1. The Reformation?
2. What was the Dutch Reformed Church in America?
3. What was the connection between Holland and the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas where the Rev. Donald Sage Mackay was Pastor during the early 20th Century?
4. DSM's career as a reformer and champion of the poor.
5. The Flushing Remonstrance of 1657, leading to the reaffirmation of freedom of religious ideas in the new world.
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Martin Luther
THE REFORMATION (GLEANED FROM THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNIA)
The Reformation refers to the religious revolution of the 16th century that divided Christendom into two camps - Catholic and Protestant. The division caused vast and unimaginable suffering among European people of the time but eventually led to an increase in freedom of thought and personal responsibility. Long before Martin Luther fastened his manifesto to the great church door in Wittenberg, Saxony in 1517, orthodox Catholics were criticizing the abusive practices of The Church, i.e. the sale of indulgences, the increasing immorality of the Priesthood, corrupt Popes, the vice and riotous behavior that often accompanied church festivals.
Distrust of The Church began to build as early as the 10th century but was ferociously quieted by the Inquisition and financed by its ruthless confiscation of the properties of its accused victims. Beginning with Martin Luther in Germany, demands for church reform grew and spread rapidly throughout Europe: to the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and across the Channel to England and Scotland. Ordinary people agreed with Luther's ideas that The Church was corrupt and they were eager for reform and change.
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John Knox
**Scotland and England's Reformation grew at the same time, each encouraging the other. John Knox, the Scottish reformist and Elizabeth I, the English Queen, were far from in complete agreement, but each had sufficient sense and self control to work with the other. Knox published The Book of Discipline in 1561 and fixed Scotland's "Presbyterianism" forever. The democratic character of the Scottish Reformation plus Knox's own zeal for education help to explain the Scot's traditional love of learning and subsequent high level of education.
THE DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICA
Protestant Dutch settlers were brought to New Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company in 1624. They founded their first church in the New World in 1628, which was, however, subject to the church of the homeland. When the English conquered the colony in 1664, they allowed the Church of the Netherlands to continue worshiping in its own way.
Early in the 18th century, new ideas sprang up in the Colonies, including colonial self-consciousness and the "Great Awakening"—a revival of religious participation in everyday life. In the years following, the Dutch Church split into two groups: one favoring greater freedom from the home church, supporting the Great Awakening, founding its own local college, and the free use of the English language; the other group, more conservative, wished to remain part of the Dutch culture. The colonial, progressive group grew more rapidly and founded Queen's College in 1766, now known as Rutgers University.
These two factions re-united in 1771 under a compromise which left ultimate authority to The Netherlands but also gave greater local autonomy to the New York Church. After the Revolutionary War, the Church became wholly independent under a constitution drafted in 1784. By 1829 the Dutch language had ceased to be in use. The name Collegiate Dutch Reformed Church remained until 1867 when it was officially changed to "The Reformed Church in America."
TheReverend Donald Sage Mackay,** Pastor of the Old North Reformed Church in Newark, New Jersey from 1894 to 1899, was called to head the oldest Dutch Reformed Church in the nation—St. Nicholas Collegiate Church at Fifth Avenue and 48th Street in New York City. He remained as pastor of that great Gothic church from 1899 until his death in 1908. In New York City, as his popularity and reputation grew, he became the friend of many wealthy and prominent people who supported his ministry which championed the lot of poor and wretched people in the city. President Theodore Roosevelt, with his prominent Dutch surname and influence, was a personal friend and a member of Donald Mackay's church. One of his richest and most generous donors was the Scottish-born philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie.
The Reverend Mackay was a popular speaker at many large events in New York City. At the St. Nicholas Society's annual dinner, December 7, 1900, he was invited to introduce Mark Twain and make a few remarks.
THE NEW YORK TIMES HEADLINES, DECEMBER 7, 1900
BANQUET OF THE ST. NICHOLAS SOCIETY
ELABORATE DECORATIONS
MARK TWAIN'S VIEW OF NEW YORK
SPEAKS HUMOUROUSLY OF ITS APPEARANCE AND SARCASTICALLY OF ITS GOVERNMENT
DR. MACKAY ON "THE GOSPEL OF THE SMILE"
A full representation of the membership of the St. Nicholas Society assembled for the sixty-sixth annual banquet held last night at Delmonico's. Upward of three hundred members and guests honored the traditions of their ancestry in Holland in song and oratory. In the midst of a selection by the boy's choir of Grace Church, Mark Twain entered the banquet hall in the custody of a committee who had been sent by cab to seek him out at his home. The humorist, limping a little from a rheumatic attack, was led up to the guest table where the diners arose and gave him long, continued applause.
DR. MACKAY FOUND MANY SAINTS
The first toast of the evening:"St. Nicholas" was responded to by Dr. Mackay, who said that he had looked up in a religious encyclopedia to find which St. Nicholas he was to honor, for a minister of New York had his hands so full of sinners that he had precious little time to cultivate the acquaintance of Saints. "I found thirty-one worthies bearing the name of St. Nicholas," said the speaker, "so I called up a member of the society and asked him which St. Nicholas I was to speak about.
"'Oh, any old saint will do he replied."' Laughter) "I finally found the one I wanted, however, and I always liked him for his rich, full-blooded, genial humanity. I do not imagine that we could do better today than perpetuate by precept just that type of genial, sunshiny religion which he stands for. Religion has suffered more from gloom than from heresy.
"Emaciation of body does not mean fatness of soul. That, I think, with all its magnificent features, was the distinctive weakness of New England Puritanism in contrast to the broad and more tolerant religion of New Amsterdam. The Puritans made temperament more than character the test of religion.
