Podcast Episode 82
Westminster Catechisms
with Dr. Chad Van Dixhoorn & host Nick Walters
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The Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms grew out of the Westminster Assembly, the gathering of ministers and theologians called by the English Parliament in 1643 during the upheaval of the English Civil Wars. The Assembly was charged with helping reform the Church of England, but its work eventually produced some of the most influential statements of Reformed Protestant theology in the English-speaking world: the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms.
Catechisms use a question-and-answer format to teach Christian doctrine. The practice long predated Westminster, but Protestant reformers made catechetical instruction a major tool for teaching Scripture and theology to congregations, families, and children. At Westminster, an effort to produce one catechism eventually resulted in two. The Larger Catechism provided a fuller treatment of Christian doctrine and duty, while the Shorter Catechism presented the material more concisely. Its 107 questions begin with the famous question, “What is the chief end of man?” and the answer, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”
The catechisms were completed in 1647, although their consideration by Parliament continued into 1648. Their creation cannot be separated from the political, ecclesiastical, and theological struggles of seventeenth-century Britain. English Puritans, Scottish Presbyterians, Parliament, and the monarchy were all part of a much larger struggle over the future of church and state. The Westminster project did not permanently remake the Church of England, but its Confession and catechisms became foundational standards for Presbyterian churches and exercised influence far beyond Presbyterianism.
For our Deep Dive, Nick Walters talks with Dr. Chad B. Van Dixhoorn, Professor of Church History and Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte. Van Dixhoorn is a leading scholar of the Westminster Assembly and editor of the five-volume The Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, 1643–1652, published by Oxford University Press. His scholarship reconstructs the debates and deliberations behind the Assembly’s work and helps explain why the Westminster divines produced two catechisms, how they expected them to be used, and why these documents survived long after the political circumstances that created them had disappeared.
The history also raises a basic question for Christians who did not grow up in a catechetical tradition: What exactly is a catechism, and why would anyone need one—much less two? The Larger and Shorter Catechisms show how seventeenth-century Protestants attempted to organize Christian teaching systematically, connect doctrine with biblical texts, and provide different levels of instruction for the church. Their subsequent adoption and adaptation helped carry Westminster theology from Britain into North America and other parts of the Christian world.
Our first historical highlight takes us to colonial Philadelphia. Presbyterian congregations had been developing in the American colonies by the beginning of the eighteenth century, and ministers organized the first presbytery in 1706. As the movement expanded, that body divided into four presbyteries. In 1717 their representatives began meeting together as the Synod of Philadelphia, creating the first Presbyterian synod in America. The new structure allowed the growing Presbyterian movement to coordinate ministry and church government across a much larger region and became an important step in the institutional development of American Presbyterianism.
Our second highlight moves to Chile and the remarkable growth of Protestant and especially Pentecostal Christianity there during the twentieth century. On September 14, 1975, the first Evangelical Te Deum, formally a national Service of Thanksgiving, was held at the recently inaugurated Evangelical Cathedral in Santiago, the central temple of the Methodist Pentecostal Church. The service was connected to Chile’s September 18 national independence celebrations and brought evangelical worship into a highly visible national setting. It also occurred during the military government of Augusto Pinochet, whose attendance gave the event an unmistakable political dimension. The Evangelical Te Deum subsequently became an annual tradition and, in 1997, was officially incorporated among Chile’s national Independence Day activities.
This Week in Christian History is produced by the Center for Christian History and hosted by Nick Walters.