For a few decades there has been a resurgent interest in the Mercersburg Theology, the nineteenth-century anti-revivalist, liturgical movement in the German Reformed Church in the United States, led by theologian John Williamson Nevin (1803–1886) and theologian-historian Philip Schaff (1819–1893). One piece of evidence is the Mercersburg Society, founded in 1983, to explore and promote the major tenets of the movement. The society holds an annual convocation, publishes a journal, and maintains a website (www.mercersburgsociety.org) with basic information about Mercersburg's leaders, recommendations on secondary sources, and original texts of the movement's principal periodical The Mercersburg Review. Further interest in Mercersburg is fostered by a projected thirteen-volume series of documents with commentary which will appear over several years.
The volume by Presbyterian pastor-scholar Adam S. Borneman is one of the latest studies to deal with Mercersburg matters, especially John Williamson Nevin's social and political views. Borneman correctly states that insufficient attention has been paid to the socio-political context of Nevin's thought in light of his ecclesiology, understanding of history, and redemptive exclusivity founded on the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, the author asserts that studies of Nevin's Christology, ecclesiology, and sacramentology have been inattentive to the political implications of his writings, including his views on the role of the nation in antebellum America. This work aims to rectify these shortcomings.
Borneman opens his study with a discussion of the major national developments that influenced Nevin—disestablishment, democratization, emergence of the modern American two-party political system, second Great Awakening revivalism, benevolent societies, slavery, and others. He focuses on the more important theological intellects who worked with Nevin or engaged him in debate—Charles Hodge, the Transcendentalists, Horace Bushnell, Orestes Brownson, and Nevin's Mercersburg partner Philip Schaff. Later in the book the author also deals with Nevin's attitudes toward Luther, Calvin, and Abraham Kuyper on the roles of state and church.
Borneman also speaks of the interrelationship of Nevin's thought with Eastern Orthodoxy, and speculates on what Nevin might think about the recent theological movement known as Radical Orthodoxy. Along the way the author effectively reminds us of the main themes of Nevin's theology—the incarnation rather than the crucifixion as the key to Christology, the nature of the church as an extension of the incarnation, and the place of the eucharist in which the church mystically offers the whole life of Christ to the world.
Nevin rejected a basic tenet of revivalism that held that the world would be changed by converting the individual. While both the individual and the world required redemption, the relationship of the two requires a worldview which understands the salvation of persons, the family and the state “through, by, and in the church” as the extension of Christ's incarnation (81). In Christ's church alone the state can realize its raison d'etre.
Near the end of his work Borneman observes, “Nevin does not explain the precise course of action for the church to take in relation to art, science, commerce, or politics. Perhaps much to the chagrin of modern interpreters, he is not interested in providing a ‘to do’ list for the church. His aim, rather, is to construct the proper ecclesiological and liturgical foundations that he believes are necessary for reconciling all spheres of life to God. Renewed bv the power of the Holy Spirit, the Christian, by way of participation in the ministry of word and sacrament, is prompted to be a testimony to the Lordship of Christ in the world. Thus the mission of the church rests upon the transforming power of the liturgy” (156).
This is a carefully researched and insightful study of an important area of Mercersburg and nineteenth-century studies.
