51. Chapter 46: The Church Is Extended into the New World

CHAPTER 46 The Church Is Extended into the New World

1. The Episcopal Church Is the First in America The Episcopal Church was the first church to be introduced into America. This was the Church which the English settlers brought with them to Jamestown in 1607. The Episcopal Church was from the beginning the Established or State Church of Virginia, and re­mained so throughout the colonial period. It also became the Estab­lished Church of Maryland and of all the English colonies south of Virginia, as well as of New York. The leading clergyman in Vir­ginia toward the end of the seven­teenth and during the first half of the eighteenth century was James

OLD CHURCH AT JAMESTOWN
This ivy-covered church tower dates back to the years when settled by the English. Behind the tower is the restored version of the main sectin of the church.

Blair. A Scotchman who had been educated in Edinburgh, he came to Virginia in 1685. It was he who after much difficulty obtained from England a charter for the estab­lishment in 1693 of a college at Williamsburg. The college was named after William and Mary, at that time king and queen of Eng­land. The purpose in founding it was declared to be "for the ad­vance of learning, education of youth, supply of the Ministry, and promotion of piety."

Blair served as president of the college for forty-nine years — until he died at eighty-eight.

Throughout the first century of colonial history the Episcopal Church made little progress. But a great change for the better came with the opening of the second century of English colonial history in America. In 1701 there was founded in England the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. This society be­came the great missionary organization of the Church of England. Its founding was an event of the first importance for the future of the Episcopal Church throughout the whole world, and particularly for the future of that church in the English colonies in America. Up to that time the Episcopal Church had hardly made a be­ginning outside of Virginia and Maryland.

2. The Congregationalist Church Is Established in New England

King James I of England meant business when he threatened that he would make the Puritans con­form, or that else he would "harry them out of the land." He made things so unpleasant for the non­conformists that the congregation of Scrooby in England was forced to seek refuge in Leyden in the Netherlands in 1609.

LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS
Religious News Service On December 21, 1620, the Pilgrims came ashore on a rocky ledge which was to become known as historic Plymouth Rock. They bowed their heads in gratitude to God for their safe arrival in the New World.

These Englishmen did not feel at home in the Netherlands. They found it very hard to make a living in a strange country. What was far worse, they saw their children "being drawn away by evil ex­amples into extravagant and dan­gerous courses, getting the reins off their necks, and departing from their parents, so that they saw their posterity would be in danger to degenerate and be corrupted." So they decided to seek a new home in America. They sailed from Plymouth in England in the Mayflower and landed on the bleak, rocky coast of Cape Cod on No­vember 11, 1620. They named the spot where they landed Plymouth, after the English city from which they had sailed. You will remember from your study of American his­tory that these English settlers at Plymouth were called the Pilgrims. The settlers at Plymouth were for the most part poor and humble folk. They were looked upon as radical Puritans because they had separated from the Church of Eng­land and held the Congregational theory of church government. In other words, they were Separatists. Most of the Puritans wanted to stay in the Church of England and regarded the Separatists as self-righteous trouble-makers. In fact, the Separatists were despised by all their fellow countrymen. The colony at Plymouth always re­mained small. The great migration of English Puritans to America began in 1628 with the founding of the Massa­chusetts Bay Colony at Salem. This colony flourished from its be­ginning. By 1640 around twenty thousand colonists had found a home in the Salem area. A very large proportion of these colonists were men of wealth, social posi­tion, and ability.

These Puritans had no desire to separate from the Church of Eng­land as did the Puritans of Plym­outh. One of the first of the Puri­tan ministers to come to Massa­chusetts Bay was Francis Higgin­son. When from the deck of the ship he saw the shore of England fade away, he said, "We will not say as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving England, `Farewell, Babylon ! Farewell, Rome!’ But we will say, ’Farewell, dear England; Farewell, the Church of God in England and all the Christian friends there!’ We do not go to New England as Sep­aratists from the Church of Eng­land, though we cannot but sepa­rate from the corruption in it." Winthrop and the other Puritan leaders considered it "an honor to call the Church of England from whom we rise, our dear Mother."

