1. Now and Two Centuries Ago. The First Civilizers of North America. The Native Americans. Features of Their Social and Domestic Life. Their Intellectual, Moral, and Religious State (Cont.) (2)

Such a process continues to the present time. Signs of it are on the one hand less confessional irritability, so that preachers only rarely touch on confessional differences and occupy themselves chiefly with the common truths of Christianity[1], and on the other the plainly developing idea of religious unity[2]. Religious consciousness obviously grows more and more exhausted by fruitless ferment and begins to thirst for unity which could give rest and reliable support to personal consciousness. This thirst manifests itself in the fact that increasingly before the religious consciousness of the American people appears the ideal of the “one Church of the future” which is to be created from the motley mixture of present sects. In religious journals this idea has played an important role in recent decades and presents the best confirmation and manifestation of the process of religious centralization we have described. The ideal of the “Church of the future” naturally presents itself differently, and each of the confessional communities presently dominant supposes that it is precisely destined to gather around itself the divided and scattered Christianity and will realize in itself the idea of the one Church. Such claims are made both by the chief Protestant communities and especially by the Roman Catholic Church. Among the former Methodism and the Protestant Episcopal Church especially stand out. Methodism represents one of the strongest religious communities on the American continent and thanks to a certain coincidence of its religious principles with the intensity of religious feeling in the American people is by many considered the specifically American confessional form[3]. The more understandable therefore is the claim to leadership among American religious communities made by the Methodists themselves. In the chief Methodist organ on this matter a detailed article was published in which the author says that in the past successes of Methodism and its present basic principles lie the foreshadowing of its final superiority over all other Christian communities and therefore it is precisely destined to be the “Church of the future” for the whole country[4]. The chief organ of the Episcopal Church on the other hand says that Methodism lost its pure vitality when it separated from its “mother Church” and therefore can never correspond to the needs of coming generations; and if any Church is destined to be the Church of the future of the country it is only the Episcopal Church[5]. On its part Roman Catholicism confidently proclaims that the future of the country lies in its hands and only it will bring the American people to unity in religion and make it in religious respects as unified as it is unified in the political sense[6].

Thus in the consciousness of the American people the idea of religious unity confusedly ferments, and they seek such a Church which, free from one-sidedness, could through its catholic all-inclusiveness satisfy their many-sided needs. The American people are many-sided—by their very composition. They have been formed and continue to be formed from a multitude of all manner of nationalities which annually flow into their organism through the stream of emigration. Into it enter not only all manner of European peoples but also the native primitive American tribes, African Negroes, and Asiatic Mongols. This entire diverse mass gradually is reworked into one people, forming one physical body and one spirit. From the fusion of such diverse elements obviously there cannot be one-sidedness in American character. Such a nature can only be all-sided, with equilibrium of forces both in physical and spiritual nature. Hence in religious respects it can be satisfied only by such a Church which is as all-sided in its catholicity as the people themselves are all-sided. Does any one of the three named Churches show signs of such a catholic all-sidedness?

If we turn to Methodism and examine its basic principles, there immediately appears its inadequacy in the sense of a catholic Church capable of satisfying the religious consciousness of the American people. Methodism by its very origin is a new phenomenon in the realm of religious life and therefore has no historical authority behind it. It constitutes a protest against the dead formalism of the Anglican Church and as such is an artificial or temporary phenomenon and therefore has no promise of future development. As a product of Protestantism it is of necessity one-sided and has no signs of catholicity. As a Protestant phenomenon it is at the same time a child of that individualism from which American religious consciousness suffers and persistently seeks salvation in more stable principles. The peculiarity of Methodism among other Protestant communities lies in the fact that it is a religion of feeling in its extreme tension[7]. While in other Protestant confessions individualism of reason reigns, constructing its salvation on the basis of interpretation of Scripture, in Methodism the individualism of feeling prevails, seeking salvation in the achievement of religious ecstasy. It took quick root among American popular masses, and this is explained by the abundance of religious feeling in the American people. But by this very fundamental principle it cannot have a future in the country. Now it constitutes the confession of the lowest classes and among others of the Negro population. With the development of these popular masses to the degree of balance of reason and feeling it will lose all ground. Clearly Methodism cannot be that “Church of the future” whose idea ferments in the consciousness of the American people.

