paul H. Eller, The History <~f the Evangelical United Brethren Church, ed. by Kenneth Krueger (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979) 39. 240 A Reluctant Den01nination 241 noticed in the hinterlands set in inotion forces that will not or cannot be con­ tained. There were reasons why no unitive efforts were immediately under­ taken by Otterbein and Boehm. The former spent a year visiting his relatives in Gcrn1any. Upon his return he left Pennsylvania in response to a call from an independent German Refonned congregation in Baltimore. If this took him out of physical proximity to Boehm, his involvement between 1770 and 177 6 with the "United Ministers," a small group of pietist German Reformed pastors intent upon evangelizing Maryland's German-speaking population, diverted his attention elsewhere. Besides, the Revolutionary War provided a six-year interruption. 3 It is probable, however, that Otterbein and Boehm encountered each other in the years following the Long's Barn event. Boehm kept at his itin­ erant preaching and Otterbein continued sallying forth from his Baltimore parish doing evangelistic preaching and keeping close contact with the "Dutch Methodists" (as they were called) that he was gathering in rural Maryland. There must have been some contact, direct or indirect, or else there would not have been the 1789 gathering of Otterbein's and Boehm's preachers at the farmer's Baltimore parsonage or the 1791 meeting of almost the saine group at John Spangler's farm, west of York, Pennsylvania. Early United Brethren historians could name and give the denominational background of 22 different preachers by now connected with Otterbein and Boehm.4 Such growth in the number of preachers suggests evangelistic mobility and mutual support exercised by these two leaders. I However it happened, Otterbein and Boehm called together what has now become known as "the United Brotherhood in Christ" to meet at the Peter Kemp farmhouse, two miles west of Frederick, Maryland. The 13 or 14 preachers in attendance laid the foundation for the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, by resolving to assemble yearly and counsel with one another as to how they could conduct their preaching office inore in keeping with God's will.5 1It is assumed that the disinterest and travel dangers caused by the American Revolution had more to do with discontinuing these efforts than did any opposition from the Reformed coetus or synod. J. I. Good, History of the Reformed Church in the United States, 1725-1792 (Read­ ing, Pennsylvania, 1899), 595-596. ~ Behney and Eller, 56. 'A. \V. Drury, trans. and ed., Minutes of the Annual and General Conferences of the Church of th e Untied Brethren in Christ, I 800-1818 (Dayton, Ohio: Published for the United Brethren Historical Society by the United Brethren Publishing House, 1897) 9-10. 242 Methodist History Evidently those preachers conferencing together exactly 200 years ago did not intend to create a new church. They were formulating a voluntary society committed primarily to rural and frontier evangelism. During the 19th century much of American Protestantism would be affected by the vol­ untary societies-associations of concerned individuals who laid theologi­ cal and ecclesiastical differences aside for purely pragmatic purposes. These people did not represent the churches from which they came, but they did find a deep bond of relationship with the compatriots in their respective causes. In the first half of the 19th century the American Sunday School Union, the American Temperance Society, the American Anti-Slavery Society, and the American Peace Society would represent the voluntary society approach. The "United Brotherhood in Christ" was just such a non­ denominational group bent upon an evangelistic mission. II The United Brethren reluctance to create a new church and preference for remaining a voluntary society is notable in several ways: because of objections of some of the preachers they made no reference in 1789 and 1791 to "the numbers of members or of societies" to which they were ministering; 6 at their 1800 annual conference they refen-ed to themselves as the unpartheiische (unsectarian) preachers and declared their zeal to preach the Gospel "untrarr1meled by sect"; 7 at their 1801 annual conference, Otterbein spoke of the need to be grateful to God if one "becomes free of sin and a party spirit" 8 (the two may not have been identical, but they sounded equally serious); at the 1802 annual conference those present voted 9-3 against recording the names of those persons who through conversion had been gathered into the growing United Brethren societies. 9 In 1803, while the recording of lay persons' names was now left to each preacher's discretion, it was resolved that the preachers after their sermons should con­ verse with the awakened souls "as might seem proper." 10 Interestingly, it was not until 1857 that the Church of the United Brethren in Christ began to count its membership accurately. 11 Coupled with all of this was a rather persistent feeling among some of the preachers that the Word of God was all-sufficient and that any further order and discipline in the society was unnecessary. This senti1nent was expressed in 1809 during the unitive conversations with the Methodist Episcopal Church. Christian Newcon1er, ('Lawrence, I, 266. 7Drury, 20. 'Drury, 10. ''Drury, 15. 10 Drury, I 4. 11 Behney and Ell er, 99. A Reluctant Denomination 243 who reported this, said that it nearly caused him to withdraw from the Society. 12 A Society it was. The early United Brethren were reluctant to use the word "church." This word does appear in the minutes of the 1800 annual conference, which was justified as a meeting where the preachers could assen1ble and counsel as to how they could conduct their office according to the will and inind of God "that the church of God might be built up." 13 The 1803 annual conference minutes called for the "bettering of the church of God." 14 The infrequent use of the word "church" in the conference minutes of the first 18 years reveals that the Otterbein-Boehm preachers believed that their labors were being done on behalf of the church in general, but that their focus was really upon the "united brotherhood," the voluntary society through whose evangelistic efforts the church in general might be rE(newed. It is noteworthy that on the title page of their early publications, our ancestors in Christ referred to themselves as "the Church of the United Brethren in Christ," but the word "church" was often in small letters with "United Brethren in Christ" in bold print and much larger lettering. 15 The word ''Church'' was not formally and legally included in the denomination­ al name until 1890. 16 The United Brethren kept the voluntary association mentality alive for a long time. III There was another side to all this, however. The annual conference minutes of 1800 and following reveal that the United Brethren preachers were not free to enjoy the comparable simplicity of a voluntary society. Like it or not, they had to address a growing number of institutional concerns. They were under way to becoming another denomination-indeed, as one of their historians would so claim it, "the first indigenous church born in the United States of America." 17 The United Brethren in Christ of two centuries ago would not have 1 known of Ernst Troeltsch 's early 20 1i century distinction between church and 1cAbram W.
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