You would expect this Massa­chusetts Bay Colony with its wealth and numbers to take the lead in directing the church life and government in New England. But it was rather the little band of poor and despised radicals at Plymouth who laid the foundations of New England, and supplied the model of church government for the Bay Colony and all the New England Puritans. Following their example, the far more numerous and influential Puritans at Salem also broke with their "dear Moth­er," and adopted the Congregation­al form of church government. In the course of ten years thirty-three churches sprang up in Mas­sachusetts. They all adopted the Congregational form of govern­ment, though one or two ministers were inclined to Presbyterianism.

THE PILGRIMS’ FIRST PUBLIC WORSHIP IN AMERICA
Schoenfeld Collection from Three Lions
On Sunday, January 21, 1621 — just one month after their arrival — the Pilgrims held their first public worship in America in a rough square blockhouse at New Plymouth. Since they had no pastor, they were led in worship by William Brewster, the oldest of the company and an elder of the church. In 1636 the foundation was laid for a college at Cambridge in Mas­sachusetts. It was named Harvard College (now Harvard University) in honor of the Rev. John Harvard, who gave a large sum of money and his library to this institution. In 1701 another college was es­tablished in Connecticut. First lo­cated at Saybrook, it was removed to New Haven in 1716. Two years later it received the name of Yale in honor of Elihu Yale, who gave generously toward its support. With fond reference to Elihu Yale, Yale University is now often spo­ken of as Old Eli.

3. The Dutch Reformed Come to New York and New Jersey The hardy and ambitious Dutch­men were not to be outdone by their English neighbors across the North Sea. In 1623 they estab­lished two trading posts in Ameri­ca: the one at the present site of Albany on the upper Hudson River, in New York, the other near the present site of Camden on the Del­aware River in New Jersey.

OLD CHURCH IN THE FORT, ALBANY
This was one of the early churches built in New York State by the Dutch Re­formed settlers of the 17th century.

They called the Hudson the North River, and the Delaware the South River. Prince Maurice, of the house of Orange-Nassau, was at the head of the Dutch Republic at that time. So the Dutch called the post on the Hudson Fort Orange, and the post on the Dela­ware Fort Nassau. In 1626 Peter Minuit came out as the first gov­ernor. He bought the island of Manhattan in the mouth of the Hudson from the Indians. At the southern tip of that island the Dutch built a third fort, which they called New Amsterdam. They called the entire colony New Netherlands.

It was only four years after the famous Synod of Dordt (ch. 38, sec. 4) that the Dutch started their colony in America. The Reformed State Church of the Netherlands was then in full strength and vigor. So it was the Dutch Reformed Church which the Dutch estab­lished in the new world. This Church was under the supervision of the Classis of Amsterdam. The first church was established in 1628 under the leadership of the Rev. Jonas Michaelius. The second minister was Everardus Bogardus, who came in 1633. During his active pastorate two meeting houses were erected in New Am­sterdam. The first was a plain, wooden, barnlike building. The second was built of stone; it was seventy-two feet long and fifty feet wide and cost 2500 guilders (about $1700) — an enormous sum for that time. The most outstanding of the co­lonial ministers in New Nether­lands was John Van Mekelenburg, usually called Megapolensis. He served the Church faithfully, and also took an interest in the Indians. He learned the language of the Mo­hawks and preached to them. It is claimed that he was the first Prot­estant missionary to the Indians.

THE COLONISTS BRING THE CHURCH TO THE NEW WORLD
Adapted from This Is America’s Story, by Wilder, Ludlum, and Brown. Courtesy Houghton Mifflin Company. In 1664, when Peter Stuyvesant was an elder in the Dutch Re­formed Church of New Amsterdam and governor of the New Nether­lands, this colony was captured by the English and renamed New York. The Dutch Reformed Church was allowed to carry on its work unhindered. Thirty years later there was a great variety of re­ligious faiths in the colony. There were almost as many English Sep­aratists as Dutch Reformed. Be­sides, there was a sprinkling of French Huguenots, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Jews. From that time on the Dutch Reformed Church in America made but little progress until it was awakened to new life by Theodore Frelinghuysen. We shall hear more about him presently (ch. 47, sec. 2).

