History of Evangelicalism

This is my University of Toronto, Toronto School of Theology, Doctoral Dissertation.  I am putting it up for a limited period of time.  It deals with poppular interpretation of ROmans 7 from the Arminian controversy to tyhe year prior to the publication of Werner Georg Kümmel’s pivotal Römer 7 und die Bekehrung des Paulus (1929).

Endorsements:

DONALD W. DAYTON: “The heart of [Huggins’s work]…is given over to a history of the interpretation of Romans 7 over almost 340 years…This central section is an extraordinary achievement and constitutes as careful and detailed a theological analysis of these figures as one will find anywhere, on this or any other topic.”


MARION ANN TAYLOR: “…Huggins goes beyond the bounds of history of interpretation to include the social history of popular religion, the sociology of knowledge and biography.  However, his treatment of exegetical issues and modern critical scholarship also shows that he is able to engage effectively with modern as well as historical and theological issues….Moreover he sensitively judges the merits of the various interpreters and streams of interpretation past and present…He has shown impressive research and analytical skills.  His work is cross disciplinary in many ways.  It shows an expertise in New Testament Studies, with a special concern for the history of the interpretation of texts, in American Church History, and in theology with its keen sensitivity to theological issues relating to the interpretation of biblical texts.  Huggins’ thesis is also very creative…his style of writing effectively draws the reader into the subject matter in an engaging way.  His use of long but fascinating quotations from diaries, journals, sermons, tracts, commentaries and other pertinent materials as well as his ability to paint very life-like portraits of the individuals he is writing about also make his thesis fascinating to read.”

This chapter is concerned with the ways in which evangelicals of various persuasions in the later eighteenth century-Methodists (both Arminian and Calvinist), Church of England evangelicals, and evangelical Dissenters (both Congregationalist and Baptist)adopted The Pilgrim's Progress as one of their key texts and made it speak to their own situations. It focuses on three main topics: first, how, in the hands of its editors, The Pilgrim's Progress became a polemical text, especially from the 1770s onwards, one hundred years after the book's publication; second, how it was used as a guide to Christian experience as lived by evangelicals; and third, how it became a means of writing the history of Dissent and evangelicalism. The key figures discussed include John Wesley,

Seán Ó Dálaigh or John O’Daly was born in the townland of Farnane which is in the parish of Lickorin and in the barony of Déise without Drom in County Waterford.  He was almost certainly born in the year 1800 although he has left accounts giving both that year and 1803 as the year of his birth.  By the time of his death in 1878 he had been a manuscript scribe, a biblical evangelist, a Roman Catholic, a Protestant and a Roman Catholic again, an editor, publisher, founder of societies and a dealer in both books and manuscripts.

His early manuscripts illustrate the interest he had even at that stage in the Fenian Cycle or Fiannaíocht (the stories centred on Fionn mac Cumhail and his band of fianna), in the Munster poets and in the poetry of the O’Daly learned family, all themes he would subsequently pursue as an editor and publisher. 

But he was not destined to spend his life in his native area, a consequence of his work as a teacher of Irish from about 1826 with the Irish Society for Promoting the Education of the Native Irish through the Medium of their Own Tongue and in 1828 the Rev.William Halloran, ‘superintendent’ of the Irish Society in the Youghal district (which included Sliabh gCua) let it be known that O’Daly had been under considerable pressure in Lickorin because of his enthusiasm for the work of the Biblical evangelical Irish Society:

O’Daly’s relationship with the Irish Society evidently declined early in 1840 and by the second half of the year he was no longer working as inspector.  He himself claimed retrospectively that he had been trying to break with the Society’s work as far back as 1833 and certainly by June 1841, John O'Daly’s enthusiasm for the teaching of the reading of Irish with a view to reading the vernacular Bible had seriously declined. 

Whether as a result of all of this or not, O’Daly had been attempting since 1843 to move his Kilkenny book business to Dublin.  In 1845 he wrote a letter to the Nation which was not published but was nonetheless referred to in an article April 26 1845 in the paper entitled, “The Irish Language” in which reference was made to a “proposal” received by the Nation from “Mr. Daly of Kilkenny” to found an “Hibernian-Celtic Society… for the cultivation of the Gaelic literature and language’.  Although the society he envisaged, eventually known as the Celtic Society, was successfully established O'Daly had little influence with the society he had founded and was only in erratic receipt of the pound per week which had been agreed in return for doing the entire work of organising the society’s publications and activities.

