Friday, March 8, 2024

It is the 8th of March 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Historical epochs and events are often remembered in shorthand by famous speeches or sermons that summarized a movement or ignited a passion around an idea. We could go back to the Philippics of Demosthenes, the “Here I Stand” defense by Luther, the Gettysburg Address, and MLK’s “I Have A Dream.”

Regarding the First Great Awakening, that Christian revival sparked in the 1730s and 40s, the “go to” is often Jonathan Edwards's “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and that is rightly regarded as a classic. But there was another, less appreciated sermon that has been likened to “dry wind to a smoldering fire,” a sermon so powerful and popular that the non-Christian Benjamin Franklin immediately published it and made it one of the most important if not inflammatory sermons of the Great Awakening. It was the 37-year-old Scotch-Irish Gilbert Tennent in Nottingham, Pennsylvania, who, on this, the 8th of March in 1740, preached his fiery sermon “The Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry”. So, who was Tennent, what made the sermon so significant, and why does telling “the rest of the story” help fill out the picture of this momentous occasion in Colonial history?

Tennent was one of 4 sons of the Presbyterian minister William Tennent who was born in 1703 in County Armagh, Ireland. His family emigrated to Pennsylvania where he was licensed to preach. William taught his sons at home and Gilbert would later model a “log college” school after his fathers classical style. (This “log college” was the sapling that became the College of New Jersey, later renamed Princeton).

Gilbert was licensed to preach in 1725 and brought his father’s energetic style that he had learned in the “Holy Fairs” in Ireland and encouraged itinerant preaching (George Whitfield and the Dutch Theodore Frelinghuysen preached at his church blending both English Puritanism and Continental Pietism).

In 1737 Gilbert ran afoul of the Presbytery by preaching across presbytery lines. This would begin his fractious relationship to those on the so-called “Old Side” of the “Old Side/New Side” debate. The “Old Side” being wary of the new evangelical preaching style.

In 1738, Gilbert and four others formed the New Brunswick Presbytery, still tied to the old but wholly devoted to preaching that focused on the individual's “true conversion”. There would be a formal separation of the “old” and “new” sides.  

It was two years later that he preached his famous ‘On the Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry” on the 8th of March in 1740 (this a year before Edward’s famous sermon). It is a jeremiad with few parallels. In it, he accused the Old Side preachers of being Pharisees, “dead dogs that don’t bark” and “murderous hypocrites” among other things. He argued that the old colleges were ill-equipped to form true ministers and that the individual should be free to attend the church of their choosing under the truly converted ministers who were not afraid to teach difficult doctrines of sin. He argued for the proliferation of his type of “log college” education that centered on personal conversion and piety along with the “difficult doctrines.”

You can imagine the division caused by one minister claiming that the opposing ministers were merely wrong but wholly unconverted! The division amongst the Presbyterians was deep, and Tennent’s reputation would be that of a firebrand and radical.

But the story should not end there. Along with that Sermon, we should consider his 1749 address “Irenicum Ecclesiasticum” or “Humble Essay upon the Peace of Jerusalem”. It was a call to unity, and soon, the two sides reconvened in a new synod with Tennent as its first moderator. The new synod affirmed the need for an “experimental acquaintance with religion” and affirmed revivals, rightly held, as the work of the Holy Spirit.

Tennent would apologize for the sermon that made him famous and would serve as trustee for the new College of New Jersey and minister at Philadelphia’s Second Presbyterian Church. The story of division amongst Protestants in the new world would often be replayed, with Tennent’s famous sermon preached on this day in 1840 held up as an inflammatory occasion for such division. But we also remember his repentance and later call to unity and work amidst a reunited church.  

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary and a timely word from Ephesians 1:

7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, 9 he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 8th of March 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who thinks calling someone a “dead dog that doesn’t bark” seems redundant, as one that did would be terrifying- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who wonders if in that church in Nottingham, there was a sheriff and if he were to be portrayed as a cartoon animal, which… sorry, I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.