Editorial
January/February, 2008
Volume 43, Number 1
The Church of the Brethren is not a perfect church! It never was—and never will be. And if you ever find a church that appears to be perfect, you will do well not to join it, because as soon as you do, it will lose its perfection. However, there is a perfect church that is being developed for the future. It is described in Ephesians 5:27, as a glorious church not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. Membership in this church is only possible through the merits of the righteousness provided by Jesus Christ and His shed blood.
The Brethren Revival Fellowship believes that the Church of the Brethren was born out of a deep desire by early Brethren to live a holy, disciplined life in accord with the plain teachings of Scripture and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Radical obedience to the New Testament message was the hallmark of the early Brethren movement. This quality of church life largely characterized the growth period from 1770 to 1950. But something happened in the middle of the 20th century.
Dale Stoffer, an Ashland Brethren historian, says that when the Church of the Brethren saw some of its brightest young scholars go off to study at more liberal schools, and the denomination joined in with the National and World Councils of Churches—these associations brought a different style of leadership and thinking into the Church of the Brethren. BRF believes that from the seeds of change which were planted during the early and middle 1900s, a harvest of spiritual and numerical decline took place. These facts, more than any other issue, are those which led some conservative and evangelical leaders in the Church of the Brethren to form in 1959 what today is known as the Brethren Revival Fellowship. It was an attempt to reemphasize our rich heritage, and to slow the drift away from accepting biblical authority. The Scriptural basis for the forming of BRF was to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3).
Harold S. Martin is one of a very few Brethren alive today who was at the first BRF meeting at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, Annual Conference 49 years ago. A careful reading of his accompanying article about more recent Brethren history will help to identify the trends of change.
Looking at Later Brethren History
By Harold S. Martin
The Brethren movement was formed in Schwarzenau, Germany in 1708. Alexander Mack was the first minister. We noted in the last issue that Brethren beliefs were influenced by Pietist and Anabaptist teachings. The historian, Donald Durnbaugh, says, “The important thing [for Brethren] was implicit obedience to all of Christ’s commandments, even if they seemed insignificant. Faith in Christ produces obedience to all of His words and commandments” (Brethren Beginnings, page 27).
A. Early Settlement in America
After about twenty years in Europe, most of the Brethren came to America—one group in 1719 and a larger group in 1729. During the early years, the Brethren met in homes of the members. The first church building was constructed at the location of the mother church in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1770. When Alexander Mack and about fifty families arrived in 1729, they either became affiliated with the church at Germantown, or else scattered farther into the frontier of the new nation, where they started worship groups or united with one of the few Brethren congregations that were already established.
The early Brethren settlers were farmers. They looked for fertile land, often locating in valleys that seemed like places for productive farming. Wherever the Brethren went, they began church services— often in homes of members until a church building could be constructed. The Brethren grew during the early years because they preached the gospel. They knew what they believed and were not ashamed to stand for what they were sure the Bible teaches. They dared to be different from the world about them. If people observe very little difference between us and most of society around them, they say in essence, “Why should I bother with the church? Those people are no different from what we are.” The number of church members who identified with the Brethren by 1770 is estimated to have been 1,500 persons.
The Brethren had come out of what they considered overly creedalized state churches in Europe and so they were slow about spelling out their beliefs in a systematic fashion.
A study of Brethren beliefs indicates that there were major themes in their belief system. The Brethren were Biblicists. They stressed dis- cipleship and obedience, nonconformity to the world, nonresistance toward enemies, aid for the poor, and love, unity, and discipline within the body of believers.
B. Westward Migration of the Brethren
As the American frontier opened up, there was an exodus of Brethren to the newer agricultural lands to the south and west of the Philadelphia area. Wherever the thrifty and hardworking Brethren chose to settle, there were crude cabins surrounded by fields cleared and prepared for planting crops. The Brethren were easily recognized by their plain dress and their simple lifestyle. They arranged for preaching services in homes; there are still some large houses in parts of Pennsylvania with removable partitions. B/ meeting in homes, the Brethren expressed their reluctance to become like the highly organized state churches in Europe.
