SABBATARIANISM Sabbatarianism is the doctrine of those Christians who believe that the Sabbath (usually on Sundays) should be observed in accordance with the Fourth Commandment, which forbids work on the Sabbath because it is a holy day (see Ten Commandments). Some other Christians have contended that the Fourth (or Third in some systems) Commandment was a part of the Hebrew ceremonial, not moral, law. They believe that this law was entirely abolished by Jesus, whose Resurrection on the first day of the week established a new kind of day, characterized by worship rather than absence of work. In Christianity there are many shades of opinion between these two views. Legislation concerning what may or may not be done on Sunday is as old as the time of the Roman emperor Constantine I, who decreed regulations against Sunday labour in 321. In its strictest form, however, Sabbatarianism was the creation of the Scottish and English Reformers, especially John Knox. The Scottish Presbyterians and the Puritans took their views to the American colonies, where rigorous blue laws were enacted. Although reduced in number and effect, Sunday observance laws are still promoted in various European countries and in the United States. State or local laws, primarily in the South, bar certain business activities and sporting events on Sunday increasingly, however, only before noon. EVANGELICAL METHODISM Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately 70 million adherents worldwide; the movement traces its roots to John Wesley s evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. Congregationalists set up missionary societies to evangelize the western territory of the Northern Tier. Members of these groups acted as apostles for the faith, educators, and exponents of northeastern urban culture. The Second Great Awakening served as an organizing process that created, a religious and educational infrastructure across the western frontier that encompassed social networks, a religious journalism that provided mass communication, and church-related colleges. Publication and education societies promoted Christian education; most notable among them was the American Bible Society, founded in 1816. Women made up a large part of these voluntary societies. The Female Missionary Society and the Maternal Association, both active in Utica, New York, were highly organized and financially sophisticated women s organizations responsible for many of the evangelical converts of the New York frontier. Each denomination that participated in the Second Great Awakening had assets that allowed it to thrive on the frontier. The Methodists had an efficient organization that depended on ministers known as circuit riders, who sought out people in remote frontier locations. The circuit riders came from among the common people, which helped them establish rapport with the frontier families they hoped to convert.
EVANGELICAL BAPTISTS GOD We believe in one Personal God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present and never changing. We believe God exists in three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We believe that He is the Creator of all that there is. We believe that He is the architect of the plan to redeem fallen humanity to Himself through the Man Jesus. PEOPLE We believe that God created people in His image to worship Him, enjoy Him, and be His representatives on the earth. We believe that Adam and Eve are our original parents and that their sin has stained the entire human race. We believe that all people are sinners depraved in all aspects of their being and are unable to save themselves from sin or the wages of sin which is death. SALVATION We believe that salvation is by God s grace through faith alone in Christ alone. We believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior of all who call upon Him as Lord. We believe that His death was an atonement for sin. We believe that His death turned away the wrath of God. We believe that Jesus resurrection began the New Creation. We believe that a person regenerated by the Holy Spirit is saved for eternity. SANCTIFICATION AND CHRISTIAN CONDUCT We believe that Christian growth comes through trusting obedience in Christ as the Spirit of God uses the Word of God to make us like the Son of God for the glory of God. We believe that Christians should live for the glory of God and the well being of others; that their conduct should be blameless before the world; that they should be faithful stewards of their possessions; and that they should seek to realize for themselves and others the full stature of maturity in Christ. THE CHURCH We believe in the universal church, a living spiritual body of which Christ is the head and all regenerated persons are members. We believe in the local church, consisting of a group of professing believers in Jesus Christ, baptized on a credible profession of faith, and organized for worship, work, and fellowship. We believe that God has laid upon the members of the local church the tasks of glorifying Himself through unified commitment to one another and making followers of Jesus Christ among all nations. 1857-1860 The area around Bridge Street and Chapel Street is mostly mills and housing for the mill workers. A member of the Eliot Church in Newton Corner proposes starting religious services for the mill workers. SUMMER, 1860 Leaders from the Eliot Church conduct outdoor services for a few months. JUNE 2, 1861 A young Irish pastor, Samuel E. Lowry, officiates the first Sunday School service near the mills with 17 people in attendance. JULY 20, 1862 The community dedicates a new one-room chapel built on land donated by mill-owner Thomas Dalby on what is now Chapel Street. JULY 11, 1866 Local leaders officially establish the North Evangelical Church and establish Samuel E. Lowry as pastor the following winter.
