BOOK REVIEW:
Dictionary of the Presbyterian & Reformed Tradition in America. Edited by D. G. Hart and Mark Noll. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999. ISBN: 0830814531. 

D. G. Hart and Mark Noll, the editors of the Dictionary of the Presbyterian and Reformed Tradition in America, claim that “few reference works are. . . primarily historical and cover the diversity of Reformed and Presbyterian churches in the United States and Canada.” The DPRTA is meant to fill this gap. The most recent comparable work is The Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith, edited by Donald McKim (Westminster John Knox, 1992), but the latter book is “more theological than historical, and its regional coverage is broader than North America.” This reviewer has certainly found the DPRTA useful, and has not found another book that serves quite the same purpose.

The DPRTA consists of roughly 350 articles, by around 200contributors, ranging from “Abolition, Presbyterians and” to “Zwemer, Samuel Marinus (1867-1952)” (“the recognized leader of Christian missions to the Muslim world”). The articles consist mainly of biographies of individuals and histories of particular Presbyterian and Reformed communions, as well as essays on important historical events, theological trends, and confessional documents. Also included are “several thematic essays that examine the Reformed tradition’s influence on the political and cultural life in North America.” For example, the article on Presbyterians and education not only discusses religious education within the Presbyterian churches, but the ways in which Presbyterians have influenced public educational institutions in the United States. The DPRTA also attempts to “do full justice to the pluriformity of the Reformed tradition in North America.” The editors include articles, not only on the dominant Anglo-American Presbyterian denominations, but on Dutch-American, German-American and Hungarian-American, and Korean-American Reformed communions.

For a church history dictionary, this one is unusually fun to browse. Its articles are all informative and for the most part well-written. Its relatively narrow focus give its articles a thematic unity. A first rate editorial introduction, which touches on the history of the Reformed tradition in Europe and North America, also helps the reader to put the many articles in perspective. The diverse essays seem to complement each other. For instance, if you have always had trouble remembering the difference between Old School Presbyterians and Old Side Presbyterians, now you can learn about both communions in two consecutive articles.

This dictionary yields a number of interesting characters, laypeople as well as ministers and theologians. One not only finds a biography of Stonewall Jackson’s chaplain, Southern Presbyterian theologian Robert Louis Dabney, but one of Stonewall Jackson himself. The biography of Catherine Wood Marshall, devotional writer and novelist, finds a place just before that of her husband Peter Marshall, famous chaplain to the US Senate. One discovers the tragic story of Elias Boudinot (born “Galagina”), a missionary to his own Cherokee nation, who believed emigration to the west afforded the Cherokees their only chance to survive as a people. With no official authority to do so, Boudinot signed the treaty with the U. S. Government that allowed for Cherokee removal in1835. He was later murdered by his own tribesmen who opposed the treaty. One also finds the story of Francis Grimké, a former slave, nephew of the abolitionist Grimké sisters and Presbyterian minister. Trained in the orthodox “Princeton theology” of Charles Hodge and nick-named the “Black Puritan,” Grimké opposed segregation in the Presbyterian church and helped to found the NAACP.

Any such reference work must set limits. Some interested parties are bound to miss certain excluded groups and figures. The DPRTA includes no article on the United Church of Christ, which claims to be a Reformed denomination, though it includes articles on three of its four parent denominations and a number of its members. One might excuse this omission as a result of the editors’ decision to focus on communions with Presbyterian polities and their members. However, Samuel Hopkins, an American Congregationalist who influenced many Presbyterians, certainly merits his own essay. One misses the Presbyterian minister children’s television host, Fred (Mr.) Rogers as well.

An interesting recurring theme of the Presbyterian and Re-formed tradition in the United States is union and division. The Reformed tradition’s deeply rooted ecumenical emphasis has resulted in many unions between various Presbyterian bodies, especially in the twentieth century. But a similarly deeply rooted emphasis on correct doctrine has led many conservative splinter groups to reject such unions as dilutions of orthodoxy. Undoubtedly the DPRTA’s most striking example of a stalwart splinter group is the Eureka Classis, who split with its parent denomination, the Reformed Church in the United States, when that body merged with another German-speaking communion, the Evangelical Synod of North America, in 1934. This hyper-Calvinist group of 1,400 members in 26 congregations in the Dakotas and northern Iowa, calls itself “the remaining member of the Reformed Church in the U. S.”

There are limits to the appeal of such a specific reference book. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, for the people who need this kind of book, the Dictionary of the Presbyterian and Reformed Tradition in America is just the kind of book they need. One such person would be this reviewer, who is writing a dissertation on American Reformed theology. However, the DPRTA also has a number of qualities that would appeal to readers with less specific needs. 

David Torbett
Instructor, Religion and Philosophy
Mt. Union College, Alliance, Ohio

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, WINTER 2002, VOL. 2, #3.