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| http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=142 |
churchmousec (http://churchmousec.wordpress.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Finney's Legacy Explains the Amalgamation of the E...":
A powerful post, Dr Jackson. My thanks. I might borrow some of it for a follow-up post on mine. Emphases mine below.
Thank you for quoting Charles Spurgeon, a Confessional ('Particular') Baptist (London Confessions of Faith 1689) and another Calvinist, B B Warfield, one of the 'Princeton Greats' before Princeton's seminary went Modernist. The Reformed Confessions -- the aforementioned Baptist and Westminster Confessions of Faith (1646), along with the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Belgic Confession (1566) and Canons of Dordt (1619) -- have nothing to do with universalism, UOJ, Amyraldism, Remonstrants, Evangelicalism or Finneyism.
I am surprised that Finney never studied the Presbyterian confessions (i.e. Westminster); perhaps he was a natural rebel and bunked off Sunday School and ignored his parents. Or perhaps they were lax. If he had studied and absorbed them, he never would have set along the heretical path of Pelagianism. It seems he wanted Scripture his own way.
Many will appreciate the lesson against legalism:
'The Western half of New York became known as "the burnt-over district," because of the negative effects of the revivalist movement that culminated in Finney's work there.'
And, this passage explained much, since I know New England quite well and could never come to grips with their secularism and gravitation towards Unitarian 'churches':
'Despite Finney's accounts of glorious "revivals," most of the vast region of New England where he held his revival campaigns fell into a permanent spiritual coldness during Finney's lifetime and more than a hundred years later still has not emerged from that malaise. This is directly owing to the influence of Finney and others who were simultaneously promoting similar ideas.'
The New England states, even today, put much misplaced faith in the government and secularism as answers to the world's woes. Note how Harvard and Yale, former seminaries, changed since their founding.
However, as my reader Linda Kimball and the retired Anglican Bishop of Durham N T 'Tom' Wright who is now a professor at St Andrew's University, would point out (although on opposite ends of the spectrum), the Enlightenment had a significant part to play in apostasy, deism and agnosticism.
This is certainly a topic which deserves more exploration. Many would be surprised, particularly if the socio-political angle is brought into play.
Churchmouse
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GJ - Earlier revivals combined appeals to faith with social improvement. Absent the Means of Grace, these efforts followed the same downward trajectory as Pietism, which began in Biblical studies and ended in rationalistic rejection of the Bible (while teaching the Bible at Halle University).
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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rauschenbusch The cool guys among the Lutherans quoted Rauschenbusch, the equivalent of having "Church Growth Eyes" today. |
The Social Gospel Movement, which peaked with Walter Rauschenbusch's Social Gospel lectures at Yale, thought the church should use its power for social reform. That was the theology behind FDR's New Deal - the same programs too. The Social Gospel movement was extremely liberal about all Biblical doctrines, including the divinity of Christ.
The Social Gospel platform was first published in the Federal Council of Churches, which became the National Council of Churches after they were exposed as Communist led. Nothing changed except the title.
The Social Gospel became an unpopular term, but the movement continued in the mainline denominations, because they had no religion except do-goodism. Each generation has to be more extreme, so ALC/LCA/ELCA went through various fad movements and settled on homosexuality as the last frontier...for the moment.
Church Growth never claimed to be changing society. Instead they convinced the dim-witted denominational leaders that Drucker's Management by Objective and savvy marketing would make them successful.
Emergent or Missional thinking is grunge Church Growth and very close to mainline radicalism. Like Andy Stanley, the more they try to fit in with current trends, the more irrelevant they will become. WELS and Missouri are clambering aboard a sinking ship, starting emergent churches with wacky names, preparing a generation of their followers to leave the Lutheran Church altogether.
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| Andy has trained many WELS workers - Missouri too - I presume. Note the faded jeans. Andy cannot admit to being Babtist, so he serves "Northpoint Community Church." |
