Jim Jordan on how preaching was set in opposition to the Church

From The Reconstruction of the Church.

The Church in America today is in disarray. Apart from the evil influence of secular humanism and theological liberalism (which are the same thing), the problem is due to two factors: an ambiguous attitude toward public worship, and the development of parachurch organizations.

The first factor is that the institutional Church has not stressed the importance of “command performance worship” and the sacraments. As a result, people are not sure why the Church is important. They can hear good preaching over the radio or television. They can read good Christian books, and get guidance for life. Home Bible studies frequently provide better fellowship. Often the Church seems kind of dead compared to other Christian works. Thus, the institutional Church seems relatively unimportant. We have to say thatthis is the Church’s own fault, for failing to make its purpose clear to the people.

It is important for us to see briefly how this came about. During the Middle Ages, because of a superstitious view of the sacrament, people stopped partaking of it. They removed it from their children, and stopped drinking the wine. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the Italo-papal nationalization of the Church was pretty much complete, and the Church was almost wholly corrupt in its ministry. Lay preachers,monks, and other types of reformers conducted ministry outside the boundaries of the institutional Church, though they always directed people to engage in formal command performance worship on Sunday. At this time it was still understood that public worship was as important as private worship.

[It was the laity, not the clergy, who rejected the cup, out of fear of spilling it. It was also the laity who stopped bringing their children for communion, for the same reason. Until the later Middle Ages, children were welcomed at Jesus’ house for a weekly dinner with Him. All baptized children, from infancy on, were present at the Table.]

With the Reformation, the preachers triumphed, and took over the Churches. The political hold of the Italo-papal court over the rest of Europe was broken. Since the Reformation grew out of a preaching movement, it was natural for protestants to emphasize preaching in their worship services. At the same time, people were not used to taking communion more than once or twice a year, if that often. Though the major Reformers, such as Luther, Calvin, and Bucer, greatly desired weekly (even daily) communion, they were completely unable to persuade the people to go along. Quarterly communion was the most they could get.

As a result of all this, protestant people came to think of preaching as the most important aspect of the institutional Church. This was a mistake, because God has not given many gifted orators to the Church. (St. Paul was ridiculed forhis lack of oratorical skill, and Moses had the same problem; see Exodus 4:10ff. and Acts 20:7-9; 1 Corinthians 2:1-5; 2 Corinthians 10:10.) The proclamation of the gospel needs the pastoral context of the whole whody life–of the Church, and particularly needs the seal of the sacraments. By its exaltation of preaching as a charismatic art, the Reformation moved in the direction, subtly and unintentionally to be sure, of undermining the Church itself.

As time went along, this unhealthy opposition of preaching to sacramental pastoral ministry became more pronounced.The Puritan opposition to prayerbook worship wound up, in practice, often pitting preaching against a more wholistic view of the Church. [It should be noted that all the Reformers had been favorable to prayerbook worship. The more radical Puritans departed completely from the Reformation at this point.] This opposition broke out into the open, in America, during the Great Awakening. Roaming preachers caused tremendous disruption in the normal pastoral life ofthe Church. As Hofstadter has written,

In truth, the established ministers found it difficult to cope with the challenge of the awakeners. The regular ministers, living with their congregations year in and year out under conditions devoid of special religious excitement, were faced with the task of keeping alive the spiritual awareness of their flocks under sober everyday circumstances. Confronted by flaming evangelists of Whitefield’s caliber, and even by such lesser tub-thumpers and foot-stampers as Gilbert Tennent and Davenport, they were at somewhat the same disadvantage as an aging house-wife whose husband has taken up with a young hussy from the front line of the chorus (Anti-intellectualism, p. 67).

Because this is so important, and because there is so much mythology about how wonderful the Great Awakening and subsequent revivals were, I want to insert here some comments on George Whitefield; but since I dare not criticize him myself, I shall let the eminent Charles Hodge do it for me:

It is impossible to open the journals of Whitefield without being painfully struck on the one hand with the familiar confidence with which he speaks of his own religious experience, and on the other with the carelessness with which he pronounces others to be godly or graceless, on the slightest acquaintance or report. Had these journals been the private record of his feelings and opinions, this conduct would be hard to excuse; but as they were intended for the public, and actually given to the world almost as soon as written, it constitutes a far more serious offence. Thus he tells us, he called on a clergyman, (giving the initials of his name, which, under the circumstances completely identified him) and was kindly received, but found “he had no experimental knowledge of the new birth.” Such intimations are slipped off, as though they were matters of indifference. On equally slight grounds he passed judgment on whole classes of men. After his rapid journey through New England, he published to the world his apprehension “lest many, nay most that preach do not experimentally know Christ .”

. . . White field was much in the habit of speaking of ministers as being unconverted; so that the consequence was, that in a country where “the preaching and conversation of far the bigger part of the ministers were undeniably as became the gospel, such a spirit of jealousy and evil surmising was raised by the influence and example of a young foreigner, that perhaps there was not a single town; either in Massachusetts or Connecticut, in which many of the people were not so prejudiced against their pastors, as to be rendered very unlikely to be benefited by them” (from a Letter to Whitefield from Edward Wigglesworth, in the name of the faculty ofHarvard College, 1745). This is the testimony of men who had received Mr. Whitefield, on his first visit, with open arms.

