In reading A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, I’ve come to a striking observation of the church that was true in 1846 and finds relevance today as well. The quote is by a gentleman with whom, before reading this book, I was unacquainted, J. H. Thornwell, “the great Southern Presbyterian theologian of the nineteenth century.” He’s recorded here regarding the church as saying,

Our whole system of operations gives an undue influence to money. Where money is the great want, numbers must be sought; and where an ambition for numbers prevails, doctrinal purity must be sacrificed. The root of the devil is in the secular spirit of all our eccelesiastical instituions. What we want is a spiritual body; a Church whose power lies in the truth, and the presence of the Holy Ghost. To unsecularize the Church should be the unceasing aim of all who are anxious that the ways of Zion should florish. (p137)