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History of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, Virginia Conference

by A. P. Funkhouser

CHAPTER I

APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY BEFORE OTTERBEIN

The Apostolic Church was the Christian organization that existed from the days of the apostles to the so-called conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine, a period of more than three centuries. There is excellent reason for the belief that it was made up only of converted men and women, and that its government and worship were very simple. There was no liturgy, neither were there any stately formalities, or any high-sounding ecclesiastical titles. Whoever believed the Gospel with the heart and made public confession was baptized and received into the church. He was then one of the brethren, and this term was applied without any discrimination as to wealth or rank. The worship consisted in reading from the Scriptures, in sermons and exhortations, in the singing of spiritual songs, in the relations of Christian experience, and in a simple celebration of the ordinances established by Christ.

During these three centuries the primitive Christian Church was a positive power and irresistible force. It endured persistent and bloody persecution, and yet it made no compromise with evil. The Christian religion was preached almost everywhere, and was rapidly advancing to a general conquest of the world, although this was taking place without recourse to physical might.

In the fourth century of the Christian era, the Roman empire was still by far the most dominant political power on earth. The emperor Constantine accepted Christianity as a state religion. This alleged conversion is one of the greatest frauds in all human history. Political expediency was undoubtedly the commanding motive of this monarch. The Christian Church now became popular and soon was growing wealthy. So long as paganism was in control,

the grandees sneered at the Christians. They now created high positions in the Church for the gratification of their pride and power. Preaching ceased, new and strange doctrines came into vogue, while a petrified ceremonial, elaborate yet empty, took the place of the primitive worship. The Church, as it was now constituted, was made superior to the Bible, and to the mass of the people the latter became an unknown book. This church of the Middle Ages was a veneered paganism. It made itself a supreme political power, and as such it was nothing less than the Roman empire in a new form. Yet even with the help of popes and kings, this political church ceased to expand and began to retreat. For some time it was in great danger of being overthrown by Mohammedanism.

This dark age in the history of the Christian Church lasted many centuries. Yet all this while, there were bands of Christians, sometimes numerous, who maintained the doctrine, discipline, and spirit of the Apostolic Church. Their Christianity was a living protest against the corruption of the papal system, which was willing to tolerate no other type than its own. These apostolic Christians consequently drew upon themselves the wrath of the papacy, which was even worse than that of paganism.

The best known of the early Protestants are the Waldensees of the southeast of France. They have had a continuous history for fifteen centuries, and have congregations in America.

Peter Waldo, a merchant of France, translated the Gospels into French, this being the first translation of any part of the Bible into a modern tongue. Until now, and indeed for several more centuries, the papal church used only a Latin version, which could be understood only by scholars. It resisted any effort to place the Bible in the hands of the people generally.

About the year 1400 it is believed there were no fewer than 800,000 of the Waldensees. They were most numerous in the south of France and the north of Italy, but had large congregations in what was until a year ago the

Austrian Empire. Their consistency was such as to force these words of praise from a papal officer: "They are orderly and modest in their behavior. They avoid all appearance of pride in dress. They neither indulge in finery of attire, nor are they remarkable for being mean and ragged. They get their living by manual industry. They are not anxious about amassing riches, but content themselves with the necessaries of life. Even when they work they either learn or teach."

Peter Waldo died in Bohemia in 1180. That country became a stronghold of the early Protestants, and in 1350 it contained 200 of their churches. In the fourteenth century their greatest religious teacher was John Hus, who by means of the basest treachery was burned at the stake by a papal council. This deed of infamy led to civil war in Bohemia, but the Hussite commander-in-chief defeated every army sent against him. After his death, however, the papal party succeeded by intrigue and persistent massacre in very nearly uprooting the Hussite church. But in 1457 the scattered remnants organized a society, giving it the name of Unitas Fratrum, this Latin expression meaning a Unity of Brothers, or United Brethren. This name has ever since been retained. But up to the time of the movement led by Martin Luther, these Christians were harried by almost constant persecution. Nevertheless, it was they who in 1470 published the first printed translation of the Bible into any European language.

In 1474 a delegation of the Brethren was sent out to see if there were anywhere in Christendom any "congregations free from popish errors, and lived conformably to the rule of Christ and his apostles, that they might form a union with them." These men went as far as Constantinople and Egypt, but could not find what they were looking for. A deputation traveling in France and Italy twelve years later found some "upright souls, who secretly sighed over the prevailing abominations." A synod of 1489 unanimously resolved that "If it should please . God, in any country, to raise up sincere teachers and re-

formers in the church, they would make common cause with them." In conformity therewith, the Brethren sent delegates to Martin Luther, who received them kindly. They urged the necessity of strict discipline. Luther admitted that during the time he was a papist his "zeal for religion made him hate the Brethren and the writing of Hus," but could now say that "since the day of the apostles, there has existed no church, which, in her doctrine and rites, has more nearly approximated to the spirit of that age than the Bohemian Brethren. They far excel us in the observance of regular discipline, and in this respect are more deserving of praise than we. Our German people will not bend under the yoke of discipline."