CONGREGATIONALISM Congregationalism is a Christian movement that arose in England in the late 16th and 17th centuries. It occupies a theological position somewhere between Presbyterianism and the more radical Protestantism of the Baptists and Quakers. It emphasizes the right and responsibility of each properly organized congregation to determine its own affairs, without having to submit these decisions to the judgment of any higher human authority, and as such it eliminated bishops and presbyteries. Each individual church is regarded as independent and autonomous. Although it was not always true in the early days in America, Congregationalists have generally been distrustful of state establishment of religion and have worked for civil and religious liberty. Their emphasis on the rights of the particular congregation and on freedom of conscience arose from their strong convictions concerning the sovereignty of God and the priesthood of all believers. This attitude has led many of them to adopt theological and social liberalism and to participate in the ecumenical movement. Congregationalists were originally called Independents, as they still are in Welsh-speaking communities. Forming first in Britain and the United States, Congregationalism in the 20th century moved into other countries and formed united churches with other denominations throughout the world. AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH The African Methodist Episcopal Church is a black Methodist church in the United States, formally organized in 1816. It developed from a congregation formed by a group of blacks who withdrew in 1787 from St. George s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia because of restrictions in seating; blacks had been confined to the gallery of the church. Those who withdrew formed the Free African Society, the forerunner of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and built Bethel African Methodist Church in Philadelphia. In 1799 Richard Allen was ordained its minister by Bishop Francis Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1816 Asbury consecrated Allen bishop of the newly organized African Methodist Episcopal Church, which accepted Methodist doctrine and discipline. The church speaks of Richard Allen, William Paul Quinn, David A. Payne, and Henry M. Turner as the Four Horsemen instrumental in the establishment of the church. The church is Methodist in church government, and it holds a general conference every four years. In 1991 the church claimed 3,500,000 members and 8,000 congregations. Its headquarters are in Washington, D.C.
NON-PROTESTANTS All non-protestants faced discrimination during the Second Great Awakening, which was a Protestant movement. These groups did not conform to national ideals, and therefore were deemed outsiders, or threats to Protestantism. Mormons A Mormon is a member of any of several denominations that trace their origins to a religion founded by Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805 1844), in the United States in 1830. The term Mormon, often used to refer to members of these churches, comes from the Book of Mormon, which was published by Smith in 1830. Now an international movement, Mormonism is characterized by a unique understanding of the Godhead, emphasis on family life, belief in continuing revelation, desire for order, respect for authority, and missionary work. Mormons also obey strict prohibitions on alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea and promote education and a vigorous work ethic. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the principal formal body embracing Mormonism, is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and had more than 11 million members by the early 21st century. About 50 percent of the church s members live in the United States and the rest in Latin America, Canada, Europe, Africa, the Philippines, and parts of Oceania. The next largest Mormon denomination, the Community of Christ (until 2001 the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), is headquartered in Independence, Missouri, and had a membership of approximately 250,000 in the early 21st century. In western New York state in 1823, Smith had a vision in which an angel named Moroni told him about engraved golden plates buried in a nearby hill. According to Smith, he received subsequent instruction from Moroni and, four years later, excavated these plates and translated them into English. The resultant Book of Mormon so called after an ancient American prophet who, according to Smith, had compiled the text recorded on the plates recounts the history of a family of Israelites that migrated to America centuries before Jesus Christ and were taught by prophets similar to those in the Old Testament. The religion Smith founded originated amid the great fervour of competing Christian revivalist movements in early 19th-century America but departed from them in its proclamation of a new dispensation. Through Smith, God had restored the true church i.e., the primitive Christian church and had reasserted the true faith from which the various Christian churches had strayed. Catholics We have religious freedom written in the First Amendment, but were people really religiously free? What about Catholics? In the early part of the United States, [Catholics] were a very small minority. And the Catholic migration, or you could even call it diaspora, of the 19th century really doesn't get going until the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, and then we see this massive Catholic migration. Most of those Catholics are not coming because they are worried about religious liberty per se. The ones from Ireland are coming because of the famine. The ones from Germany are coming because of political troubles, and sometimes there's religious persecution issues involved there as well, because there's a lot of religious conflict in Germany in the 1830s and 1840s. But most of the reason they're coming is economic as well.