During this period O’Daly was also building up his book and publishing business at a succession of Dublin addresses – 25 Anglesea St., Aston Quay, 7 Bedford Row and finally 9 Anglesea St., which became one of the most significant addresses in the cultural history of its period and a powerhouse of activity in the field of the Irish language.

As a consequence of his dissatisfaction with the Celtic Society, O’Daly established a society “for the publication of Fenian poems, tales and romances, illustrative of the Fenian period of Irish history, in the Irish language and character, with literal translations and notes explanatory of the text, when practicable.”  This became known as the “The Ossianic Society.”  From the beginning the Ossianic Society was rooted in Gaelic learning and dominated by actual practitioners in the field.  This distinguished it from any predecessors as, indeed, did the 5/- annual subscription, a quarter of the subscription to the Celtic Society.  O’Daly managed to realise his aims for the Ossianic Society in a way which had eluded him in the Celtic Society and six Fiannaíocht texts in all were published.

O’Daly’s most enduring legacy was his work as an editor-publisher, beginning with Reliques of Irish Jacobite Poetry, which he began publishing in Kilkenny in 1844. 
After only two issues the original plan was altered and with a view to improving the literary standard of the translations, the Cork poet Edward Walsh was brought on board and he supplied a series of translations of continuing literary merit. 

In 1849 O’Daly edited and published the work most closely associated with his name.  This was Poets and Poetry of Munster, a text as influential in Anglo-Irish as in Gaelic literature.  This anthology of eighteenth-century Munster poetry includes translations by the poet, James Clarence Mangan which were based on cribs provided by O’Daly. 

Poets and Poetry of Munster established a Munster poetic canon with Seán Clárach Mac Dómhnaill and the Limerick filí na Máighe, Seán Ó Tuama and Aindréas Mac Craith, an Mangaire Súgach as its principal figures and this canon persisted until Professor Seán Ó Tuama of UCC, in our own time, installed Aogán Ó Rathaille as the outstanding Munster poet, which is now the conventional wisdom. 

In 1860 O’Daly edited and published The Poets and Poetry of Munster Second
Series, a further volume in the series which had begun with Reliques. 

In summary then, we could say that no aspect of O’Daly’s cultural activities whether as teacher, founder of societies, editor, publisher, scribe or book dealer can be disconnected from the rest.  In particular the many manuscripts he compiled cannot be separated from his many printed publications.  Not only did his publications derive from manuscripts, but his manuscripts owed a great debt to printed material.  Many of his manuscripts, for instance, have tables of contents, page numbers and even footnotes. 

O’Daly died on May 23 1878.  He did not die poor and his estate was classified among “Effects under £600”, a category indicating a person of reasonable means.  By the time of his death he had been largely forgotten.

Though the purity culture movement of the 1990s and 2000s situates itself as a God-ordained movement to bring North America back to Christ, its discoursive and rhetorical arguments are rooted in racism, White Christian heteropatriarchal nationalism, and colonialism. This paper seeks to demonstrate that as scholars and ex-evangelicals attempt to dismantle purity culture, if these conversations do not include a racial-informed and intersectional analysis, then purity scholars have the opportunity to perpetuate the same White supremacist harms that were part of the harms of purity culture. Further, scholars can learn much about intersectional and transformative healing practices by centering the voices and interventions of Black womanists and Black Feminists.

This article examines the rise of a "right-wing international" around contemporary Russia through the lens of the concept of "bad ecumenism," explored in conjunction with the author's philosophical views and personal experience of Orthodox-Protestant interaction. In contrast to "good ecumenism," which, broadly defined, seeks interconfessional dialogue and cooperation toward the common good in our pluralist world, bad ecumenism seeks interconfessional dialogue and collaborative efforts with the goal of dominating and coercing individuals and social groups that do not conform to so-called "traditional values." Hence Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate,  dubs hardline American Evangelical Franklin Graham and other Western Christians who oppose LGBTQ rights "confessors of the faith," and Graham is happy to receive his blessing. This works in part because the history of the US Christian Right is bound up with anti-Communism and an equation of secularism with Communism. Russian actors are now playing into this narrative, insisting that because they survived Communism, they can help US and European Christians resist the "new totalitarianism" of so-called "political correctness."