4. Roger Williams Founds a Baptist Church In the early months of the year 1631 there landed at the port of Boston with his comely wife a young English minister by the name of Roger Williams. The Con­gregational Church was the Estab­lished State Church of the Massa­chusetts colony. But Williams be­lieved in the separation of Church and State. Almost immediately this got him into trouble with the church authorities in Boston.

He then became minister of the Pilgrim Church at Plymouth. Here he made friends of the Narragan­sett Indians and learned their lan­guage. This was to be of great use to him later on. In 1634 he was called to the Con­gregational Church in Salem. He served there for two years, and won a number of the members to his view about the separation of Church and State. In the fall of the year 1635 the General Court sentenced him to leave the Massachusetts colony within six weeks. But Williams at this time was in poor health, and the court allowed him to wait until the following spring. Williams at once withdrew from the ministry of the church in Salem; but his friends and followers then gath­ered at his house. There he preached to them on the very points for which he had been censured. This aroused the court to action, and Williams was ordered to leave the colony at once.

Williams took a mortgage on his house to raise money, left his wife and two children in Salem, and plunged into the wilderness. It was the dead of winter. For fourteen weeks he wandered about in the deep snows of the forest. Then the Indians, whom he had befriended back in Plymouth, took him in. Late the following summer he pur­chased from them a plot of ground at the mouth of the Mohassuck River. Soon followers of Williams came from Massachusetts, and to­gether they founded the town of Providence. This was the begin­ning of the state of Rhode Island. In 1638 a church was organized at Providence. A Mr. Holliman, who had been a member of the church in Salem, rebaptized Wil­liams. Thereupon Williams rebap­tized Holliman and ten others. The first Baptist church in America had come into being. When in 1647 the government of Rhode Island was set up, it was founded upon the principles advo­cated by Roger Williams: separa­tion of Church and State, church, membership not a requirement for voting, and complete liberty of re­ligion. These principles have be­come fundamental American prin­ciples of government.

Baptist views were adopted by quite a number of members of the Congregational churches in the older Puritan colonies. Among them was Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard. The first Baptist church in Mas­sachusetts was organized in 1663 at Rehoboth by a Welsh Baptist minister, John Myles. Later it was removed to a place near the Rhode Island border called Swansea. This church has had an uninterrupted existence down to the present day. It was, however, not in New Eng­land but in the Middle Colonies that Baptist churches flourished most. The first Baptist Association in America, consisting of five churches, met at Philadelphia in 1707. The year 1742 is considered a turning point in the history of the American Baptists. In that year the Baptist Association of Phila­delphia adopted a Confession of Faith which was strongly Calvin­istic. Up to this time Arminian Baptists had been the more numer­ous, especially in New England. From this time on the majority of American Baptists have been Cal­vinistic in their doctrine. The Phil­adelphia Association became and has remained the strongest Bap­tist body. The growth of the Baptist Church in America was not rapid. About a hundred years after Roger Williams landed in Massachusetts there were less than twenty-five Baptist churches in New England, and less than thirty in the middle colonies. The rapid growth of the Baptist Church in the South came in a later period.

Roger Williams was not the founder of the Baptist Church in America. The Church he organized in Providence was the first of the Baptist churches in America but not their mother, for not a single Baptist church branched off from it; and the part played by Williams in American Baptist history was exceedingly small. Most American Baptist churches owe their origin to small groups of men and women who were Baptists before they came to America. The greater num­ber of these were of English and Welsh stock. The great significance of Roger Williams lies in the fact that he stood bravely and firmly for com­plete separation of Church and State. This principle of separation was a great contribution on the part of the Baptists to the solving of a problem that had caused trouble ever since the conversion of the emperor Constantine the Great in 312 (ch. 5, sec. 6; ch. 17, sec. 3). The principle of freedom of re­ligion followed naturally from the principle of separation of Church and State. These principles form one of America’s most beautiful ornaments. And those who had the foremost part in the fashioning of that ornament were the Baptists.

