The Reformed Pastors: Boehm
Jacob Reiff (1698-1782) was called the Elder because he was sent to Holland with Weiss and was implicitly asked to act as one. This title has nothing to do with his son named Jacob Jr. (1734-1816). At 29, in 1727, this Jacob was 15 years the junior of Boehm the immigrant teacher who acted as pastor and was defrocked by Weiss who arrived that year. Reiff had grown up in Skippack with his brothers and sister, the son of his father who was respected as a charitable and honest man. The Reiffs were farmers and blacksmiths and implicitly educated people respected for their literacy as pioneers.
Why do nineteenth century German Reformed scholars continually repeat that Jacob Reiff refused to give an account of the funds since he does, first in his Defense, second, in the public meeting of 1734 and third, to Schlatter. What they mean is he would not give an account to the kangaroo court of Philadelphia Reformed elders who sought to impeach his honesty after they had ratified his actions and he had acted at their behest.
Boehm was one of many victims of these forces behind the fratricides of the Philadelphians of 1725 to 1750, but he had trouble keeping his own counsel. It is not out of the mouth of babes that Boehm constantly calls Jacob" the insolent Reiff" (447), " bold and impertinent" (410). He is not very suckling when he seeks "to silence the audacious Reiff" (270) in this conflict between the old and the new.
Boehm complains, "if the people rule, every vagabond may cause factions" (Letters, 332), pretty much the stance of the modern day Obama. Thus, Wilemmaus' letter (below) was instrumental in forging, no pun, what Mittelberger calls the "excessive," which we delight in as the fine freedom that increases appetite for more.
John Philip Boehm was aschoolmaster who emigrated to Philadelphia about 1720. It is thought that as early as 1723 he began to officiate as a reader in informal services at Skippack held in the Reiff homes, and about 1725 began to function as a pastor there. There is some doubt whether he himself would have called it a church, lacking as it did the trappings of ordained authority to important to Reformed hierarchy. Of course he knew the importance of ordained authority because he was himself the son of a Reformed pastor. He inherited his father's contentious nature. There were serious feuds with laymen, elders even, over preferences, rewards, priorities. Suits were filed, petitions made, angers aroused, reconciliations forsworn. As a schoolmaster of the Reformed Church at Worms and later Lambsheim (l708-l720) his duties included reading the Scripture during the service, posting the hymns, cutting the communion bread, but not administering the sacraments or baptisms. There being no such Reformed officials in Skippack however, things were "informal" for about five years, meaning he did all that and more, that is until the arrival of Weiss in 1727.
Remember, this small group of people, 50 to 100, met in homes, New Testament style, but unlike the NT, could not select a member to lead them (as the Mennonites did). This of course was because they were Reformed, hence structured in a certain way, but as we might put it, unable to provide for the new because of the old. Boehm knew this law as well as anyone, having served as church adjunct and schoolmaster in Holland and as the son of the pastor. The point here is that before he ever set foot in the baptismal he knew the rules and that he had a definite adversarial bent. He woke up in the new world and found himself old.
He says they begged him with tears to assume the pastor's role, but when the majority told him to leave he wanted to stay. Naturally enough (for he was later ordained and founded a number of Reformed churches) he was most attached to the Skippack church, his first love. But the illegal minister, once ordained, became a legalist and insisted upon his own rights as he had in Holland. Why not just walk away and be a farmer, which he also was, or pastor, since he was ordained, at other churches? Why sustain a dissension, especially considering the eminent advice Muhlenberg had for Pastor Voigt that, "it is not in accord with the Gospel of Christ that a man should force himself upon a congregation against the wish of the majority of members" (Journals, III, 8).
Your Reiff Church Pastors
When John Peter Miller exited the Reformed ministry to go with the Ephrata Dunkards in the most dramatic manner, by burning their holy books, he became a radical player in later Ephrata events and the American revolution. When Weiss went back to Holland in the spring of 1730 Boehm thought this absence might result in his reinstatement. But Miller, he complained to the New York pastors on November 15, 1730, had been installed in Weiss's place instead of himself.