Hodge also comments on the belief, new at the time, that anyone had the right to set himself up as a gospel preacher, over against the ministry of the Church. The perspective which Hodge sets out here, which has been the universal catholic view of the Church of all ages, is almost completely lost today, and seems very odd to the modern reader:

Whitefield. . . assumed the right, in virtue of his ordination, to preach the gospel wherever he had an opportunity, “even though it should be in a place where officers were already settled, and the gospel was fully and faithfully preached. “This, I humbly apprehend,” he adds, “is every gospel minister’s indisputable privilege.” It mattered not whether the pastors who thus fully and faithfully preached the gospel, were willing to consent to the intrusion of the itinerant evangelist or not. “If pulpitsshould be shut,” he says, “blessed be God, the fields are open, and I can go without the camp, bearing the Redeemer’s reproach. This I glory in; believing if I suffer for it, I suffer for righteousness’ sake.” If Whitefield had the right here claimed, then of course Davenport had it, and so every fanatic and errorist has it. This doctrine is entirely inconsistent with what the Bible teaches of the nature of the pastoral relation, and with every form of ecclesiastical government, episcopal, presbyterian, or congregational. Whatever plausible pretences may be urged in its favor, it has never been acted upon without producing the greatest practical evils .

Thus, the Great Awakening went far toward breaking down the historic connection between the wholistic ministry of the local Church and the preaching of the gospel. Subsequent revivals have only worked to further the disaster. Piety came to be seen exclusively in individualistic terms–individual souls responding to the ministry of the preacher–and corporate piety as the public performance of worship visibly on the earth before the throne of God for His glory, was increasingly lost from view

5 thoughts on “Jim Jordan on how preaching was set in opposition to the Church

  1. The Native Tourist

    It seems to me that one can be sacramentally oriented and still be individualistic. (Many Roman Catholics I have known have been very “me and the host” oriented; historically there have been family chapels so that individuals/individual families could partake.)

    The antidote to individualism is covenantalism – which has its effect of how we see *both* preaching and the sacraments.

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  2. pentamom

    Oooh, it hurts to see Whitefield trashed like that, but Jordan’s pretty convincing. If someone has a well-reasoned antidote, I’d love to hear it.

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  3. wyclif

    These comments from Hodge concerning Whitefield are very familiar to me. Although I think Hodge’s criticisms have a lot of justification to them, I still think Hodge (and Jordan) get it slightly wrong concerning Whitefield “setting himself up as a Gospel preacher over against the ministry of the Church.”

    Whoah, Nelly.

    It’s my understanding that Whitefield actually wasn’t “setting himself up” as anything. Whitefield was a graduate of Oxford (MA) and as such, as well as being an ordinand in the CofE, he was completely within both jurisdiction and his rights to preach in America. At the time (early eighteenth century) the CofE clergy serving in the Americas under the Commissary of London were within their rights to, as Wesley, “take the world as their parish.”

    So Hodge and Jordan may not like it, but Whitefield was fully credentialled, and credentialled in a way that made it impossible for his antagonists in America to do anything about it except complain.

    If Whitefield was an ecclesiastic usurper on those terms, then so was Wesley, and so were a host of other men, as Hodge intimates. And frankly, I’d rather not do without either of them, notwithstanding the errors and legacy of revivalism.

    And Hodge and Jordan are both pushing the limits of credulity to say that “if Whitefield had the right…so every fanatic and errorist has it.”

    I have to say that this is false. Just because Whitefield, an ordained and properly ordered man, went into another’s diocese without so much as a by-your-leave isn’t really the same thing in terms of either order or magnitude as a fanatic or heretic.

    Nevertheless, I agree with the vast majority of Jordan’s observations, and I also would be the first to agree with Hodge that the Great Awakening needs demythologising.

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  4. Laura

    Here are some things to consider regarding Hodge and revival as well as what the Presbyterian church has historically believed about revival.

    When the plan for Princeton Seminary was set forth the General Assembly committee said in forming a seminary it would “endeavor to make it, under the blessing of God, a nursery of vital piety as well as of sound theological learning, and to train up persons for the ministry who shall be lovers as well as defenders of the truth as it is in Jesus, friends of revivals of religion, and a blessing to the church of God”.

    It was during a revival in the winter of 1814-1815 that Charles Hodge made a profession of Christ and joined a Presbyterian Church.

    In 1835 Hodge had this to say on the topic of revival. “as in every individual Christian there are seasons of more or less devotional feeling, fidelity, and activity, so it is in every church.” “the work commences silently in the hearts of a few praying people; the sacred fire gradually spreads through the church; the word is preached with more poin and fervour; prayer is offered with greater importunity and faith; the Spirit descends with power upon the people, and they are in the midst of revival before the word has been prounounced”

    Dr. Archibald Alexander, one of the hero’s of the faith, used to “lecture to the seminary students fully and frankly on revivals.” He rejoiced over the many times of revival that were experienced in his time at Princeton.

    William Sprague, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in NY, observed revival for years. Princeton used to have a special committee that gave yearly reports on revivals. Sprague says of true revival “Such a revival affords the most beautiful sight ever seen upon earth. Its aspect gives us a lively idea of what will be the general state of things in the latter day glory, and some faint image of the heavenly state.”

    For those who are interested in continuing in the biblical traditions handed down from their fathers in the faith, might I recommend the two volume set on Princeton Seminary written by David Calhoun. Its really the history of American Presbyterianism. Here you will find that these men put great stress on personal piety, experiential religion, the need for revival, calling on men to individuall repentance, and the centrality of the preached word, NOT the Lord’s Supper.

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