Preface (Cont.) (2)

Such a process continues to the present day. Signs of it are on one hand a lesser confessional irritability, so that preachers only rarely touch on confessional differences and occupy themselves chiefly with the general truths of Christianity,[1] and on the other—a clearly developing idea of religious unity.[2] Religious consciousness is evidently increasingly weary of fruitless ferment and beginning to hunger for unity, which could give rest and reliable support to personal consciousness. This hunger manifests itself in the fact that more and more frequently before the religious consciousness of the American people arises the ideal of a “future church,” which should be created from the motley mixture of present sects. In religious journals this idea has played an important role in recent decades and represents the best confirmation and manifestation of the process of religious centralization outlined by us. The ideal of the “future church” is naturally conceived differently, and each of the confessional communities now dominant supposes that it is destined to gather around itself the divided and scattered Christendom and that it will embody in itself the idea of the one church. Such claims are made both by the principal Protestant communities and especially by the Roman Catholic Church. Among the former, Methodism and the Protestant Episcopal Church stand out especially. 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, many consider it to be a specially American confessional form.[3] It is therefore more understandable that the Methodists themselves make claims to leadership among American religious communities. In the principal Methodist organ, a detailed article was published on this subject, the author of which says that in the past successes of Methodism and its present fundamental principles lies the portent of its final superiority over all other Christian communities, and therefore it is precisely Methodism that is destined to be the “future church” of the entire country.[4] The principal 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 future church of the country, it is only the Episcopal Church.[5] For its part, Roman Catholicism confidently proclaims that the future of the country is in its hands and only it will lead the American people to unity in religion and make it as religiously united as it is politically united.[6]

Thus in the consciousness of the American people there vaguely ferments the idea of religious unity, and they seek such a church as, free from one-sidedness, could by its Catholic universality 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 various nationalities which annually flow into their organism through emigration. Into it enter not only various peoples of the European continent, but also native primitive American tribes, African Negroes, and Asian Mongols. This entire diverse mass is gradually transformed into one people, forming one physical body and one spirit. From the fusion of such diverse elements, American character obviously cannot have one-sidedness. Such a nature can only be many-sided, with equilibrium of forces, both in physical and spiritual nature. Hence in religious respect, it can be satisfied only by such a church as is as many-sided in its catholicity as the people themselves are many-sided. Do any of the three churches named present signs of such Catholic many-sidedness?

If we examine Methodism and consider its fundamental principles, we shall at once discover 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 lacks 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 lacks the seeds of future development. As an offspring of Protestantism, it is of necessity one-sided and lacks signs of catholicity. As a Protestant phenomenon, it is at the same time the child of that individualism from which American religious consciousness suffers and earnestly seeks salvation in more firm principles. The particular feature of Methodism among other Protestant communities lies in the fact that it is a religion of feeling in its extreme intensity.[7] While in other Protestant confessions reason individualism prevails, constructing its salvation on the basis of the interpretation of sacred Scripture, in Methodism there prevails the individualism of feeling, seeking salvation in the attainment of religious ecstasy. It spread rapidly among the 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 religion of the lower masses and among others of the Negro population. With the development of these popular masses to the degree of equilibrium of reason and feeling, it will lose all soil beneath it. Clearly, Methodism cannot be the “future church” whose idea ferments in the consciousness of the American people.

