People find excuses to not go to church easily. They are busy with their children’s sport activities or shopping. People might feel under the weather because it’s raining or snowing, or it’s cold or it is too warm outside. Some might miss church for Super Bowl Sunday, others for the Oscars or for March Madness. Perhaps they cannot stand the pastor’s long sermon or the dreary, old fashioned music. Some may not come to church because they wish not to see someone or shake hands during sharing the peace of God. Church folks often state as an excuse to not come to church that, people in church are not welcoming, prying and convey their negativity or judging opinions with words or body language. Someone would refuse to attend church because a new worshiper took his or her seat in the pew. Young people find it hard to be with the older generation for the length of a worship service, while elderly parishioners might not approve parents bringing their children into the sanctuary. Once, I even heard a person saying that she cannot stand a person smiling all the time and being all cheerful all the time.
Is it not amazing that God still loves us so much that he died for us? Furthermore, is there one person out there, who would not want to meet with that humble and loving God that made us, feeds us, protects us and forgives us? I wonder how long we can pretend that we are all good and safe as we believe that what we do and how we do it is enough, while we deny God without shame as individuals, as congregations, as denominations or as a universal church. We turn our back to God out of our comfort, our pride and our fear as we build our existence from manmade valuables, which we seldom want to trade for the promise of the Kingdome of Heaven that money, cannot buy. In my research based on the book: Boel’s Compliant Against Frelinghuisen, translated and Edited by Joseph Anthony Loux, Jr., I explore the deep sense of belonging to God that forced one man of God to stand tall to give in to society’s demands, in order to tell the world to repent.
Is it not amazing that God still loves us so much that he died for us? Furthermore, is there one person out there, who would not want to meet with that humble and loving God that made us, feeds us, protects us and forgives us? I wonder how long we can pretend that we are all good and safe as we believe that what we do and how we do it is enough, while we deny God without shame as individuals, as congregations, as denominations or as a universal church. We turn our back to God out of our comfort, our pride and our fear as we build our existence from manmade valuables, which we seldom want to trade for the promise of the Kingdome of Heaven that money, cannot buy. In my research based on the book: Boel’s Compliant Against Frelinghuisen, translated and Edited by Joseph Anthony Loux, Jr., I explore the deep sense of belonging to God that forced one man of God to stand tall to give in to society’s demands, in order to tell the world to repent.
The uneasiness and debate with regards to pietism and orthodoxy among the early Dutch Reformed ministers and churchgoers in America faded away since 1725, the importance of the discourse cannot be denied. Furthermore more than two hundred and fifty years later it can be revisited and applied to the church order, which the Reformed Church of America inherited from the Dutch Reformed Church of the Netherlands. Reverend Henricus Boel complaint against Reverend Theodorus Jacobs Frelinghuisen seemingly presented a personal problem against Reverend Frelinghuisen, due to Frelinguisen’s leadership style, his preaching, his theology and pastoring. While both men came from the same denomination and tradition. It is interesting to see the bureaucratic body of the church that Boel defended by attacking Frelinghuisen. Could this happen today if an ordained minister of the church would feel that he or she has the right to serve his or her conscious, that is guided by faith against the people, the church body that ordained that minister? Today in a similar controversy if a modern Frelinghuisen would refuse to minister to sinners with demanding repentance, he would be sued and excommunicated as our churches and her ministers have no right or authority of any kind to draw a line between sin and sinners.
Reverend Boel’s main concerns against Reverend Frelinghuisen were that he excommunicated four officers of his congregation as an autocratic leader and a minister with disrespect towards the Dutch Reformed Church. Boel was seeking the help of the church to reprimand Frelinghuisen in public for his actions. He wanted to strengthen the church as an institution by serving divine justice for the classis and its dogma by weakening the pietistic Frelinghuisen. (Loux, p. 15)
In the list of complaints that Boel brought forward against Frelinghuisen were several testimonies by the gentlemen: Pieter Dumont, Simon Wyckoff and Hendrik Vroom. Their views about Reverend Frelinghuisen touched on several issues, among them his critical language of the Synod of Dotrecht, particularly on the doctrine of perceptibility of one’s regeneration that the Dutch Reformed Church rejected, but Frelinghuisen preached about. Dumont in his testimony emphasized that Reverend Frelinghuisen stepped out of his pastoral boundaries as a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church by doubting anyone’s faith in the congregation with regards to repentance. It should be only God alone by His grace that could decide and judge anyone for his or her sin. (Loux, p.65)
It is hard to imagine today that in any Reformed Churches of America the pastor would preach and pray so radically to the congregation about sin that would force people to share or even talk about their sins. While we are aware of that the churches are more centered on giving hope and positive spiritual nurture to everybody, most ministers and church leaders know that our world is just as broken as Frelinghuisen’s world was. He seemed to be aware of the individual sin that walked with each member of his congregation and he seemed to be committed to share the good news of the gospel with the emphasis on sin, which keeps us humans away from God.
