Within The New Divinity and the Origins of the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions David W. Kling
proposes that the theological influences of the New Divinity movement of the
early 1800s intricately inspired the formative nature of the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) - a concept Kling asserts is
unchallenged by scholars of American religious history as the doctrinal
guidance of Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Hopkins, and other Congregational
ministers visibly are rooted in the origins of the Protestant missionary
movement. Congregational ministers and heirs of Edwardsean thought became known
as proponents of the New Divinity movement and initiated evangelical pursuits
of mass conversions to the Protestant religion. An early model for missionary work
can be detected through the urging of the Great Awakening theologian's Life of Brainerd which emphasized the
reality of redemption and man's need to encounter that grace. Following
Edwards' example, Kling suggests that Samuel Hopkins took the basis for mission
work further by taking the abstract ideal of heart conversion and forming
sincere spiritual change into a matter of practicality narrowed on "self-denial
for the greater glory of God's kingdom and the betterment of humankind."[1]
The essence prevailing
Edwards’ New Divinity resulted in a “distinction between natural and moral
inability,” found especially in his well-regarded Freedom of the Will which promoted the idea of human agency and
cultivated a sense of urgency in believers to demonstrate that "faith as
doctrine is incomplete without fruition in experience,"[2] convictions which
motivated hopeful missionaries to fulfill the calling to convert nations yet
deaf to the Gospel as per Edwards’ emphasis upon genuine expressions of religious
affections. These sentiments would rekindle during the Second Great Awakening
and future Holiness Movements as Protestantism submerged America’s culture in a
spiritual landscape.
Despite the demise of
famed Great Awakening ministers, the revivals of the 1800s saw an influx of
youthful converts desiring to enter missions. Upon fervent prayer meetings and
intimate gatherings, many attendees of Second Great Awakening camp revivals
associated as New Divinity believers who committed their lives to spreading the
Gospel across domestic, cultural, and political borders. A famous example of
such commitment by youth attending one of these revivals was the declaration of
Samuel J. Mills Jr. to fulfill the spiritual calling resonating within him and
his peers at Williams College despite enduring balmy weather which ushered the
group to take shelter beneath a haystack while they continued formulating ways
in which they could realize this vision. The Haystack Prayer Meeting served as
the fundamental instance where the foreign missions movement initiated by
American Protestants spread from Christian students to other seminaries and eventually
into formal organizations and mission associations. Student involvement, interest,
and assistance from congregational bodies resulted in the official opening of
the ABCFM in 1810. Within the span of two short years, five missionaries from
this religious collective ventured to the vastly pagan "jewel of the
British empire:" India while others turned their gazes inward to reform American
society.
This initial launch
sounded the beginning of American missionary work which found its basis
primarily in the contributions and labor of Congregationalists from New England
though the activities of Presbyterians, Reformed Dutch, and other denominations
which came to join the ranks of the new ABCFM. Kling wisely discerns that though
Edwards and Hopkins offered theological insight, they did not purposefully
intend nor supply doctrinal rationale as to how Protestants were to engage in
international or domestic ministry. Kling paints them as transitional figures
as Edwards functioned prior to the growing consciousness of the importance of
mission work, and though Hopkins was aware of the underpinnings of this
movement through New Light influence through the Great Awakening of the 1740s,
he did not live to witness the effects occurring in the generation proceeding after
these two influential theological figures ascended into glory. Instead, Kling
argues that the following generation "extended and applied the implicit
missionary theology of Edwards and Hopkins into an explicit theological
justification for the creation of the ABCFM."[3] It is also an ironic fact
that the man known as the "father of the foreign missionary work in
Christian America” is often overlooked, as Samuel J. Mills Jr. never served as
a foreign missionary, yet he arguably did more to pioneer the advance of
mission work compared to any contemporary. A grand student leader and religious
evangelical promoter, Mills organized the ABCFM, was "instrumental in the
formation of the Foreign Mission School,"[4] and dedicated to educating
converted native peoples so that they could serve as ambassadors for Christ
amongst the members of their culture in their homeland.