5. The Catholics Experience Slow Growth in the Colonial Era The Roman Catholic Church came to America with the founding of the colony of Maryland. In 1632 King Charles I of England granted to George Calvert and his heirs the territory around Chesapeake Bay. This George Calvert was made the first Lord Baltimore by the king. He was a recent convert to Catholicism. He named the territory Maryland after the wife of the king.

Soon after having received his grant of territory in America the first Lord Baltimore died. He was succeeded by his son Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, who in 1634 established the first settle­ment in the new colony, which he named St. Mary after the mother of Jesus.

It is very interesting that the first English colony in America in which religious toleration was es­tablished by law was founded by a Catholic. The Catholic Church had nothing to do with this. It was entirely the personal idea of the founder of the colony. With Lord Baltimore freedom of religion was not a principle, as it was with Roger Williams, but a matter of policy. In order to make his colony profitable, Lord Balti­more needed settlers to whom he could sell the land. A small number of Roman Catholics were among the first settlers, but the great mass of Catholics in England did not care to come to the new country. So Lord Baltimore had to draw his settlers from the ranks of the Prot­estants. These from the very be­ginning formed the great majority of the colonists. It was to protect his small minority of Catholics that Lord Baltimore decreed re­ligious toleration for all the re­ligious bodies in his colony — ex­cept for people who did not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. Against the latter he decreed death and confiscation of property. In 1649 the Maryland Assembly, at the request of Lord Baltimore, passed the Act of Toleration. Al­though this act was based upon considerations of policy and not of principle, it is nevertheless an im­portant milestone in the history of religious liberty in America. In 1692 the Baltimore family lost its possessions in America. Maryland was made a royal colony, and the Church of England was set up as the Established or State Church.

Under the rule of the Baltimores the Catholic Church had grown but slowly. At the time they lost Mary­land the Catholics formed only one fourth of the population. Yet from these small beginnings there was to develop the great expansion of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States which we see today.

6. The Quakers Persist in the Face of Persecution The Quakers were among the most interesting of the religious groups which came to America. They were possessed of a strong missionary spirit. Ten years after George Fox started his work in England (ch. 38, sec. 6-8) some of his followers appeared in America. By the end of the century they could be found in every one of the English colonies. From the beginning many Quak­er women did missionary work. The first Quakers to appear in America were two women, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin. They ar­rived in Boston in 1656; but before they could land, orders were given by the Puritans that they should be kept on board the ship. After that they were put in prison for five weeks. The jail windows were boarded up so that they could neither see out nor be seen. Then they were sent back to Barbados, the place from which they had come. The ship which took the two women was barely out of sight when another vessel entered the port of Boston bringing eight other Quakers. These were imprisoned for eleven weeks, and then they also were sent out of the colony. The Massachusetts colony passed several laws forbidding Quakers to enter. In 1661 a law was passed imposing the death penalty upon Quakers who returned after having been banished. In spite of these severe laws the Quakers con­tinued to come. At last the laws against the Quakers were sus­pended. The story was the same in the other New England colonies. The Quakers appeared in New York at about the same time that they came to New England. For a short time they were persecuted there. Outside of the so-called Quaker colonies — New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania—and with the exception of Rhode Island and the Carolinas, the Quakers were persecuted in every one of the English colonies. The first Monthly Meetings in America were formed at Sandwich and Scituate in Massachusetts be­fore 1660. The New England Year­ly Meeting was established in 1661. It is the oldest Yearly Meeting in America.

George Fox visited America in 1672. He made a number of con­verts and established several new meetings. By 1681 more than a thousand colonists had come to New Jersey. Most of them were Quakers. They settled in West Jersey; and Bur­lington on the Delaware, founded in 1677, became for a time the most important Quaker center. In 1681 Pennsylvania was granted to William Penn, and the next year Delaware was added, though later this became a separate colony. No other single Englishman made such a success of his colonial enterprise as did Penn. He not only granted religious freedom, but also advertised his colony in England, Holland, and Germany. As a result a stream of colonists poured into Pennsylvania from all these countries and also from France. While the majority of the early colonists to Pennsylvania were Quakers, Penn estimated in 1685 that only half the population of his colony was English. The number of Friends, as the Quakers are officially called, con­tinued to increase. By 1760 their number was thirty thousand. But as numbers increased the spiritual life declined. Religion among the Friends was described as lifeless and dry. In the nineteenth century the Friends experienced significant revivals. In 1827-28 the Hicksites, so named after liberal leader Elias Hicks, separated from the Ortho­dox branch. The Friends have established many schools and col­leges, and they are very active in missionary work.

