A Note on New Church Government - or Absence Thereof
By Kurt Simons | June 20, 2009
Mac Frazier’s most interesting posts on General Church history and evangelization, “My life’s purpose” and “Why do you want to start a church planting movement?,” stimulated some related thoughts:
An old question in church history, which could be dated back to the father-priest model of the Most Ancient Church, is the proper form of church government. In the organized New Church this discussion dates back to its first inception. For instance, “At the Fourth General Conference, in 1792, there was a sharp reaction against the democratic spirit of the year before which had given the laity equal power with the clergy, and a minority group, led by Hindmarsh, brought in a proposal for an episcopal form of government. This was forcibly voted down.” (M. Block, The New Church in the New World, p. 69) This centralized vs. decentralized discussion continued, sometimes hotly, in the development of the church in England and the US through the whole of the nineteenth century and beyond (ibid., p. 189ff.).
The General Church took its structure from the Anglicans (ibid., p. 216), who in turn had copied the Roman Catholic model. (For details on the wide extent of the powers of the General Church’s executive bishop, see P.M. Buss “A Statement of the Order and Organization of the General Church of the New Jerusalem” Bryn Athyn, PA 2000.)
So the end result was that the General Church adopted the papal model. However, there is something of a mystery about that adoption. The General Church’s founders, notably W.F. Pendleton, were certainly familiar with the teachings of the Second Coming about how corrupt the papal model was (e.g., Pendleton wrote eloquently in Topics from the Writings (p. 75) on the theme of God and truth leading, not ruling or commanding). Then, driving those teachings home, those under Benade’s leadership had experienced his papal-type autocracy, particularly in the more extreme forms following his stroke (Block, op. cit., pp, 231, 240). They also were familiar from their own experience with the long battle over centralized “popery” in Convention (Block op. cit., pp. 188ff.). And, finally, the “fear of episcopal autocracy was strong in the breasts of many” (ibid., p. 242) members of what would become the post-Benade General Church. But Pendleton et al. after the separation from Benade nonetheless continued in Benade’s episcopal/papal model (which Benade had first adopted 20 years earlier, (ibid., pp. 211, 216)). The mystery is how completely Pendleton believed in his decision. For, in seeking to allay the concern over autocracy, he “laid down the principle of ‘freedom according to reason’” (ibid.). Since that principle is logically contradictory to the episcopal/papal model, it raises question of whether Pendleton was in fact conflicted about his decision to continue with that model. It is interesting to speculate where the General Church might be today if he had gone the other way and made freedom of conscience the top governing principle. An editorial in Convention’s Messenger at the time of the Academy/General Church split from Convention suggests some of the consequences of taking the course he and the General Church did follow:
“In an editorial on the causes of the split [with Convention]…all the blame was laid on the General Church’s ‘assumption of infallibility.’ Instead of admitting that there should be varieties of usages and beliefs in the New Church, and being contented with a Convention broad enough to hold them all, [the General Church] had attempted to make their uses and beliefs a standard for all, and continually referred to Convention’s ‘denial of the Writings as the Divine Human.’ The General Church had assumed in the New Church the position of the Catholic Church in the Christian world. ‘This resemblance is shown in a literalism of interpreting doctrine, in an assumption of the supremacy of the Church as the authorized interpreter of doctrine, in the conception of the nature and order of the priesthood and its function in the church, and also in its declarations against the ecclesiastical legitimacy of those who do not agree with it….” (Block, op. cit., p. 230ff.)
“…[T]here should be varieties of usages and beliefs in the New Church, and being contented with a Convention broad enough to hold them all” (ibid.). What a thought. Again, what if Pendleton had made freedom of conscience the General Church’s priority and taken up Convention’s offer of reconciliation, made several times by the Rev. Frank Sewall? (There was a brief period of friendly relations with Convention following the General Church’s separation from Benade, during which Sewall made the last of his appeals, but that friendliness did not last (ibid., p. 231, 243).) If that freedom and reconciliation had been made the policy of the two bodies, where might the overall New Church have been today? Would it have saved both bodies from going down some of the roads they subsequently did, with unfortunate results? It is certainly interesting to note that the Academy split came at the end of the nineteenth century, during which church membership had been approximately doubling every decade, ending in the highest membership the US organized New Church ever saw (7,095 in 1890) (ibid., p. 173). However, after the split that growth not only stopped, but decline set in (e.g., ibid., p. 356), to the smaller numbers that still apply to both bodies today, a century later.
For further reading
1. Do we Need Church Organizations?
2. A dialogue between Mac Frazier and Steve Simons on the evangelization implications of this issue: See opening post at “My Life’s Purpose, and following Comments #9-13 (particularly #13).
3. See posts at Second Advent Christian™ .
Topics: Issues, News, Theology | 1 Comment »
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