As the charges against Reverend Frelinghuisen continue in Boel’s account by showcasing Frelinghuisen’s challenging pastoral activities towards the church elders, there are various elements of the compliant that highlights Frelinghuisen’s pietism and strong sense of divine leadership. Also it brings a breeze of a new approach to examine the old, Dutch church order that is challenged by this case. In addition the Summoners and Reverend Frelinghuisen not only defied the church elders in the theological sense, but threatened their security inside the church’s organization by electing their own to the consistory. For instance Simon Wyckoff and Hendrik Vroom testified on May 6, 1722, against Frelinghuisen’s appointment of Hendrik Fisser to be a deacon at the Three –Mile Run Reformed Church. (Loux, p.67)
Reverend Boel’s main concerns against Reverend Frelinghuisen were that he excommunicated four officers of his congregation as an autocratic leader and a minister with disrespect towards the Dutch Reformed Church. Boel was seeking the help of the church to reprimand Frelinghuisen in public for his actions. He wanted to strengthen the church as an institution by serving divine justice for the classis and its dogma by weakening the pietistic Frelinghuisen. (Loux, p. 15)
In the list of complaints that Boel brought forward against Frelinghuisen were several testimonies by the gentlemen: Pieter Dumont, Simon Wyckoff and Hendrik Vroom. Their views about Reverend Frelinghuisen touched on several issues, among them his critical language of the Synod of Dotrecht, particularly on the doctrine of perceptibility of one’s regeneration that the Dutch Reformed Church rejected, but Frelinghuisen preached about. Dumont in his testimony emphasized that Reverend Frelinghuisen stepped out of his pastoral boundaries as a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church by doubting anyone’s faith in the congregation with regards to repentance. It should be only God alone by His grace that could decide and judge anyone for his or her sin. (Loux, p.65)
It is hard to imagine today that in any Reformed Churches of America the pastor would preach and pray so radically to the congregation about sin that would force people to share or even talk about their sins. While we are aware of that the churches are more centered on giving hope and positive spiritual nurture to everybody, most ministers and church leaders know that our world is just as broken as Frelinghuisen’s world was. He seemed to be aware of the individual sin that walked with each member of his congregation and he seemed to be committed to share the good news of the gospel with the emphasis on sin, which keeps us humans away from God.
As the charges against Reverend Frelinghuisen continue in Boel’s account by showcasing Frelinghuisen’s challenging pastoral activities towards the church elders, there are various elements of the compliant that highlights Frelinghuisen’s pietism and strong sense of divine leadership. Also it brings a breeze of a new approach to examine the old, Dutch church order that is challenged by this case. In addition the Summoners and Reverend Frelinghuisen not only defied the church elders in the theological sense, but threatened their security inside the church’s organization by electing their own to the consistory. For instance Simon Wyckoff and Hendrik Vroom testified on May 6, 1722, against Frelinghuisen’s appointment of Hendrik Fisser to be a deacon at the Three –Mile Run Reformed Church. (Loux, p.67)
The church as an institution has members, which are the pillars of the congregation. In most cases these pillars are standing on concrete ground with very little flexibility to change for outside pressure. In our modern era the church officers in many congregations react the same way to a minister’s unusual views or ways of communicating as Dumont, Wyckoff, Vroom and Sebering did with Frelinghuisen. On the other hand in our society as the church is so much influenced by the secular world it would be impossible for minister today to refuse to give communion to an elder or to label or point out someone as a sinner from the congregation.
These records portray Boel’ s attack on Frelinghuisen strict and protective against the changes that Reverend Frelinghuisen meant to the Dutch churches in the New Jersey- New York area. Frelinghuisen’s pietism and approach to reform the reformed faith was became a problem for the church that was living on the island that mirrored the old world where they came from. Frelinghuisen’s words and actions were morally difficult to align with for most members of the church. Church members and officers perceived their Dutch church order with the new American freedom as a perfect bridge between being faithful and being members of a capitalist society, where the new enlightenment era’s ideas made a connection for most people.
