"Upon reading a letter from New York signed by Henry Heiser, Lucas Van
Buskirk and L. Hartman, representing that they have erected an English
Lutheran Church, on account of the inability of their children to
understand the German language:
RESOLVED, That it is never the practice in an Evangelical Consistory to sanction any kind of schism; that if the persons who signed the letter wish to continue their children in the Lutheran Church connection in New York, they earnestly recommend them the use of the German School, and in case there is no probability of any success in this particular, they herewith declare that they do not look upon persons who are not yet communicants of a Lutheran Church as apostates in case they join an English Episcopal Church.
RESOLVED, 2d, That on account of an intimate connection subsisting between the English Episcopal Church and the Lutheran Church and the identity of their doctrine and near alliance of their Church discipline, this Consistory will never acknowledge a new erected Lutheran Church merely English, in places where the members may partake of the Services of the said Episcopal Church."
From the viewpoint of the ministers in 1797, Lutheranism seems to have been a matter of language rather than of religion. It was something to be retained among German-speaking people, but could not be effectively transmitted except through the medium of the German language.
We have come to the last decade of the 18th century. In the political world great men were finding themselves and mighty principles were finding expression in the organization of what was destined to become one of the great states of the world. Some of our own men were taking a large part in the making of American history. In the church they were content with a more restricted outlook. Our people, it is true, were of humble origin, yet some of them had attained wealth and social standing. The Van Buskirks, the Grims, the Beekmans, the Wilmerdings and the Lorillards were men of affairs and influence in the growing town of 30,000 that had begun to extend northward as far as Canal Street and even beyond. But we look in vain for any positive contribution to the life of the embryo metropolis of the world.
Our church had lost its roots. The Rhinebeck Resolution indicates the feeble appreciation of the distinctive confession to which she owed her existence. The English hymn books and liturgies of this period are equally destitute of any positive confessional character.
But after all, the church in New York only reflected in a small way the conditions that existed on the other side of the Atlantic. In the Fatherland the national life had been declining ever since the Thirty Years' War. In 1806 Germany reached the nadir of her political life at the battle of Jena. In the church this was the period of her Babylonian Captivity. Alien currents of philosophical and theological thought had devitalized the teaching of the Gospel. The old hymns had been replaced by pious reflections on subjects of religion and morality. The Lutheran Liturgy had disappeared leaf by leaf until little but the cover remained. With such conditions in the homeland what could be expected of an isolated church on Manhattan Island? Take it all in all, it is not surprising that only two congregations survived. It is a wonder that there were two.
In "Old New York" Dr. Francis presents a vivid picture of the social and religious life of this period and from it we learn that the Lutherans were not the only ones whose religion sat rather lightly upon them. French infidelity had taken deep root in the community and Paine's Age of Reason found enthusiastic admirers.
Fifty years ago I was browsing one afternoon over the books in the library of Union Theological Seminary, at that time located in University Place. I was all alone until Dr. Samuel Hanson Cox, the father of Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe, came in. He was then in his eighties, but vigorous in mind and body. We easily became acquainted and I was an eager listener to the story of his early ministry in New York, which fell about the time of which we are speaking. From him I got a picture of life in New York closely corresponding with that which is given in Dr. Francis' interesting story. There were leaders of the church in those days who were not free from the vice of drunkenness. Evangelical religion in all denominations had a severe conflict in doctrine and in morals with the ultra liberal tendencies of the time.
A marked defect of our church life was the inadequate supply of men for the ministry. For 140 years New York Lutherans had been dependent upon Europe for their pastors. For 60 years more this dependence was destined to continue.