When they get to the United States, Catholics have two reactions. And by Catholics I mean bishops and Jesuit priests, and then ordinary lay Catholics, too. The first reaction is: "This place is great because we get to do what we want, and religious liberty is going to allow us to. If we want to build a school, we can build a school. If we want to open a church, we can open a church. If we want to try and bring a group of nuns over from Germany to work here, we can do that." The second reaction -- and it's a growing reaction in the 1830s, '40s and '50s -- is that these people don't mean what they say when they say, "We believe in religious liberty." What they really mean is, "We believe in religious liberty for certain kinds of religions." And by that, they don't mean Catholicism. So they believe in religious liberty as long as the church doesn't have any ties to a foreign state, like the Papal States [in Italy] in the 19th century. "We believe in religious liberty as long as people don't take vows of obedience," because that seemed somehow un-american. "We believe in religious liberty as long as you don't try and set up your own school system."... America fought the Revolution to fight tyranny, yet the Catholic Church saw tyranny? Right. Many Protestant... Americans in the early 19th century, if they looked to Europe and they thought of what are the tyrannical institutions in Europe, they would think of monarchies sometimes,... and then they would think of Catholicism. One thing I've thought has been underestimated in the historical literature is actually how powerful the memory of the Reformation is for both Catholics and Protestants in the 19th century. It happened 300 years before, 400 years before, but that is very powerful. And the association of Protestantism with liberty and freedom is really locked pretty tightly in a lot of Americans' minds. So they look to Europe, and they see Catholicism supporting some monarchical governments; they see Catholicism, in the name of the pope, expressing doubts about freedom of the press and hesitation about allowing any Protestant preachers in, for example, the Papal States. And they say: "There it is. It's tyrannical Rome." Then they're even more shocked when they realize by the middle of the 19th century that Catholicism is growing. One of the ironies of this period is that at the end of the French Revolution, most people thought institutional Catholicism is more or less dead, because it was in total chaos. Most of the churches in France had been destroyed. The pope had been almost kidnapped. There was relatively little left of the institutional structure of the Catholic Church. By the mid-19th century, it's going through the greatest growth period in its modern history, and that surprised and scared people whose own narrative of history was that Catholicism was with the old days, the backward days, and Protestantism was part of progress and the future.... Jews In the 1840s, in contrast to the early American model of synagogues run by a hazan (cantor) or lay leadership, immigrant rabbis began to assume the pulpits of American synagogues. Some sought to promote Orthodoxy, while others merged the ideology of German Jewish Reform with the practices of American Protestant denominations and created a new American version of Reform Judaism. Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise of Cincinnati, a leader of American Reform Judaism, sought to develop a Minhag-America (American liturgical custom) that would unite Jews around moderate Reform Judaism. The founding of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (1873) and Hebrew Union College (1875) in Cincinnati sought to actualize his vision. But even as rabbis hoped to unite the community, the greatest legacy of the so-called "German period" is actually Jewish religious diversity. By the Civil War, every American Jewish congregation had at least two synagogues, and major ones had four or more.