Denominational collaboration in times past
Gamma Gamaliel
Shipmate
in Purgatory
This is inspired by the sub-theme (polite name for a tangent!) on an Ecclesiantics thread where denominationalism came up.
I suggested that this was largely a 19th century concept, although anticipated of course by earlier 'Dissenting' sects. I use the word 'sect' in a sociological rather than pejorative sense.
The discussion reminded me that one of my great-great-grandfathers was a prominent and very active Baptist minister from West Wales.
He pastored congregations across South Wales and on several occasions in parts of England. He would have been bilingual of course.
My brother has found a fair bit about him from contemporary newspaper accounts in Welsh and English and from chapel histories.
There is a memorial to him in a chapel he founded and where he was due to give the inaugural sermon but for his death from TB.
Anyway... I was struck by the presence of Anglican clergy at several of his inaugural services when he took on new pastorates.
How common would this have been in the late 19th century?
I do know that the London Missionary Society (LMS) was multi-denominational.
We tend to see the mid to late 19th centuries as a time of intense denominational rivalries. Yet I sense this us only part of the story.
Has anyone got any insight into ecumenical collaboration during this period?
I suggested that this was largely a 19th century concept, although anticipated of course by earlier 'Dissenting' sects. I use the word 'sect' in a sociological rather than pejorative sense.
The discussion reminded me that one of my great-great-grandfathers was a prominent and very active Baptist minister from West Wales.
He pastored congregations across South Wales and on several occasions in parts of England. He would have been bilingual of course.
My brother has found a fair bit about him from contemporary newspaper accounts in Welsh and English and from chapel histories.
There is a memorial to him in a chapel he founded and where he was due to give the inaugural sermon but for his death from TB.
Anyway... I was struck by the presence of Anglican clergy at several of his inaugural services when he took on new pastorates.
How common would this have been in the late 19th century?
I do know that the London Missionary Society (LMS) was multi-denominational.
We tend to see the mid to late 19th centuries as a time of intense denominational rivalries. Yet I sense this us only part of the story.
Has anyone got any insight into ecumenical collaboration during this period?
Comments
I'm not sure if this counts as collaboration or rivalry, but I remember reading of a U.S. Congressional debate around the establishment of what came to be known as American Indian boarding schools, with various denomination vying to make sure they got "their share" of Native Americans and various Congressmen currying favor by assuring each denomination they would be included. So I guess that counts as ecumenical collaboration in eradicating Native American cultures and religions.
Relations between the two ministers were extremely cordial, not least because one of the Free Church minister's sons was married to one of the C of S minister's daughters, and they shared a set of grandchildren.
Does he comment how that translated locally though? (Which is where I suspect much collaboration goes on).
Interesting. My late wife's sister and my brother-in-law attend the Methodist church nearby.
I wonder whether they were called on to speak or simply observe?
By the latter part of the 19th Century, congregations became more established and often had more resources, so union churches gave way to separate churches for the Lutherans and German Reformed. But in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, where German settlement was concentrated, one can still see legacy of union churches, as the local Lutheran church and the local German Reformed** church will have the same name.
* German settlers also included Moravians, but because of their particular way of forming and organizing communities, they established separate settlements from other Germans.
** In 1934, the Reformed Church in the United States, the main German Reformed body, merged with the Evangelical Synod of North America, a primarily Midwestern group with a mixed Lutheran-Reformed heritage, to form the Evangelical and Reformed Church. In 1957, the ERC merged with American Congregationalists to form the United Church of Christ. As a result, the historically German Reformed congregations in North Carolina that were once part of union churches with the Lutherans are now UCC congregations.
Interestingly, the UCC is now in full communion with the Lutheran denomination to which most if not all of those formerly Lutheran partners in union churches now belong, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. (The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Reformed Church in America (the American descendant of the Dutch Reformed) are also part of that full communion agreement.)
Although the source for the latter was originally German immigrants with a background in the Prussian Union of Churches.
The German settlers in North Carolina, both Lutheran and Reformed (who were part of what became the Reformed Church in the United States), who formed the union churches were primarily from the Palatinate.
Please note the ecumenism of the actors, quite happy to be Congregational Elders and Salvation Army Superintendents. In other words I suspect at least among those from the Independent tradition, people served according to where they felt called and not according to their denomination.