Through an examination of the Nonconformist reception of Richard Baxter, this essay provides a window into theological transition within early modern Protestantism. I argue that, although Baxter excelled in knowledge of scholastic theology, integrated scholastic theology into his practical writings, and produced a great scholastic system of theology—the Methodus Theologiae Christianae (1681)—over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scholastic and philosophical aspects within Baxter’s corpus were ignored, downplayed, and even excised by Nonconformists who otherwise strongly sympathized with his writings. The modern focus on Baxter’s practical works and neglect of Baxter’s scholastic theology is due in large part to this later reception. The story of Baxter’s reception is, moreover, illustrative of a general shift in philosophical and theological orientation in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Nonconformity.

ABSTRACT
The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) is the most successful higher education organization to emerge from the modern American evangelical movement. Especially within the context of the United States, higher education has been a key element of neoevangelicalism
since the 1940s. Rather than choosing between biblical
truth and cultural outreach, post–World War II neo-evangelicals called the church toward a thoughtful approach to address the needs of the world. The early movement was focused not only on
evangelistic ministry efforts, but also on education as a primary means for shaping the culture. As modern evangelicalism took shape in the 1950s, the movement struggled to find a consistent moral
voice. From early challenges related to the civil rights movement to current debates over poverty and immigration, evangelicals have engaged with cultural issues, but with a wide variety of strategies
and viewpoints. Political issues have brought evangelicals into public life, and some leaders have used elections as the primary means for promoting moral concerns. Consequently, the public may often view
U.S. evangelicals as activists concerned with political voting rather than as sincere followers of Christ who are committed to social ethics. Yet, the Christian college represents a significant platform for
sustaining evangelical thought in public life. Evangelicalism has suffered a fracturing in the last decade or so, and the term now carries a negative connotation in some circles. Many colleges in the CCCU
are searching for a new way to describe their evangelical identity. The historical meaning of the term evangelical focused on gospel proclamation and social reform. A return to this emphasis, as well as an alignment with the international focus of evangelical movement, can provide a more accurate and consistent legacy for evangelical
institutions.

Considered by many to be one of the most influential German Pietists, August Hermann Francke lived during a moment when an emphasis on conversion was beginning to produce small shifts in how the sacraments were defined-a harbinger of later, more dramatic changes to come in evangelical theology. In this book, Peter James Yoder uses Francke and his theology as a case study for the ecclesiological stirrings that led to the rise of evangelicalism and global Protestantism. Engaging extensively with Francke's manuscript sermons and writings, Yoder approaches Francke's life and religious thought through his theology of the sacraments. In doing so, Yoder delivers key insights into the structure of Francke's Pietist thought, providing a rich depiction of his conversion driven theology and how it shaped his views of the sacraments and the church. The first in-depth study of Francke's theology written for an English-speaking audience, this book supports recent scholarship in English that not only challenges long-held assumptions about Pietism but also argues for the role of Pietism's influence on the changing religious landscape of the eighteenth century. Through his examination of Francke's theology of the sacraments, Yoder presents a fresh view into the eighteenth-century ecclesiological developments that caused a rupture with the dogmas of the Reformation. Original and vital, this study will become the standard reference on Francke for American audiences and will influence scholarship on Lutheranism, Pietism, early modern German studies, and eighteenth-century history and religion.

216 pages | 6 x 9 | December isbn 978-0-271-08800-6 hardcover: $89. 95/£71. 95/€83.95 + sh Pietist, Moravian, and Anabaptist Studies Series Religious Studies/German Studies

II w jednej ze swych encyklik głosi, iż drogą Kościoła jest droga ekumenizm u1. Jest to bardzo ważne stwierdzenie papieża. Żaden ka tolik, a nawet żaden chrześcijanin nie powinien traktować ruchu na rzecz jedności chrześcijan jako jakiegoś dodatku wśród wielu innych działań ekle zjalnych, jako mało istotną kwestię. Jest to kierunek, który Kościół musi obrać, inaczej sprzeciwiłby się Ewangelii swego mistrza Jezusa Chrystusa.