7. The German Reformed Settle in Pennsylvania

Between 1727 and 1745 a large number of Germans came to Penn­sylvania. For the most part they came without ministers or school­masters; consequently several of the earliest German Reformed churches were formed without pastors. The first German Re­formed church was established in 1719 at Germantown, ten miles north of Philadelphia. By 1725 there were three German Re­formed churches. These churches asked John Philip Boehm, who had been a schoolmaster at Worms, to act as their pastor. He began to preach and to baptize. But there was one difficulty. Boehm had never been ordained as a minister. He and his friends asked the ad­vice of the Dutch Reformed churches in New York, and then of the Classis of Amsterdam. Boehm admitted that he had vio­lated the order of the Reformed church by preaching and baptizing without ordination. The classis stated that under the circum­stances the work of Boehm must be considered lawful, and he was properly ordained as minister in 1729. This was the beginning of a close relationship between the Ger­man Reformed and the Dutch Re­formed churches in America.

Many Swiss Reformed settled in that area also, between the Dela­ware and the Schuylkill rivers.

Most of the German immigrants to Pennsylvania were poor. On their way to America they passed through the Dutch ports, where they aroused the sympathy of the Reformed Church in the Nether­lands. An appeal was made to this group to take over the care of the German Reformed churches in America, and they consented. Michael Schlatter, a native of Switzerland, heard of this. He went to Holland and presented himself as a candidate for minis­terial work among the German Re­formed in America. The Classis of Amsterdam accepted him, and he set sail in 1746.

Schlatter’s chief mission was to organize the German Reformed churches in America into a synod. He was full of energy and zeal. He visited all the larger German Re­formed churches, and the newly organized synod held its first meet­ing in Philadelphia in September, 1747. At the request of this synod he went to Holland, and in a short time raised $48,000 to help the poor German Reformed churches in America. This aid was given on condition that these churches re­main under the Classis of Amster­dam. When he returned to Ameri­ca he brought with him besides the money six young ministers and seven hundred Bibles for free distribution. This greatly strength­ened the German Reformed Church in colonial America.

GLORIA DEI CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA
This Swedish Lutheran Church on Swan­son Street is the oldest church in Phil­adelphia. It was dedicated in 1700 and is still in daily use. In most respects the German Re­formed and the German Lutherans in America were much alike in worship and doctrine. They worked harmoniously together. In many places the German Reformed and the German Lutherans held serv­ices in the same church building.

8. The Lutherans Weather a Crisis

Lutheranism in America had its beginnings among the Dutch on the banks of the Hudson and among the Swedes on the banks of the Delaware. Two churches are still standing as monuments to the early history of Swedish Lutheran­ism in America: Old Gloria Dei Church on the bank of the Dela­ware in South Philadelphia, and Old Swedes Church in Wilmington. Around both churches are grave­yards in which rest the remains of these Swedish Lutherans. In the southern end of the graveyard around Old Swedes Church in Wilmington lies buried the body of Torkillus, the first Lutheran minis­ter in America. But however interesting the his­tory of these Dutch and Swedish Lutheran churches may be, they were historically unimportant in comparison with the German Lu­theran churches. As already noted, swarms of Germans came to Amer­ica between the years 1727 and 1745. Of all the religious groups among these German immigrants, the Lutherans were the most nu­merous.

All these Germans were desper­ately poor, and the Lutherans, like the Reformed, came without pas­tors or schoolmasters. As a result they were slow in organizing churches. But after a time a num­ber of German Lutheran ministers came to the colonies, among them Daniel Falckner and Gerhard Henkel.

