Frank Dent, a friend of New Reformation Press, and a resident of New England, has written a fascinating guest post for us about the demise of the Puritans in New England and its parallels with the modern church growth movement. Frank has done some excellent research and we are excited to be able to share the first of three parts with our readers.

During the first few years of living in Massachusetts, after moving from the San Fernando Valley suburbs of Los Angeles, it seemed as though the air was fairly filled with stories of Colonial Massachusetts, yarns of yankee whaling ships, tales of fabulously snooty Beacon Hill bluebloods, as well as anecdotes of eccentric New England intellectual elites. After hearing the stories recounted again and again, some questions began forming in my mind, “Why is there no American Puritan denomination today? How did Harvard College become dominated by liberal Unitarian theologians so early when it was founded for the proper training of Puritan ministers? How did we get from the Puritans to the Boston Brahmin so quickly?”

A couple years ago I began some casual research on these topics and my questioning came into greater focus when I read a reference to the Half-Way Covenant instituted by Puritan congregations in Colonial New England. The reasons for the Half-Way Covenant, and its consequences, are many and nuanced. Still, I think there is much to be learned by confessional Lutherans in the early 21st Century from the causes and consequences of the Half-Way Covenant that provide us an historical reference in our discussions regarding church polity, traditional worship, pastoral training and the definition of the pastoral role, as well as baptism, communion, catechesis and the means by which we accept new members.

Another change occurred during the last two years; I became a Lutheran. I had actually belonged to a Lutheran Church in the 1980s in southern California, a congregation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I managed to belong to the Church Council, even serve as the Church Growth Committee chairman, and never actually become a Lutheran. It took another twenty years of wandering through American Evangelicalism before I understood what confessional Lutheranism actually is and what I had been missing all my life. If my approach to the questions I’ve posed above seems biased, then you may conclude that I am actively cultivating that bias. Confessional Lutherans, those orthodox traditionalists who continue to advance the solas of the Reformation, and other adherents of objective truth and causality, find history not to be a dead subject but something we live every day. We live our baptism every day, although it can be recorded as an event in time past. We live the promises of Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter every day, although these are observed only once during the church calendar and are historical events. We don’t simply re-enact them as hollow rituals but, rather, live each day in the reality of their meaning in what God accomplished long ago and promised to do even longer ago.

I’ve organized my findings into three parts. The first will provide a brief overview of English Puritanism and the challenges it faced when transplanted to New England. The second will look at the transition in Boston from the Puritan ideal of “a city upon a hill” to the rise of the Boston Brahmin. The final segment is my assessment of what Confessional Lutheranism in the early 21st century can learn from the experiences of our American Puritan forefathers.

1. Visible Saints in America

Puritanism was an English phenomenon that sprang from conditions unique to that country, and was as important as a political force as it was a religious movement. Efforts to purify the church in England were applied to many areas including church polity and hierarchy, church membership, the use of clerical vestments, the appropriateness of liturgical ceremonies and religious symbols, and the exercise of traditional discipline of church members. The pursuit of these reforms exacted a terrible toll as the Puritans’ opponent was chiefly the Monarchy as “governor” of the Church of England, to which all citizens belonged by decree. Many Puritan clergy and congregants were imprisoned, tortured, and executed for their criticism of the national church. Some of these punishments were meted out by Protestant monarchs, some by Catholic, and some by a ruler, Elizabeth, who seemed determined to be one or the other or both, depending on what most benefitted her government at the moment.

Puritanism was represented in public dispute and in published argument by some of the most learned and erudite English thinkers of the day. Their persuasiveness in print and skill in public preaching were both the front line of their attack as well as their sometime last court of appeal. It was not a thoroughly homogenous movement, however. There were episodes where Puritans, in conflict with each other over interpretation of what constituted a biblical church, would indulge in the public embarrassment of excommunicating each other, pursued with the same learned language as their theological treatises, but seasoned heavily with sarcasm, not unlike the treatment applied by Martin Luther to Erasmus of Rotterdam and other opponents.

