Our Protestant Heritage

In this series of eight beautifully crafted sermons, first delivered to the congregation of Boston's historic Park Street Church in Boston in 1938, Harold John Ockenga invites his listeners--then and now--to rediscover the spiritual insights of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. The important work of reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and Ulrich Zwingli come alive once again for modern readers. ""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 Harold John Ockenga (1905-1985) studied at Taylor University, Princeton Theological Seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary, and the University of Pittsburgh. From 1931 to 1936 he served as pastor at Point Breeze Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, and from 1936 to 1969 as senior minister at historic Park Street Church in Boston. From his base at Park Street he rose to international prominence, becoming one of the most recognized leaders of the resurgent evangelical movement that swept across America and around the world during the 1940s and 1950s.