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The Social Roots of Dutch Pietism in the Middle Colonies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Randall H. Balmer
Randall H. Balmer
Affiliation:
Mr. Balmer is a graduate student in the department of religion in Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. For this essay Mr. Balmer was awarded the 1983 Sidney E. Mead Prize.
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Extract

When Godfridus Dellius, Dutch Reformed minister at Albany, surveyed the religious situation of the Middle Colonies in 1694, he found little to cheer him. In addition to the recent deaths of two colleagues and the political upheaval in New York, Dominie Dellius lamented the intrusion of William Bertholf into the Dutch churches in New Jersey. Bertholf, a cooper by trade, openly flaunted his independence from both the Netherlands ecclesiastical authorities and the orthodox New York clergy. With pietist leanings, Bertholf had ingratiated himself with Dutch communicants on the New Jersey frontier. “He will now not neglect anything to carry out his designs,” Dellius warned, and “soon some marvelous kind of theology will develop here.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 187 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1984

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References

1. Corwin, Edward T., ed. Ecclesiastical Records: State of New York, 7 vols. (Albany, 1901–1916), 2:1105–1106.Google Scholar

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19. New Jersey Archives, 2:179, 132; see also 218–221.

20. In 1694, Governor Fletcher wrote, “I have latlie seen with a heavie hart, fourscore fine farms all deserted about Albany, after the great expence of the owners in building and Improving” (quoted in Hansen, “Minor Stocks,” 37 In).

21. George Keith to SPG, 29 November 1702, SPG microfilm, letterbook ser. A, vol. 1, no. L; John Bartow to SPG, 1 December 1707, ibid., vol. 3, no. 184.

22. Miller, , New York Considered and Improved, p. 69;Google ScholarDocuments Relative to Colonial History, 4:861.

23. Ecclesiastical Records, 2:1428; Miller, , New York Considered and Improved, p. 55.Google Scholar

24. Hawks, Francis L., ed., “The Memorial of Col. Morris Concerning the State of Religion in the Jerseys, 1700,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 4 (1849–1850): 118.Google ScholarSchenck, Garret C., “Early Settlements and Settlers of Pompton, Pequannoc, and Pompton Plains,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, n.s. 4 (1919): 68Google Scholar, observes that “nearly all the first settlers in [northern New Jersey] came from the city of New York, and the larger part of them were members of the Reformed Church there.”

25. Morris to Lord Bishop of London, June 1704, Fulham Papers, SPG microfilm, vol. 6, fols. 125–128.

26. Hansen, , “Minor Stocks,” p. 372;Google Scholar see also Burr, Nelson R., “The Religious History of New Jersey before 1702,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 56 (1938):176–177.Google Scholar On the rapid rise of population in New Jersey, see Tucker, William L., “New Jersey—Her People,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 57 (1939): 172–177.Google Scholar

27. By 1790, Hansen, argues, “the northeastern part of the State [New Jersey] was as completely Dutch as any region in New York” (“Minor Stocks,” p. 370).Google Scholar This area—particularly its northern reaches—was later memoralized in Washington Irving's writings. On the persistence of Dutch culture in northern New Jersey, see Prince, John D., “Netherland Settlers in New Jersey,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, 3d ser., 9 (1914): 1–7;Google ScholarSchenck, , “Early Settlements,” pp. 58–71;Google ScholarAllbee, Burton H., “Ancient Dutch Architecture,” Papers and Proceedings of the Bergen County Historical Society 5-6 (1908–1910): 19–22;Google ScholarLeiby, Adrian C., The Early Dutch and Swedish Settlers of New Jersey (Princeton 1964)Google Scholar, chap. 9; Scott, W. W., “Dutch Buildings, Customs, Habits, etc.,” Americana 16 (1922): 368–379.Google Scholar

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29. Morris to SPG, 30 May 1709, SPG microfilm, letterbook ser. A, vol. 4, no. 149; Documents Relative to Colonial History, 4:1044, New Jersey Archives; 3:9, 4:305.

30. Brooke to SPG, 11 October 1706, SPG microfilm, letterbook ser. A, vol. 3, no. 6.

31. Tucker, , “New Jersey—Her People,” pp. 173–174.Google Scholar Like other frontier settlers, the Palatines were poor. See Elias Neau to SPG, 5 July 1710, SPG microfilm, letterbook ser. A, vol. 5, no. 134.

32. New Jersey Archives 5:22.

33. For a biographical sketch of Bertholf, see Hagemen, Howard G., “William Bertholf: Pioneer Dominie of New Jersey,” Reformed Review 29 (1976): 73–80.Google Scholar

34. For Bertholf's charges against the classis, see Ecclesiastical Records, 2:1107. This is one of the earliest instances of itinerancy anywhere in the colonies.

35. Quoted in Wertenbacker, Thomas Jefferson, The Founding of American Civilization: The Middle Colonies (New York, 1938), pp. 92–93;Google ScholarEcclesiastical Records, 2:1107.

36. On the appeal of pietism to other ethnic groups, see Burr, , “Religious History of New Jersey,” 56:189;Google ScholarDocumentary History, large paper ed., 3:329. Frelinghuysen's pietism also greatly influenced the ministry of Gilbert Tennent; see Coalter, Milton J. Jr, “The Life of Gilbert Tennent: A Case Study of Continental Pietism's Influence on the First Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1982)Google Scholar, chap. 1.

37. The best biography of Frelinghuysen is Tanis, James, Dutch Calvinistic Pietism in the Middle Colonies: A Study in the Life and Theology of Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (The Hague, 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. A translation of this sermon appears as chap. 1 in Frelinghuysen, Theodorus Jacobus, Sermons by Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen, trans. Demarest, William (New York, 1856).Google ScholarTanis, James, Dutch Calvinistic Pietism, p. 183Google Scholar, says that this sermon was preached “before15 June 1721.”

39. Frelinghuysen, , Sermons, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

40. Loux, Joseph Anthony Jr, ed., Boel's Complaint against Frelinghuysen (Rensselaer, N.Y., 1979), pp. 65, 83, 117.Google Scholar Frelinghuysen himself conceded that they “had not the necessary intelligence” to defend him (ibid., p. 83).