Nevin’s Anxious Bench
The Principle of Protestantism: Notes & Quotes
Available in a handly little book by Wipf and Stock Publishers (ISBN: 1-57910-429-0), Nevin’s three great essays The Anxious Bench, Antichrist, and The Sermon: Catholic Unity all speak to problems equally as destructive within the 21st century church as they were to that of the 1840s.
In The Anxious Bench, Nevin attacks the “new measures” practiced in revivalistic evangelicalism. Nevin isn’t interested simply in preventing the use of the so-called “Anxious Bench” but rather in abolishing all use of theatrical and fanatical practices. For Nevin, the end (”converts”) does not justify the means (”quackery”). Indeed, his argument is based on the belief that “conversion” when accomplished through the individualistic, abusive practices he shorthands as “new measures,” is no true conversion at all.
Although his message has fallen on deaf ears for a hundred and fifty years, it stands as true today as it did back then that “popularity” and “success” are not adequate excuses for manipulative practices. “It requires no spiritual power to use the Anxious Bench with effect. To preach the truth effectually, a man must have a certain spiritual force in himself which others are made to feel. But nothing of this sort is needed to secure success here. The object sought is a mere outward demonstration on the subject of religion, which may be gained by other forms of influence just as well. It shows no inward power whatever to be able to move a congregation in this way.” (24) In other words, moving evangelistic fervor is not a sign of true spirit-filled ministry. Indeed, one may put on a moving and emotional evangelistic show in the midst of Immense spiritual bankrupcy.
Although we wouldn’t use the term “new measures” nor the “anxious bench” the spirit Nevin so powerfully argues against in The Anxious Bench is powerfully, and disruptively alive in the contemporary church. The following is as powerful today as it was when Nevin first set pen to paper, simply replace “Anxious Bench” with “contemporary evangelistic practices”:
“…the whole system contemplated in the tract is an abuse, from which it is of the utmost importance that the worship of the sanctuary, and the cause of revivals, should be rescued” (6)
“But still a revival is one thing, and a Phrygian dance another; even though the Phrygian dance should be baptized into Christin Montanism. Life implies action, but all action is not life. It is sheer impudence to say that new measures and revival measures are the same thing.” (16)
“An Anxious Bench may be crowded where no divine influence whatever is felt. A whole congregation may be moved with excitement, and yet be losing at the very time more than is gained in a religious point of view. Hundreds may be carried through the process of anxious bench conversion, and yet their last state may be worse than the first. It will not do to point us to immediate visible effects, to appearances on the spot, or to glowing reports struck off from some heated imagination immediately after. Piles of copper, fresh from the mint, are after all something veery different from piles of gold.” (20)
“…it does not follow by any means that a thing is right and good because it may be made subservient occasionally in the hands of God to a good end…. God can cause the wrath and folly of man both to praise Him in such was as to Himself may seem best.” (20)
“We must not do wrong, even to gain a soul for heaven.” (21)
“The inward must be the bearer of the outward. Quackery, however, reverses the case. The outward is made to bear the inward. (28)
“The Anxious Bench tends naturally to disorder. Where any considerable excitement prevails, it is almost impossible for the measure to be applied without confusion and commotion. ” (54)
“As the spirit of the Anxious Bench tends to disorder, so it connects itself also naturally and readily with certain vulgarisms of feeling in religion that is always injurious to the worship of God, and often shows itself absolutely irreverent and profane…. The pulpit is transformed, more or less, into a stage. Divine things are so popularized as to be at last shorn of their dignity as well as their mystery. Anecdotes and stories are plentifully retailed, often in low, familiar, flippant style. Roughness is substituted for strength, and paradox for point. The preacher feels himself, ans bent on making himself felt also by the congregation; but God is not felt in the same proportion.” (56)
“The Anxious Bench has stood before us as the representative and type of a certain religious system, having its own theory and its own practice, both replete with dangerous error. In the same way, we exhibit the Catechism as the representative and type of another system, including in like manner both theory and practice of an opposite character…. The theory of religion in which the system of the Catechism stands, is vastly more deep and comprehensive, and of course vastly more earnest also, than that which lies at the foundation of the other system.” (64)
How little has changed over the years…so sad.
Grace and Peace,
tim
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