Our Protestant Heritage

“Harold John Ockenga was not afraid to provide his congregation with a meaty appetite of Scripture, theology, and church history from the pulpit. This sermon series on the Protestant Reformation was presented to his Park Street Church congregation in Boston during 1938, a time of great upheaval in church and society. The Fundamentalist-Modernist controversies had divided American Christianity. Effects of the great depression were giving way to threats of another world war. For Ockenga, Christians must understand the centrality of Reformation Protestantism because ‘America is the product of Protestantism’. To lose sight of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox, Cromwell, Roger Williams, and other Reformation forebears is to jeopardize the freedom and liberty that have marked the United States since its founding. Ockenga desires that his congregants be familiar with the foundations of the Reformation not simply as knowledge of the past (though that is important) but as the foundation that makes Christian citizenship meaningful. Unity for Protestants ‘must be in Spirit and in truth’ and not in forced uniformity that broaches no dissent. Because ‘freedom of dissent in religion and freedom in civic life go hand in hand.’ And without authentic gospel freedom, Ockenga argues that both American Christianity and American society are doomed.”





Robert J. Mayer, Senior Librarian, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary