One trip from Denver for church planting involved taking the stage to both Central City and Missouri City because several Presbyterians were interested in having churches organized. During the trip other settlements were visited with services held. It was an efficient way to reach what were often settlements located at sites where gold could be panned from streams or obtained from veins in rock. Wherever gold was found, communities of prospectors arose quickly.

Alexander Taylor was born December 4, 1803 to Richard and Isabella (Steel) Rankin in Dandridge, Tennessee. His parents were originally from Augusta County, Virginia and had moved for better opportunities in east Tennessee. Alexander was next to the last child born in a household of eleven sons and one daughter. The Baltimore Sun reported that according to Alexander’s memories of his home life
His mother became a sort of arbiter in all church matters, which were at that time in a greatly agitated state. She was a great theologian, and not afraid to express her opinion, so her house was the center for ministers, elders and all those interested in Presbyterianism and the various questions which occupied the minds of thinking people of that day.
What was the greatly agitated state of the Presbyterian Church during Rankin’s early life? As the eighteenth century turned to the nineteenth, the eastern Tennessee-Kentucky region experienced religious revivals such as the season at Cane Ridge in August 1801. The Synod of Kentucky of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) was formed in 1802 with its constituent presbyteries Transylvania, West Lexington, and Washington having been transferred from the Synod of Virginia. Some members of the Synod believed the revivals represented a unique outpouring of the Holy Spirit showing the work of God, but others thought differently and instead attributed the apparent conversions to the machinations of man and a stirred-up emotional atmosphere. Within the new synod there was polarization as the supporters of revivalism called for reduced educational requirements for ministers and less adherence to the Westminster Standards, particularly its Calvinist soteriology, so that more passionate ministers could be trained more quickly. The desire for more ministers was well founded. In 1803 the General Assembly reported that the Synod of Kentucky had 37 ministers and 3 licentiates with no vacant churches, but the other six synods combined had 62 ministers without call. It would have been good if some of the ministers without call had made their way to the Synod of Kentucky and established churches committed to Scripture and the Westminster Standards in the wake of the Second Great Awakening, but this was unfortunately not the case. The General Assembly sent missionaries to the expanding frontier, but the supply could not keep up with the demand. In the end, the controversy was resolved by division. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church was formed in 1810 with ministers that were either expelled or had withdrawn from the Synod of Kentucky. So, the greatly agitated state of the Presbyterian Church into which Alexander Rankin was born had long-term effects on Tennessee and Kentucky Presbyterianism.
He went on to graduate Washington College in Tennessee, 1826. Washington was founded by the first Presbyterian minister to settle in Tennessee, Samuel Doak. Rankin’s education for the ministry was likely provided by a minister at Washington College. Rankin left Tennessee to be ordained an evangelist by the Presbytery of Cincinnati and worked as such until 1837 when he was installed the minister of a church in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The Fort Wayne Presbyterians had struggled since their earliest days when John Ross first preached in their settlement, but as the city grew Pastor Rankin worked with the existing congregation to bring harmony and he oversaw the addition of new members until he resigned in September 1843. For the next ten years it appears that his ministry involved supplying pulpits and serving brief calls in New York state, possibly in both Old and New School churches. From 1852 to 1859 he pastored the Breckinridge Street Church in Buffalo, New York. When he attended the Old School General Assembly in May 1859, Moderator William L. Breckinridge appointed him to the Committee of Publications and when deliberations about establishing the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the Northwest (later McCormick) took place, he was nominated a candidate for two of the faculty chairs, neither of which he received. But most significant for Rankin was the Assembly’s Board of Domestic Missions appointment to be a missionary to the West. It was a difficult decision but after some consideration he accepted the call, left his family in Buffalo, and made his way to St. Louis to plan the journey to the Kansas Territory and then on to the rapidly growing city of Denver in the Utah Territory.
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Christ promises to be present with church courts when they assemble in His Name officially to decide disciplinary matters, Christ likewise promises to be present when these same church courts officially assemble God’s people in Christ’s Name to worship Him. In these official, authorized church gatherings in Christ’s Name, we may rightly expect God’s promised presence.

