Upon the first Great Awakening, often identified with Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), Evangelicalism overshadowed Presbyterianism. “Evangelicalism, to use the term by which this new surge of spiritual life is usually described, has often been interpreted as a revolt against Calvinism. While this may have been its ultimate consequence, it was far from that in the beginning. The understanding of the Christian faith as set forth in the great Reformed Confessions was taken for granted. John Wesley was an important exception, but in many respects even he stood firmly within the Genevan tradition. Evangelicalism, however, was much more a mood and an emphasis than a theological system. Its stress was upon the importance of personal religious experience. If it was a revolt against anything, it was revolt against the notion that the Christian life involved little more than observing the outward formalities of religion.”32 Seepage in strength from the Standards in favor of personal experience softened Presbyterianism for the bludgeoning impacts of revivalism and its post-Civil War, that is, after 1865, burgeoning and popular camp meetings.33 Camp-meeting enthusiasts pummeled the Standards to no end, deteriorating Presbyterians’ primary evidence, confessional integrity.
Throughout North America, biblical doctrines as predestination and total depravity failed before the onslaught of optimistic and evangelical forces, Arminian fervors lauding the essential goodness of human beings; thus manipulative advocacy of freewill swept east to west, south to north. “If the Presbyterians had trouble handling the energies generated by the camp meetings, the Methodists did not. They had long been accustomed to the noise and excitement and they were equally accustomed to ‘on-the-job’ training for their preachers. Furthermore, the theology of the camp-meeting exhorters with its implicit rejection of predestination and its explicit emphasis upon salvation as potentially available to all, which proved to be so divisive among Presbyterians, posed no problem for the Methodists.”34 As revivalistic storms surged hither and yon, subjectivism dominated. Presbyterian orthodoxy was openly opposed and rejected, or quietly ignored.
These anti-Presbyterian sentiments spread far and wide, catching more heart-attention. ”Deeply interested in the subject of religious liberty, [Rev. Thomas Campbell, 1763–1854] was appalled at the number of sects and churches all about him, each making loud claims for its own interpretation of Christian truth. In his celebrated ‘Declaration’ of 1807, shortly after his arrival in America, Campbell stressed the two pillars of his outlook. One was individual freedom and autonomy of action, which required less stress on precise creeds as a test of fellowship in the church. The other was the need for greater unity among Christian believers.”35 Less stress on creedal formulation fitted dominant frontier moods. Greater unity softened, in Campbell’s estimation, the Standards’ effectiveness for ecclesiastical homogeneity. More and more church people opted for such conventional wisdom.
In the post-Civil War decades, discoveries initiated by Charles Darwin’s biological evolution theories and Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism, each totally devoid of creedal appreciation, took North America’s Westminster congregations by storm; resistance, often strong, floundered, its dogmatic demands spurned. Charles Hodge (1797–1878) of Princeton Seminary led this opposition. However, larger resistance to (Social) Darwinism took on forms of pietistic indifference36 (what we don’t know won’t hurt us). This conservatism, or Old School Presbyterianism, helped deterioration of interest in and respect for the Westminster tradition. At the same time, Darwinian-tainted New School Presbyterianism further damaged respect and love for the soundness of the Confession of Faith, the Larger Catechism, and the Shorter Catechism.
A sideline: Colonial-era Baptists had adopted a modified Presbyterianism. General Baptists, largest and strongest such denomination then, advocated a global atonement; beyond that, they at first rooted themselves in Westminster’s fervent Calvinist tradition.37 “The Philadelphia Confession of Faith of these American Baptists was a slightly emended version of the Westminster Confession of Faith, following the changes introduced by the Savoy Declaration (1658) of the English Congregationalists with an additional modification at the point of baptism.”38 Arminian priorities, however, had led to complacency in doctrine and confession. “The doctrine of human ability, [Jonathan Edwards] was convinced, destroyed the very foundation of the Christian faith. To counter this threat, he preached a series of five sermons in 1734 on justification by faith alone.”39 But damages had been done, and slanted Jonathan Edwards’s heritage to lay unwonted stress on personal religious experience. Once legitimate confessions conform to human ideas, symbols lose respect, as the anti-confessional history of Baptist denominations and sects proved. Thus Baptists first confessionally rooted in Presbyterianism worked at undermining the Standards.
Northwards, late nineteenth, early twentieth-century Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Methodists produced the Basis of Union. “This was considered a sound document by all concerned, emphasizing a harmony of views with a minimum creedal novelty.”40 Everywhere across Canada’s West large majorities perceived creedal unity on paper less a necessity than evangelical oneness, confirming continental religious moods. “The Western communities . . . were heterogeneous in religious loyalties. They couldn’t have cared less which denomination served them but they did want church services. There sprang up, therefore, a demand for ‘community’ or ‘union’ churches without any specific denominational tag. The ‘Basis of Union’ drafted in 1908 seemed an adequate guide.”41 Reflecting this anti-confessional mood, people everywhere, excepting committed Presbyterians, demanded life in action, or action in life, not theological fine points.
Early on in the twentieth century, Canadian ecumenical sentiments reflected much of the North American ecclesiastical currents. “The project of church union took shape during a period when traditional ways had little prestige. During the first decade of this century many writers were predicting that dogmatic theology would yield its place to sociology and the comparative study of religions. The social gospel was the excitement of the hour, and in Canada the church was preoccupied with the task of evangelizing new cities and a new west largely populated by settlers from abroad. Impressed by the urgency of planning for the future, Christians had little regard for ecclesiastical heirlooms. They were looking for ideas and methods that would work.”42 Rooted in subjectivism, this unity drive took its confessional toll. Only in 1940 did the United Church of Canada accept a more developed Statement of Belief.
The Presbyterians’ 1967 Living Faith and 1976 A Declaration of Faith proved the anti-confessional point: Once human ideas and notions are creedalized, these, if not stillborn, soon lose any glamor bestowed at birth. More stuff for the massive Presbyterian garage: too good to throw away, too bad for direction-setting endeavors. As the Anglicans, also the Presbyterians were largely carried away by anti-confessionalism.
3
Lutherans, institutionally, started in Canada circa 1775, prior to this in America. Canadian Lutherans from the beginning suffered ecclesiastical instability. “The Lutherans were hampered in those early days by the transference of loyalty by both clergymen and laymen to the prevailing Anglican Church—the more so as English became the dominant language and German-speaking pastors were few.”43 When German-language proficiency in colonial Canada died away, Lutherans no longer owned a living language for second and third generations, the appeal of the Book of Concord (1530), the Augsburg Confession (1530), and several Helvetian Confessions failed, and therewith then these Lutheran identification symbols yielded to anti-confessionalism.
3–1
During post-immigration decades the Augsburg Confession symbolized and activated the distinctive that held Lutheran hearts. But with a qualifier: “. . . Lutherans are free to address themselves to any given situation, to the issues involved, and to the persons or corporate bodies thereto related, without any necessary prior reference to tradition or precedent. Operationally speaking, the Lutheran Church normally fulfils these functions in and through congregations. It thus has the potential capability of expressing its confessional genius anew in each particular situation. As a result, Lutheran practice allows for considerable latitude and flexibility in its address to problematic situations in such areas as manners and