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From: "Herman Labuschagne" <>
Subject: Re: [HWE] Historical perspective
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:49:06 +0200
In-Reply-To: <4579F236.7070702@atc.edu>


Dear Ray,

The flow in the co-existence of religions reminds me of the Amazon River.
The two tributaries are black and brown in colour, and for a very long
distance the two colours flow together in parallel but don't mix. And where
the Amazon runs into the ocean, it is said that the sea water is fresh up to
the horizon, and brackish for as much as 100 miles off-shore. But eventually
they all do mix and become one, simply because there is more sea water than
fresh water.

Waldensian history in America is somewhat more peripheral to my field of
interest so I'm not the most qualified to give a useful overview. But for
what it is worth, I'll try to summarize my understanding briefly:

The Baptists make a definite point of tracing their history to Waldensian
origins. And it figures, because adult baptism is very plainly a legacy of
the old Waldensian faith. That's an outward sign of something prominent that
did survive to modern times. But many other Waldensian beliefs have bee
discarded long ago, most notably Sabbath observance, in favour of Sunday
observance.

Presbyterians, as you noted on the other hand, don't trace their history to
a Waldensian origin. Their origin appears to reside more firmly in the
Reformation.

Since I would contend that these two religions in its early years, were of
two rather fundamentally different backgrounds, it makes sense that they
wouldn't always have seen eye-to-eye. It is not really that complicated to
understand. The fact is just that Huguenots and Waldensians had a lot in
common, but they also had an awful lot of big theological differences
between them. So as in Europe, we find that they had a bit of an uneasy
relationship. Sometimes there was remarkable cooperation and harmony between
them, and sometimes (as happened in various incidences in America), there
was severe strife. Typically we find that in small communities, the two
groups took each other's presence very personally and really went out to
make life difficult for one-another. And of course, since there were more
Huguenots/Reformist than Waldensians, the former obviously overshadowed the
latter.

A lot is popularly known about Huguenot influences in America. However, I
think it is important that we don't forget what an important role the
Waldensian faith played in shaping the formation of many American religious
groups. This part of history is perhaps more poorly understood today. While
it is true that a more or less distinct Waldensian school of thought can be
found in America from the middle- to late 1600's, the lines of distinction
soon became very blurred indeed. Waldensian thoughts arrived via settlers
from Scotland, England, France (and via the French refugees in Holland), and
Germany. All of them probably subscribed to individual ideas and were
probably plagued by language and cultural issues which only made matters
worse. The result was that they never managed to truly unify upon arrival.
This is very important to understand.

The groups of adult-baptizing, Sabbath-keeping Waldensian remnants soon
spread across the country, splitting and re-splitting, whilst giving birth
to some very prominent religious groups in America, and scores of
lesser-known ones, some of which still exist today, but most of which have
long since fizzled out. Some of them retained elements of Waldensian
theology. Some of them adopted mostly Protestant theology, like the waters
of the Amazon...

A small sprinkling hung on to what I would respectfully call "primitive
Waldensian theology." The history of the splits and re-splits becomes quite
complicated. We can't go into it too much here for fear of going completely
off-topic, but on the surface, I'd say it looks to me as if you're in the
same position as I. The faith of your ancestors was partly rooted in
Waldensian origins and partly in Huguenot origins. I can live with that. I'm
satisfied knowing that they were all free-thinking folks with Christian
values. And besides, it makes our history very, very interesting indeed. I'm
always bugged to see that although we know so much about Huguenot history,
the Waldensian history which is often just as interesting or even more, is
pretty much overlooked.

Best regards and good luck unraveling the puzzle!
Herman Labuschagne
Johannesburg, South Africa


-----Original Message-----
From:
[mailto:] On Behalf Of ray
Sent: 09 December 2006 01:16 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [HWE] Historical perspective

> Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2006 11:03:33 +0200
> From: "Herman Labuschagne" <>
> Subject: [HWE] Historical perspective re. Huguenots, Cathars &
> Waldensians
> To: <>

Hi Herman,

Also of interest to me is the other end of Huguenot history - how the
Huguenots drifted into other religions. In South Carolina, those that
changed to Anglican (close to Catholicism on the religion spectrum) can
best be explained by political and economic alliances.

In researching how my line became Baptist, it seems that they first
became Particular Baptist. Particular Baptists were Calvinists and
during their formation in England, they sent a council to Holland to
gain guidance from French Huguenot pastors that had moved to the
Netherlands.

Strangely, that while most books say that the Huguenots were most like
Presbyterians, they disliked each other in South Carolina. One of my
ancestors wrote a letter to fellow Huguenots that if they did not turn
out and defeat Presbyterian candidates at the next vote, the
Presbyterians would bring a plague on them worse than Moses sent on the
Egyptians.

Ray

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