Boehm
Weiss
John Peter Miller--pastor from 1730 to 1731
John Bartholomew Rieger--pastor from 1731 to 1734
John Henry Goetschy--pastor from 1735 to 1740
Peter Henry Dorsius--pastor from 1737 to 1743
Buchstaben the kirkendief
The Letter--the letter kills but the spirit brings life. Stabbed in the back by a book, that is,
THE LETTER Faileth--"If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." I Timothy 5.
The Money-- Catch the kirkendief. Jacob's Party
There are two possible contradictions in Jacob Reiff's Defense. First, whose idea really was it that the money should be "laid out in goods" (Dubbs, 64)? Reiff says that it was "proposed by the said George Michael Weitzius (alias Weiss) that it should be laid out in goods and merchandise" and that this "Doctor Wilhelmus approved of."
Reiff says further that Weiss "directed this defendant to lay out what money should come to his hands in certain goods and merchandise, a particular whereof he delivered to this defendant in writing, intimating that it would be much more for the advantage of the sd. Congregation that to carry it over in specie."
But how that reconciles with the letter he speaks of when making the charge of kirkendief against Diemer, et. al. Boehm may well have mistaken, for he says that Reiff said "if they had not written to me, I would not have done it" (Letters, 236). Then Reiff showed a letter which the Philadelphia elders had sent to him in Holland which, after taking the authority from Weiss (which he had received from the whole congregation and transfrering to it Jacob Reiff," he acted accordinglyt.
So whose idea was it to turn the money into goods? Diemer's, Weiss? The tales conflict, but there is no doubting that these suggestions were made only because in their experience they knew that JR was an experienced trader and had already changed money to goods on the voyage, "to get his relatives" from which he had just returned.
Secondly, what was JR's motive to take this second trip? He says that some of the collected funds were to have been paid him for the land and the church building, whose costs he had advanced. Did he go to collect the money so he could pay himself?
He says that he had "advanced, lent and paid before his voyage to Holland about the sum of L 150 Penisilvania currency, in order to purchase some land and build a church for the use of the said congregations, which money remains unpaid with the interest thereof to this day. And this defendant for their greater ease in repaying the same condescended to wait till the aforesaid monies so collected in Holland should arrive." He says this to evidence that" he has been so far from injuring the said congregations that in all things he has constantly endeavored to promote their interest."
Why does Boehm think he is going to get any of the money?
Charges:
l. He forged the letter.
2.He stole the money.
3. He founded and operated a conspiratorial party.
4. He was insolent.
5. He is an embarrassment to the founding.
6. He is Weis's best friend. The "leading layman" (Gladfelter 381.
7). He refused to give an account. This repeats what his accusers say only.
Defenses:
l. Muhlenberg's testimonial
2. His own confession
3.His eventual settlement and exoneration
4. Is he a purveyor of church freedom (in the forgery)?
5.Is he the sport of the vexatious Philadephila cabal?
6.The evidence of a frame-up and a cover up.
Gladfelter: "the unhappy, long-drawn-out affair in which he was the central figure" (117).
Boehm
In a way you have to sympathize with simplified Boehm. Underneath all his conflict with Reiff he only wanted to preach in the Reiff Church. Even in 1744 in his Report to the Synod he says "I still hope that when Reiff has once been taken to account for the collected money, he will have to give up the church which stands upon his property" (Letters, 411). It makes you wonder when he wrote this, since that Building was removed in 1743.
And why do the Reformed historians not suggest that his too rash personality was the source of most of his trouble. There were few that he could get along with for long, excluding the steadfast William Dewees. Boehm had it out with everyone else if he couldn't get his way, including every one of the Reformed pastors. He had a contentious spirit. Like ourselves, he was his own worst enemy.
Certainly his compulsive, defensive personality and the validation he sought from the Holland synods was entirely the motive for most of the letters he sent, which work out to be a treasure trove of unparalleled merit as a record of that time. His suffering is our reward, but like any tortured unfortunate who can't get respect, we must judge his antagonisms in their context, not take them as gospel truth as does the Rev. William J. Hinke, Ph.D., D.D, his biographer and German Reformed apologist.
