"Common Roots", part II : New Birth

This newly-born church community that we call “The Commons”, here in Rochester, NH is blessed to be the adopted child of a global family of faith known as the Evangelical Covenant Church. For the reason that, for most of our launch team partners this journey of church planting has constituted a running introduction to the mere existence of the ECC - never mind vision, values and so on - my hope is to offer this short series of articles as a primer on the essential history and distinctives of the Covenant as our denominational and spiritual “home”. These articles will be framed around the six central “Covenant Affirmations” of the ECC, with a focus upon the historical forces that led to their articulation. May God bless and establish this new work, that as we grow in our awareness of where and how the Spirit of God has moved in and through our past, we might also grow in clarity and conviction regarding our future!

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Part II: “We affirm the necessity of the new birth.” 

“The Apostle Paul wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17 ). New birth in Christ means committing ourselves to him and receiving forgiveness, acceptance, and eternal life. It means being alive in Christ, and this life has the qualities of love and righteousness, joy and peace. New birth is only the beginning. Growing to maturity in Christ is a lifelong process for both individuals and communities of believers. God forms and transforms us—and it is through people transformed by Christ that God transforms the world.”

The trouble with ministering within the context of European Christendom in the 18th century, where being German - or Swedish - and being Lutheran were categorically indistinguishable was that there was no established precedent, motivation or means to differentiate between those people who showed up on Sunday because they were genuine disciples of Jesus, and those who were simply legally obligated to do so. Toward whom does the Great Commission compel us, when literally everyone we know is a baptized “Christian”?

August Hermann Franke (1663-1727) was a German Lutheran clergyman and scholar, deeply influenced by the teaching and ministry of Philip Jacob Spener, and whose own dramatic conversion experience shaped his convictions on what entrance into the “new creation” life of Christ entailed. “In great trouble and doubt I had bent my knees” he recounted, “but with unspeakable joy and in great certainty I stood up again. When I knelt, I didn’t believe that there was a God; when I arose, I could without doubt or fear have sealed the truth with my blood.” This personal, converting encounter with the Spirit of God led Franke to the conviction regarding the necessity of conversion for those preparing for or engaging in Christian ministry. For those of us some distance further “downstream” from pietism’s influence, this may seem absurdly self-evident. However, within a state church context, where every citizen was presumed Christian and where clergy were employees and agents of the state, this was a dangerously disruptive notion to advance.

Long before Franke and Spener began establishing the framework for what would become the pietist revivals with Germany and Scandinavia, it was Johann Arndt (1555-1621) who had prepared the soil. Thirty years before the birth of Philip Spener, Johann Arndt published his call for reformation within the Lutheran church. The volume was titled “True Christianity” and it would remain a “best seller” for hundreds of years. Indeed, it became increasingly popular throughout the 1800’s, as the winds of revival continued to blow: 

“It is not enough only to write against sects and heretics, to preach and dispute, to maintain pure doctrine and true religion... These activities have fallen into great misuse in our time so that beside the many, heavy disputations, polemical sermons, writings and tracts, Christian life, true repentance, godliness, and Christian love are almost forgotten. It is as if Christianity consisted only in disputations and the production of polemical books, and not far more in seeing to it that the Holy Gospel and the teaching of Christ is practiced in a holy life.” (Arndt, “True Christianity”)

“He who is not for me is against me” (Mt. 12:30). If one compares the life of the present world with Christ’s teaching and life, one discovers immediately that the greater part of the world is completely opposed to Christ. What is the life of man now other than covetousness, concern over food, search for wealth, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life... 

In a word, the whole life of the children of this world at this time is nothing other than worldly love, self-love, self-honor and the desire for self-gain.” (Arndt, “True Christianity”)

One can appreciate the challenge that sentiments such as these might cause for an institutional state church that was more or less happy to ‘baptize' standing cultural norms in order to champion political stability and general calm. A Christ who called for those who would follow him to be “birthed” out of that culture into a new manner of existence altogether was a threatening, destabilizing prospect. However, as the pietists turned anew to the teachings of Jesus, the conviction became more and more unavoidable: One was just simply not born “Christian” in the same manner that one was born German or Swedish or otherwise. Life in Christ followed after a birth of a different order: a new, spiritual birth; a work of the Holy Spirit that more and more common people were growing hungry to experience for themselves.

Living and working as we do in a thoroughly post-Christian context, here in New England, this truth is perhaps more readily accessible to us, though no less important to understand: our life in Christ is not a “default” setting or cultural/national heritage, it is a conscious decision and act of surrender to Christ made possible by the empowering of the Holy Spirit. As such we stand, as ever, a people of invitation to a world in need of the rebirth and renewal that only Christ can bring.