The Mercersburg Theology Historically Considered

1912 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 117-149
Author(s):  
George Warren Richards

The Mercersburg Theology derived its name from the town of Mercersburg in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Here was the seat of Marshall College from 1835 to 1853, and of The Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in the United States from 1837 to 1871. While Mercersburg gave the institutions “a local habitation and a name,” they owed their distinctive doctrines to the genius of the German and the Swiss Reformed people in America and to the influence of the contemporary German philosophy and theology.

1987 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. G. Hart

In 1854, Philip Schaff, professor of church history at Mercersburg Theological Seminary and minister of the German Reformed Church, reported to his denomination on the state of Christianity in America. Although the American Church had many shortcomings, according to Schaff the United States was ‘by far the most religious and Christian country in the world’. Many Protestant leaders, however, took a dimmer view of Christianity's prospects. In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, a nagging sense prevailed that traditional theology was no longer capable of integrating religion and culture, or piety and intelligence. Bela Bates Edwards, a conservative New England divine, complained of the prevalent opinion ‘that an intellectual clergyman is deficient in piety and that an eminently pious minister is deficient in intellect’. Edwards was not merely lamenting the unpopularity of Calvinism. A Unitarian writer also noted a burgeoning ‘clerical skepticism’. Intelligent and well-trained men who wished to defend and preach the Gospel, he wrote, ‘find themselves struggling within the fetters of a creed by which they have pledged themselves’. An 1853 Memorial to the Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church summed up the doubts of Protestant clergymen when it asked whether the Church's traditional theology and ministry were ‘competent to the work of preaching and dispensing the Gospel to all sorts and conditions of men, and so adequate to do the work of the Lord in this land and in this age’.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 394-394
Author(s):  
T. E. C.

Henry Adams (1838-1918), in his superb autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, describes his school phobia and what his grandfather, President John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) did about it as follows: ... but he distinctly remembered standing at the house door one summer morning in a passionate outburst of rebellion against going to school. Naturally his mother was the immediate victim of his rage; that is what mothers are for, and boys also; but in this case the boy had his mother at unfair disadvantage, for she was a guest, and had no means of enforcing obedience. Henry showed a certain tactical ability by refusing to start, and he met all efforts at compulsion by successful, though too vehement protest. He was in fair way to win, and was holding his own, with sufficient energy, at the bottom of the long staircase which led up to the door of the President's library, when the door opened, and the old man slowly came down. Putting on his hat, he took the boy's hand without a word, and walked with him, paralyzed by awe, up the road to the town. After the first moments of consternation at this interference in a domestic dispute, the boy reflected that an old gentleman close on eighty would never trouble himself to walk near a mile on a hot summer morning over a shadeless road to take a boy to school, and that it would be strange if a lad imbued with the passion of freedom could not find a corner to dodge around, somewhere before reaching the school door.


Author(s):  
Edward González-Tennant

Chapter 2 presents a history of Rosewood beginning with a brief overview of previous research into the town’s past. Most of the research takes place in response to a statewide conversation in the early and mid-1990s. Growing media attention encouraged Floridians to grapple with the meaning of Rosewood’s destruction in the past and present. The attention encouraged the state legislature to compensate the survivors and descendants of the massacre; that compensation represents the primary example of reparations granted to African Americans in the United States. To better understand the events of 1923, Florida’s state legislature commissioned a group of historians to investigate and write a concise history of the town and its destruction. The resulting report, based on four months of research, remains the authoritative treatment of the 1923 riot. The report, a few articles, a popular book, and a Hollywood movie all contribute to public knowledge and representations of Rosewood. González-Tennant’s overview of Rosewood’s history adds to previous research by offering a comprehensive look at similar events in American history. González-Tennant contextualizes Rosewood within broader social trends beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing until today.


2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 684-701 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Fuhrmann ◽  
Charles E. Konrad ◽  
Margaret M. Kovach ◽  
Jordan T. McLeod ◽  
William G. Schmitz ◽  
...  

Abstract The calendar year 2011 was an extraordinary year for tornadoes across the United States, as it marked the second highest annual number of tornadoes since 1950 and was the deadliest tornado year since 1936. Most of the fatalities in 2011 occurred in a series of outbreaks, highlighted by a particularly strong outbreak across the southeastern United States in late April and a series of outbreaks over the Great Plains and Midwest regions in late May, which included a tornado rated as a category 5 event on the enhanced Fujita scale (EF5) that devastated the town of Joplin, Missouri. While most tornado-related fatalities often occur in outbreaks, very few studies have examined the climatological characteristics of outbreaks, particularly those of varying strength. In this study a straightforward metric to assess the strength, or physical magnitude, of tornado outbreaks east of the Rocky Mountains from 1973 to 2010 is developed. This measure of outbreak strength, which integrates the intensity of tornadoes [Fujita (F)/EF-scale rating] over their distance traveled (pathlength), is more highly correlated with injuries and fatalities than other commonly used variables, such as the number of significant tornadoes, and is therefore more reflective of the potential threat of outbreaks to human life. All outbreaks are then ranked according to this metric and their climatological characteristics are examined, with comparisons made to all other tornadoes not associated with outbreaks. The results of the ranking scheme are also compared to those of previous studies, while the strongest outbreaks from 2011 are ranked among other outbreaks in the modern record, including the April 1974 Super Outbreak.


2006 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 11-24
Author(s):  
Yihua Xu

AbstractUnion Theological Seminary (Union) in New York City, established in 1836, has long been regarded as one of the best and most liberal Protestant theological seminaries in the United States. Served by prominent Christian theologians such as Harry Emerson Fosdick, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich, Union reached its peak development in the first half of the twentieth century, setting a standard of theological education in the United States and promoting the ecumenical movement around the world.


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