While this is only a partial account of the ministry and mission of Joseph Fish, it does reflect what would constitute a fuller account. It conveys the simultaneously fulsome and impoverished characteristics of his life. The travail he experienced early on, due to the assault of the Great Awakening upon his ministry, had residual effects upon the tactics, principles, and effectiveness of his ministry. Fish’s ministry was fulsome in the sense that he had reliable allies and friends, who loyally came to his aid. Furthermore, he had an abundant reach in his ministry across three diverse communities and a wide correspondence network. Nonetheless, he was financially impoverished and his mission to the Natives was spiritually impoverished as well. Though an account of the conditions that facilitated his mission endeavors and the pattern by which he pursued mission to the Natives have been recovered, the consequential failure of the mission to the natives has yet to be recounted. Summarily, it was Fish’s Imperial, Anglo, Christian, and White Supremacy that inhibited the fruitfulness of his ministry to the Pequot and Narragansett Natives. The evidence for this claim shall next be produced.

THE SOVIET POWER AND THE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES (1917–1990)

The paper examines the policy pursued by the Russian Communists towards the Protestant denominations existing in the Soviet Union. The origins of the evangelical churches and societies within the Russian Empire and their destiny following the forcible takeover of power by the Bolshevik Party at the end of 1917, is traced. The main stages of the policy pursued towards them are outlined. An answer to the problem of how much these were due to the general religious policy of Soviet power and to what extent they were the result of a differentiated practice following the logic of the particular ideological conjuncture, is being sought. Particular attention is paid to the repressions committed towards individual churches and their members during the prewar period, the results of the atheistic campaign during the time of N. Khrushchev, as well as the forms and methods of pressures typical of the last two decades of Soviet power, are examined.

The essay analyzes Jonathan Edwards’s hermeneutics in his four sermons on the Lord’s Supper from 1 Corinthians 10. The complexity of Edwards’s theology, especially of the Lord's Supper, is subtly demonstrated in his use of biblical references. The essay demonstrates that, although Edwards’s hermeneutical methods are difficult to understand by modern minds, his biblical references are not mere proof-texts as modern assumption suggests. This is only observable when one inquires more deeply into his other sermons and writings as his references often form a web that connects such writings. Edwards’s use of the Bible is crucial in shaping both his sacramental theology and his homiletical oratory.

This article expounds the phrase ‘known by God’ as it functions in the philosophy, preaching and spirituality of Jonathan Edwards. The phrase is important in the Scriptural witness and is used most importantly by the apostle Paul, though it has been eclipsed in modern writing by the better known phrase ‘knowing God.’ Its usefulness reminds, rebukes and refocuses our witness and discipleship.

This essay analyzes Christian laypeople and church leaders who hoped for a new age of political, racial, social, and religious cooperation at the beginning of the twentieth century. This new age was centered on a belief that the global rise of nationalism combined with the transformational qualities of Christian missions and ecumenical cooperation would spur a new camaraderie among diverse peoples and nations that would lead to peace and prosperity for the world. The essay explores how this pre-First World War idea for a new oikoumene arose out of a desire for reconciliation among Christian denominations and the call for the "evangelization of the world in this generation."

The trial against the evangelical pastors in 1949 is one of the few topics related to the history of the evangelical churches in totalitarian Bulgaria that caused a serious research interest. It is seen as a continuation of the series of trials against opponents of the Bulgarian Communist Party associated with the establishment of its one-party rule.
The process is part of the struggle of the Communist parties of Eastern Europe with the internal enemy in which falls the so-called „Religious front“. Designed and conducted as a public order purposely the „full exposure of the faith traders and traitors of the motherland“ the trial against the arrested in 1948 evangelical pastors from the United Evangelical Churches began on 25 February and continues until March 8, 1949, when sentencing. The charges are for spying for foreign countries, transmitting military, economic and political information, spreading malicious rumours, enemy propaganda. Through its impact on the evangelical church in Bulgaria Bulgarian communist party performs the tasks of the Soviet leadership – the elimination of Protestantism as „conductor of foreign influence“ in the country and reduce its activity to a minimum. With virtually headless guidance, a legalized international isolation, state intervention in the internal life and under constant surveillance by the State security, evangelical churches in Bulgaria entered the most difficult period of their existence.
Despite the existing research interests as well as the published memories of some of the convicted pastors and the publicist promotion, the related key documents which reveal the true motives and mechanisms for its conduct have not been published till present. In this paper are selected 11 documents stored in the Central State Archives, some of which are already cited but for the first time they are complete published leading to the atmosphere of the events that took place 65 years ago.

