Unity Without Uniforlllity: An Exploration into the History of the Churches of Rhinebeck, N.Y. by Thea Lawrence efore I embark on this expedition into the pas t, I must explain carefully and painstaking ly the tenta tive nature of m y inquiry . I ask the reader, therefore, to understand that this paper represents Bonly an "exploration. " If I am successful , there will be others following my lead- others intrigued by the door I have opened. Rhinebeck is a town on the east bank of the Hudson Ri ver, approximately halfway between New York and Albany. It is a charming village with a reasonabl y prosperous middle class, tree-lined streets, distinguished o ld houses, and, most noticea ble of all, numerous and beautiful historic churches. There are six in the village itself and four in outlying areas. T hey represent Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Reformed, L utherans, Metho­ dists and Baptists. This is a lot o f churches for a population of less than three thousand. Though over three hundred structures are li sted in the The H udson I'alley R egionaL R eview, September 19tH . Vo lumc I. Numbn 2 97 Nati ona l Historic Village District, few have been so continuously in use over a long time as these buildings. It has been said, quite accurately, that the history of Rhinebeck is the history of its churches. In no way is Rhinebeck dominated by an unconventional type of relig ion. T he Sunday services present a visual scene pretty much likeany to be seen in mainline churches across the nation. The behavi or of the worshippers is circumspect in the extreme; they are careful to do everything as St. Paul admonished, "decently and in order. " T he sermons are neither unusually intellectual nor inordinately passionate. One is not deluged with g lossalalia nor edified with prophecy from the congregation. T hough there is a chari smatic prayer group and several home Bible study groups, they keep a low profile. If an y of the churches owes its vita lity to the recent "Full Gospel" movement, it is not immediately apparent. There are no miraculo us happenings reponed. The last great rev iva l meetings took p lace during World War I. My thes is is simply that the history of Rhinebeck and its churches, if examined closely, exhibits, if not uniqueness, at least some peculiarity. And what makes this history so strange? It has been marked by an unusual degree of mutual cooperation. In a word, an o utside observer would see nothing odd. But Rhinebeckians know abo ut something that the outsider cannot see. T hey know that alongside the six visible churches stands an invisible seventh which occasiona ll y surfaces into view and might correctl y be ca lled the Church of Brotherl y Love. T he ideal of brotherhood is certainly a preoccupation of the twentieth century. Is Rhinebeck's seventh church simply an image of the Consulta­ tion on Church Union? Or does it derive from an o lder source? T hat ques tion is easy to answer. Rhinebeck's union worshi p services go back to the Civil War and cooperation among denominations even earlier. T hinking of each persuasion as a room in a ho use might be of benefit in grasping the complex nature of this community. If I may borrow an image from C.S. Lewis, I will make this point more clearl y. In his book, Mere Christianity, he speaks of such unity as "a hall o ut of which doors open into several rooms." In the ma ller of ecumenism today, it is hardly surprising that Christian churches should be trying to make up their differences. Like Republicans or Democrats, they close ranks when under fire; in this respect they are no different from any beleaguered faction . It is no secret that their influence is being eliminated fro m all aspects of public life. Non-Christians view the ecumenical movement as a last-ditch fight aga inst inevitable extinction. In mergers and interfaith conferences, they see a kind of desperation. 98 Perhaps they are right. But none of this is reflected in the churches of Rhinebeck. Each o ne is still stubbornly what it is. Lutherans separate from Reformed on fine matters of doctrine just as they did in 1729. Catholics continue their devotion to Mary, and Episcopalians, however much they admire Pope John Paul II , will have nothing to do with papal infa llibility; Methodists remain confirmed Wesleyans, and Baptists consider immersion the only valid form of baptism. When a ll this is considered, the figure o f the house with its six separate rooms can be seen to be a valid ana logy. But the union Lenten services add a mys terious dimension to this basic picture. In the background hovers an enigmatic form suggesti ve of the Spirit of Co-Inherence which Charl es Williams claims has seldom appeared since the Apostoli c era.) It is the presence of this spirit that gives Rhinebeck its distinction. While American churches elsewhere are feverishly pursuing a common denominator, Rhinebeckians have possessed one for nearl y three centuries. T he following pages will establish this plain matter of fact. What I am hoping to determine here is the etio logy of this curious hi tory. The method I have outlined seems to me the proper one. I am convinced that the exploration of this matter will revea l a fertile fi eld for further investigation, not only into historical trends, but also into the role of the small tcwn in the great moral and ethical revo lution of our time. There are two kinds of clues which are particularly relevant in a search for the origins of the idiosyncratic nature of Rhinebeck. T he first show primarily what happened in the religious denominations themselves both before they came to Rhinebeck and after. The second kind is composed of local fa ctors both of social climate and political weather. These cl ues are inextricabl y woven together in the histori cal fabric, and I shall not try to separate them. I believe they will emerge from the facts by themselve . When in the sixteenth century the character of what had come to be known as Christendom was changed by inner revolution, the first spokesman for the new era was the German, Martin Luther. Following came a Swiss, Ulrich Zwingli , who impressed the German people nearl y as much as Luther had. Whereas Luther was mostl y concerned with Christianity as a fa ith rather than a system of works, Zwingli pointed out that "faith without works is dead." But in Germany a movement called Pietism impelled the Reformed Church toward New Testament principles rather than the severe doctrine of Calvin and John Knox. The University of Halle was the seedplot for such preaching in both the Lutheran and Reformed bodies. Laymen were encouraged to take part in informal 99 meetings for prayer, Bible study and hymn-singing. The relatively mild Heidelberg Catechism of the Palatine EleclOr was used, particularly in the Rhineland and the duchy of Wuntemberg. Unlike the churches of Holland and Scotl and, the Reformed Church in Germany li ved peaceably with its Lutheran neighbor. 2 With the exception of the Dutch Republic, the Germanic states generall y eschewed strict Calvinism. Meanwhile, a third force, the Church of England, published T homas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer as the first vernacular transla ti on of the La tin Mass. T he " Prayerbook" church was later to develop into the " Bridge" church between the Catholic and Protestant poillls of view. But in the beginning, each of these three Protestant sects- L utheran, Reformed and Angli can-were cl oser lO the mother church in Rome than to any future recusalllS. H owever, there shortl y ap peared on the continent a recalcitrant sect known as Anabaptist for its dogma of bapti sm by immersion. T hese p urists set the stage for all the nonconformist sects that were to proliferate in the fo ll owing century, groups whose only common denominalOr was Sep­ arati sm. It was not so m uch their beli efs as their manners that outraged the orig ina l Protes tants. In Amsterdam , the ultimate stronghold of the Calvinist fa ith, stern church men outdid the Spanish Inquisition by p ublicly cutting o ut the heart s of Anabaptists, Az tec style.:! T he fifth type of ch urch lo arise in reaction lo the Roman church was typified by the Wes leys and other preachers of "The Great Awakening" and could be call ed the "Miss ionary" church. By the nineteenth celllury, the offshoot called Methodists had generated m iss ionaries who strea med to every country on the globe. T h us the si x churches which came lo Rhinebeck were se t in their mo lds before they arrived. Although these major ways of approaching the gospel of Jesus Christ d id not come o n the local scene according to their appearance in the worl d, there is still a kind of logic in the way that they did come lOgether, as will be seen. T he first church to be built IJl Rhinebeck was a union church of Lutherans and Zw ingli Reformed. Immigrants from the Rhenish Palatinate had moved from Governor Hunter's "East Camp" on Livingston's Manor to a crossing of the King's Highway on the Beekman Patent. It might be sa id that the Rhinebeck hOll se of churches began here as a one-room cabin.