In Matthew 18:20, Jesus promises that “where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (cf. 1 Cor. 5:4). Does this mean that two Christians gathering at a restaurant for lunch have achieved a Temple experience? Put another way, when can we be confident that God will fulfill His promise to be especially present?
The context of Matthew 18:20 demonstrates that this promise is given to the official courts of the church. Jesus is speaking about church discipline. If a professing believer will not repent of his sin after being confronted, first privately and then with witnesses, Jesus tells us to bring the matter to the “church.” But who is “the church” here? It is an organization rendering judgment on a member. This is the church as a court. But that raises another question: Who sits on that court? Should we convene all the members together to decide a discipline case? No. Rather, the Biblical practice is for leaders to judge the members of God’s people (e.g., Ex. 18:13ff; Dt. 21:1ff; 1 Ki. 3:5ff; Ezra 10:14ff; Acts 15; Acts 20:17ff; 1 Cor. 6:3-6). God has always committed the judgment of sinning members to the spiritual leaders He has appointed, not to Christians casually meeting for lunch together.
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Written by P. Jesse Rine |
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
In many ways, the Christian academy has entered an uncharted territory, one that will require the fortitude of a pioneering spirit. For the sake of our callings as scholars and practitioners within Christian higher education, now is the time to lay aside our neutral world maps and get to the business of negative world exploration, cartography, and construction. 

Leaders in Christian higher education must constantly wrestle with one fundamental question: How can we position faith-based institutions to flourish without losing their souls? While this perennial dilemma has taken various forms throughout American history, its complexity depends upon the degree of discontinuity between Christian orthodoxy and the values of society at large. In times of general alignment, this negotiation is fairly straightforward; in times of opposition, the challenge intensifies.
What, then, are we to make of our present moment? How and to what extent should Christian colleges relate to the wider culture in which they are situated? Conventional wisdom among many leaders within Christian higher education points to a constellation of cultural engagement tactics.
Seek middle ground. Promote pluralism. Exude civility and hospitality.
Articles appearing in the latest issue of Advance, the semiannual magazine published by the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) and promoted as “the leading voice of Christian higher education,” illustrate how these tactics are typically justified. In “Stewarding Our Call to the ‘Middle Space’,” Jonathan Schimpf interviews Shirley Mullen, President Emerita of Houghton University and current member of the CCCU’s Board of Directors. Mullen describes the thesis of her new book, Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future, which argues that Christians have a “particular calling” to function as “agents of active hospitality in a middle space—hosting conversations of ‘translation’ and ‘bridgebuilding’ that allow those on either pole to see each other as fellow human beings and not enemies or abstractions.” Mullen understands this calling as not limited to individuals; it also extends to institutions like Christian colleges and universities: “As believers who are entrusted with the tools of higher education, we also bridge aspects of the current polarization within our culture.”
While Mullen advocates for dialogue as a tool for navigating differences within society, CCCU Chief Communications Officer Amanda Staggenborg argues that difference is itself a social good. In “Meeting the Need for Faith in Challenging Political Times,” Staggenborg acknowledges our highly politicized environment and encourages readers to “lean into challenging conversations with faith and purposeful unity.” And why should the reader take such a personal risk? Because, according to Staggenborg, “inspiring and engaging in pluralism is the goal of a civilized society, both in and outside of higher education.” After reassuring the reader that “what we are experiencing in this modern political and cultural climate is not unique to history,” Staggenborg concludes by asserting that difference could actually be a source of faith: “Christians have found faith, not only in spiritual guidance, but in humanity. The core of a democratic society is the celebration of valuable differences of opinion.”