Greater claims to a great religious mission of uniting the American people into one religious body are apparently made by the Episcopal Church. This church represents a community which in its foundation is considerably free from the common defect of Protestantism—extreme development of individualism. It occupies the middle ground between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism as two opposite systems. From this side it apparently appears free from both the extremes of Protestant individualism and the opposite extreme of Roman papacy, 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 in its foundation the same principles on which Anglicanism arose and exists. The latter by its essence is a moderate protest against Roman papacy. Having torn itself away from its historical backbone, Anglicanism found itself severed from its historical past and without a definite foundation in the present. As a result, it began to seek support for itself in nationalism and became the state church of England. However shaky such a position, it was still able, with the aid of the state, which took it under its care, to organize itself into an independent community and has sufficient foundation for its existence. As a state church it came also to 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 position. The only way out for it was either to develop its Protestant principles to their extreme logical consequences and thus sink into the general sea of Protestant ferment, or on the other hand to return to its historical past and reunite with Roman Catholicism. However, its organism, though artificially created, managed to achieve sufficient equilibrium between the two extremes so that it could not entirely lean toward either side. Parts of it fell away and were absorbed by both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, but the whole organism continued to maintain its existence. Feeling its inner 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 still sought to maintain close relations with the state through adopting the forms of the state institutions of the United States into its church organization. For 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 has no executive power corresponding to the President of the United States.[8] In this correspondence of its church organization to the country’s political organization it undoubtedly finds considerable support, since the American people, highly valuing their political system, regard more sympathetically and favorably a church which has a similar organization. This explains the fact that it was able to preserve its independent existence on American soil and did not perish after losing its support in the English state.[9] But besides this external feature, the Episcopal Church has inner qualities as well, which give it advantages over many other religious communities of the country. By its essence, it is a compromise between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Rejecting the extremes of the papacy system, it did not at the same time fall into the opposite extreme—Protestant individualism. Thanks to the positive nature of the Anglo-Saxon race, it took the form of moderate Protestantism and stopped there. In England this form found support in the state, and therefore it easily became the state religion. If on one hand in this union it found external support for itself, then on the inner side such a union was for it equivalent to slavery, with its inevitable consequences of moral weakening. In America, on the other hand, it, lacking state support, of necessity had to rely only on its inner principles and seek in them the source of its vitality. Hence is explained the undoubted fact that the Episcopal Church in the United States is distinguished by much greater vitality compared to Anglicanism. But this in turn leads to a new consequence. Distinguished by greater inner self-consciousness compared to Anglicanism, the Episcopal Church in America of necessity experiments more boldly with the inner foundations on which its organism rests. With such bold critical self-examination, its inner organic weakness is clearly revealed. It does not have positive principles in its foundation, and the secret of its existence is explained precisely only by compromise. In dogmatic respect it vacillates between Protestantism and Catholicism, in ecclesiastical matters it seeks dubious support in nationalism. Such compromise apparently gives it equilibrium between the 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 are formed from diverse elements which, entering into organic combination, create a race foreign to extremes and on the contrary balanced in its forces and functioning. But this equilibrium 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 Episcopal Church’s organism, their complete discrepancy is revealed. In 1853 such an attempt was made and it revealed the entire groundlessness of the Episcopal Church as a religious system capable of satisfying the needs of the American people. In view of the intensified process of dissolution and fragmentation of Protestantism, the appearance of various forms of unbelief, and the strengthening of Roman Catholicism, leaders of the Episcopal Church were seized by a serious question: where to seek salvation from this state of affairs? Naturally they turned to the Episcopal Church itself; but upon examining its inner condition, they came to a sad conclusion that it cannot in its present state satisfy the religious needs of the American people and is not capable of “doing the Lord’s work in this land and in this age.”[10] The result of this self-awareness was that it, having lost faith in its adequacy and stability on the principles on which it now rests, began to seek more firm support somewhere outside itself, and hence its constant vacillations and searches for catholicity, which characterize its 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 “future church” in the United States. It does not have such positive principles as would correspond to the positive nature of the American people. In that case, only a third claimant to the future of the country remains, namely Roman Catholicism.

Footnotes

[2] A learned author of a philosophical treatise on religion in America over the past century says: “The prevailing impulse of American religion, according to common conception, serves the fragmentation into an endless diversity of sects. But nothing could be more certain from a review of our religious history than the gradual strengthening of a tendency in the completely opposite direction. It is true that a multitude of sects is a present fact, and in a country where expression of opinion on all subjects is not restricted, such a result is not surprising; but the majority of small communities are only waves on the surface of a current, which appear for a moment and then disappear forever. In their most repellent forms they are only social growths which arise mainly from foreign sources. The most characteristic fact of our religious history, as the census of 1870 clearly shows, is not the tendency of American Christianity to fragment into a multitude of sects, but its inclination toward concentration under a few major denominational types. This conservative preference on the part of the vast majority for stable church order is the chief and undoubted distinction of our religious life. Whatever the tendency was in the previous period, at the present time it is beyond question in this direction.” Diman, ’Religion in America 1776–1876’, in North American Review vol. CXXII, p. 31.

[3] Cf. N. Y. Herald of September 12, 1880. MacDonald, the British representative of the Episcopal Conference in Cincinnati, in his report says that “Methodism by its very nature is the national church in America.” Article ‘American Methodism as seen by an Englishman.’ A remarkable feature of it is that it arose from nothing and in one century managed to occupy the first position in the country among religious confessions, growing and expanding at the expense of other confessions. When the first Methodist conference assembled in Baltimore in 1784, they had only 60 preachers conducting worship in barns and under the open sky, but according to the 1870 census Methodism already had 25,000 parish organizations with church property valued at 70,000,000 dollars. North American Review, Jan. 1876, p. 25.

Preface (Cont.) (2)

Предисловие (продолжение) (2)