AWAKENING TO THE WORLD
Matthew 28:16-20

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
October 2, 2005 / 20th Sunday of Pentecost

Today I want to tell you a little religious history.

It has to do with the Great Awakening. Beneficent Church was born in the Great Awakening. It was, perhaps, the most memorable rise of religious interest and enthusiasm ever experienced in America. It caused changes in personal lives. People became pious. People prayed more. People sang hymns more. People went to Church more. People got emotional about their religion. People founded Beneficent Church.

It sounds individual. It sounds personal. What then does awakening have to do with the World?

So let me tell you some history.

When the Puritans first came to New England they thought they were going to change the World. They talked about being a City set on a Hill that all the World would see. They said they knew that they were Pilgrims. They expected the whole World to see their purity, their example of Godliness, their missions to the Indians, and think it was wonderful, and great, and people all over would copy them. They thought that the whole World was watching. They were pretty egotistical.

But they also believed they had some idea about how the World should be. As our Neighbors and Need offering fliers say, "they imagined another World is possible."

But it got all messed up. They weren't as perfect and loving as they had hoped.

And they also were strongly opposed by the British Crown. After the fall of Oliver Cromwell, and the English Puritan Commonwealth, and the restoration of the Stuarts, the very survival of the New England Churches was threatened. For some period of time the King took away the charters of all the New England Colonies, and permanently the charters of most. Most could no longer elect their own Governors. The King's Anglican appointees ruled. And they started to close Congregational Churches. They started actions to close some in New Hampshire in the 1670s, and later they seized the buildings of some just over the line in New York. All of the Puritan Churches worried that a British army was going to arrive and force them to change their beliefs.

So a compromise was worked out. Some of that compromise, I'm sure we would agree with. Worship of other groups would be tolerated. People who went to other churches were exempted from paying taxes to the town church.

But the other actions on the Congregational Churches were more direct, a trade off. Part of the compromise was that local Congregational churches could keep their money and support, if they remained entirely local. Before this, in the 1600s, Congregational Churches often sent delegates to synods to solve common problems, and plan strategies together. Now the King said Congregational Churches in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, could not have synods, could not send lay delegates to common associations of conferences, not at all, they must be completely local. When some New England Congregationalists tried to form missionary societies, they were opposed by the King. They were not allowed to incorporate.

So, for the most part, New England Congregationalism became completely localized: us and our town alone. Just us. We have nothing to do with those wider stretches of the World . And unfortunately some Congregationalists came to love it, like a slave may say they like slavery, or a prisoner hopes to stay in prison. John Wise and Increase Mather, (Mather had a lot to do with working out this compromise with the King), tried to come up with reasons why this extreme localism was better. Today I still find many Congregationalists who think that to be a Congregationalist means to be an extreme localist, our church and our church only, us first.

But that was not what we believed. We believed in a worldwide community.

From the beginning most of the clergy disagreed with this. Cotton Mather broke with his father and disagreed. He carried on an extensive correspondence with the new rising German Pietist movement. He said New Englanders must be part of the worldwide Christian work. We must hear and share with our sisters and brothers around the World.

The great preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards, who is often credited with getting the Great Awakening going in New England, also disagreed with this severe and narrow localism. Edwards also corresponded with Christians in other parts of the World , and shared and opened communications.

This worldwide aspect became most clear when certain preachers began to travel around the colonies proclaiming the Gospel. John Wesley came to America. The best known of these traveling preachers was the English Calvinist Episcopalian George Whitefield. I can actually show you a history book that says that Whitefield came to Providence and his preaching inspired the founding of Beneficent Church. Now we don't think that Whitefield ever came here.

But we do know that Gilbert Tennent came to Providence, and we know that Tennent did inspire and befriend the founders of Beneficent. Tennent was the son of an Irish immigrant and a Presbyterian.

What the Great Awakening people were telling us is that the Gospel is worldwide . Our religion is not just some local congregation in some local town made up of direct descendants of the Puritans. God is for all people. The Gospel can be spoken by Presbyterians and Episcopalians. We can hear truth from the lips of native English people, even Irish people, and whomever else God has called.

The Great Awakening was a rejection of a narrow localism in religion and religious belief and a desire to be connected with the whole World . This was particularly true of those Awakening congregations that welcomed the traveling itinerants from other localities and groups, just like Beneficent.

Historian Timothy Hall says this interest "made possible a World radically open to the free operation of God's Spirit, which could operate unhindered by human boundaries of space, time, custom, class, race, or gender through those who disseminated the gospel free to all in every place."¹ He says there was "an eagerness to reach beyond the confines of the parish for sources of participatory belonging in a way that paralleled long-distance participation in other areas of social, cultural, and economic life."² He says that the religious experiences of the people involved in the Awakening "reflect the reorientation of the newborn self within a wider, more open setting than the immediate environment of the local parish."³ He sees it as a "dynamic, expansive, potentially global religious orientation."⁴

What I am saying is that Beneficent's birthright was an awakening to the World . Jesus calls on the disciples to care about all nations. We can never have a narrow perspective of us only, and our future only.

Is it no wonder then that Beneficent played a key role in founding America's first foreign missionary organization? Or is it no wonder that it was the Churches that were children of the Awakening evangelical community that took the lead in the anti-slavery movement?

We do not live for ourselves. Our call is not to this building and this place. Our call is to the World. Our call is to those suffering in bombings in Iraq. Our call is to the Gulf Coast. Our call is to the physically hungry, and the spiritually hungry around the World . Our Church is a Church that cares for the people of China and the Middle East, Zimbabwe, and Nicaragua. We reject the severe localism forced on the New England Congregational psyche by the King of England. We rejoice in the God who made us internationalists. We rejoice in the God who awakened us to the World. May we never fall asleep again!

Amen.

1 - Hall, Timothy D., Contested Boundaries; Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial American Religious World, (Duke University Press, Durham, 1994), p.72.
2 - Ibid., p.77.
3 - Ibid., p.80.
4 - Ibid., p.82.