USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Bridgeport > Two hundred fifty years, the story of the United Congregational Church of Bridgeport, 1695-1945 > Part 5
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The American Bible Society was established in Phila- delphia in 1808 and a second society was organized in Con- necticut. The state law required that every family own a Bible and that each apprentice or indentured servant be given one upon reaching the age of twenty-one. It soon be- came necessary to organize another society to meet the de- mand for Bibles in Connecticut.
Still another expression of the increased sense of moral
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THE CHURCH EXPANDING
and social responsibility was the temperance movement. The use of liquor was almost universal. Everybody drank. Church officials saw no inconsistency between their reli- gious obligations and the owning of taverns and distill- eries. Liquor was served to ministers on their parish calls; employers gave it to their employees; it was used in all kinds of illnesses for both children and adults. No wedding or funeral was complete without it. At house-raisings, at ordinations, at ecclesiastical meetings, rum or other spirits was served. No doubt much rum had been required for the raising of each of the early Congregational meeting houses.
Occasionally a voice had been raised in protest. As early as 1710 Cotton Mather, famous Massachusetts preacher, had stated that "The consequences of the Affected Bottel- are beyond all imagination." In 1805, in the town of Wash- ington, in Litchfield County, an intoxicated man fell in the snow and was frozen to death. The incident stirred public feeling and the Reverend Ebenezer Porter of that town used it as the basis of what was perhaps the first temperance sermon in the state. Lyman Beecher of Litchfield headed the movement for the pledging of total abstinence. Socie- ties sprang into being everywhere. The twentieth century attempt to secure temperance reform by prohibition did not mushroom into being overnight; it had behind it a full century of earnest effort to abolish the evils of intemper- ance.
This period saw the beginning of organizations for women. In almost every church a "female society" was formed with the result that for the first time women were recognized as active participants in church affairs. As the church of earlier days had played an important part in de- veloping the spirit of liberty within the colonies, so now the church was giving women their first opportunity for formal organization and training them for active partici- pation in other spheres of life.
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The first women's organization in the state was the Hart- ford Female Beneficent Society, which was founded in 1809. The next year, in New London, a Female Cent So- ciety was organized, with dues of one cent a week; and simi- lar societies developed in other towns. New Haven had three such groups, formed for the purpose of providing clothes for needy women and girls and also schools for poor female children, some of them negroes.
In Bridgeport, one afternoon in 1813, a little group of women met at the home of Captain Abijah Hawley to sew for some of the families that were in difficulty because of the war. It was decided to hold such meetings monthly, working for any who might be in need, especially among the Indians, and Mr. Waterman was asked to draw up a constitution. Thus was born the Bridgeport Female Be- nevolent Society. While this may not have been exclusively a Congregational group, Polly Hawley, the first almoner (namely, dispenser of alms) was a member of the Congre- gational Church, as were at least some of the other twelve ladies who constituted the early membership. Besides work for the destitute Indians on Golden Hill, the Society had a social aspect also, for sewing stopped at six and the husbands appeared for high tea, after which they escorted their respective ladies home through the dark, unpaved streets.
But one of the most important expressions of the new so- cial consciousness that accompanied the Second Awaken- ing, important because it was destined to extend to the re- motest parts of the world, was the foreign missionary move- ment. To many who were supporting the work of the Con- necticut Missionary Society it must have seemed that the task of "Christianizing the heathen in North America" was as much as they should be asked to undertake; but there were a few who looked out upon the little-known pagan
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lands and heard the insistent call, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." Such an one was the young Samuel J. Mills of Litchfield who had once over- heard his mother say, "I have consecrated this child to the service of God as a missionary." In Williams College he and a few of his fellow students met one day under a hay- stack for prayer and talked earnestly of the problem of carrying the gospel to the heathen world. This famous Haystack Meeting was the real origin in this country of for- eign missions, though it was four years later, in 1810, that The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- sions was formally launched, the first foreign missionary organization in the United States. Of the nine men who composed the first Board five were from Massachusetts and four from Connecticut, among the latter being the Honor- able John Treadwell, governor of the state, and Dr. Timo- thy Dwight, president of Yale. The first meeting was held in Farmington at the home of the Reverend Noah Porter.
The heroic story of the first missionaries to India, a story as thrilling as an adventure novel, cannot be told here. But churches at home were moved with emotion and roused to sacrificial giving as the tale slowly filtered back: the dan- gers and privations of the long voyage; the hostility of pa- gan natives and of so-called Christian traders; the tragic death of wife and child and then of one after another of the missionaries themselves. But though Adoniram Judson labored for seven long years before the first convert in Burma was made, though in some of the stations the num- ber of missionaries who died was greater than the number of converts baptized in twenty years, nevertheless more men and women volunteered for the task and more money was contributed by the churches to make that task possible.
Among the men who volunteered was Dr. John Scud- der, of New York, who answered the call for a "pious physi-
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cian" and was the forerunner of a great missionary family of Scudders in India. His grandson, the Reverend Charles J. Scudder, is now a member of the United Church.
The Bridgeport churches must have been moved by the story of Henry Obookiah, the Sandwich Island lad who was found on the steps of Yale College, crying with loneliness and the desire for the education which he saw the other boys obtaining. He had seen his parents and baby brother cruelly killed by his savage countrymen, but he had es- caped and come to New Haven under the protection of a kindly sea captain. He was befriended and educated, and although he died before he was ready to return to his na- tive islands, his story had caught the imagination of Chris- tian people and a group of missionaries set out for Hawaii. They found there a people in the depths of barbarism, but in twenty years two thousand converts were made and a marvelous transformation took place in the character of the entire country. Among the early missionaries to these islands was the Reverend David B. Lyman, a native of New Hartford. Mr. Lyman and his wife sailed in 1831, in the fourth missionary company to set out, on a voyage that lasted a hundred and seventy-two days. He established the Hilo School for boys and labored, teaching, preaching, and training native teachers, for fifty-two years without once returning to the States. Many years later his granddaugh- ter, Mrs. Julia Lyman Day, came to Bridgeport, the wife of the first pastor of the United Church.
No doubt many of the children of the Congregational Church were proud possessors of small cards which stated that they were the owners of one or more shares in The Morning Star, "The Children's Ship," which plied among the islands of the Pacific-the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Carolines, the Marianas, the Fijis, the Philippines-where frightful forms of cannibalism existed. For nine years this ship carried missionaries from one island to another and
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THE CHURCH EXPANDING
distributed Bibles, tracts, and other supplies, until it was worn out by the buffetings of the ocean waves. Then a sec- ond, a third, a fourth, and even a fifth Morning Star was fitted out, the last one being a steamship. Other vessels were engaged on similar errands, and before the last Morn- ing Star had completed her final voyage, the gospel had been carried to about two thousand islands and the entire character of the Pacific had been changed.
Other intrepid pioneers penetrated into China, master- ing the language that required, as some one has remarked, "a head of iron, nerves of steel, the patience of Job, and the years of Methuselah"; translating the Scriptures; preach- ing, teaching, doing medical work. Among these was the Reverend Henry Blodget, D.D., who went first to Shang- hai; then, taking a boat, pushed on into the interior, visit- ing walled cities and isolated towns, living, together with a Chinese teacher, a servant, and four boatmen, in a cabin nine feet by seven. Later his wife joined him. Once he was stoned, but for forty years he labored on. His son, Dr. Henry Blodget, long a physician in Bridgeport, was a loyal member of the United Church; and his daughter, Mrs. William R. Richards, is still in the church, earnestly pro- moting the missionary cause.
Thus the story of the American Board became a world- wide story. The seventeenth century had seen the church established in the new world; the eighteenth had seen it developing its strength and wrestling with the problems of colonial and national life; the nineteenth century saw it growing as the country grew and reaching out, beyond the national boundaries, into every inhabited portion of the earth; the twentieth century, with ships and planes that cover in hours what the sailing vessels took days and weeks to cover, is reaping the benefit of the Christian teaching that has been scattered far and wide over the earth, and the results have returned even to our own church. And the
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Bridgeport church, through its gifts and the influence of its leaders, helped to make possible this world-embracing mis- sionary movement.