When the Revolutionary War closed in 1783, the majority of Brethren lived in Pennsylvania, with a scattering of members in New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia. But by 1800, the Brethren had moved south into North Carolina and Tennessee. Others had moved across western Pennsylvania into Ohio and Kentucky. The move west and south continued at a rapid pace during the last half of the 1800s. By 1850, the Brethren first reached the state of Oregon on the West Coast. Travel was tedious and dangerous. Major trails to the West were not designed for large amounts of wagon traffic. By 1850, however, the new nation had 9,000 miles of railroads. The Atlantic Coast was connected with Chicago by 1853, and by 1869 the Atlantic and Pacific coasts were connected by rail. Also, many Brethren took advantage of the Homestead Act passed by the federal government in 1862, which provided that any person over age 21 who was the head of a family, could obtain title to 160 acres of public land, if he agreed to live on it for five years and improve it. By 1895 there were almost 300 Brethren congregations scattered in 19 of the 22 states west of the Mississippi River.
There were a number of reasons why the Brethren moved away from the Germantown area and fanned out to the south and west.
1) Land was available in the frontier region.
2) Industrial growth in the Philadelphia area made the city less inviting to a rural people.
3) The Brethren had a strong missionary spirit.
Wherever the Brethren went they built houses, and the families in close proximity became a colony which established a local congregation. When their numbers grew they began to build houses for worship. The meeting houses were simple structures. The preachers stood on the same floor level as the worshipping congregation. There were no raised pulpits, stained glass windows, or steeples on the roof. Robed choirs and costly organs were considered unnecessary. The worship consisted of singing, praying, reading the Scriptures, and hearing expositions and applications of the Bible. Most of the ministers did not have much formal education, but one historian says, “Their acquaintance with the Bible is admirable.”
C. Attempts to Preserve Unity among the Brethren
As Brethren migrated to the frontier and settled in many parts of the country, it became more difficult to preserve unity. There were several ideas about doctrine and practice. Some taught universal restoration; some practiced the single mode of feet washing; some had the feet washing after supper; others baptized by a one-time backward mode of water baptism. The Brethren seemed to need a channel by which they could be more unified across the nation. The solution seemed to lie in the printed page. The year 1851 saw the first issue of the Gospel Visitor, the forerunner of the present-day Church of the Brethren Messenger.
During the latter part of the 1800s, there were calls for involvement in higher education. Opportunities for formal education were not easily available in most frontier areas. Many early Brethren believed that public education would lead to vain conduct and introduce secular values, damaging the Brethren way. But in the columns of the Gospel Visitor there were appeals for more emphasis on disciplined learning. The writers also called for the establishing of Sunday Schools. By 1870, the Annual Meeting agreed that congregations could have Sunday school classes “if good order was maintained, and if all members agreed.” The Brethren wanted no part of a trained clergy. They saw the oppression imposed in Europe by highly trained pastors. And so some Brethren advocated starting schools which would be conducted in a religious atmosphere, but which would omit formal religious instruction.
The Brethren reacted against the highly organized state churches of Europe, and were slow to develop a structured church government. But in the 1740s they were challenged by a Moravian leader to work ecumenically with him to reach the American Indians for Christ. They were not impressed by some of the Moravian beliefs, but were convinced about the value of a conference to help unite the scattered Brethren, and so a Brethren conference was arranged for the spring of 1742. This became the first in what later came to be known as the Annual Meeting.
There were also pleas for involvement in overseas missionary activity. Early Brethren were missionary minded. Alexander Mack and others went up and down the Rhine Valley preaching the gospel. It was missionary zeal that led many Brethren to plant churches and to reach neighbors as they moved south and west in the new nation. But in the mid-1800s there were calls for foreign missionary work. Brethren were slow to get excited about foreign missions for several reasons:
1) Many felt there was plenty of evangelistic work to be done at home.
2) There were no structures or financial means to support missions.
