Philip Schaff and the fate of the RCUS

Since 1985 I've had in my personal library a thin, privately printed volume published in 1893 on the occasion of The Semi-Centennial of Philip Schaff, that is, the 50th anniversary of his academic career, which began in 1842 at the University of Berlin and culminated in 1892 at Union Theological Seminary in New York. (He died the year this volume was published.)

Between its covers are numerous testimonial letters written in Schaff's honour, some material by Schaff himself, and other relevant material. Schaff writes here of his reception into the German Reformed Church in the US:

In October [1844] I was received into your Synod, at Allentown, and delivered, in Dr. Bucher's church, at Reading, my inaugural address on the "Principle of Protestantism," in the German language, which some hearers misunderstood for Latin or Greek. It was a vindication of the Reformation on the theory of progressive historical development, which was then regarded as dangerous, but is now very generally accepted.

Schaff goes on to recount the controversies surrounding his teaching, mostly having to do, not so much with his Hegelian view of history, as with the validity of earlier Roman Catholic baptisms for those received into the Reformed Church, which he defended.

Schaff is, of course, best known for editing and publishing the writings of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, as well as the Creeds of Christendom.

As for the denomination Schaff served, the (German) Reformed Church in the United States divided and went in two very different directions. The majority of the RCUS united with the former Evangelical Synod of North America (the church of Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr's family) in 1934 to form the Evangelical and Reformed Church. In 1957 that church joined with the Congregational and Christian Churches to become the United Church of Christ, by far the most liberal of the protestant denominations in the US.

However, a smaller group remained out of the 1934 merger and continues as the Reformed Church in the United States. It is one of the most confessional of the Reformed church bodies, with its strength mostly in the Great Plains states. It is odd to think of its members having 2nd and 3rd cousins who are members of the UCC.

Did Nevin and Schaff have anything to do with the peculiar double fate of the old RCUS? My guess is that Schaff's Hegelianism facilitated the two mergers which, despite his intentions, would produce a dangerously nonconfessional body. Yet I also imagine that trends were already afoot in the RCUS that were eroding its confessional identity, even in the 1840s. Some of these were fought by Nevin and Schaff, ultimately unsuccessfully.