Mr. Waterman died in 1825, in his fifty-sixth year, after a ministry crowded with significant events. He had pre- sided over the dedication of a new church. He had received into membership a large number of persons who had been shaken out of their complacency or indifference by a series of religious revivals. He had watched the development of missionary and humanitarian movements of all kinds and had been active in many of them. Did he appreciate the sig- nificance of these events, or was he so occupied with the harassing details of every day living-war, the stoppage of business and trade, religious disputes, the unsettling ef- fects of revivals-that he failed to realize how great was the achievement? While he rejoiced in the number of converts added to his church, he must have been keenly aware also of the evils that inevitably accompanied revivals and of the dangerous results that were likely to spring from the vio- lent doctrinal controversies that characterized the period.
The doctrine that was being commonly taught was still a harsh doctrine. Children in the "infant school" were singing, "A fallen creature I was born." President Dwight felt no qualms regarding the methods of the revivalist preacher; he maintained that "the preacher must use the fire and hammer to break the rock to pieces," and he had used them both effectively as was proved by the transfor- mation at Yale. Lyman Beecher wrote to his son, "Oh, my dear son, agonize to enter in. You must go to heaven; you must not go to hell." A little later Horace Bushnell of Hartford would teach a different doctrine: that not "con- version" of children was to be sought so much as "Chris- tian nurture"; that "The child is to grow up a Christian and never know himself as being otherwise." He wrote to
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his child, "You have been religiously educated, and you are now come to a place where you must begin to be more responsible for yourself."
Mr. Waterman was a moderate Calvinist in theology, liberal in his views; but, more important, he was a man of tact, conciliation, and good judgment. He refused to allow doctrinal controversies to become dominating issues, and he held the respect of his parishioners, no matter how widely they differed in their individual opinions. But when his steadying influence had gone, the opposing forces flared into open conflict. Matters came to a head over the choice of a successor. One group, the more liberal group, supported the Reverend Thomas Waterman, son of the late pastor. He had grown up in the community, had graduated from Yale, had studied and worked with his father, and would, in all probability, have continued in the same spirit and carried his father's work to completion. So violent was the opposition, however, on the part of the con- servative group, the group that feared the liberalizing tendencies of the New School, that agreement was impos- sible. By compromise, the choice finally fell upon the Rev- erend Franklin Vail.
Mr. Vail had attended Yale, but had left without gradu- ating. He had studied theology in New York and was or- dained in the Bridgeport church. The occasion was a bril- liant one and rather expensive for the Society according to the bill rendered: "to furnishing 40 dinners at gs-$20; to furnishing for 20 took tea, at 1s, 6d-$5.00." The selection proved an unfortunate one. Mr. Vail was apparently not adapted for the ministry, and his pastorate lasted less than two years, although during that time a revival added thirty members to the church rolls. After leaving Bridgeport, he became agent for the American Tract Society, a position which he filled successfully. He developed a talent for rais- ing money and later was active in founding and endowing
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Lane Theological Seminary in Ohio and the Ohio Female College.
Unfortunately, his short pastorate deepened the cleav- age that already existed. For a hundred thirty-five years the church had endured, weathering whatever storms had occurred, losing ground from time to time as conditions became too complex, but on the whole moving always for- ward. But now an irreparable division had developed; and the two groups, unable to work together in harmony, must part, each to go its own way until at a later date they could again be united and continue their forward march in a new spirit of unity and service.
