The Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church in the Ecclesiology of Charles Hodge (Reformed Academic Dissertations) by Strange Alan D

Author:Strange, Alan D. [Strange, Alan D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: P&R Publishing
Published: 2017-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

The General Assembly of 1845

Hodge wrote an important article on abolitionism a year before the General Assembly of 1845, the assembly that made the most important statement about slavery since the 1818 General Assembly. 66 Hodge continued to argue there, as he had begun to do in print in 1836, that abolitionism, not slavery, was the greatest threat to the union of the American states. And for Hodge and many of his fellow churchmen, maintaining the American union was crucial, the conviction being that without it, so much would be lost; disunion would put at risk the American experiment and the kind of freedoms enjoyed by her citizenry in both church and state. Presbyterians, and Hodge in particular, were working very hard to maintain the union of the Presbyterian Church, quite aware that other communions were at the time in the process of rupture: the Baptists and the Methodists split over slavery in 1844. 67

Churchmen like Hodge and statesmen as diverse as Henry Clay and John Calhoun believed that church union was especially important to maintaining national union. Calhoun opined, after the Baptist and Methodist Churches split, “This sundering of the religious ties which have hitherto bound our people together, I consider the greatest source of danger to our country,” and warned, in his last great speech before the U.S. Senate in 1850, that if all Protestant churches split, “nothing will be left to hold the States together except force.” 68

Hodge, in his 1844 article, continued to find abolitionism wanting, particularly because it tended, fixated as it was on immediate emancipation, toward fanaticism. If abolitionism had simply meant that society must work to rid itself of slavery eventually, Hodge averred that “many of the wisest and best men of the South” could affirm such. 69 He says, at one point, given such a definition, that “nine tenths” of the country would be abolitionists or even “ninety-nine out of a hundred.” The reason that so few are abolitionists, however, is because abolitionists are fanatics who teach that “slaveholding is a great sin; and consequently slaveholders should not be admitted to the communion of the church, and that slavery should immediately, under all circumstances and regardless of consequences, be abolished.” 70 This fixation, Hodge believed, rendered abolitionists incapable of good judgment, prompting them to call slaveholders who may be godly men “evil,” and further unfitting their judgment by rendering slavery the worst of evils and causing them to see all things in relation to the subject with which they have become obsessed.

Hodge, as noted in chapter 2 , seldom attended General Assembly, chiefly for health reasons. He had attended in 1842 but was not at the 1845 assembly. Though Hodge was not there, the 1845 assembly fairly reflected something of his ethos as it sought to handle the thorny issue of slavery with caution and moderation, defending it as something that was not malum in se but acknowledging its abuses and need for reform. These actions were taken in response to overtures from various presbyteries requesting that the assembly take a decided stand against slavery.

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