Three Disputed Vermigli Tracts

This article attempts two tasks: it will show that Peter Martyr Vermigli wrote three tracts whose authorship has been disputed for over a century, and it will suggest how these tracts fit into his life and the life of the Swiss Reformed Church

A Sufficiently Republican Church: George David Cummins and the Reformed Episcopalians in 1873

In 1873 George David Cummins, the assistant bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Kentucky, rocked the complacency of the Protestant Episcopal Church by resigning his Kentucky episcopate and founding an entirely new Episcopal denomination, the Reformed Episcopal Church. Schismatic movements in American religion are hardly a novelty. Still, Cummins and his movement occupy a peculiar position in both the history of American religion and the cultural history of the Gilded Age. Unlike the wave of church schisms before the Civil War, the Reformed Episcopal schism of 1873 had no clear relation to sectional issues. And unlike the fundamentalist schisms of the early 1900s, it had no real connection to the great debate in American religion between conservativism and modernism. Instead, the story of George David Cummins hangs upon a ferocious struggle within the Episcopal Church about ritual, romanism, and Episcopal identity - or, in other words, about symbol and culture in the Gilded Age. And in 1873, that cultural struggle was closely bound up with the fearful and unresolved questions posed by America\u27s full integration into the great networks of international, industrial, and finance capitalism. Cummins and the Reformed Episcopal schism was, in miniature, part of the persistent conflict between the old antebellum republican ideals of public virtue and restraint and the new capitalist ethic of consumption which restructured American public culture in the Gilded Age. [excerpt

A Reformed Natural Theology?

This paper aims to counter the recent opinion that there is a peculiar epistemology in the reformed Church which made it negative to natural theology. First, it is shown that there was an early and unanimous adoption of natural theology as the culmination of physics and the beginning of metaphysics by the sixteenth and seventeenth century philosophers of good standing in the reformed Church. Second, it is argued that natural theology cannot be based on revelation, should not assume a peculiar analysis of knowledge and must not pass over demonstration

Clergy work-related psychological health : listening to the Ministers of Word and Sacrament within the United Reformed Church in England

Drawing on the classic model of balanced affect proposed by Bradburn (The structure of psychological well-being, Aldine, Chicago, IL, 1969), this study conceptualised poor work-related psychological health in terms of high levels of negative affect in the absence of acceptable levels of positive affect. In order to illuminate self-perceptions of work-related psychological health among a well-defined group of clergy, a random sample of 58 ministers of word and sacrament serving within the west midlands synod of the United Reformed Church in England completed an open-ended questionnaire concerned with the following six guiding questions. Do you enjoy your work? How would you define stress? How would you define burnout? What stresses are there in your ministry? What do you do to keep healthy? What can the church do to enhance the work-related psychological health of ministers? Content analysis highlighted the main themes recurring through these open-ended responses. The conclusion is drawn that ministers of word and sacrament within the United Reformed Church in England are exposed to a number of recurrent recognisable sources of stress. Suggestions are advanced regarding the need for future more detailed research and for the development of more effective pastoral strategies

Early music printing in german-speaking lands

Printing was first established in Mainz, the seat of the archbishop who was the most important of the seven Electors of the Holy Roman Empire and head of the largest ecclesiastical province of that Empire, containing 17,000 clerics who made a perfect market for liturgical books.1 The Council of Basel had ended in 1449 with the imperative to distribute newly reformed liturgical texts across Europe, and music was an integral part of those reformed texts. Although it appeared that the entire international church was behind the adoption of the conciliar reformed Liber Ordinarius, the Council of the Province of Mainz that met in 1451 voted against what was essentially a Roman liturgy, supporting instead a text offered by the archbishop of Mainz.2 Despite the pope’s threat to use military force if necessary, the council ended by sending bishops and abbots back to their homes to create unique reformed diocesan and monastic texts in a giant exercise in textual editing.

‘Church and Civil Society in the Reformed Tradition: An Old Relationship and a New Communion’

‘Church and Civil Society in the Reformed Tradition: An Old Relationship and a New Communion’. Reformed World 61, no. 3 (2011), 195–210

Ecclesiology and Ministry as Reflected in Contemporary Ordination Rites

(Excerpt) The ministry is a problem and the doctrine of the ministry has been, for Lutheran theology, an insoluble problem. Perhaps the root of the problem is more ecclesiastical than ecclesiological. Robert Paul has suggested that for every kind of ecclesiology there is a related form of ordained ministry. 1 The Lutheran doctrine of the church is clear (although we have some problems defining and numbering sacraments and thus the marks of the church); but our church polity is confused --to say the least. Current discussions of Lutheran unity and possible merger under three different types of organization reflect that lack of .clarity

Herman Hoeksema: A Theological Biography

Summary In the Christian Reformed Church in America in 1924, one of its ministers, Rev. Herman Hoeksema, resisted the adoption of the 'doctrine' of common grace and its being given confessional status within the church. The 'doctrine' maintained that God has a favorable attitude towards to all humanity, particularly in a free offer of the Gospel to all. Common grace also allows good works in the civic and cultural realms to be attributed to non-believers; works which God finds acceptable and is pleased with. Closely connected with the latter, common grace also designates one of the functions of the Holy Spirit as working in the hearts of unbelievers to restrain sin. Hoeksema resisted these 'innovations' as detrimental to both the Reformed Church and its heritage. As a result of his stance, Hoeksema was expelled from the ministry of the Christian Reformed Church. Together with two other ministers of like mind and a small faction from his church, Hoeksema founded the Protestant Reformed Churches in 1924. Herman Hoeksema was an interesting man to say the least. In many ways, he was a study in contradictions. He was both insightful and innovative, some would say brilliant, he was logical to a fault, and he had an inordinate love of fighting. In this thesis both the man and his theology are examined, especially from the standpoint of common grace.Beek, A. [Promotor]van de Mouw, R. [Promotor

The Christian Reformed Church Periodical Index: A Local Solution to Indexing Periodicals

This article describes the creation of a web-based database that indexes less well-known periodical titles of importance to scholars in the Christian Reformed Church, and generally not covered by other indexing services. The author explains how the data from the index, originally stored in a card catalog, was moved online to a text-based system, and eventually into its present form in a web-based system. Highlighting some of the challenges that were overcome in creating this resource, brief details are provided on how the data is stored and retrieved in the web environment, on how the data are searched and presented to the researcher, and on the methods used to keep the database current