But the religious wars that followed the death of Luther were very demoralizing. The Brethren were persecuted by the Lutherans and the Reformed Church as well as by the Catholics. They were driven from Prussia to Poland, where in 1627 a new organization was effected under the title of the Church of the United Brethren. But in the same year all their property in what is now Czechoslovakia was confiscated, and all their churches and schools closed. The membership was scattered in all directions.

These United Brethren agreed in doctrine with the Waldensees. They had superintendents, but recognized only one order of ministers as of divine appointment. They laid greater stress on piety, moral conduct, and knowledge of the Bible, in persons holding the pastoral office, than on human learning. The head of every family was required to send his children regularly to church, to instruct them at home, and to hold family devotions. Their churches were unadorned, and the sexes sat apart. There was vocal but no instrumental music, and there was no prescribed form of prayer.

In the opinion of the Brethren the Protestant Reformation accomplished only a part of its mission. They could not see that the churches that arose from it were moulded according to the apostolic pattern. One formal religion had been exchanged for another. Few of those who em-

braced the Protestant faith were inwardly enlightened. There was little discipline. All who conformed to certain very easy conditions were recognized as members of the church for life, although they might be notorious for impiety and immorality. All grades of unbelievers came to the communion table. Church and state were united. Men loved their creeds more than they loved God. They were orthodox, but only in an intellectual sense.

In 1722, Christian David led a band of United Brethren refugees to the estate of Count Zinzendorf, a Lutheran nobleman of Saxony. David had some time before met some imprisoned Brethren and their influence led to his conversion. He decided to join the Lutherans, but finding among them that any person seeking the salvation of his soul was exposed to jeers and taunts, he enlisted as a soldier. After his discharge he preached to such of the Brethren as he could find. On the Zinzendorf lands the refugees built the village of Herrnhut in a forest. Since this time they have been commonly known as Moravians.

Count Zinzendorf was born in 1700. Losing his father in childhood he was reared by a grandmother, who had a daily prayer meeting in her home. Such a thing was then regarded as fanatical. The count was religiously inclined from his childhood, and Herrnhut grew into a flourishing village. Its people organized themselves into a religious society in 1727, in which year there was a great revival, thousands of people assembling to attend the meetings. Thus arose the Moravian Church, which has been greatly distinguished by self-sacrifice and by missionary zeal and success. As early as 1723 some of their missionaries visited England and were the inspiration of the remarkable Wesleyan revival of after years. Much of the spirit of the Moravians was carried into the Methodist movement, both Wesley and Whitefield having a very warm feeling for these people.

In 1735 Moravian missionaries reached America, Count Zinzendorf himself following in 1742. In 1741 Bishop Spangenburg and others issued a call for any Christians of

whatsoever name to meet in a convention at Germantown, "to see how near all. could come together on fundamental points." Representatives of all the German sects, and perhaps others, were present at the meeting on New Year's day, 1742. The spirit of it was exactly similar to the movement afterward led by Otterbein. The doctrinal spirit of those taking part in it was Arminian and not Calvinistic. It was pre-eminently a missionary body.

Yet this movement, begun in so promising a way, was wrecked by the bitter opposition of the Lutheran and Reformed pastors, who were opposed to the idea of a church composed only of converted persons. Wherever the Moravian missionaries went, they found the seeds of prejudice sown in advance, to embarrass and in some degree to frustrate their efforts.

This opening chapter of our book may not at a first glance seem to have a direct bearing on the history of the United Brethren in Christ. Yet it will show that the older bodies bearing almost precisely the same name were precisely the same in spirit, and also that they had brought down to our modern era the spirit of the Apostolic Church.

"The number of enlightened Christians, who, before the rise of Luther, adhered unswervingly to the doctrine and discipline of the Church which Christ had established, was very great; and the unblenching testimony they bore against popery, the evangelical light they dispersed by their preaching and their circulation of the Scriptures, and the remarkable heroism displayed by so many thousands, while suffering a cruel death, did far more to make the papal power odious, and to prepare the public mind to respond to the voice of the reformers, than is generally supposed."

To the above quotation from Lawrence, it may be added that the very existence of the pre-Reformation Protestants is an irresistible argument for the correctness of their views concerning the Apostolic Church. The church as reorganized by Constantine and his successors has a long history of bigoted intolerance and savage persecution, and

is mainly responsible for the religious wars that for several centuries drenched Europe in blood. Yet it is no more than fair to state that if the church of the Middle Ages appears in the light of history as an apostate church, the Catholic Church of to-day is the product of a counter-reformation within that church, just as the various Protestant churches are the product of the Protestant Reformation.



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