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The German Reformed Church was founded by followers of Ulrich Zwingli, a 16th century leader of the Reformation in Switzerland and a contemporary of Martin Luther. Zwingli and Luther differed on nearly all points of church reform but most emphatically on doctrine related to the Last Supper and transubstantiation, the actual presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Zwingli believed in a literal translation of the scriptures, and thus saw the Eucharist as only symbol of the body and blood of Christ, whereas Luther accepted the Catholic tradition of transubstantiation. The disagreements among Luther, Zwingli, and other Reformation leaders led to the development of a variety of Protestant faiths rather than a unified Protestant church.
The German Reformed Church in America dates to the 1720s in Pennsylvania. The denomination appeared in North Carolina in the 1740s as German immigrants made their way south. Brick Church, in eastern Guilford County, was established in 1770 by the Reverend Samuel Suther, a Swiss immigrant who figured prominently in the organization of the Reformed Church in North Carolina. After a few years of sharing a facility with a local Lutheran congregation, the Reformed congregation began meeting in a schoolhouse on property belonging to the Clapp family. Church lore records that the separation, during the Revolutionary War, was due to political differences between the Lutheran and Reformed congregations. In the early years it was known as Beaver Creek Church, for the community it served, and for many years later as the Clapp Church. The first church building, a log structure, was completed in 1786 and was succeeded by a brick church, completed about 1814.
On May 21, 1831, four ministers and four elders met at Brick Church as representatives of seventeen Reformed Churches in North Carolina in order to organize a Classis, or governing body, as directed by the Synod of the German Reformed Church at Hagarstown, Maryland. The nascent Classis addressed the need for more ministers, and appealed to those ministers present to visit churches that were not being served. Brick Church would go on to host the Classis conference nine more times before the turn of the century.
Early church histories report that the 1814 structure had “a defect in the foundation which weakened the walls” and that the building was utilized, but unfinished until 1841. At that time the building was disassembled and then rebuilt, enlarged, and remodeled using many of the original materials. It was in March of 1842 that Brick Church gained the services of George W. Welker, who would remain at the church for fifty-one years. Welker was a leading member of the Classis of North Carolina and, himself, a historian of the Reformed Church. He was described by later historians as having done “more than all other men . . . to rescue from oblivion the existence, piety and heroism of a people most worthy to live in the minds of coming generations.”
The Brick Church was substantially renovated in 1946 and again in the late twentieth century. Today the church is affiliated with the United Church of Christ.
References:
Classis of North Carolina, Historic Sketch of the Reformed Church of North Carolina (1908)
Jacob Calvin Leonard, The Southern Synod of the Evangelical and Reformed Church (1940)
Banks J. Peeler, A Story of the Southern Synod of the Evangelical and Reformed Church (1968)
Carole W. Troxler and William M. Vincent, Shuttle and Plow: A History of Alamance County, North Carolina (1999)
William S. Powell, ed., Encyclopedia of North Carolina (2006)
History of the Reformed Church in the United States at http://www.ccel.org
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