An essay by Staggenborg’s CCCU colleague, Vice President for Research & Scholarship Stanley Rosenberg, further surveys the current cultural landscape. In “Academic Criticism, Civility, Christian Higher Education and the Common Good,” Rosenberg traces the contentious contours of a public square marked by “incendiary comments, inattentive listening, ego-driven and hostile criticism, and polarized political positions” and lays partial blame for the current state of affairs at the feet of “incivility found in the modern American university.” How should Christian higher education respond? By countering the “damaging phenomenon” of incivility through an embrace of the Chrisitan scholarly vocation, which Rosenberg describes as “a particular form of caring, of expressing love, for our neighbour.” According to Rosenberg, the cardinal virtue of this scholarly vocation is hospitality: “Entrusted with the tools and content of knowledge, we are called to welcome others into the community of knowledge. This extends the grace of participation, profoundly reflects the vision of integration, and expresses a vision for the love of neighbour.”
The common thread running through each of these essays is a confidence in Christian higher education’s ability to maintain its mission and position within the wider academy by adopting a cultural engagement strategy. On the surface, the espoused tactics of bridgebuilding, promoting pluralism, and exhibiting civility and hospitality appear unassailable. Upon closer examination, however, a necessary precondition for the strategy’s efficacy comes into focus: an academic milieu characterized by mutual respect, populated with good faith actors, and committed to institutional diversity. Does a sober assessment of American higher education confirm such a climate, or have national leaders misread the current state of play?
To fully appreciate the dynamics of our present moment, we must first look to the past, for where we are today is far from where we started. The history of American higher education is largely a story of departure from founding commitments. As I’ve detailed elsewhere, the earliest American colleges were thoroughly Christian in nature and built upon a medieval model rooted in the Christian worldview. Over time, however, the American system secularized, beginning with the period following the Civil War. Although Christianity’s influence declined within much of American higher education over the following century, the system as a whole still sought to construct a unified understanding of the world under the banner of modernism, a scholarly project presupposing objective reality. This common intellectual framework fostered a forum where Christian colleges and universities could make the case for their particular truth claims.
The modern order would eventually give way to the postmodern turn, a cultural and philosophical movement that profoundly altered the postsecondary landscape. Instead of viewing language as a stable and unbiased medium of exchange for all individuals, regardless of personal background, postmodernists argued that meaning is inherently tied to one’s particular sociocultural context, and these contexts are inescapably shaped by power relations marked by privilege and marginalization. On the one hand, this reframing of reality resulted in the promotion of diverse perspectives within the academy, a move that appeared to be additive. This was the promise of postmodernism: intellectual discourse could be enlarged without diminishing existing perspectives. On the other hand, the ascendant critical theories that animated postmodernism sowed seeds of discontentment within the academy, which would flower into vines of ideological constriction. This has been the reality of postmodernism in practice: intellectual discourse must be policed to ensure that perspectives promoting oppression are excluded.
This progression within the academy at large—from principled pluralism to ideological gatekeeping—portends an inhospitable professional environment for Christian scholars, whose orthodox theological beliefs are viewed by many as oppressive. This gatekeeping is evident when detractors question elements of the emergent dogma, such as the concept of Christian privilege, which asserts that Christians enjoy certain benefits that accrue from the hegemonic status their religion has achieved in American society. Even the most rational and amiable of critiques can elicit a forceful rebuke.
Take the case of Perry Glanzer, a tenured full professor at Baylor University who has authored a dozen books and more than a hundred journal articles and book chapters. A scholar with particular expertise in the relationship between religion and education, Glanzer recently wrote a piece for the academic journal Religion & Education, a leading venue for publishing research studies that “advance civic understanding and dialogue on issues at the intersections of religion and education in public life.” His article explored complexities that are rarely acknowledged by scholarly treatments of Christian privilege, such as the disparities in experience across various Christian groups and the existence of secular privilege. It is important to note that while Glanzer critiqued certain narratives surrounding Christian privilege, he nevertheless accepted the notion that privilege exists and must be mitigated in order to foster an inclusive collegiate learning environment. His final paragraph concludes, “Overall, student affairs needs to champion and commit to creating the structures and conditions to which a just form of pluralism can flourish.”
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