"So the man with the longest face became the typical saint. It is against this mawkish type of religion that is perpetually congratulating itself, not on the good things it ought to do but on the wicked things it doesn't do, that in the name of St. Nicholas I want to protest tonight. There is a gospel in a smile, and, in my opinion, a man like Mark Twain is as much a preacher of righteousness in this world today as any consecrated Bishop, priest or minister. " (Cheers)
"He stands as a type of man to whom the doing of God's will is more important than his belief in a human creed. The religion the world wants today is a religion like that of St. Nicholas that lays hands of brotherly love upon the crying needs of our helpless brethren."
A characteristically humane statement, Reverend Donald Mackay used every occasion to champion the overlooked and forgotten members of the community. Like his father before him, his ministry lay with the poor, and he worked to alleviate their suffering through his influence and friendship with wealthy and prominent people.
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SCOTTISH PRESBYTERIANS, ENGLAND'S CATHOLIC MONARCHY AND THE LIBERAL DUTCH.
Hundreds of years earlier, The Dutch Colony at New Amsterdam proclaimed that all people were welcome and that worship of every kind of religion was accepted, including certain Scottish Presbyterians who had fled England under the Catholic daughter of Henry VIII and renamed their church the Dutch Reformed Church. Here is a story printed in the New York Times that emphasizes the Dutch Colonists' sturdy opposition to attempts to lessen that freedom. All people were welcome (especially wealthy businessmen.
A COLONY WITH A CONSCIENCE(NEW AMSTERDAM)bold text by Kenneth J.Jackson (Professor of history at Columbia University and editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of New York City)
From a **New York Times OP-ED* piece (Thursday, 12/27/07)
THREE hundred and fifty years ago today, religious freedom was born on this continent. Yes, three hundred years! Religious tolerance did not begin with JEFFERSON'S VIRGINIA STATUTE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM in 1786. With due respect to ROGER WILLIAMS and his early experiment with "LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE" in Rhode Island, this republic really owes its enduring strength to a fragile, scorched and little-known document that was signed by some 30 ordinary citizens on December 27, 1657.
IT IS FITTING that the FLUSHING REMONSTRANCE should be associated with Dutch settlements, because they were the most tolerant in the New World. The NETHERLANDS had enshrined freedom of conscience in 1579, when it clearly established that "NO ONE SHALL BE PERSECUTED OR INVESTIGATED BECAUSE OF HIS RELIGION." And when the Dutch West India company set up a trading post at the southern tip of Manhatten in 1625, the purpose was to make money, not to save souls. Because the founding idea was trade, the directors of the firm took pains to ensure that all were welcome.
For example, while the Massachusetts Bay Colony was enforcing Puritan orthodoxy, there were no religious tests in the Dutch colony. So open was New Amsterdam that at least 16 languages were being spoken there by the 1640s; by 1654, the first Jews in what is now the United States had been able to settle there peaceably.
BUT religious tolerance had its limits in New Amsterdam, especially when it came to Quakers, who then had a reputation as obnoxious rabble-rousers. Peter Stuyvesant, the provincial director-general and a "Type A" personality if ever there was one, was not going to tolerate Quaker presence in his domain. To make his point, he ordered the public torturing of Robert Hodgson, a 23-year old Quaker convert who had become an influential preacher. And then he issued a harsh ordinance, punishable by fine and imprisonment, against anyone found guilty of harboring Quakers.
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY after the edict was released, Edward Hart, the town clerk in what is now Flushing, Queens, gathered his fellow citizens on December 27 and wrote a letter to Stuyvesant, citing the Flushing town charter of 1645, which promised liberty of conscience.
AS HART and his fellow petitioners so elegantly wrote, "We desire therefore in this case not to judge least we be judged, neither to condemn least we be condemned, but rather let every man stand and fall to his own master." Their logic was impeccable: "the power of this world can neither attack us, neither excuse us, for if God justify, who can condemn, and if God condemn, there is none can justify."
THE FLUSHING REMONSTRANCE was remarkable for four reasons:
First, it articulated a fundamental right that is as basic to American freedom as any we hold dear.
Second, the authors backed up their words with actions — they did not whisper their opposition among themselves or protest in silence. Rather, they signed the document and sent it to the most powerful official in the colony, a man not known for toleration or for an easygoing or gracious manner.
Third, they stood up for others; none of the signers was himself a Quaker. The Flushing citizens were articulating a principle that was of little discernible benefit to themselves.
And Fourth, like all great documents, the language of the remonstrance is as beautiful as the sentiments they express. "If any of these said persons come in love unto us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egress and regress unto our town;" its authors wrote in the conclusion. "For we are bound by the law of God and man to do good unto all men and evil to no man."
So what was the result? As expected, Stuyvesant arrested Hart and the other official who presented the document to him, and he jailed two other magistrates who had signed the petition. Stuyvesant also forced the other signatories to recant.
But THE DOOR HAD BEEN OPENED and Quakers continued to meet in Flushing. When Stuyvesant arrested a farmer John Bowne in 1662 for holding illegal meetings in his home, Bowne was then banished from the colony. He immediately went to Amsterdam to plead for the Quakers. There he won his case. Though the Dutch West India company called Quakerism an "abominable religion"," it nevertheless overruled Stuyvesant in 1663 and ordered him to "allow everyone to have his own belief." Thus did religious tolerance become the law of the colony.
The Bowne house is still standing. And within a few blocks of it a modern visitor to Flushing will encounter a Quaker Meeting House, a Dutch Reformed church, an Episcopal church, a Catholic church, a synagogue, a Hindu temple and a mosque, all coexisting in peace, appropriately in the most diverse neighborhood, in the most diverse borough, in the most diverse city on the planet.