If Boehm is his own worst enemy his biographer, Hinke is his second, for he magnifies the adversarial tone of Boehm's troubles by making everybody choose up sides: Wentz was "an adherent " of Weiss, Lefeber "sided" with Weiss, Schuler was one of the "officers of Boehm's congregation" (25,26). The congregations continually belong to Boehm, again and again, "Boehm's congregation," "Boehm's congregations," until we are surprised not to read 'upon this Boehm I will build my church." If we think at all that leaders should set the tone for followers then Boehm and the Reformed scholars got exactly what they exemplified: 'I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow Cephas, I follow Christ." I follow Boehm, I follow Weiss.
Boehm wants us to believe they are also saying, I follow Reiff. But Reiff hated it and there is no record subsequently that he ever went to church again. Some think, Harry Reiff included, that he became a Mennonite, which in the tone of the current schism between the Reformed/Lutheran scholars and the “sectarians” in Pennsylvania who hold each other at arm’s length is further contention. In Boehm we find a conflicted soul not in a situation wholly of his own making whose every instinct is to seek redress when wronged, and with it solace and support from hierarchy.
The two men, Boehm and Reiff, differ as significantly as do their fathers. Throughout his life, Boehm's father, Phillip Ludwig Boehm (l646-l726), pastor at Hochstadt, was vexed with quarrels and troubles, prosecuted for poaching, reprimanded and suspended for domestic troubles and complaints by his congregation and rash speaking. Hans George Reiff (1659-1726) was a smith, farmer, and landowner , a man of application and therefore wealth who was likewise educated. While he was of the Reformed church he apparently helped in some way to build the Salford Mennonite Meetinghouse where he is likewise buried. When we speak of their sons we can see Boehm has no immediate new world root and struggled continuously, while Jacob Reiff, confident, well respected and self assured in his demeanor came of a well established and respected family.
Jacob Reiff (1698-1782) was called the Elder because he was sent to Holland with Weiss and was implicitly asked to act as one. This title has nothing to do with his son named Jacob Jr. (1734-1816). At 29, in 1727, this Jacob was 15 years the junior of Boehm the immigrant teacher who acted as pastor and was defrocked by Weiss who arrived that year. Reiff had grown up in Skippack with his brothers and sister, the son of his father who was respected as a charitable and honest man. The Reiffs were farmers and blacksmiths and implicitly educated people respected for their literacy as pioneers.
Why do nineteenth century German Reformed scholars continually repeat that Jacob Reiff refused to give an account of the funds since he does, first in his Defense, second, in the public meeting of 1734 and third, to Schlatter. What they mean is he would not give an account to the kangaroo court of Philadelphia Reformed elders who sought to impeach his honesty after they had ratified his actions and he had acted at their behest.
Boehm was one of many victims of these forces behind the fratricides of the Philadelphians of 1725 to 1750, but he had trouble keeping his own counsel. It is not out of the mouth of babes that Boehm constantly calls Jacob" the insolent Reiff" (447), " bold and impertinent" (410). He is not very suckling when he seeks "to silence the audacious Reiff" (270) in this conflict between the old and the new.
I follow Boehm,
I follow Weiss,
I'd follow Miller
But I won't follow Reiff.
(see "followers of Reiff" in Boehm's Letters, 273)
Boehm complains, "if the people rule, every vagabond may cause factions" (Letters, 332), pretty much the stance of the modern day Obama. Thus, Wilemmaus' letter (below) was instrumental in forging, no pun, what Mittelberger calls the "excessive," which we delight in as the fine freedom that increases appetite for more.