The same sentiment exist today with regards of being connected in our faith to the church as a support system that allow us to be part of the free society, where sin is just something that we interpret for ourselves as we want. Our churches and our ministers would not welcome a Frelinghuisen type of ministry that would reprimand church leaders and church members for their part in the secular world order, while they may teach and preach the same gospel that Frelinghuisen preached. Our churches and our ministers lost the respect that Frleinghuisen claimed through the interpretation of the gospel that required repentance even if it meant to criticize the church or giving up social statuses.
While most members and clergy thought of Frelinghuisen as a bizarre, perhaps irritating minister that distant himself from the Dutch church order, they seemed to understand his pietism along with the fact that there was a new classis born in America. The complaint against Frelinghuisen may have been serious enough to talk about it on the local levels of the church’s life; however it was not as threatening as to take either side for the leaders of the church. The possible effects of providing judgment in the Frelinghuisen case had to be a daunting task in the life of the Dutch Reformed Church in America, since they wanted to remain in control in the colonies as long as possible.
Boel’s complaint against Frelinghuisen brought forward an important debate about deeply going back to the interpretation of sin and our own relationship with God in the world by being owners of our sins. Church orthodoxy was presented in the sense of belonging to an institution that provided rules and interpretation of the word of God and the authority of God’s ministers, while it also presented a more challenging orthodoxy in the form of pietism. Frelinghuisen’s pietism in the compliant can reignite the core principles of our Christian faith in such time, when we tend to balance our lives to favor our physical well-being without paying attention to our eternal life that is measured up to our sins. Frelinghuisen’s approach maybe a radical and impossible way to encourage people to repent, on the other hand it is a remarkably important element of our faith that we as people, as pastors, as churches neglect.
( Based on the book: Boel’s Compliant Against Frelinghuisen Translated and Edited by Joseph Anthony Loux, Jr.)
These records portray Boel’ s attack on Frelinghuisen strict and protective against the changes that Reverend Frelinghuisen meant to the Dutch churches in the New Jersey- New York area. Frelinghuisen’s pietism and approach to reform the reformed faith was became a problem for the church that was living on the island that mirrored the old world where they came from. Frelinghuisen’s words and actions were morally difficult to align with for most members of the church. Church members and officers perceived their Dutch church order with the new American freedom as a perfect bridge between being faithful and being members of a capitalist society, where the new enlightenment era’s ideas made a connection for most people.
The same sentiment exist today with regards of being connected in our faith to the church as a support system that allow us to be part of the free society, where sin is just something that we interpret for ourselves as we want. Our churches and our ministers would not welcome a Frelinghuisen type of ministry that would reprimand church leaders and church members for their part in the secular world order, while they may teach and preach the same gospel that Frelinghuisen preached. Our churches and our ministers lost the respect that Frleinghuisen claimed through the interpretation of the gospel that required repentance even if it meant to criticize the church or giving up social statuses.
While most members and clergy thought of Frelinghuisen as a bizarre, perhaps irritating minister that distant himself from the Dutch church order, they seemed to understand his pietism along with the fact that there was a new classis born in America. The complaint against Frelinghuisen may have been serious enough to talk about it on the local levels of the church’s life; however it was not as threatening as to take either side for the leaders of the church. The possible effects of providing judgment in the Frelinghuisen case had to be a daunting task in the life of the Dutch Reformed Church in America, since they wanted to remain in control in the colonies as long as possible.
Boel’s complaint against Frelinghuisen brought forward an important debate about deeply going back to the interpretation of sin and our own relationship with God in the world by being owners of our sins. Church orthodoxy was presented in the sense of belonging to an institution that provided rules and interpretation of the word of God and the authority of God’s ministers, while it also presented a more challenging orthodoxy in the form of pietism. Frelinghuisen’s pietism in the compliant can reignite the core principles of our Christian faith in such time, when we tend to balance our lives to favor our physical well-being without paying attention to our eternal life that is measured up to our sins. Frelinghuisen’s approach maybe a radical and impossible way to encourage people to repent, on the other hand it is a remarkably important element of our faith that we as people, as pastors, as churches neglect.
( Based on the book: Boel’s Compliant Against Frelinghuisen Translated and Edited by Joseph Anthony Loux, Jr.)
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