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In 1921, John Wagner Pritchard, author of Soldiers of the Church: The Story of What the Reformed Presbyterians (Covenanters) of North America, Canada, and the British Isles, Did to Win the World War of 1914-1918 (1919), and the editor of The Christian Nation, a weekly publication associated with the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America and the National Reform Association, which is published in New York City, conceived the idea of creating a catalog of Covenanter literature. He wrote on March 2: “We are going to try to compile a complete list of all the books written by Covenanters or written about Covenanters.”
Over the next several months, with suggestions contributed by readers in America and overseas, his ambitious goal resulted in a list that exceeded 250 titles. He wrote on June 8: “Columbus thought he had found a group of islands, and did not live long enough to learn that he had discovered a new continent. W'e started in search of sufficient books written by or about Covenanters to fill a shelf, and did not need to live but a few months to learn that there were enough of such books to fill a good sized room.”
Among the sources utilized in this research was James Calvin McFeeteter’s address at the First International Convention of Reformed Presbyterian Churches held in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1896 titled Reformed Presbyterian Literature (American) [available to read here]; and John C. Johnston’s marvelous compendium titled Treasury of the Scottish Covenant (1887), of such usefulness that it is listed twice (#195 and #259), which was unknown to Pritchard at the beginning of this endeavor.
Pritchard’s catalogue met with such success that the 1921 RP Synod ruled that “Authority was conferred to collect as far as possible one copy each of books, catalogued in the Covenanter Book Shelf, for College and Seminary.” The library at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to this day is the great repository of Covenanter literature in America.
We have recently added Pritchard’s “Covenanter Book Shelf” to his page recently, and it is truly a valuable resources for Covenanters and students of the Covenanters on both sides of the Atlantic. One will find the names of Scottish Covenanters such as Cameron, Cargill, Gillespie, Guthrie, Knox, Melville, Rutherford, Peden, Symington and many others highlighted; as well as American Covenanters Dodds, George, Glasgow, Kennedy, McAllister, McFeeters, McLeod, McMaster, Scott, Sommerville, Sproull, Willson, Wylie and more. As we work our way through this catalogue, we hope to add more and more of the American titles listed to Log College Press. If you have an interest in Covenanter literature, be sure to check out Pritchard and McFeeters and you will benefit from their research.
