A Few Conclusions
Now that I’ve hunkered down on about 2k pages of Mercersburg stuff, I’ve come to a few conclusions. They’re not definitive - and I hope the paper I’ll have to be writing in the next month will be a little more focused - but I’d like to share them…
1) Although I cannot claim to have divined this on my own, it seems practically everything related to Mercersburg comes back to the idea of Mystical Union. Whether talking about the liturgy, sacraments, the catholic Church (universal, Christian, etc.), personal piety, etc.
2) Most of the opposition to Mercersburg seems to have come from people who didn’t really read what Schaff and Nevin actually wrote. (Ironically, the church’s response to Mercersburg was remarkably similar to the church’s response to Harry Potter in SW Michigan….Lots of hyped up talk by people who didn’t know what thet were talking about.)
3) Nevin’s criticism of (what he called) New Measures are exceptionally applicable to the church-planting and plan-based/transaction-focused evangelism practices of the late-20th and early-21st century church. (Indeed, for those of you familiar with the RCA, it might be possible to republish Nevin’s Anxious Bench by simply replacing the words “Anxious Bench” with “the RCA’s 10 year goal” and the words “New Measures” with “Evangelical Techniques.”)
4) Schaff’s understanding of Church reflects an ecumenicity that would, to this day, make many cringe with it’s world-wide inclusiveness and out-right attack on sectarianism (which the reformed tradition, at least in the US, so loves). Although I believe there is a place for denominations, it nothing short of sinful to suggest that an individual denomination - any denomination - can call itself the Church.
5) Although the Dutch Reformed Church’s move to English came far more quickly than that of the German Reformed Church and that certainly influenced the lack of merger between the two in the late 1800’s - It seems that Mercersburg is probably the only other main reason such a merger didn’t take place. (And that, because the Dutch Reformed Church - now the RCA - didn’t adequately understand what Schaff and Nevin were writing/saying.)
6) Mercersburg’s approach to continually-developing history is powerful and would be helpful to today’s church, particularly as we may well be entering into new epoch (notice I don’t call it post-modernism, although perhaps that may be it). Mercersburg was nearly-prophetic in this sense. Although one must be careful not to fall into classical dispensationalism, which a particular (misreading) of Schaff would lend itself to.
And finally, thought this doesn’t particularly relate to Mercersburg per se:
7) I am struck by the amazing lowering of academic standards of clergy over the past 150 years. I doubt that I (or most of my contemporary colleagues) would come close to passing the classis exams they gave back then….This trend seems likely to continue - that worries me.
Those of you who know Mercersburg: Am I on track? What do you think?
Those of you who don’t: What do you think?
Grace and Peace,
`tim
2 Responses to “A Few Conclusions”
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August 28th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Tim,
As one who also took up the task of studying quite a bit of Mercersburg stuff this summer, I completely agree with your preliminary conclusions.
Looking forward to reading more of your thoughts on the topic.
August 28th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
I think you are definitely on the right track. You would do well to run these ideas past Norm Kansfield, Chris Dorn, and Gregg Mast. What is an interesting implication for thew modern RCA, of course, is that Howard Hageman was drawn to us because he mistakenly connected us to Mercersburg, and his chief contribution to us was a liturgy that made us much more a Mercersburg denomination (of course, we can also argue that this better connects us back to Calvin, etc.). So, did we come into Mercersburg not quite a century late, reclaiming our Reformed roots, or was this merely a detour on our general path toward US Evangelicalist Revivalism, where we are Reformed in but name only? Historians about a century from now may well have interesting things to say about that!