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.
The unofficial history of the German Reformed Church claims "their
concerns were pragmatic. They did not bring pastors with them." But this means they were unpragmatic, since according to their laws they
could not baptize infants or celebrate communion without ordained leaders. Teachers, or readers without ordination had 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).
The modern revision continues: "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 the Palatinate the Reformed followed the state church. They were the state church. Mennonites in Pennsylvania had been oppressed for two centuries by those Reformed in Germany, Holland, Switzerland. The Reformed establishment was a Mennonite oppressor. 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". Such persecutions followed Anabaptists to Holland and the Low Countries, where many Mennonites migrated to the Ukraine, children of whom in the 1800's emigrated to the Midwest to be visited in Nebraska by Bishop Mack. The United Church today is that Reformed church of old continued, but shorn of outright opinion. Nobody wants to take credit for 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. Hierarchy vs. democracy were so
embarrassing that later denominations hid their complicity in crimes of blood. It
was the Anabaptists who wanted freedom and escaped to find it.
The Reformed
clergy that settled in Philadelphia thought itself superior to the
ignorant lay pastors of the Mennonites. Mennonite leaders were "uneducated," as is charged against Jacob Reiff, but the Reformed top
down hierarchy contradicted the essence of emerging democratic Pennsylvania. Mennonites
ordained nominees by lot, not seminary. Lacking pastors, early Reformed generations had to create leadership, so "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 that colony of Reformed brought the first legitimate church official, Rev. George Michael Weiss. Before Weiss' arrival the only means of grace had been for the congregation to call its own pastor, that is, school teacher and Reader John Philip Boehm, who ministered with accord at Skippack until the day Weiss landed. Weiss then systemically routed Boehm from every church.
Weiss was the instrumental cause, not the efficient cause of the failure of leadership to provide. As opposed to Zwingli, church order, Heidelberg Catechism and Reformed governance, Pennsylvania was famous for its enthusiasms. Conrad Weiser and Beissel burned the Heidelberg Catechism whose doctrines had been the sometime agency of death. 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. So the modern progenies of these ideas have a problem when they afterward take
upon themselves the qualities and traits they first assailed, as though
they had recognized themselves and couldn't stand it. 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 in
1957.