The Episcopal Church has more claims to the great religious mission of uniting the American people into one religious body. This Church presents itself as a community which in its foundation is significantly free from the common defect of Protestantism, namely the extreme development of individualism. It occupies a middle position between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism as two opposite systems. From this side it apparently presents itself as free both from the extremes of Protestant individualism and from the opposite extreme of Roman papalism, and therefore more corresponds to the balanced character of the American people. But upon closer examination of its inner character its essential weakness is revealed. The Episcopal Church in the United States is an offshoot of Anglicanism and therefore has at its foundation the same principles on which Anglicanism arose and exists. The latter by its essence is a moderate protest against Roman papalism. Having severed itself from its historical foundation Anglicanism found itself without connection with its historical past and without a definite basis in the present. As a result it began to seek support in nationalism and became the state Church of England. However unstable such a position may be, it could nevertheless by means of the state which took it under its care organize itself into an independent community and have sufficient basis for its existence. As a state Church it also passed to the soil of the New World. But with the proclamation of the independence of the United States it lost its sole support—in the English state and found itself in a difficult situation. The only way out for it remained either to develop its Protestant principles to their extreme logical consequences and thus plunge into the general sea of Protestant ferment, or on the other hand return to its historical past and reunite with Roman Catholicism. However its organism, though artificially created, had succeeded in becoming balanced enough between the two extremes so that it could not entirely incline to one side or the other. Parts of it fell away and were absorbed both by Protestantism and by Roman Catholicism but the whole organism continued to maintain its existence. Feeling its internal weakness Anglicanism on American soil also attempted to lean on the state. But since here by virtue of the principle of separation of Church and state it could not become a state Church in the English sense it nevertheless sought to be in close relations with the state by adopting the form of state institutions of the United States into its church organization. With this purpose the Episcopal Church in America developed a “Constitution” which makes its organic system almost identical with the political system of the country with the difference that it does not have an executive power corresponding to the President of the United States[8]. In this correspondence of its church organization to the political organization of the country it undoubtedly finds significant support since the American people, highly valuing their political system, more readily and sympathetically regard a Church which has a similar organization. This explains the fact that it could preserve its independent existence on American soil and did not perish after the loss of its support in the English state[9]. But apart from this external feature in the Episcopal Church there are also internal features which give it advantage before many other religious communities of the country. By its essence it is a compromise between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Having rejected the extremes of the system of papalism it at the same time did not go to the opposite extreme—Protestant individualism. Thanks to the positive nature of the Anglo-Saxon race it assumed the form of moderate Protestantism and remained there. In England this form found support in the state and therefore it easily became the established religion. If on the one hand in this union it found external support then on the internal side such a union was for it equivalent to slavery with its inevitable consequences of moral weakening. In America on the other hand it, having no state support, for its self-preservation of necessity had to rely only on its inner principles and seek in them the source of its vitality. Hence is explained that undoubted fact that the Episcopal Church in the United States is distinguished by far greater vitality compared with Anglicanism. But this in turn leads to a new consequence. Differing in greater self-consciousness than Anglicanism the Episcopal Church in America of necessity more boldly tests its inner foundations on which its organism is based. In such bold critical self-testing its inner organic weakness is plainly revealed. It has no positive principles in its foundation and the secret of its existence is explained precisely only by compromise. In dogmatic respects it wavers between Protestantism and Catholicism, in ecclesiastical matters it seeks questionable support in nationalism. Such compromise apparently gives it equilibrium between two extremes but this equilibrium is unstable and is maintained only by the temporary coincidence with similar equilibrium in the external conditions of its existence. The American people is formed from diverse elements which entering into organic combination create a race free from extremes and on the contrary balanced in its forces and functions. But this balance is not external but organic and therefore positive. Meanwhile equilibrium in the Episcopal Church as founded on compromise is only so to speak mechanical, external, and as such does not correspond to the positive organic equilibrium of the American people. On the contrary at the first attempt to compare the principles lying at the foundation of the organism of the Episcopal Church there is revealed their complete non-correspondence. In 1853 such an attempt was made and it revealed the entire inadequacy of the Episcopal Church as a religious system capable of satisfying the needs of the American people. In view of the intensified process of decomposition and fragmentation of Protestantism the appearance of various forms of disbelief and the strengthening of Roman Catholicism representatives of the Episcopal Church raised the serious question of where to seek salvation from this state of affairs. Naturally they turned to the Episcopal Church itself; but delving into its internal state they came to the sad conclusion that it could not in its present state satisfy the religious needs of the American people and was not capable of “doing the Lord’s work in this land and in this age”[10]. The result of this self-consciousness was that having lost faith in its adequacy and stability on the foundations on which it now rests it began to seek more stable support for itself somewhere outside itself and hence its constant hesitations and search for catholicity which characterize its most recent history. Thus the Episcopal Church even by its own consciousness cannot satisfy the religious needs of the American people and consequently cannot become the “Church of the future” in the United States. It does not have that positive character of principles which would correspond to the positive nature of the American people. In such a case there remains only the third claimant to the future in the country namely Roman Catholicism.

Footnotes

[2] A learned author of a philosophical treatise on religion in America over the past century states: “The prevailing impulse of American religion, according to common opinion, is its fragmentation into an infinite diversity of sects. But nothing can be more certain from a review of our religious history than the gradual strengthening of a tendency in the exactly opposite direction. True, the existence of a multitude of sects is a present fact, and in a country where the expression of opinion on all subjects is unrestrained, such a result is unsurprising; but the majority of small communities are only waves on the surface of a stream, which appear in moments and then forever disappear. In their most repellent forms they are only social excrescences, which arise mainly from foreign sources. The most characteristic fact of our religious history, as the census clearly shows (1870), is not the tendency of American Christianity to fragment into a multitude of sects, but its inclination to concentrate under a few large denominational types. This conservative preference on the part of the vast majority for a stable church order is the main and undoubted distinction of our religious life. Whatever the tendency was in the earlier period, at the present time it is not subject to doubt in this direction.” Diman, “Religion in America 1776–1876”, in North American Review vol. CXXII, p. 31.