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The German Reformed Church and the Home Missionary Movement before 1863: A Study in Cultural and Religious Isolation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Glenn Weaver
Glenn Weaver
Affiliation:
Connecticut College
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Extract

Shortly before the opening of the nineteenth century there began what American historians have chosen to call the Home Missionary Movement. This phenomenon in American social and religious history must not be confused with “church extension,” for its purpose was not to extend religious denominations as such. but rather to “save souls.” This missionary enterprise was carried out chiefly by various missionary “societies”—both denominational and interdenominational. Some of these groups were all-inclusive in their missionary interests, but others were limited to specific phases of the work, such as the distributional enterprises. While these organizations flourished along the Atlantic seaboard, their chief concern was the spiritual welfare of the inhabitants of the frontier where the easterners believed that shameful lawlessness and immorality prevailed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , December 1953 , pp. 298 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1953

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References

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5. During the early years of the Reformed Church's history, a number of congregations in outlying regions employed “lay readers” who were selected from their members to provide spiritual edification until an ordained pastor could be secured. Two characteristics of these “lay readers” distinguished them from the “lay preachers” of the revivalistic sects: 1) the best educated man in the community, often the school-master, was usually selected, and 2) instead of preaching extemporaneous sermons, as was the custom among frontier Baptists and Methodists, the “lay reader” simply read selections from books of sermons or homilies. Seldom did they attempt to administer the rites or Sacraments. Many of these “lay readers” were subsequently ordained to the ministry. For a fuller account see Hinke, William J., Life and Letters of the Reverend John Philip Boehm (Philadelphia, 1916)Google Scholar and Minutes and Letters of the Coetus of the German Reformed Congregations in Pennsylvania (Phila., 1903), p. 4Google Scholar, et passim.

6. The Coetus was a missionary Synod subject to the authority of the Reformed Church in Holland.

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64. Ibid., p. 51.

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66. Ibid., Records of 1834, pp. 52–53.

67. Ibid., Records of 1835, pp. 12–13.

68. Ibid., Records of 1836, p. 21.

69. Ibid., Records of 1844, p. 30.

70. Ibid., Records of 1852, p. 109.

71. Ibid., Records of 1856, p. 46.

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