One of the Lutherans, John Christian Schulz, returned to Eu­rope to collect funds and to obtain ministers and teachers. The ap­peal struck a responsive chord in Francke in Halle (ch. 39, sec. 4, 6). Francke began looking for a young man suitable for the work among the German Lutherans in America. Finally his choice fell upon Henry Melchior Miihlenberg. Miihlenberg was well educated and had had experience as a teacher in Francke’s orphanage at Halle. Al­though a Pietist and severely criti­cal of conditions in the Lutheran Church in Germany, he was thor­oughly loyal. He loved the Luther­an Church and was deeply con­cerned about its growth in the new world. The outlook for Lutheranism in America was not altogether en­couraging. The Germans were more numerous than any other non-English inhabitants in the colonies; but they were widely scattered and were divided into many sects — although the Luther­ans were the most numerous. Fur­thermore, at this time Count von Zinzendorf was in America and was working hard to unite all the German religious groups into one body. If his plan should succeed, it would dim the hope of building up in America the Lutheran Church as an independent organi­zation.

Muhlenberg responded to the pleas of Francke, and in 1742 set sail for America. His coming opened a new period in the history of American Lutheranism. He had come out as the pastor of three Lutheran churches in the Phila­delphia area. However, he had come unannounced, and when he arrived in Philadelphia in Novem­ber he found the churches in a dis­organized state. The majority of the Philadelphia churches favored Zinzendorf’s plan of union. Many congregations had unworthy men as pastors. But Muhlenberg was an energetic and resourceful man. Within one month he was in com­plete control of the field, and before the end of the year he was installed as pastor of the three German Lu­theran churches—in Philadelphia, New Hanover, and the Old Trappe Church in New Providence.

Besides caring for his three con­gregations he labored far and wide to build up the churches that had no pastors. He regularly sent re­ports of his work to the authorities in Halle. This kept the American field before the Lutheran churches in Germany, and as a result money and men were sent for the support of the work in the colony. In 1745 three ministers came out from Halle with funds to build new churches. In each one of these churches a Christian day school was opened for children of the parish. By the year 1748 there were several strong churches and able ministers. New congregations had been organized, and many young men offered themselves as candi­dates for the ministry. In this same year six ministers and twenty-four members representing ten churches met in Philadelphia and organized the first Lutheran Synod of America. There were around seventy Lutheran churches in America at this time. And when the War for Independence broke out the number of German Luther­ans in Pennsylvania alone had reached about seventy-five thou­sand.

HOME OF CHRISTOPHER SOWER
Brethren Missionary Herald Company
This house near Philadelphia was erected in 1731. The German Baptist Brethren held their meetings upstairs. The printing was done in the building at the rear 9. Various German Groups Make Their Homes in America

Let us go back, now, to the pre­vious century, and see what other German groups came to America in those early years.

William Penn advertised his colony far and wide. He even made a trip to Europe to tell about it. As a result, in 1683 thirteen Ger­man Mennonite (ch. 37, sec. 9) families came to America. They made a settlement ten miles north of Philadelphia and named their colony Germantown. Theirs was the first German settlement in America. A number of Swiss Men­nonites settled in what is now Lan­caster County.

Another religious group to come to Pennsylvania were the German Baptists, who arrived in 1719. The other people in the colony gave them the name Dunkers, which comes from the German word tunken, meaning "to dip." They first settled at Germantown, but soon left to make other new settle­ments in that area. From the beginning they held religious serv­ices in their homes. A church was not organized until 1723. Within a few years these German Baptist Brethren, or Dunkers, scattered in all directions. In many respects the Dunkers agreed in doctrine with the Quak­ers and the Mennonites. They were influenced by the Quakers in that they adopted a very plain style of dress. They practised trine im­mersion, that is, three-fold im­mersion in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Adults only were baptized. In their form of church government they were con­gregational. The most important Dunker in colonial times was Christopher Sower. He was the first German printer in America. He was also the first to edit and print a Ger­man newspaper. After his death his son carried on the work. The Sower Bible was of great impor­tance in the religious life of the early German settlers. Published in 1743, it was the first Bible printed in America in a European lan­guage. The Moravians (ch. 39, sec. 10) came to Pennsylvania in 1740 and settled on a tract of five thousand acres at the forks of the Delaware River. Their great object was to do missionary work among the destitute and scattered German settlers in Pennsylvania and among the Indians. In 1741 Count von Zinzendorf himself arrived in Philadelphia. Just before Christ­mas he came to the Moravian set­tlement at the forks of the Delaware, and on Christmas Eve he named the place Bethlehem, mean­ing House of Bread, "in token of his fervent desire and ardent hope that here the true bread of life might be broken for all who hun­gered." Bethlehem, where today the great Bethlehem steel works is located, is still the chief Moravian center in America.