3) Brethren had little understanding of the needs beyond our own country.
4) The idea of giving money to help pay teachers and preachers of the Bible was unacceptable.
Despite these concerns, the first effort in overseas missions came in 1876, when Christian Hope (an ordained Brethren minister) was sent to his homeland in Denmark to baptize some persons who had requested baptism. A national missionary committee was formed, and mission work was begun in India (1894), in China (1908), in Africa (1923), and in Ecuador (1943). The work in China was closed in 1950 by the Communist takeover. The work in India merged with the Church of North India in 1970. The mission in Ecuador merged with five other denominations in 1964. The mission in Nigeria became indigenous (EYN) in 1972, and today continues as a vibrant movement with strong Brethren ties. There are more Brethren in Nigeria than in the United States. In recent times, with the exception of a relatively few individuals and congregations, it is obvious that Brethren have lost some of their evangelistic and missionary zeal.
It is interesting to observe that the Gospel Visitor, which was first published to help promote unity among the scattered Brethren, seems to have heightened tensions. The writers advocated causes that sometimes became matters of serious disagreement between Brethren.
D. Rising Tension and Division in the Church
From a variety of sources we learn that the Brethren were known to be peaceful and modest in their conduct. In worship, their singing was spirited and their prayers were sometimes prayed with deep emotion. Many of the early church leaders journeyed by foot and by horseback, preaching wherever they found settlers—in cabins, in schools, and out in open fields. To outsiders they were known for their hospitality, integrity, and kindness—but within the larger body, there were some rumblings of discontent.
In the early 1880s there was a three-way split among the Brethren. There was a very conservative wing called the Old Order German Baptist Brethren (separated in 1881); a large middle body was called German Baptist Brethren (but after 1908, Church of the Brethren): and a forward-looking more progressive group that was known simply as the Brethren Church (separated in 1883). The specific issues which led to the division centered on higher education, Sunday schools, fixed salaries for ministers, church periodicals, organized missions, and matters related to dress, and to the authority of Annual Conference.
The more conservative Old Order German Baptist Brethren wanted no high schools, Sunday schools, revival meetings, mission boards, worldly dress, musical instruments, and paid ministers. The Progressives lamented the incompetent and uneducated leadership and publicly called for all the items disliked by the conservatives. After the two splits, the moderates, now called the Church of the Brethren, numbered about 60,000 members. The Church of the Brethren experienced rapid growth in the years that followed. Funds and energy were put into education and missions and the building of homes for the aged. The Brethren stressed hospitality toward those outside the church. They promoted strong family life in their homes—with an emphasis on the discipline of hard work, daily family worship in the home, and the prohibition of divorce and remarriage.
E. Major Changes in the 20th and the 21st Centuries
The primary word that must be used to describe the Brethren in the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century is “change.” There were a number of developments which led to the major changes that have occurred in the larger denomination.
1. Nonconformity became optional: The long standing emphasis on nonconformity to the fads of the world was gradually changed to speaking of “the simple life,” and the early emphasis on nonresistance was called “the peace position.” The Brethren kept the early terms (nonconformity and nonresistance), but invested the words with new meaning. Already, early in the 1900s, there were calls for relaxing the standards on dress. Discarding nonconformity in dress was followed by gradually discarding other typical Christian beliefs. Donald Durnbaugh says that church leaders were often “reluctant to speak with authority on any doctrinal issue (after dress standards were no longer required), and instead, spoke about “the right of individual conscience.” The term “no force in religion” came into more common use. The early Pietists used that term to mean that the state had no right to force on individuals a certain brand of religion. Now, Brethren were using the term to mean that the church had no right to require certain expectations of its members. By 1926, the issues of plain dress, the remarriage of divorced persons, and trends toward ecumenism, led to the formation of the Dunkard Brethren Church.
