Introduction to the Commission, Complaint and Answer of Jacob Reiff
Freedom of association,
congregationalism, religious freedom, not authority, created
the independent congregations who engaged preachers "for the year, like
cowherds in Germany" (Gottlieb Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania,
47): "When any one fails to please his congregation, he is given
notice." Mittelberger did not see the silver lining, "liberty in
Pennsylvania does more harm than good to many people" (48). "Excessive
freedom," he calls it famously, "heaven for farmers, paradise for
artisans and hell for officials and preachers" (48). This freedom was an
extension of Penn's vision for Pennsylvania, and a desire
for it underlies the Jacob Reiff controversy.
Authority most often says the opposite of what it means.The unofficial history of the German Reformed Church claims "their
concerns were pragmatic. They did not bring pastors with them." But they were totally unpragmatic. According to their own laws they
could not baptize or celebrate communion without ordained leaders. Teachers, or readers without ordination had to step in to serve this need: "because
these men called Readers were not ordained ministers, the settlers could
not have their children baptized nor partake of Holy Communion"
(History of Bethany United Church of Christ, Ephrata, Pennsylvania,
1730-1976).
This deception continue in the modern authority: "they realized that they were sheep without a shepherd. Having come to Pennsylvania for religious freedom
but finding no place to worship God, they would gather in houses, barns
or groves and select a man who could read well to read sermons and
prayers." But the Reformed did not emigrate for
religious freedom. As Frederick S. Weiser observes: "Reformed and Lutheran, along with the Roman Catholics, were the only legally
recognized churches in Germanic lands. Mennonites and
other Anabaptists existed in hiding and defiance of the law. But it is
important to note regarding the Pennsylvania migration that whereas
almost all the Anabaptists left Europe, the Lutheran and Reformed emigration was not undertaken for religious reasons or because of persecution...but for opportunity" (Pennsylvania German Fraktur, xx).
In Bern, Zurich and in the Palatinate the Reformed were the state church. Mennonites in Pennsylvania had been oppressed for two centuries by those authorities in Germany, Holland, Switzerland. The Reformed establishment executed Mennonites. If you held "pernicious views in regard to the sacraments" you could be drowned in a bag (Bloody Theatre, 485). "King Ferdinand declared drowning (called the third baptism) "the best antidote to Anabaptism". Persecutions followed Anabaptists to Holland and the Low Countries. Mennonites migrated to the Ukraine, children of whom in the 1800's emigrated to the Midwest to be visited in Nebraska by Bishop Andrew Mack. The United Church (UCC) today is that Reformed church of old continued, but nobody wants to take credit for their doctrines of blood. If the Reformed were fleeing the so-called Palatinate "oppression and poverty" they were fleeing themselves. Thousands of people were executed for being rebaptised. Baptize your baby or die. Rebaptize your baby and you die. Hierarchy vs. democracy was so
embarrassing that later denominations hid their complicity. It
was the Anabaptists who wanted freedom and escaped to find it.
Reformed
clergy that settled in Philadelphia thought itself superior to the supposed ignorant lay pastors of the Mennonites. Mennonite leaders were "uneducated." This is also charged against Jacob Reiff. The top
down Rformed hierarchy contradicted emerging democratic Pennsylvania. Mennonites
ordained by lot, not seminary. Early Reformed generations were forced into something like this, had to create leadership. "Readers," unordained in the case of the Skippack church and others, were drafted. John Philip Boehm preached and performed the sacraments from 1725 until September 1727 when a colony of Reformed settlers brought as their religious head the first legitimate church official, Rev. George Michael Weiss. Before Weiss' arrival the only means of grace at Skippack had been school teacher and Reader Boehm. The day Weiss landed practically, he systemically routed Boehm from every church.
Pennsylvania was famous for its enthusiasms Weiss was only the instrumental cause of division of church order.. Conrad Weiser and Conrad Beissel burned the Heidelberg Catechism as the sometime agency of death along with Reformed governance. Judges of those duly constituted old world councils made clear to Mennonites how free they were to disagree. Believe or die. Shadows of this are everywhere in Weiss' contentiousness. The German Reformed Church in Pennsylvania derived its ideas c. 1725
from Zwingli and Calvin two centuries before. It eventually became the
Evangelical and Reformed Church, merged with the Congregational
Christian Churches, then merged again and became the United Church (UCC) in
1957.