John Philip Boehm was aschoolmaster who emigrated to Philadelphia about 1720. It is thought that as early as 1723 he began to officiate as a reader in informal services at Skippack held in the Reiff homes, and about 1725 began to function as a pastor there. There is some doubt whether he himself would have called it a church, lacking as it did the trappings of ordained authority to important to Reformed hierarchy. Of course he knew the importance of ordained authority because he was himself the son of a Reformed pastor. He inherited his father's contentious nature. There were serious feuds with laymen, elders even, over preferences, rewards, priorities. Suits were filed, petitions made, angers aroused, reconciliations forsworn. As a schoolmaster of the Reformed Church at Worms and later Lambsheim (l708-l720) his duties included reading the Scripture during the service, posting the hymns, cutting the communion bread, but not administering the sacraments or baptisms. There being no such Reformed officials in Skippack however, things were "informal" for about five years, meaning he did all that and more, that is until the arrival of Weiss in 1727.
Remember, this small group of people, 50 to 100, met in homes, New Testament style, but unlike the NT, could not select a member to lead them (as the Mennonites did). This of course was because they were Reformed, hence structured in a certain way, but as we might put it, unable to provide for the new because of the old. Boehm knew this law as well as anyone, having served as church adjunct and schoolmaster in Holland and as the son of the pastor. The point here is that before he ever set foot in the baptismal he knew the rules and that he had a definite adversarial bent. He woke up in the new world and found himself old.
He says they begged him with tears to assume the pastor's role, but when the majority told him to leave he wanted to stay. Naturally enough (for he was later ordained and founded a number of Reformed churches) he was most attached to the Skippack church, his first love. But the illegal minister, once ordained, became a legalist and insisted upon his own rights as he had in Holland. Why not just walk away and be a farmer, which he also was, or pastor, since he was ordained, at other churches? Why sustain a dissension, especially considering the eminent advice Muhlenberg had for Pastor Voigt that, "it is not in accord with the Gospel of Christ that a man should force himself upon a congregation against the wish of the majority of members" (Journals, III, 8).
Your Reiff Church Pastors
When John Peter Miller exited the Reformed ministry to go with the Ephrata Dunkards in the most dramatic manner, by burning their holy books, he became a radical player in later Ephrata events and the American revolution. When Weiss went back to Holland in the spring of 1730 Boehm thought this absence might result in his reinstatement. But Miller, he complained to the New York pastors on November 15, 1730, had been installed in Weiss's place instead of himself.
Boehm
Weiss
John Peter Miller--pastor from 1730 to 1731
John Bartholomew Rieger--pastor from 1731 to 1734
John Henry Goetschy--pastor from 1735 to 1740
Peter Henry Dorsius--pastor from 1737 to 1743
Buchstaben the kirkendief
The Letter--the letter kills but the spirit brings life. Stabbed in the back by a book, that is,
THE LETTER Faileth--"If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." I Timothy 5.
The Money-- Catch the kirkendief. Jacob's Party
There are two possible contradictions in Jacob Reiff's Defense. First, whose idea really was it that the money should be "laid out in goods" (Dubbs, 64)? Reiff says that it was "proposed by the said George Michael Weitzius (alias Weiss) that it should be laid out in goods and merchandise" and that this "Doctor Wilhelmus approved of."
Reiff says further that Weiss "directed this defendant to lay out what money should come to his hands in certain goods and merchandise, a particular whereof he delivered to this defendant in writing, intimating that it would be much more for the advantage of the sd. Congregation that to carry it over in specie."
But how that reconciles with the letter he speaks of when making the charge of kirkendief against Diemer, et. al. Boehm may well have mistaken, for he says that Reiff said "if they had not written to me, I would not have done it" (Letters, 236). Then Reiff showed a letter which the Philadelphia elders had sent to him in Holland which, after taking the authority from Weiss (which he had received from the whole congregation and transfrering to it Jacob Reiff," he acted accordinglyt.
So whose idea was it to turn the money into goods? Diemer's, Weiss? The tales conflict, but there is no doubting that these suggestions were made only because in their experience they knew that JR was an experienced trader and had already changed money to goods on the voyage, "to get his relatives" from which he had just returned.
Secondly, what was JR's motive to take this second trip? He says that some of the collected funds were to have been paid him for the land and the church building, whose costs he had advanced. Did he go to collect the money so he could pay himself?
