The Protest of Religious Feeling Against Church Fragmentation (Revivals). – Consciousness of the Insufficiency of Protestant Principles and the Search for Firmer Foundations of Church-Religious Life. – The Striving for Church Unification and the Renewal of This Movement at the Present Time. – The Maturation of the Catholic Element in the Theology and Practice of the Episcopal Church. – The ‘Congress of Churches’ and Its Significance. – Conclusion (Cont.) (2)

We have concentrated principally on examining the process of maturation of Catholic self-consciousness in the Episcopal Church, as representing more striking facts in this regard. But individual features of this same movement can be observed in other communities, and it manifested itself principally in the fact that in these communities the search for firmer church principles was renewed with new strength, and the eyes of many turned to the Episcopal Church as standing at the head of this notable movement. As one can judge from the latest reports, in the American religious world the movement toward church unification is rising with new force, a movement which in all its details recalls that great movement which marked the ‘60s and which had as its subsequent result the Episcopal Church’s relations with the Orthodox East. External sign of this movement is the fact that with each year the number of converts from various communities and sects to the Episcopal Church is increasing, where they seek final peace – obviously the same phenomenon that was observed during the previous movement. But having the same character as the previous movement, the present movement acquires even greater intensity because of certain new conditions brought into the religious-moral life of the American people. The previous movement flowed from the inner desire for church unity for more friendly and successful labor in the vineyard of God; now there is added the feeling of self-defense against two increasingly threatening hostile forces. The matter is that in recent decades on the one hand Roman Catholicism has extraordinarily grown and strengthened, coming forward with open intention to take possession of the entire American continent, and on the other hand the continuous and with each year increasing emigration from the Old World has brought into America such a mass of skeptical, irreligious and directly anti-religious elements that unbelief is rapidly beginning to develop in certain layers of the population and threatens to infect with its corrupting breath the spiritual life of the American people. And so fear of these enemies and the desire to unite in common efforts for successful struggle against them and have served as the strongest incentive for the renewal of the movement toward church unification. Since now the conditions are much more developed through the previous work, this movement was not slow to express itself in a remarkable, unprecedented phenomenon, namely the ‘Congress of Churches.’

This remarkable phenomenon passed in our press completely unnoticed, and yet it made a tremendous impression in America and served as an important expression of the religious self-consciousness to which the American people had attained. The ‘Congress of Churches’ took place in the spring of the year before last (1884). It was convened at the initiative of the Episcopal Church and had as its aim the joint clarification of the vital needs of the religious-moral life of the country. And remarkably, the thought of convening such a congress was answered by representatives of all communities and sects, even those which had until then not recognized the possibility of any solidarity with others. To this congress there gathered indeed representatives from all communities and with remarkable unanimity expressed the desire that animated all – to finally take measures to eliminate the evil of sectarian fragmentation in America. At the congress many speeches were delivered, many reports were read by persons of all possible church-religious opinions and confessional shades, and thanks to such a brotherly-Christian exchange of thoughts, so unlike the petty-hostile polemic which had hitherto characterized the relations between the various confessional communities, in the best representatives of religious-theological thought the idea of church unity received new encouragement and new support in its further development. ‘The success of the Congress of Churches,’ said one organ of the Episcopal Church,[1] ‘was unexpected and almost unprecedented. Until now it was impossible to say how strongly the desire for Christian unity was spread among various confessions. The Congress exceeded the boldest expectations and revealed in the minds and hearts of people a deeper feeling of desire to be freed from the evils of our divided Christianity in America than could have been supposed.’ And thus we see here a new phase into which the church-religious self-consciousness of the American people has entered. This phenomenon is still so new that it is impossible to draw any more or less definite conclusions, but certain is the fact that this phenomenon is an eloquent protest against the evils of Christian fragmentation from the standpoint of religious ferment and sectarian Protestantism, and here in all its brilliance there emerges the ripening triumph of the Catholic self-consciousness of the American people. This fact becomes even more remarkable in view of the impression this ‘Congress of Churches’ made on society. It was among other things the subject of lively discussion in society and the press, and under its evident influence opinions began to be expressed which could have the greatest significance in case of their application to life. Thus one professor of a Presbyterian college, discussing the questions agitated at the ‘Congress of Churches’ and seeking the common ground on which all American communities could merge into one integral church body, expressed at this an unthinkable in former times opinion that such ground could be served by the transformed liturgy of the Episcopal Church. And this opinion was expressed in the pages of the most widely distributed journal in America ‘Century,’ having hundreds of thousands of readers and consequently possessing tremendous influence on society.[2] And since the Episcopal Church’s liturgy is now precisely being transformed, and is being transformed with a view to bringing it into agreement with the great examples of liturgical worship of the ancient church, and consequently in the spirit of universal Orthodoxy, this fact can eloquently speak for itself, and casts in the highest degree significant light on the future fate of church-religious life in the great trans-Atlantic republic.

Thus we see how in a country where Protestantism had the full opportunity and freedom to develop and display in all its brilliance its religious essence, and where religious individualism, so to speak, claimed the throne—how in this very country the people who had fled the Old World to the unknown wilds of the New World chiefly for the free development of their Protestant beliefs eventually came to the sorrowful conviction that Protestantism, as a religious system, cannot satisfy the deepest longings of the human spirit, cannot provide full satisfaction for the needs of religious and moral life. In the face of these great longings, its internal insufficiency becomes completely evident, for by its very fundamental principle it can only destroy and fragment, but not create and unite. Only a church that possesses a creative and constructive spirit and strong ecclesiastical authority can satisfy these longings, but clearly such a church must be sought outside Protestantism. And so in light of this momentous historical experience, which has visibly demonstrated the decisive insufficiency of Protestantism, how pitiful are the appearance of our fashionable preachers and philosophizing writers who strive to introduce into the healthy ecclesiastical-religious consciousness of our people the corroding poison of religious individualism, who wish to deprive it of the greatest blessing it possesses in the high authority of the church, and to give each person the difficult and dangerous privilege of striving, by their own strength, under the burdensome weight of distressing doubt and despair, to achieve an answer to the terrifying question: ‘What is my faith?’… For such philosophers-theologians, clearly the lessons of history do not exist: they are deaf to its most dire warnings. But in return they are preparing for themselves in the future a terrible and inexorable judgment from this history which they do not acknowledge.

* * *

Footnotes

[2] The Century, November 1885, article by Prof. Schild. This article produced an enormous impression and provoked numerous discussions and responses from theologians of various churches and denominations. Several of these appeared on the pages of the same journal in the form of “open letters.” Such were the responses in the February issue of the journal for 1886 from Episcopal theologians, in the March issue from Presbyterian, and in the July issue from Congregationalist. In all these statements one dominant feeling is expressed—the desire to be rid of the corroding sectarian fragmentation that undermines the religious and moral life in America and to achieve unity, although naturally there are expressed different and widely divergent views both on the means of achieving this unity and on its very character.