Ursinus: The dangers and opportunities of latent theologies resident within established congregations

The German Reformed churches almost came to blows over the Romanizing influences of John Williamson Nevin and Philip Schaff who were the denomination's seminary professors at Mercersburg, PA. John Bomberger and later James I. Goode had theological objections to the Evangelical Catholic reforms so Bomberger and others opened a competing seminary called Ursinus (now Ursinus College) to prepare low church clergy for the ministry in competition with Mercersburg (which later moved to Lancaster and became Lancaster Theological Seminary).;My interest lies in the distinctive features of the Ursinus movement in order to determine how it had an impact on one congregation, Wolf’s Church. I hope to uncover the ways in which its theological principles encouraged certain ecclesial practices that lingered long after the controversy with the Mercersburg movement had faded from the congregation’s memory.;My work answers the question, “What were the theological convictions and ecclesiastical practices of the Ursinus Movement within the 19 th Century German Reformed Church?” My purpose is to understand the Ursinus Movement as a response to the Mercersburg Theology in its 19 th century German Reformed Church context, including key figures, causal factors, salient features, features of the ‘Ursinus’ piety/theology as distinct from Mercersburg, etc.;Having identified the salient and distinctive characteristics of the Ursinus tradition, I then will explore the ways in which this heritage may have informed the ecclesial practices of Wolf’s Church and kept that legacy alive even when the congregants could not articulate the characteristics of the Ursinus tradition or even identify the theology embedded in their corporate life as being in the Ursinus mold.