V
THE CHURCH DIVIDED
1830-1916
R EADING this story a century later, we find it hard to understand the strength and bitterness of the feel- ing that drove divergent groups to split asunder and form separate churches. To us the points at issue seem vague and relatively unimportant, but to them the fear was ever present that false doctrine would creep in and un- dermine the very foundations of the church. Perhaps Con- gregationalists especially find this emphasis upon doctrine hard to understand, for we have been inclined to put less emphasis upon traditional creeds than upon the right of the individual to seek his own interpretation of truth; per- haps, indeed, our temptation has been to hold creeds so lightly that we sometimes fail to gain a clear knowledge of the great teachings of the church. Tolerance may be but another name for lack of conviction, but a people who had been fed for generations upon doctrinal sermons were in no danger of suffering from lack of conviction.
Religious controversy was by no means peculiar to Con- necticut; in fact the liberalizing spirit which was dividing the churches in Bridgeport was merely one incident in the widespread revolt against the outgrown dogmas of Calvin- ism. In Massachusetts that revolt came in the form of the great Unitarian movement. Unitarianism gained little headway in Connecticut, but the fear of it led conservative men to defend the old doctrines with increased determina- tion.
Dr. William Ellery Channing was saying in Boston: "My aversion to human creeds as bonds of Christian union, as
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conditions of Christian fellowship, as means of fastening chains on men's minds, constantly gains strength. .. . The Infinite cannot be defined and measured out like a human manufacture. It cannot be reduced to a system. It cannot be comprehended in a set of precise ideas. It is to be felt rather than described."
But while words like these found response in the minds of many thoughtful people, to others they were danger sig- nals that would lead men astray. Church members still sub- scribed to the statement, "You believe in the apostacy of Adam and that all his posterity are in a fallen and depraved state."* They had been taught from childhood that: "There shall be a general resurrection of the bodies both of the just and unjust, when there will be a day of judg- ment, when all must stand before the Son of Man to receive a sentence of just and final retribution, according to the deeds done in the body; that the wicked shall go into ever- lasting punishment, and the righteous into life eternal."+ They still believed in the old doctrine of predestination: "God in his mercy has not left all mankind to perish for- ever, but out of his mere good pleasure, has from all eter- nity chosen some to everlasting life, whom he has given to Christ in the covenant of redemption; that as many as are ordained to eternal life will believe and never come into condemnation." To men who had based their faith upon these stern doctrines, the religion of Dr. Channing was much too soft and comfortable; it seemed to lead only to disintegration and chaos.
The issue that was splitting the churches, therefore, was not so much a controversy over one article of creed as against another article; it was more fundamental than that. It was a conflict between the theology of tradition and the
* From the creed of the First Church in the Manual of 1852.
+ From the creed of the Second Church in the Manual of 1887. į Ibid.
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THE CHURCH DIVIDED
great truths of Christianity that transcend all theology and are adaptable to any age. And that conflict was not to be settled in one year or by one church. The history of both churches for a generation and the survival of antiquated dogmas in their creeds prove that only gradually could the old chains be shaken off and complete freedom of mind and spirit be achieved.
Mr. Waterman had been a man of wide interests; he had kept his church busy about many things, and controversial issues had therefore been subordinated to matters of greater importance. But during Mr. Vail's weaker pastor- ate the cauldron, which had been merely simmering be- fore, began to seethe violently; and when the selection of a new minister became necessary, it boiled over completely. Thomas Waterman, who upon his father's death had been the choice of the liberal group, was now the settled pastor of a church in Providence. The liberals turned, therefore, to the Reverend John Blatchford, son of Dr. Samuel Blatchford who had been pastor a quarter of a century be- fore. But Mr. Blatchford was known to be a man of the New School, and his nomination was vigorously opposed by the conservative group. When the formal vote was taken, in January, 1829, Mr. Blatchford received a ma- jority of four, but in view of all the circumstances he de- clined to accept the invitation.
For almost a year the controversy continued until, in December, when agreement had proved impossible, the decision was made to separate. Accordingly, on January 24, 1830, thirty-nine men, three of them deacons, and seventy-eight women were dismissed at their own request to form a new church. Fifteen Hawleys were among the number.