For a man who has been described as advocating “evangelical restorationism” was Haldane a mere biblicist who was uninterested in the history of the Christian church? Did Haldane’s desire to restore the New Testament church come at the cost of ignoring the development of the church in doctrine and practice throughout history?

“Concentrating on the upstart revivalism and social reform of the Methodists, Baptists, and Salvationists in late nineteenth-century Boston, Hartley’s carefully researched and well-written book is a landmark study of urban evangelicalism in post-Civil War America. In particular, he shows how eclectic, cantankerous, and contentious evangelicals, both men and women, brought together revivalism and social reform, anti-Catholic and labor politics, and local revivals and international mission. Evangelicals built institutions, addressed the evils of the city, fought with each other over doctrines and priorities, and eventually saw their influence ebb in the face of new forces at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hartley’s terse and persuasive analysis of urban evangelicalism before fundamentalism gathered traction fills a significant gap in our knowledge.”  - David Hempton, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, Harvard Divinity School

Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the University of Latvia, Faculty of Theology.  17-18 February, 2020, Riga

"Kurp ejam? Teoloģija, reliģijpētniecība un garīgums 21. gadsimtā" (Where are we heading? Theology, Religious Research ann Spirituality in 21st Century)

Commemorations of the birth of the Oxford Movement (later known as Anglo-Catholicism) have regularly intimated certain early commonalities with evangelicalism, especially within the Church of England. It was so at the 1933 centenary of the launch of the movement; such hypotheses have been given fresh life with the 2017 release of the Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement. This essay examines the basis for these suggestions and finds them wanting.  The author reviewed the OHOM in Themelios 43.3 (2018), 498-500. That review is also uploaded on Academia.edu

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Extended essay chronicling revival events in the Connecticut Valley leading up to Jonathan Edwards’s famous sermon performance of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God at Enfield, Massachusetts, in July 1741. Includes edited transcription of a Boston merchant’s letter describing Edwards’s preaching activities in the neighboring town of Suffield.

It is difficult to imagine Jonathan Edwards countenancing the “Confus'd, but very Affecting Noise” that erupted in Suffield, Massachusetts, on July 6, 1741. Yet there he stood, his loud voice rising in prayer above the din that emanated from an assembly of more than two hundred boisterous men and women who had gathered to listen to his exhortations in the “two large Rooms” of a private house. On the previous day, the visiting Northampton, Massachusetts, revivalist had administered the sacrament to nearly five hundred Suffield communicants, ninety-seven of whom had joined the church that very day. It was an extraordinary event—quite possibly the largest oneday church admission ritual ever observed in colonial New England.

THE RE-REGISTRATION OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES AND THE WHITE BROTHERHOOD AT THE END-50S – EARLY 60S OF THE 20TH CENTURY
The paper focuses on a rather unknown aspect of the religious policies of the Bulgarian Communist Party, namely re-registration of the central administrations, branches and subdivisions of all evangelic churches and the White Brotherhood in the country, implemented at the end-50s – early 60s of the 20th century. That was a reflection of the restoration, on the part of Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet administration, of anti-religious policies and atheistic propaganda, and the implementation of the practice of closing down of churches in the USSR through cancellation of their registration, thus providing a legal form for religion control. Despite the preliminary plans of the administration of the Bulgarian Communist Party, for that re-registration to cover all religions, it was actually implemented on the evangelical churches and the White Brotherhood only. Out of the 262 churches and branches and the 428 communities and groups, existing in at the end-50s, only 106 ones were re-registered. The remaining ones were officially closed down, and their activities were declared illegal. Even though communist parties adopted a more moderate approach towards religions after Nikita Khrushchev’s deposition in 1964, the registration, meeker though, continued to be implemented for the purpose of their co-optation up until the end of their administration.