2. The free ministry was abandoned: Another major change in the 1900s was brought on by the move from the plural free ministry to the single salaried pastor form of church leadership. The early Brethren called its leaders from within the ranks by a process of discerning the gifts of Bible knowledge and good character in the lives of young men in the congregation. But as more Brethren received college educations, there were more calls for a better educated ministry. The first full time salaried pastor was hired at the Geiger Memorial Church in Philadelphia in 1891. One member paid the salary out of her own financial reserves. Annual Conference in 1915 was urged to establish educational standards for ministers, and in 1905 Bethany Bible School was established on the south side of Chicago. The conservatives objected because they feared the promotion of dangerous theological views in the seminary classroom. Graduates of the Training School became pastors of more and more churches, until the norm for leadership in the Church of the Brethren became a Bethany trained pastor.
3. Contention over theological issues surfaced: Brethren historian, Donald Durnbaugh also identifies the major strands of theological struggle in the Church of the Brethren—as primitivism, liberalism, and fundamentalism.
Primitivism is the belief that doctrine and practice should follow the life and thought of the early church, and that Christians should accept the entire New Testament “as it reads.” J.H. Moore’s book, The New Testament Doctrines, published in 1914, is a collection of articles which reflect the major view of the Brethren in the first two hundred years of existence. Moore (1846-1935) was a primitivist, and served as the editor of the Gospel Messenger tor 26 years.
Liberalism is the belief that stresses freedom from traditional beliefs, and allows a wide range of views about God and salvation. Liberal theologians use statements like: “The seeds of grace are found in every religion,” and “There are many ways of salvation; many paths lead to the mountain top.” The liberal denies the total accuracy of the Bible, emphasizes the love of God, and believes in the basic goodness of human beings. Liberal theology has much optimism about man’s ability to solve the problems of society, if given enough time and education. D.W. Kurtz (1879-1949) was one of the most prominent promoters of liberal theology among the Brethren. He served as president of Bethany Seminary, and was moderator of Annual Conference four times between 1926 and 1939.
Fundamentalism is a firm belief in the basic (fundamental) tenets of the Scriptures, including belief about God, man, sin, salvation, and Christian duty. Fundamentalists sometimes have held their beliefs in a spirit of arrogance and with condemnation toward others who believe differently. (Those who hold to the fundamental doctrines, but with moderation toward those who disagree, are called evangelicals.) One noted representative of fundamentalism (evangelicalism) among Brethren leaders was C.C. Ellis (1874-1950). Ellis was president of Juniata College and moderator of two Annual Conferences. He was an advocate of the verbal inspiration of the Bible, a writer of articles for the evangelical Sunday School Times magazine, held a pre-millennial view of prophecy, and was an open critic of some articles in the Gospel Messenger.
Many Church of the Brethren lay members, and a significant number of pastors maintain a strong evangelical theological conviction, while those who have been trained at more liberal institutions of higher learning have embraced the concepts of liberal theology. This diversity has led to tensions within the brotherhood. There is a tremendous gap between where many of the grass roots people are, and where some leaders are.
Brethren Revival Fellowship stands for a primitivist and evangelical position. We hold to the evangelical Bible doctrines but do not embrace the typical evangelical selective cafeteria approach to obedience. Evangelicals tend to view the New Testament teachings as a buffet–selecting the goodies, and letting the rest be counted as cultural. BRF accepts the primitivist “as it reads” approach to understanding the New Testament.
The first decades of the 1900s were marked by two major wars. Brethren were persecuted severely during World War I. Mobs of patriotic citizens sometimes raided homes and forced CO’s to kiss the flag. By the time of World War II in the 1940s, Brethren leaders along with other peace church representatives had arranged for alternative service projects so that drafted CO’s could do a number of constructive jobs instead of participating in learning the art of war. Yet, ninety percent of the Brethren who were drafted entered the armed forces. The social pressure from community and friends won out over their dedication to following the example and teaching of Jesus.
The years between World War I and World War II were marked by the Great Depression. The years were difficult for most people. Financial giving to the church diminished, but it was during those years that a number of well educated and talented leaders emerged in the Church of the Brethren, and many lay members were open to guidance from their paid staff members. Those trained in liberal institutions of learning promoted the idea that the church should give guidance to government leaders on how to settle international conflicts. After the war a number of inter-church movements (including the National Council of Churches) were established to help accomplish this goal. It was during those years that important postwar relief ministries were created–including the Heifer Project, the Christian Rural Overseas Program, and the BVS program.
