John Phillip Boehm

John Philip Boehm was born on November 24, 1683, in Hochstadt, in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, in modern-day Germany.

As a young man, Boehm served as an innkeeper in the town of Lambsheim, where he became a citizen in 1706. Two years later, in 1708, he became the Reformed school teacher in the city of Worms,[1] a position which he occupied until 1715. In 1720, Boehm immigrated to “Penn’s Woods” in eastern Pennsylvania.[1] Because of a lack of Reformed ministers, many German Reformed immigrants who found him to be both educated and pious asked him to read sermons to them. Eventually, in 1725, communities in Falkner Swamp, Skippack Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania and White Marsh Pennsylvania called him to be their pastor, a call which he was reluctant to take, due to the fact that he was not ordained, as having a non-ordained minister administer the sacraments. On October 15, 1725, Boehm served his first communion in Falkner Swamp, and between the three congregations, there were over 100 communicant members. Boehm also drew up a constitution, which provided for government by a consistory, and adoption of the Heidelberg Catechism as a confessional standard. Boehm would function as a circuit rider between the congregations.

In 1727, two years after Boehm began his ministry, an ordained German Reformed minister named George Weiss arrived in Pennsylvania. His arrival started a controversy, as Weiss argued that Boehm's ministry was in violation of Reformed polity, and was therefore invalid. Weiss's assertions created a division in the German Reformed Church. Some of Boehm's supporters sought the help of the American branch of the Dutch Reformed Church in New York, who arranged the ordination of Boehm by the Classis of Amsterdam, which occurred on November 23, 1729. The Dutch Reformed also validated the previous labors of Boehm, prior to ordination. In returned Boehm, Weiss, and the rest of the German Reformed submitted themselves to the oversight of the Dutch Reformed, an arrangement which lasted until 1793.

In 1730, the churches in the Philadelphia area were left under the sole care of Boehm after Weiss traveled to Europe to raise money for their cause in America. Weiss would return the following year, and eventually settled in Rhineback, New York. Along with his ministerial roles, in the 1730s and 1740s, Boehm faced dissention in his own ranks, as several prominent churchmen left for other denominations. In 1742, Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf, the bishop of the Moravian Church arrived in Pennsylvania, attempting to unite the German Lutherans, Reformed and the Moravians into one church, which Boehm actively resisted. In 1746, in response to requests from Boehm for additional ministers, the Dutch Reformed sent Michael Schlatter to Pennsylvania, to assist Boehm, who was, by then, in his early sixties. He nevertheless continued on in his ministerial duties. It was on his way to a congregation near Allentown, Pennsylvania that he died, at the farm of his eldest son, on April 25, 1749, aged sixty-five.

Boehm, in 1706, married Anna Maria Stehler. Between 1709 and 1725, the couple had eight children (four sons and four daughters) seven of whom survived infancy. Along with serving as a minister, Boehm had a 200-acre farm, which he purchased in 1736. Four years later, Boehm became a citizen of Pennsylvania.

• “The German Reformed Church in Colonial America”. Reformed Church of the U.S. (RCUS). April 9, 2009. Retrieved May 22, 2014.

• Life and Letters of the Rev. John Philip Boehm, Founder of the Reformed Church in Pennsylvania, 1683-1749