The Anxious Bench Triumphant

To oversimplify tremendously, Christianity in this country can be divided into three distinct groups:  Roman Catholicism, high-church protestantism (such as the Lutherans and Episcopalians), and American Christianity.  American Christians are easily identified as those who take it as a matter of course that the U.S. flag will be at the front of the sanctuary.  They tend to view high-church protestantism as dangerously  close to Roman Catholicism.  This is not just because their pastors wear collars;  high-church Protestantism is marked by formalism, by which I mean a reliance on forms in worship and Church life.  That is, they keep the Church calendar, have set liturgies, baptize babies, and generally expect Church life to follow set patterns.  American Christians, by way of contrast, emphasize inner spiritual experience and disdain formalism as mere outward religion.  They tend to doubt high-church protestants are really Christian, although usually they will charitably allow the possibility.

Given those classifications, most conservative presbyterians today would identify themselves as American Christians.  They are evangelicals who believe in a Calvinistic soteriology which they expect to be manifested in their own and others’ lives through moving personal experiences.  As such, they are something other than presbyterian.

In 1843, J.W. Nevin, a German Reformed (in other words, a presbyterian for all practical purposes) Church historian, published The Anxious Bench, a polemic tract against the “New Measures” being advocated in his day.  The New Measures were methods for conducting revival meetings so as to produce conversions;  many would be familiar to us today.  He took the anxious bench as representative of the whole system of the New Measures.  It functioned much like the altar call:  those who felt a stirring were encouraged to come forward in order to have a conversion experience.

Nevin argued “that the measure is adapted to obstruct rather than to promote the progress of true godliness, and that it deserves to be discouraged on this account.”  Indeed, he believed revivalism’s emphasis on a momentary experience (the instant of conversion) would at best produce immature believers, easily buffeted by life’s travails.  In opposition to the Anxious Bench, he commended “the Catechism.”  By this term, he did not mean simply or even primarily catechetical memorization, but more generally a life of piety grounded in the ordinary means of grace mediated through corporate worship and the regular discipline of the Church, as regulated by Scripture.  “Catechism” is a fit antonym to “Anxious Bench” because the latter expects lives to change instantaneously, while the former expects the Spirit to sanctify slowly and steadily.  Thus, both are not simply systems of doctrine, but ways of being Christian which produce distinct Church cultures.

Nevin was of course not recommending an innovation, but adherence to the practices common to the reformed and presbyterian Churches for centuries.  The Anxious Bench  conveys a tone of great urgency because Nevin feared the Catechism would be usurped by the New Measures, resulting in a spiritual shipwreck for his German Churches in particular and protestantism in general.  Thus, he ended his tract by warning “It must be ever a wretched choice, when the Bench is preferred to the Catechism.”

We live in the aftermath of that wretched choice.  Some 160 years after Nevin wrote, conservative presbyterians look more to youth programs than the sacraments to build up their faith.  The Shorter Catechism, after the first question, is largely unknown.  When baptized children make profession of faith, we speak of them “joining the Church” as though they previously had been outside the Church, as though their baptisms availed them nothing.  We expect the Spirit might do great things in revivals, but little (if anything) through Sunday morning services.  In sum, the Anxious Bench has triumphed.

Curiously, the Catechism has not entirely disappeared from American presbyterianism.  It is still maintained to a large extent in the liberal Presbyterian Church U.S.A.  While they tend not to make use of the Westminster Shorter Catechism itself, their Church life is marked by use of the ordinary means of grace and very, very little on anything like revivals.  

As time progresses, the Catechism in their circles is being turned into a liberal catechism;  there is no good thing immune to decay and corruption when put in the charge of decadent and corrupt persons.  However, I grew up in the 1970s and 80s, when the liberals had long ago seized power but had not yet completely worked their heresies into the fabric of Church life.  There was little if any clear proclamation of the Gospel itself, but by osmosis I learned the major themes and events of the Bible and life of Christ.  Long before I entered seminary, I knew, on what is for all practical purposes an instinctive level, that Pentecost is as important for the life of the Church as the Incarnation and the Resurrection.

In other words, the ordinary means of grace are remarkably efficacious.  I did not believe the Gospel until I was seventeen.  But thereafter, I slowly discovered that the Holy Spirit had over those long years taught me how to be a Christian.  By God’s grace and the tattered remnants of the Catechism, I was inoculated against the excesses and just-plain-weirdness which caught up so many of my friends in the evangelical circles in which I lived immediately after my conversion.

Here I would like to say I found my way home to conservative presbyterianism and the faithful Catechism.  In a sense I did, but they exist almost entirely in books, not the life of the Church.  In the twentieth century wars against liberalism, the fundamental truths of Scripture and the Gospel were saved.  However, the Catechism suffered serious collateral damage, and so I question how distinct we really are from our allies in that war, the fundamentalists.  Too often, it seems to me we are fundamentalists who practice Christian liberty, not presbyterians who are unflinchingly committed to the ordinary means of grace.  

Ironically, the Westminster Shorter Catechism itself (or rather, the way it is commonly used) may be undermining the Catechism, the way of Church life for which Nevin fought.  In many conservative presbyterian circles, right doctrine has become the be-all and end-all of Christian life;  the better one’s theology, the more spiritually mature one must be.  In this environment, the Shorter Catechism does not inculcate one into Nevin’s Catechism;  it encourages one to rely upon something other than the ordinary means of grace.

Thus, even some of the most adamant advocates of the reformed confessions have drifted away from the Church life those marvelous documents commend.  Having lost the Catechism and the distinctive and separate culture it produces, many presbyterian Churches have American flags in their sanctuaries.

Having said all that, I cannot forget the profound sense of alienation which grips me whenever I attend a conference geared toward an evangelical non-denominational audience.  For all their hostility toward formalism, they fluidly rattle off set phrases (such as “stand in the gap,” whatever that means) and make theological assumptions (such as equating “worship” with singing a few songs) which raise nary an eyebrow.  In conversation, I am careful not to employ the language of the Catechism lest I receive blank stares and get the clear impression the credibility of my profession is in doubt.  

My discomfort in these environments is not uncommon amongst conservative presbyterians, I’m sure.  The Catechism may be weak and dying in our Churches, but it has not lost its grip on us yet.  Whatever we are, we are not (entirely) American Christians.

This is a good thing, I think.  Some are concerned the Catechism makes it difficult for us to communicate with the evangelical world.  On the other hand, it facilitates dialogue with conservative Lutherans and Episcopalians, traditions which have largely kept in better touch with their own practice of the Catechism.  In our present-day ecclesiastical tower of Babel, we ought always remember that in choosing one language, we exclude the speakers of another.  I, for one, am not confident it is good to turn away from those who speak the Catechism in order to sound like those who never learned it.

Rather, I hope we can relearn the Catechism for ourselves and our children.  As Nevin says, “I mean of course not the Catechism as a mere deed form, …[but] the living Catechism, the Catechism awakened and active….”  I hope we can teach this Catechism to those who yearn for an experiential religion grounded in the mundane faithfulness of Christ mediated by his Holy Spirit through the ordinary means of grace.  I hope and pray the Anxious Bench, by God’s grace, will be overthrown completely and finally not only in our presbyterian Churches, but in all the Churches of Christ.  I pray we might reverse our wretched choice and witness the triumph of the Catechism over American Christianity.

In other words, I pray for presbyterianism.