Russell Richey’s Denominationalism collects some of the most important essays on its titled topic. The authors are a who’s-who of 20th century American religious history: Winthrop Hudson, Timothy L. Smith, Sidney Mead, Richey himself, H. Richard Niebuhr and Martin Marty. Some are broad synthetic studies; others are more granular studies of the formation of specific denominational formations and transformations. Happily, the 1977 book has been republished recently by the indispensable Wipf & Stock.
At a few points, the book shows its age. Mead suggests that “a Roman Catholic threat could unite all the other groups – even the Evangelical and Unevangelical – in a common front of opposition” (104), but that prospect has become an impossible one as the culture wars have intensified. Overall, the essays hold up very well, and the book is an essential conversation for the topic.
Mead’s essay is still a classic, and is worth multiple readings. A denomination, he argues, is “not primarily confession” or “territorial” but rather “purposive.” It’s related to a particular political location, since a denomination “has no official connection with a civil power whatsoever,” but is a “voluntary association of like-hearted and like-minded individuals, who are united on the basis of common beliefs for the purpose of accomplishing some tangible and defined objectives” (71).
Mead enumerates six characteristics of denominational churches: each has a “sectarian” tendency to “justify its peculiar interpretations and practices as more closely conforming to those of the early Church as pictured in the New Testament than the views and politics of its rivals” (75-6); denominations are based on a voluntary principle and depend on persuasion rather than coercion (80); denominations are missionary organizations, and this mission-mindedness has accounted too for the “interdenominational or superdenominational consciousness and cooperation which has been such an outstanding aspect of the American religious life” (84); denominations are revivalist (90); in America, many denominations have defined themselves in opposition to Enlightenment Reason, while operating within the parameters of a church-state settlement that was defended by that same Reason (96); finally, denominational churches are competitive (102).
This analysis leads to some penetrating insights into the American religious scene. Since each denomination claims to derive its practices from Scripture, more consistently and thoroughly than others, each has a tendency to sanctify its own practices “indiscriminately” so that “all the various elements of doctrine and practice that it for whatever reason adopted, under the supposition that it but followed a blueprint revealed in the Word of God” (80). Not only does this intensify conflicts between denominations, it makes each denomination’s claim to be “more biblical than Thou” implausible to a watching, often bewildered, world.
American denominationalism’s “voluntaryism” works against deep theology. Denominations are defined by activity more than theology, and Mead thinks this encourages the idea that Christian faith itself is “an activity, a movement, which the group is engaged in promoting” (81). This setting encourages the formation of certain kinds of leaders, and not ones who are profound theologians: “whatever else top denominational leaders may be, they must be denominational politicians” (82).
Voluntaryism has political consequences too. American churches accept the American settlement of religious freedom, and that implies that “only what all the religious ‘sects’ held and taught in common . . . was really relevant for the well being of the society and the state” (83). Americans need to be religious, but (to paraphrase Eisenhouer) it doesn’t matter what religion it is, so long as it maintains certain publicly useful tenets. Conversely, “the churches implicitly accepted the view that whatever any religious group held peculiarly as a tenet of its faith, must be irrelevant for public welfare.” Thus churches teach their distinctive doctrines and views, and so divide themselves from each other, but those things that justify the existence of the denomination are “either irrelevant for the general welfare or at most possessed only a kind of instrumental value for it” (83). We may put it another way, relying on another concept that is key to Mead’s view of American religion: The denominations have agreed that they will subordinate their distinctive views to the generic faith of American Civil Religion.
There is much more in Mead’s essay, but let me highlight of few of his comments about the “competitive” character of denominations. He quotes L. W. Bacon’s comment about the colonial that “fears that the work of the gospel might not be done seemed a less effective incitement to activity than the fear that it might be done by others” (103). Even when the effect is not so blatant, the competitive environment affects the way churches do their business: Competition accentuates “minor as well as substantial differences . . . and a submergence of the consciousness of a common Christian tradition.” It “helped sometimes to make sheer stubborn perpetuation of peculiarities a chief objective of a group long after real understanding of and hence belief in them had faded into limbo” – the denomination’s mission effectively becoming the perpetuation of the denomination (104). Competitive denominations are locked in a struggle for power, each trying to extend itself at the expense of others – since at some point, with the vast majority of Americans being members of churches, there weren’t enough unbelievers around to sustain evangelism. Theological differences have become less important, and the competition is more “related to such non-theological concerns as nationality or racial background, social status, and convenient accessibility of a local church” (105).
In a sense, we might say that denominationalism is the form that Protestant establishment has taken in the U.S. Fred J. Hood’s study of the “evolution” of denominationalism among the Reformed churches of the middle Atlantic and Southern states is highly illuminating on this and other points. Early on, denominations were understood as having to do with the internal government of the church (144). Missions, and especially the patriotic mission of Christianizing America, was carried out not through denominational structures but through the myriad voluntary societies that came into existence in the early 19th century: “In the wake of the fragmentation of Protestantism and the retreat of civil government from jurisdiction in matters of religion, the societies seemed to be the most efficient way to encourage religion and therefore promote the national welfare” (148). These societies claimed to be, and in some ways were, ecumenical efforts, but Hood argues that most of them were guided by some sectarian vision. The American Sunday School Union was controlled by middle-state and Southern Reformed churches, and the United Domestic Missionary Society was primarily funded and manned by Reformed groups (153).
Because of growing theological struggles in the 1820s, the societies came to be seen increasingly as subversive of the doctrinal distinctives of Presbyterian and other groups. There was a growing sentiment that the churches, not para-church organizations, should carry out the Christianizing mission. The churches began to withdraw support from voluntary societies and to bring the mission efforts under denominational control. A new definition of the denomination formed around these efforts. It was no longer simply a matter of the way a church was organized internally; a denomination came to be seen as a mission agency, a Sunday School curriculum producer, the overseer of ministry to the urban poor, training of new leaders, etc. Under this new definition “all functions of the societies” were included (159). For all its catholic and ecumenical roots (and there were such), the American denominational system was the product of a massive withdrawal from common mission and ministry.
One of the key insights emerging from Mead’s essay, and others in this volume, is the tight fit between American political order and the denominational system that orders the church. Denominatonalism cannot be seen in isolation from American nationalism, with its sometimes aggressive eschatological Messianism and American Civil Religion. Denominationalism isn’t just an ecclesial ordering for a pluralistic society; other nations handle that situation without adopting a denominational model.
Denominationalism is the American way of being church. A critique of denominationalism is simultaneously a critique of American order. And, by the same token, if we see signs that American order is fracturing, then that raises questions about the viability of denominationalism.
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis.