There must have been many in the church, truly spir- itual persons, who were heartsick over the whole contro- versy. More than thirty years later the pastor of the First
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Church* in a memorial address for Deacon Isaac Sherman made the following comment: "The dissensions which arose in this old church, in connection with the settlement of Mr. Blatchford in 1830, and which resulted, in the providence of God, in the formation of the Second Church, so affected Mr. Sherman's equanimity that he seriously contemplated a union with the Episcopal Church, in order to find peace. But after much prayer he determined to re- main at his post and to adhere to the party which should re- tain the church building, to 'sink or swim' with the old edi- fice. This decision he never regretted."
An earlier incident had shown Deacon Sherman to be the kind of man from whom such loyalty might be ex- pected. When he and his wife, shortly after the birth of their first child, were considering their responsibility in the matter of church membership, Mr. Waterman ex- plained to them the possibility of assuming the Half-Way Covenant instead of being received into full communion. Mr. Sherman replied, "I don't believe there is any half- way in religion."
The conflict had been long and bitter, but the separa- tion, once decided upon, evoked true Christian tolerance and generosity. Men like Deacon Sherman, though they had been powerless to prevent the dissension which they deplored, now used their influence to maintain friendly relations between the two groups. The official record, with admirable restraint, dismissed the situation with the terse phrase, "difficulties existing in this church." The church gave the withdrawing group one-half of the property and funds, as well as two thousand dollars, pledged by indi- vidual members, toward the erection of a new building. The Society's record of 1830 contains the following min- ute: "It having become necessary that the Stratfield Con- gregational Society should be divided, We the under-
* Reverend Matson Meier Smith.
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THE CHURCH DIVIDED
signed, being actuated by most honorable motives and de- sirous 'to do as we would be done by,' do agree to pay to such members as manifest a desire to withdraw from said Society for the purpose of building a new home of worship the sum of two thousand dollars-on condition that they ac- complish the work in the year 1830." One-third of this sum was to be paid when the building was raised, one-third when it was "inclosed," and the remaining one-third "When they shall have seated the lower floor."
A site was immediately purchased on the corner of Broad and Gilbert Streets and the members of the new con- gregation entered enthusiastically upon the work of build- ing, the men performing much of the labor, and the women providing many of the furnishings. For a few months they worshipped in the High School House on State Street, a schoolhouse that was high in construction only, not in academic rank; but by fall the new building was complete. The dedication was held on the thirtieth of November, 1830, with a membership of one hundred thirty. The house of worship was a simple frame structure, painted white, but it had a steeple and it served the church for thirty years until a larger and more impressive building could be erected.
Although one hundred seventeen members had with- drawn from the old First Church, about a hundred seventy remained. The church renewed the call to Mr. Blatchford, and he accepted. John Blatchford was born in Bridgeport, the tenth of the seventeen children of Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Blatchford; but he was only five when his parents moved to Lansingburg, New York. He grew up in the Presbyterian church of which his father was pastor and graduated from Union College and Princeton Theological Seminary.
Mr. Blatchford was a man of liberal view, but he kept as free as possible from the controversies of the period. Within a year there were added to the church nearly as
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many as had withdrawn. He warmly espoused the various progressive movements that were the outgrowth of the "Awakening," especially the missionary and temperance movements. He organized a young men's temperance so- ciety which enrolled about two hundred twenty-five of the prominent young men of the city. The six years of his ministry did much to heal old wounds and develop the spiritual resources of the church; and his resignation, made necessary by his wife's health and the doctor's orders for a change of climate, was accepted with great reluctance. He went from here to Jacksonville, Illinois, where he served for a short time as president of Illinois College, the oldest college in the state. He then went to Chicago, where he became the first pastor of the Presbyterian Church, which had been established four years before by Dr. Jere- miah Porter in the carpenter shop at Fort Dearborn. This church, "The Church on the Frontier," has been called "The Mother of Protestantism in Chicago and the Middle West." He later became president of Marion College in Missouri, from which he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity. His own health had suffered from overwork, es- pecially in the Chicago revivals of 1839 and 1840, and he died at the age of fifty-six, at the home of a daughter in St. Louis.
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