Theology Today - Vol 17, No. 2 - July 1960 - BOOK REVIEW - The Nineteenth Century In Europe: The Protestant and Eastern Churches

258 - The Nineteenth Century In Europe: The Protestant and Eastern Churches

The Nineteenth Century In Europe:
The Protestant and Eastern Churches
By Kenneth Scott Latourette
532 pp. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1959. $7.00.

This is the second volume of Christianity in a Revolutionary Age: A History of Christianity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Assuming that his readers are familiar with the political, economic, social, and intellectual forces in the nineteenth century that have produced our complex urban civilization, the author wastes few words in redefining them, but instead concentrates upon the monumental task he has set himself of describing the response of the Protestant Churches in each European country to the threat which always lay inherent in the revolution-the menace of a de-Christianized Europe. It is a story that has long needed to be told. As one reads these pages, their short crisp sentences packed with facts and illumined by concise biographical notices of literally hundreds of Protestant thinkers and leaders (five English archbishops and twenty-three bishops in seven pages), one must agree with Professor Latourette that this was, indeed, "the Protestant century." Despite the revolutionary challenges, or because of them, there was more intellectual ferment in the Protestant Churches of Europe than in any century since the Reformation, more movements to solve social problems, and more missionaries abroad than ever before.

In the forefront of this new burst of Protestant vitality were, of course, the Churches of Germany. To older readers educated in the classrooms of professors who had traveled to Göttingen or Berlin, the chapters on Germany arouse many long-forgotten memories. What a wealth of great and familiar names nineteenth century German Protestantism produced-Schleiermacher and Ritschl, Harnack, Ranke and Mommsen, Wellhausen and Tischendorf, Strauss, Baur, and Troeltsch. There were others too, less familiar to American classrooms, but of far-reaching influence on the national life of Germany, such as Johann Hinrich Wichern, the founder

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of the Inner Mission with its dominant idea that the Church must go to the people. Pietism, which had begun as a reaction against the coldness and rationalism of the Enlightenment, continued to play an important role as a shelter from the storm of revolutionary forces which seemed so destructive to traditional Christianity. There were "Hurrah Christians," and "Galloping Christians," as well as higher critics in Germany. Some conservatives found new life by emphasizing the liturgical and confessional aspects of the historic faith, others found expression in a great expansion of voluntary and charitable agencies. Despite many forces making for de-Christianization, it is Dr. Latourette's conclusion that Protestantism in Germany was far more vigorous in 1914 than it had been in 1815.

One of the great values of an international survey of this scope is that the great Christian leaders formerly unassociated, or separated into specialized compartments of the mind, now fall into order with their contemporaries as parts of the mighty army of the living Church. Indeed, at times the reader of The Nineteenth Century in Europe is impelled to say, that this is like reading The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, or the Dictionary of National Biography (both of which works Professor Latourette leans on rather heavily), except that here the biographies have been lifted out of an alphabetic order and rearranged geographically within the context of their ecclesiastical and theological contributions. Thus as one leaves Germany and proceeds to Scandinavia and the Baltic states, and on to examine the Protestant Churches in the remaining countries of Western Europe, one is both charmed and impressed by the variety and the caliber of leadership. In Denmark, Kierkegaard and Grundtvig (of whom it was said, "Denmark is different because he lived"), Söderblom in Sweden, Vinet in Switzerland, Monod in France, Kuyper in Holland, these are only a few whose lives illustrate the richness of the Protestant response to a revolutionary age. In all of the continental countries there were forms of evangelical awakening, such as the reveil in Switzerland, and interesting currents of religious influence due to the large emigrant population in America. Bitter controversies between liberals and conservatives, missioners and established clergy were mixed with selfless devotion to the poor and needy and to the vision of Christian nations under God.

Nowhere were the contrasts and paradoxes of the nineteenth century more apparent than in Great Britain. There the Industrial Revolution was farther advanced and there, also, Darwinism made its first impact on Christian thought. In general the Church of England responded to the challenge in one of three ways: (1) "Strong rejection," by the majority of Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics; (2) "Adjustment," by the Broad

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Churchmen and Biblical Scholars such as Farrar, Rashdall, Westcott, and Hort; and (3) "Surrender," as in cases of T. H. Green and Leslie Stephen. The Non-Conformist Churches reacted similarly, and produced some outstanding leaders among whom P. T. Forsyth is singled out for special commendation. Reading the scores of pithy condensations of what each man believed is a sobering experience. Did ever men strive more sincerely to know the Gospel for their age, and was there ever such a lack of unanimity as to the answer?

It will come as a surprise to some that only six per cent of English workers attended Church in 1856. The breach with the laboring classes was one of the most serious problems of the age of revolution. It was in its efforts to overcome the evils of the rising industrial cities that English Protestantism was most active. It is intriguing to think that Karl Marx, Frederick Denison Maurice, and William Booth were all taking different approaches to the same problems in London at the same time. In Scotland, too, Thomas Chalmers and others were attempting to reach "the Home Heathen," and one marvels at city parishes of 87,000 souls. Despite serious losses, the author's conclusion is again optimistic-Christianity was more potent in the total range of British life in 1914 than it was in 1815.

The last chapters of the book are devoted to a survey of Russian, Balkan, and Greek Christianity in the Nineteenth Century. The description of the Imperial Russian Church is especially well done, bringing within brief compass the Westernizing and Slavophile influences and the awakening of a vital interior life within Russian Orthodoxy. Particularly suggestive to western readers are the summaries of devotional works such as Unseen Warfare, and the practice of unceasing prayer exemplified in the "Jesus Prayer." Professor Latourette concludes that "the centuries of nurture in the Orthodox Church had instilled in the masses a pervading sense of God and of the incarnation and the triumphant Christ," which could not be easily eliminated.

Throughout, the book is minutely documented and bears evidence of painstaking research. in addition to seventeen pages of bibliography listing only works that are cited more than once, there are several hundred additional titles included in the footnotes. Like an aerial flight over the Continent, The Nineteenth Century in Europe provides the reader with a vast panorama conceived with clarity and precision. It should stimulate him to more pedestrian explorations in many areas. One also looks forward with interest to the projected flights over non-European lands and especially over the Twentieth Century.

Maurice W. Armstrong
Ursinus College
Collegeville, Pennsylvania