Early Fathers of the Reformed Church to America Part Two Prepared for Trinity Covenant Church, RCUS Colorado Springs, CO
Michael Schlatter 1716- 1790	After two brief assistant pastorates in Switzerland, he was commissioned by the Synods of North and South Holland to go to America to organize the German churches in Pennsylvania. He arrived in late summer of 1746. His coming was a great relief to Boehm and the Reformed churches. He immediately began missionary journeys. The Reformed people at Tulpehocken wept at the sight of three ministers, Schlatter, Weiss and Boehm. They had not seen that many ministers since they left Germany. These three later held an informal meeting in Philadelphia to plan a conference, the first meeting of Reformed ministers in America. Schlatter journeyed to the churches to see how he might organized the congregations and to see how many could support a minister. He preached in a barn in Providence and then to Indianfield, to Philadelphia and to New Jersey, 33 miles in about two weeks. He continued the next spring after staying the winter in Philadelphia. The first Coetus was held on September 29, 1747, with 27 elders with 12 congregations. Schlatter continued organizing the churches. He kept a good journal: “On the 15th of May, I preached at Fredericktown, in a new church which is not yet finished, standing behind a table upon which had been placed the holy covenant seals of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. When I was preparing myself for the first prayer and saw the tears of the spiritually hungry souls roll down their cheeks, my heart was singularly moved and enkindled with love, so that I fell on my knees, in which the whole congregation followed me, and with much love and holy desire I commended the house and the congregation to the Triune God and wrestled for a blessing from the Lord upon them.” The Coetus was held the next year, September 28, 1748. Three new ministers had arrived from Europe. The Coetus formally adopted the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort as its creeds. There were usual problems. There was a division in the church in Philadelphia and a court case to decide the ownership of the church. It was finally settled by the Synods of Holland and the divisive minister left Philadelphia. There was a successful fund-raising tour on behalf of the German churches by Schlatter into Germany, Holland, and Switzerland. He said there were 30,000 German Reformed in America in 46 congregations with only six ministers. He raised funds and recruited six new young ministers. Trouble arose when an English minister in Amsterdam was moved by the plight of the Reformed and went to England and Scotland and raised some $20,000 to establish charity schools for the German Reformed in America. This caused a very negative reaction and great opposition to this project. Because English was to be taught in the schools, it was taken as an attempt to establish the English church and impose a bishop upon the churches. The opposition became so strong that it created a negative reaction against Schlatter and in 1754 he was dismissed at the request of Holland. He lived the next 33 years at Germantown, never attended a Coetus meeting, but did occasionally preach in a Reformed church. But for the ten years he served, he labored without sparing himself. Preaching day after day, traveling more than 8,000 miles, a fantastic distance for those times. He became a chaplain in the British Army during the French Wars. During the Revolutionary War, his house was attacked and plundered by the British, who considered him a traitor because he supported the Americans. He died in 1790 a friend of many of the leading men of Pennsylvania.
The Coetus	The denomination faced many dangers. Chiefly, in the early days, the danger came from adventurers who tried to turn the sheep to their own advantage. With great difficulty ministers were supplied from Europe, and the church began to train others to serve the church, privately tutored by ministers of the church. The Revolution brought division in the churches. Most of the German reformed were anti-British and pro-American, but there were some loyal to the crown. Most of the ministers were outspoken in their support of the Revolution. No official action was taken by Coetus, probably because they did not want to mix politics with the church, nor did they want to complicate Holland’s relationship with Britain. A day of prayer was established, and thanksgiving was given when the war was over and a republic had been established. The rest of this is a quotation from J. I. Good: But while the Coetus itself does not seem to have taken any political action, many of the individual ministers did. The First Reformed church of Philadelphia was known for the sympathy of its pastor, Weyberg, and its people, with the patriots. When a memorial service was to be held February 19, 1776, on the death of General Montgomery, who was killed in the attack on Quebec, the Reformed congregation boldly threw open its doors for that meeting, although there were many Tories about and it was somewhat dangerous to do so. Indeed Dr. Weyberg dared even when the British were occupying Philadelphia, to preach such patriotic sermons that the British (fearing he would influence the Hessians, many of whom were Reformed and attended his German services, to desert) imprisoned him. When the British departed from Philadelphia and the congregation again regained possession of their church (which had been used as a hospital by the British), Dr. Weyberg took the significant text, “O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance. Thy holy temple have they defiled” Ps. 79:1. Dr. Hendel was accustomed to go over the Blue Mountains north of Tulpehocken to preach to the Reformed in the Lykens Valley. His sympathy with the patriots was so well known that this trip was quite dangerous, as the Indians on that border sympathized with the British. So a delegation of the Reformed would come armed to meet him at the entrance of the valley and guard him to the church, watch while he was preaching, and act as his bodyguard on the journey homeward until they brought him back safely to the Tulpehocken. Several of the prominent officers of the Revolution were members of the Reformed Church. General Herkimer, the hero of Oriskany, a battle in New York State, was a German Reformed, and General Philip Schuyler was a Dutch Reformed. Baron Steuben was also a member of the Reformed Church of New York City. He created a great furor among the Germans here, for he had been an officer in the famous army of Frederick the Great of Prussia, the military hero of Europe. He came to our land to bring the tactics to our army that had made Frederick victorious, and he probably saved our cause by his military drills. “After his coming,” says Lessing, “the army was drilled and after this the Continental Congress regulars were never beaten in a fair fight. Before he came the American soldier, because he did not know how to use the bayonet, had lost faith in it as a piece of armor. The only use of it to which he had been accustomed had been to roast his meat with it over the fire. Yet in a little more than a year after Baron Steuben came, an American column, without firing a gun, stormed Stony Point, on the Hudson, and captured it after one of the most splendid bayonet charges of history.” Nine miles west of Reading is one of the oldest Reformed churches in Pennsylvania, formerly called the Cacusi, now called the Hain’s church (near Wernersville). It had over the door the inscription placed there by its first builders when that church was built (1766), “All who go in and out must be true to the God and the King.” After the war was over, one of its builders said the word “king” must be cut out, and the word “king” was cut out, and so the inscription remains mutilated to this day, a silent witness to the patriotism of the members of that church. Thus the Reformed proved faithful to the American government. After the war was over the Coetus presented General Washington (1789) with a letter of congratulation when he was elected President. General Washington, although an Episcopalian, attended the Reformed church at Germantown under Dr. Hendel’s ministry, and rumor has it that he communed there. And after Washington’s death the Cincinnati Society, founded in 1783, by the officers of the Revolutionary army, met in the First Reformed Church of Philadelphia, Feb. 22, 1800, to commemorate his death.