Though he did not travel
abroad, Mills’ domestic influence punctured the heart of Congregational worship
as he served as a pioneer missionary in the western territories of America and posed
as an abolitionist who desired to rectify the institution of slavery, to educate,
and to include African Americans as equal members of church and society. Suitably,
Mills’ lobbying for educational reform assisted evangelization at home and abroad
with the opening of missionary societies and organizations which funded the distribution
of Bibles, construction of Sunday schools, the traveling expenses and lodging
for preachers and missionary families, and the establishment of education
societies to lessen the “cost for ministerial training for pious young men
aspiring to the ministry.”[5] Thus, Mills operated as a
fundamental catalyst of the foreign missionary movement which aligned with the
broader scope of the antebellum reforms sweeping throughout the initial stages
of the nineteenth century.
The New Divinity or
Edwardsean or Hopkinsian mindsets relied upon by Mills and other
Congregationalists surged the movement forward as many felt compelled by the
idea of a "disinterested benevolence," rather that the believer ought
to be willing to be damned for all eternity if one’s individual sacrifice of
their salvation could bring glory to God. Though perhaps misguided regarding
how the redemption and salvation of all mankind remains at the heart of the
Christian doctrine, those of New Divinity theology stewed in Edward’s “grand providential/millennial scheme” believed that
revivals “signaled the dawn of the millennium – a new age [emerging] through
natural means as an outpouring of God’s Spirit manifested in religious activity
– [denoting how] Christian activity was a precondition [and that Christians
ought to be] engaged in benevolent activities, social reform, and missionary
outreach”[6] to usher
in the second coming of Christ.
Fundamentally, Kling’s work explains the
contributions of multiple New Divinity members, such as Moses Hallock, William
Richards, Ammi Robbins, and the impact of sermons such as Edward D. Griffin's
"The Kingdom of Christ" which called for the fulfillment of the Great
Commission which supported Mills’ efforts to gain sponsors and volunteers to
sustain and expand the ABCFM. However, Kling primarily constructs a narrative
regarding an exploration of Edwardsean theology, Mills' exceptional organizational
skills and passion which propelled the success of the "Society of the Brethren"
(a secret missionary society) and the ABCFM as an institution and movement, as
well as how the historian analyzes the overall influence of New Divinity thought
on the mission field. Intriguingly, Kling reiterates how most scholarship lacks
the assertion that New Divinity is the stirring cultural factor entwined with
the Edwardsean tradition that prompts the development of American missions. In
fact, Kling boldly claims that New Divinity ideology should be considered a
"widespread movement insofar as it promoted a theology and directed that
ideology into organizations bent on influencing the nature of society"[7] – the origin
of missionary societies being firmly ingrained within New Divinity doctrine, revivalism,
and an intricate series of voluntary associations which were distinctly New
Divinity-based and whose members adhered to New Divinity doctrine which served
as the motivation and justification for domestic and international American
missions due to a benevolent view of depraved mankind – a step away from prior
forms of Calvinist theology as though a new light had dawned in order to lead
America and the world closer toward the Divine being and the awaiting millennium.
[1] David Kling, “The
New Divinity and the Origins of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions.” Church History (2003): 792.
[2] Michael Haykin, “All the Dogmas of
the American School” in Great Admirers of
the Transatlantic Divinity, 201.
[3] Kling, “The New
Divinity,” 793.
[4] David
Raymond, "The Legacy of Samuel J. Mills Jr." International Bulletin of Missionary Research 38, no. 4 (2014):
207.
[5] Ibid,.
[6] John Hubers,
"Making Friends with Locusts: Early ABCFM Missionary Perceptions of
Muslims and Islam, 1818-50." International
Bulletin of Missionary Research 33, no. 3 (2009): 151.
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