10. Presbyterianism Takes Root and Grows Rapidly As we saw in Part IV of our book, Presbyterianism in England acquired great strength during the seventeenth century. The moment came when this Church was about to be the Established or State Church. Although in England it did not actually reach this position, in Scotland the Presbyterian Church did become the State Church. In America several of the fore­most Puritan leaders, such as John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, Increase and Cotton Mather, and others, were favorable toward Presbyterianism. In several of the New England churches Presbyte­rian ideas of church organization were put into operation, and in Connecticut the Presbyterian sys­tem was fully adopted. There the names Congregational and Presby­terian came to be used interchange­ably. The Dutch Reformed Church in the colonies of New York and New Jersey was presbyterian in its form of church government. When New England Congregationalist Puritans moved into New York and New Jersey their change to Presbyterianism came about easily. And so these New England Con­gregationalists established in Long Island several churches with the presbyterian form of government.

These were the small beginnings of this denomination in America. Then a mass immigration of Scotch Irish took place and greatly increased the growth of the Pres­byterian Church in the new world. The Scotch Irish were really not Irish at all, but Scotchmen who had gone to live in Ireland. They were staunch Presbyterians. Although some came earlier, the mass migra­tion to America began in the early part of the eighteenth century and continued until well past the middle of that century. The earliest parties came to New England, but later groups settled in New York and especially Pennsylvania. From the latter state they gradual­ly made their way into western Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The man who laid the foundation for organized Presbyterianism in America was Francis Makemie, who came to eastern Maryland in 1683 and established preaching stations in the Scotch Irish com­munities there. For several years he went up and down Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, preaching in the scattered settle­ments. Through the work of Makemie and his helpers a number of churches were organized as early as 1706, and by 1716 there were seventeen Presbyterian ministers serving in the colonies. In this year the first synod was held.

Throughout the years when the number of ministers was small and requests for preaching services were many, the Church held stead­fast to its rule that only trained, ordained men should serve as min­isters. In 1710 a certain David Evans was preaching among the Welsh settlers in Virginia. He was a gifted young man, whose preach­ing gave spiritual food and guid­ance to his hearers. Yet, the Pres­bytery decided that he "had done very ill," because he was not or­dained. In spite of the great need Evans was told to lay aside all other business for a whole year, and apply himself diligently to learning and study. Once a year the Presbytery examined his progress, and five full years passed before Evans was finally ordained. An important event for Presby­terianism in America was the pass­ing of the Adopting Act by the Synod of 1729. This Act required all Presbyterian ministers to sub­scribe to the Westminster Confes­sion. As the Scotch Irish immigration increased, especially after 1720, the Church grew more and more rapidly, and by the time the War for Independence began these sturdy Presbyterians were to be found in every one of the English colonies. Everywhere they were in sufficient numbers to be of consid­erable influence.

11. Methodism Arrives Late in the Colonial Period

Since the Methodist movement in England did not get under way until 1739 (ch. 40, sec. 8), Method­ism was naturally late in making its appearance in America. It was not introduced until almost the end of the colonial period. The man who brought Method­ism to America was Philip Em-bury. He began work in New York in his own private dwelling in the year 1766. At about the same time Robert Strawbridge labored in Maryland. In 1771 John Wesley sent Francis Asbury over from England to further the work. But the Methodist Church was not established in America until after the War for Independence.