The close of World War II in 1945 was followed by a period of prosperity in the United States. Church membership increased and new church building projects rapidly developed. The trend in architecture moved from the long preacher’s benches to a central raised pulpit, and then to a divided chancel with a lectern and a pulpit. Baptisteries were constructed in buildings, and new educational wings were built so that more Sunday school classroom space was available. Pianos and organs were added. Durnbaugh observes that the preaching changed from an emphasis on practical applications from the Scriptures, to an emphasis on oratory and literary excellence.
In 1958, the Annual Conference made two major decisions which diminished the requirements for church membership. It was decided that new members could transfer to the Church of the Brethren without baptism by trine immersion, and approval was given to observe a bread-and-cup communion instead of the full three-part Lovefeast. There were a number of reasons for the changes that have been initiated in the Church, including the desire to be like other mainstream churches, the discarding of the “as it reads” interpretation of the Scriptures, and not knowing how to respond to the charge of “legalism.”
During the last fifty years, a number of movements emerged, forming fellowships that chose not to depart from the Brotherhood, but remained in the Church as loyal opposition groups.
The Brethren Revival Fellowship (BRF) was formed in 1959. The movement was precipitated by changes approved at the 1958 Annual Conference. BRF calls the Church to stand firmly for its historic biblical principles, based on a clear belief in the authority of the Scriptures.
The Womaen’s Caucus was formed in 1973. It is a feminist movement with the goal of calling women to serve in elected church offices and as pastors of local churches. A major drive is being launched to change the name of the Church of the Brethren, so that the offensive word “Brethren” would not be part of the title.
The Brethren/Mennonite Gay Caucus (BMC) was formed in 1976. It is a pro-homosexual movement calling for acceptance of lesbians, bisexuals, gays, and transgendered persons as members of the church in good standing, and for their ordination to ministry. The 1983 official decision of Annual Conference still stands. It says that even a covenanted homosexual lifestyle “is unacceptable.” BMC continues to aggressively promote its cause. There have been other concern groups that appeared for a short while and then became extinct. These include among others the Holy Spirit Renewal Group (1974) and the Grass Roots Movement (1993).
F. Observations on the Current State of the Church
There has been an on-going decline in membership since the mid-1960s, from more than 200,000 members in 1965, to 127,000 members in the year 2006. Philip Stone, the Annual Conference moderator in 1990, lamented the aging and declining membership in the Church of the Brethren, and said, “We are presiding over a dying organization.”
There are several discouraging facts about life in the Church of the Brethren today.
There is the declining membership from more than 200,000 members in 1965 to 125,000 members in 2008. In October, 1991, at Bridgewater College, a group of scholars and church leaders gathered to consider “directions and dilemmas” in the Church of the Brethren today. The presentations were published in a book entitled “Brethren in Transition.” The conclusions about the current status of the Church of the Brethren are these:
There is individualism—each doing his own thing.
There is theological failure and drift—not taking the Scriptures seriously.
There is pluralism—many differing points of view are openly tolerated.
There is ethical relativism—no fixed standards of right and wrong.
There are ongoing conflicts between the feminist/homosexual coalition, and the more conservative larger body of Brethren. However some positive observations can be made.
There are some strong and growing congregations, and there are many Brethren who love the Lord Jesus, and are concerned that the teachings of the Scriptures be taught and practiced.
As we look to the future, our hope is that the Church of the Brethren will be a disciplined body that reaffirms its biblical heritage, stresses loyal family life, emphasizes personal evangelism and foreign missions, and continues its excellent ministry of service to needy people. We admire the piety, integrity, and devotion of the early Brethren. It should be our aim to continue manifesting those traits by standing firmly for “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), and at the same time being committed to applying that faith in the affairs of life today.