That Old-Time Religion

The Evangelical Identity of American Christianity

By guest author Evangelical Mystics.

The 19th-century Gospel song “Old-Time Religion” is representative of the peculiar fruit of religious Americana. The traditional English Gospel music of the 18th century was appropriated by contemporaneous and later Negro Spirituals, which in turn gave way to Southern Gospel music.¹ “Old-Time Religion” is an example of the fruit of this development. The song is rather old-fashioned and by many accounts (including mine) entirely unsuitable for corporate worship. But it provides a helpful snapshot of a period of religious fervor from one point in history that has been largely rejected, particularly in our time.

I first encountered the song at the beginning of Stanley Kramer’s 1960 film Inherit the Wind, a fictional (and farcical) dramatization of the introduction of Darwinism into the American public school system. The message of the film, of course, was that the “old-time religion” was something for backward Neanderthals, while enlightened progressives subscribed to the conventions of modern science. The film’s propaganda notwithstanding, its use of this piece of iconic Americana folk religion belies the modern sentiment that the traditional American religion is passé and in need of dramatic reform.

Perhaps ironically, the original English Gospel music genre that gave way to the Spiritual was itself part of the “Great Awakenings” or “Evangelical Revival” movements that raptured the American religious sphere in the 18th through 20th centuries. Although the heirs of these movements were the objects of ridicule intended by Inherit the Wind, they shared with the film the general sentiment that the religious mores of our Western tradition had to give way to progressive enlightenment. To the Revivalist, America’s classical religion was passé and in need of dramatic reform.

Modern “evangelicals” are the progeny of this ideology and are no true Evangelicals at all. The original Evangelical Church was the fruit of the Reformation inspired by the sainted Martin Luther’s doctrinal, liturgical, and mystical commitment to the Evangel (i.e., the Gospel). This is the identity that was embodied by the Church as it stood in protest to what it viewed as the unbiblical tyranny of certain religious leaders over the affairs of state and their negligence concerning the affairs of the spirit. While many European languages still equate the Evangelical Church with the Reformation, this identification has lost its power in our American mindset thanks to the Revivalists and their appropriation of the term. Unfortunately, this has also co-opted the popular conception of classical Americana religion.

But what has this to do with us and the Old Glory Club?

There are many who operate in coterminous circles who continued the spirit of the Revivalists, having found America’s supposed classical religion passé and in need of dramatic reform. For some, the answer has been “Trad Cath” Catholicism or Eastern “Orthobro” Orthodoxy, to say nothing of other Sedevacantist, Old Orthodox, etc. sects. When the fraternal ends of the OGC come to fruition, what is to be done with these deep sectarian divides? Perhaps Inherit the Wind was partially right. Perhaps we do need to put away the “Old-Time Religion” brand of Revivalist Christianity in favor of the actual Old-Time Religion of America.

Some might justifiably argue that this means a return to the Episcopalian Church and the broader Anglican Communion. Certainly, among our English forebears, this would have been the established institution. Others would point out that the Puritans of our founding national mythos were intentionally nonconformists and argue for some variety of Congregationalism, or at least Presbyterianism. Valid points all around, but these sectarian options offer little by way of answering the legitimate concerns of the men who left them for the ostensibly more traditional pastures offered by Rome and the East.

I contend that the solution is found in the classical Evangelical Church, which captures the mystical and traditional mores that have drawn many young men to those institutional Churches while avoiding the political complications that are inherent to them and the truly anti-Protestant zeitgeist of the Revivalists. Such an Evangelical Church, colloquially known as “Lutheran,” has always existed in the United States, with an institutional basis that predates its Constitution and the founding of the Episcopal Church by over forty years.

In 1748, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg and several other clergymen of the Evangelical Church founded the “German Evangelical-Lutheran² Ministerium of North America,” colloquially known as the Pennsylvania Ministerium. While this was the first chartered Evangelical-Lutheran Church body in America, there had been Evangelical-Lutherans on the continent for more than a century. The liturgical rite that the Ministerium authorized at its inception was the same one in use at the Chapel Royale in London, which had its origins in the Evangelical Rite of the traditional Western Liturgy in use throughout Europe.

My point in sharing this is not to proselytize for modern Lutheranism or its institutions, which are fraught with errors and heretics. Rather, it is to establish that there is a liturgical, mystical, traditional Evangelical spirit that is part of the founding stock of our American nation. Indeed, Muhlenberg’s son became the first Speaker of the House of Representatives. The Pennsylvania Ministerium made use of the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, which was a critical site for both Union and Confederate forces in the American Civil War. This Old-Time Religion of the American continent has been part of the American story throughout.

In this light, I appeal to an idea of a truly American Evangelical Church — not in the spirit of the Revivalist so-called “evangelicals,” but rather the truly Evangelical Church of our American and Saxon forebears. I believe there is room in this tent for those who have identified with Evangelical-Reformed institutions, as well as those who have gone to Rome or the East seeking mystical truth and liturgical integrity. An American Evangelical Church rooted in the Protestant spirit of our forefathers and the spiritual fathers of Western Christendom would be an unstoppable force for good in the world.³

1. Incidentally, in the secular sphere, those Spirituals and the music of Appalachia were musical antecedents to the genres of Blues, Jazz, Bluegrass, Rhythm & Blues, and, ultimately, Rock & Roll, Hip Hop, etc.

2. The hyphenation of Evangelical with -Lutheran was made to qualify the caliber of Evangelical from that of “Evangelical-Reformed,” which denied many of the mystical and traditional tenets of historic Western Christianity that were inherent to the classical Evangelical Church.

3. In the end, when our fraternal efforts prove successful, I believe this appeal will become politically relevant as well. But that is a topic for another article and another time.