The United Church and Religion of Blood
Dave Hunt, What love is this? Calvinism Misrepresentation of God, provides more insight into the religion of blood practiced those reformers who tortured and killed those who dared to oppose their baptism. He cites how when Emperor Constantine wanted to divide the Roman empire he had also to unite the opposing factions of the church. St Augustine was the vehicle of the ecumenicism for this, allowing back into the church, no harm no foul these who denied their faith under previous emperors to save their lives. He cites how Calvinists and Catholics are both aggressive in insisting their way is only right way and they shared in killing Mennonites and others.
CONSTANTINE THE GREAT (AD 313-337)
Rome's first "Christian" emperor.
THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA (AD 325)
The establishment of the first Church Council
ST. AUGUSTINE (AD 354-430)
The German Reformed Church in Pennsylvania took its lead, c. 1725, from Zwingli and Calvin centuries before, but was also an offshoot of the Augsburg Confession as altered by Melanchthon from Luther's original violent style, 25 June 1530. That is, Melanchthon "arbitrarily altered some of the articles, and a new edition with his changes appeared in 1540. The latter gave rise to the denomination known as 'German Reformed'" (Sachse, The Geman Pietists of Provincial Pennsylvania, 67). The German Reformed Church eventually became the Evangelical and Reformed Church, then merged with the Congregational Christian Churches, then merged again and became the United Church in 1957.
Its unofficial history explains, "their
concerns were pragmatic. They did not bring pastors with them," which
really means they were unpragmatic, for according to their own laws they
could not baptize their infants or celebrate communion without ordained leaders, the
perennial story of priesthood, much like saying you
can't read literature without a professor.
This line of thinking continues: "they realized that they were sheep without a shepherd. Having come to Pennsylvania for religious freedom
but finding no place to worship God, they would gather in houses, barns
or groves and select a man who could read well to read sermons and
prayers." But places of worship do not drop down from the sky, they grow up from the ground. Teachers, or readers, without ordination served as needed: "because
these men called Readers were not ordained ministers, the settlers could
not have their children baptized nor partake of Holy Communion"
(History of Bethany United Church of Christ, Ephrata, Pennsylvania,
1730-1976). Coming without pastors in religion that requires them is like not digging a hole in your garden and wondering
after why there is no pile of dirt. However these Reformed did not emigrate for
religious freedom. In Bern, Zurich, the Palatinate they were free to
believe in the state church. Frederick S. Weiser says:
Reformed
and Lutheran, along with the Roman Catholics, were the only legally
recognized churches in Germanic lands. Mennonites and
other Anabaptists existed in hiding and defiance of the law. But it is
important to note regarding the Pennsylvania migration that whereas
almost all the Anabaptists left Europe, the Lutheran and Reformed emigration was not undertaken for religious reasons or because of persecution...but for opportunity" (Pennsylvania German Fraktur, xx).
This caused serious contradiction when Reformed congregations came into proximity with the Mennonite who were oppressed for those two centuries in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, for the Reformed were Mennonite oppressors. Zwingli got excited over
infant baptism when his associates Conrad Grebel and Feliz Mantz
started rebaptizing. If you held "pernicious views in regard to the sacraments" you could be drowned in a bag (Bloody Theatre, 485). That means if you refused to baptize your children around Zurich you could be persecuted or killed. Such persecutions followed Anabaptists to Holland and the Low Countries, where many Mennonites migrated to the Ukraine, children of whom who in the 1800's came the Midwest to be visited in Nebraska by Bishop Mack. The United Church today is the Reformed church of the old order brought forward to the new. It is not nice to say, but if they were fleeing the so-called Palatinate "oppression and poverty" they were fleeing themselves. This same Reformed church notably practiced oppression. Nobody wants to take credit for doctrines of blood. But such minds had a sense of humor, "King Ferdinand declared drowning (called the third baptism) "the best antidote to Anabaptism." Thousands of people were executed for being rebaptised. Conflicts of blood and peace,
baptize your baby or die, hierarchy vs. democracy, these were so
embarrassing that later denominations glossed their origins to hide
their complicity in crimes of blood. It
was the Anabaptists who wanted freedom and escaped to find it. SeeDave Hunt. What love is this? Calvinism Misrepresentation of God.
The Reformed
clergy that settled in Philadelphia may have thought itself superior to the
ignorant lay pastors of the Mennonites, but the Reformed top
down hierarchy contradicted the essence of the emerging democratic Pennsylvania. Mennonites
ordained nominees by lot, not seminary. It is said their preachers were
boring. Well of course they were. All the educated clergy were reading
aloud from Blake! Not.
Early Reformed generations had to create leadership. "Readers," unordained in the case of the Skippack church and others, were drafted. John Philip Boehm preached and performed the sacraments from 1725 until September 1727 when a colony of 400 Reformed brought the first legitimate church official, George Michael Weiss. Legitimate means his religion made itself impossible for others to practice without him. Before Weiss' arrival the only means of grace had been for the congregation to call its own pastor, that is, school teacher and Reader John Philip Boehm, who ministered with accord at Skippack until the day Weiss landed. Weiss systematically routed Boehm from every church. He didn't burn him, but he had him defrocked.
But Weiss was the instrumental cause, not the efficient cause, whose failure of foresight to provide belongs in the first place of Zwingli, church order, Heidelberg Catechism and Reformed governance, which had been the sometime agencies of death. Just how free were you to disagree with the powers of the old religious state was made clear to Mennonites by their judges in duly constituted councils. Believe or die. Would this be coercion? Would shadows of it manifest in Weiss' contentiousness?
Political institutions also wreak havoc and afterward backtrack and take upon themselves the qualities and traits they first assailed, as though they had recognized themselves and couldn't stand it. Is all race hate the same? What did Ben Franklin fear in the Germans, that he would see in himself? But his erudition was implacable, and his rhetoric overwhelming, so smooth and gracious later that he somewhat retracts his views, but contrast him to Dr. Rush who lacked the animus to even begin.
Freedom of association, dreaded congregationalism, religious freedom not religious authority created the independent congregations who engaged preachers "for the year, like cowherds in Germany" (Journey to Pennsylvania, 47): "When any one fails to please his congregation, he is given notice." Mittelberger does not see the silver lining, "liberty in Pennsylvania does more harm than good to many people (48). "Excessive freedom." He calls it famously, "heaven for farmers, paradise for artisans and hell for officials and preachers" (48). This freedom is an extension of Penn's vision in the trees, the Pennsylvania charter.
There are modern validations of these things in neighborhoods and local churches abstracted and watered down into church splits, hateful looks, sudden firings of pastors over no material cause summed up in the statement of official who prayed at his grand daughter's baptism, "please do not destroy us."
scaring you to death with fear and
death/blessing,
