Presbyterianism and a smaller class

The discussion keeps getting smaller as people drop away due to conflicts or illness. We’re like some study in evolutionary science, with only the hearty surviving.

Joe said in response to Liz’s post that he was waiting for the term “Puritan” to crop up, and it did. I remember Nancy Bickel from First Congregational (UCC) coming into one of my classes and beginning her explanation of Congregationalism with a reference to these early Americans who established some of the finest schools we have, including Harvard. I suppose we tend to forget that faiths like UCC Congregationalism and Presbyterianism make a big deal out of their heritage related to this land. Even though they too were immigrants, they have been around long enough to claim attachments to “the founders” and assert connections that really shape their identity as “American” faiths. Perhaps this helps to justify their beliefs that, as Crystal said, they have earned a special “access to power.”

Both Crystal and Kelli alluded to the organizational issues associated with Presbyterianism, and I was really glad to learn from our readings and from Joe and Ed about the emphasis the tradition places upon matters of “order” and “organization. I’ve grown accustomed to it in Catholicism, and I’ve always thought that Lutherans really want to be more organized, but I suppose I tended to think of the Presbyterians in the same light as the UCC crowd, and now I don’t think that’s a good connection at all. Congregationalists are, as their name suggests, much more focused on the “local” church.

Finally, not much more to say about the “faith” and “works” debate other than you all seem to understand it pretty well—even if that means it exasperates you, as it does for Carla. For what it’s worth, I don’t read much about it in contemporary theology, perhaps because the theologians are weary of it too. By contrast, the distinction between “personal” and “institutional” encounters with God seems very much at the forefront of the way we discuss Christianity today. In that discussion, what’s fascinating (to me) is how the perspectives of traditional denominations is changing. “Evangelical” interests in a personal encounter with God now seems to apply to people from all Christian denominations, including Catholics. And if people understand God primarily in terms of their personal encounter, then I suppose that does lead them to think about the relationship between faith and works in certain ways. jw