He says that he had "advanced, lent and paid before his voyage to Holland about the sum of L 150 Penisilvania currency, in order to purchase some land and build a church for the use of the said congregations, which money remains unpaid with the interest thereof to this day. And this defendant for their greater ease in repaying the same condescended to wait till the aforesaid monies so collected in Holland should arrive." He says this to evidence that" he has been so far from injuring the said congregations that in all things he has constantly endeavored to promote their interest."
Why does Boehm think he is going to get any of the money?
Charges:
l. He forged the letter.
2.He stole the money.
3. He founded and operated a conspiratorial party.
4. He was insolent.
5. He is an embarrassment to the founding.
6. He is Weis's best friend. The "leading layman" (Gladfelter 381.
7). He refused to give an account. This repeats what his accusers say only.
Defenses:
l. Muhlenberg's testimonial
2. His own confession
3.His eventual settlement and exoneration
4. Is he a purveyor of church freedom (in the forgery)?
5.Is he the sport of the vexatious Philadephila cabal?
6.The evidence of a frame-up and a cover up.
Gladfelter: "the unhappy, long-drawn-out affair in which he was the central figure" (117).
Boehm
In a way you have to sympathize with simplified Boehm. Underneath all his conflict with Reiff he only wanted to preach in the Reiff Church. Even in 1744 in his Report to the Synod he says "I still hope that when Reiff has once been taken to account for the collected money, he will have to give up the church which stands upon his property" (Letters, 411). It makes you wonder when he wrote this, since that Building was removed in 1743.
And why do the Reformed historians not suggest that his too rash personality was the source of most of his trouble. There were few that he could get along with for long, excluding the steadfast William Dewees. Boehm had it out with everyone else if he couldn't get his way, including every one of the Reformed pastors. He had a contentious spirit. Like ourselves, he was his own worst enemy.
Certainly his compulsive, defensive personality and the validation he sought from the Holland synods was entirely the motive for most of the letters he sent, which work out to be a treasure trove of unparalleled merit as a record of that time. His suffering is our reward, but like any tortured unfortunate who can't get respect, we must judge his antagonisms in their context, not take them as gospel truth as does the Rev. William J. Hinke, Ph.D., D.D, his biographer and German Reformed apologist.
If Boehm is his own worst enemy his biographer, Hinke is his second, for he magnifies the adversarial tone of Boehm's troubles by making everybody choose up sides: Wentz was "an adherent " of Weiss, Lefeber "sided" with Weiss, Schuler was one of the "officers of Boehm's congregation" (25,26). The congregations continually belong to Boehm, again and again, "Boehm's congregation," "Boehm's congregations," until we are surprised not to read 'upon this Boehm I will build my church." If we think at all that leaders should set the tone for followers then Boehm and the Reformed scholars got exactly what they exemplified: 'I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow Cephas, I follow Christ." I follow Boehm, I follow Weiss.
Boehm wants us to believe they are also saying, I follow Reiff. But Reiff hated it and there is no record subsequently that he ever went to church again. Some think, Harry Reiff included, that he became a Mennonite, which in the tone of the current schism between the Reformed/Lutheran scholars and the “sectarians” in Pennsylvania who hold each other at arm’s length is further contention. In Boehm we find a conflicted soul not in a situation wholly of his own making whose every instinct is to seek redress when wronged, and with it solace and support from hierarchy.
The two men, Boehm and Reiff, differ as significantly as do their fathers. Throughout his life, Boehm's father, Phillip Ludwig Boehm (l646-l726), pastor at Hochstadt, was vexed with quarrels and troubles, prosecuted for poaching, reprimanded and suspended for domestic troubles and complaints by his congregation and rash speaking. Hans George Reiff (1659-1726) was a smith, farmer, and landowner , a man of application and therefore wealth who was likewise educated. While he was of the Reformed church he apparently helped in some way to build the Salford Mennonite Meetinghouse where he is likewise buried. When we speak of their sons we can see Boehm has no immediate new world root and struggled continuously, while Jacob Reiff, confident, well respected and self assured in his demeanor came of a well established and respected family.
Of Weiss, see Penn Germania of Gideon Moor, his slave