Among the enduring themes of English Puritanism was the desire for establishment of a church composed solely of the “Visible Saints.” This Puritan ideal was borrowed from Augustine’s assertion of there being two churches, the invisible church made up of all elect believers predestined for salvation from time past, present, and future, and the visible church made up of those alive today who professed Christ. The visible church, while Christ’s Body in the world today, is not pure, but represents “the wheat and the weeds” side-by-side together. While Augustine knew that the visible church would be impure, it should retain discipline among its members by applying the Apostle Paul’s counsel to the early church as its model. The Puritans saw a Church of England completely overrun with weeds, with the wheat struggling to stay alive, to maintain a high regard for Scripture, to maintain church discipline, to expect righteous living from its Bishops, and sound teaching from its clergy. They envisioned a different ideal, a church pure and spotless in its leadership and laity, a church discriminating in who may be numbered among the elect, a church community where people would live their faith, a church of Visible Saints.¹

Viewed in its historical context, this desire to establish a church that stands as a testimony to the purity of the Lamb by whose blood was won the forgiveness of sins, a church that suggests to the world the future perfection that will accompany Christ’s return, must be considered among the highest of all human ideals. But, it can be also viewed as merely that, among the highest of all human ideals, and not a soundly biblical model for the visible church. Insistence on purity of the church members and its clergy, as well as the elimination of a church hierarchy as unbiblical and Romish, are more dominant in historic Puritan thought than insistence on purity of the Gospel being preached, the inerrancy of Scripture, or the centrality of Christ and his work on the cross.

Although authors of popular histories of English Puritanism, and its American offspring, are quick to argue that the desire to establish the Visible Saints was by no means the primary distinction of Puritan congregational life nor the sole focus of Puritan teaching and preaching, Puritanism simply cannot be fully appreciated without it. In fact, they were commonly likened to Donatists, the 4th Century Christian heretical sect who held that only those demonstrating a blameless life belonged in the church, by their opponents. While Puritans argued persuasively against this characterization, their commitment to the Visible Saints ideal increased over time and became quite severe.

Despite Puritan musings on the necessary agency of grace and the presence of faith in their regenerate members, these are of lesser importance to their movement than the necessity of creating a pure church, called away from unregenerate society and an unrepentant church hierarchy. Walter Tavers, a Puritan minister at Temple Church, London, wrote that doctrine and discipline were interdependent. As long as discipline in the church was unreformed the reform of doctrine was precarious.² Robert Browne went beyond Tavers’ call to throw out canon law and the church hierarchy, and argued for congregationalism. His prescription for reforming the Church of England was a complete dismantling of the system, including the revocation of the royal degree making all citizens members of the church, even if that meant the church were distilled down to a precious few, but pure, members.³ While these themes were recurring throughout English Puritanism, there was one issue that provided a clear demarcation between internal camps, whether to reform their national church from inside it or from outside it. Those that separated from the Church of England, arguing that the national church was past saving, were known as Separatists. Although there were some Separatist groups who remained in England, most fled not only their church, but also their country. Among the Non-Separatists who remained to fight for reformation from inside the Church of England, many refused to accept the attempts by Queen Elizabeth to standardize Anglican worship in the Act of Uniformity in 1558 and became known as Nonconformists. Since there was no Church of England in the New World, the distinction between the two groups once they arrived on these shores is made clearer by referring simply to Separatists and^{3 2} Non-Separatists. These represent the two dominate strains of radical Puritanism that both nurtured and hardened those who concluded that relocating to the New World was not only reasonable, but necessary. We must regard this as a particularly courageous and hopeful decision by a sect that contended that even one known offense left unpunished was sufficient to destroy a church.⁴ What impact could this, and other practices of Puritan church life, have on a group that was now isolated from the rest of the world?

All Americans know something of the Pilgrims, that group of Puritan Separatists who sailed from Amsterdam to the New World with the intent of establishing a kind of Puritan utopia, and founded the community that became Plymouth, Massachusetts. We may even remember something of a vague distinction between these Pilgrims of the “first American Thanksgiving” and their Non-Separatist Puritan counterparts who came a little later and founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and are perhaps better known for the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts.

While in the Netherlands, the Pilgrims had lived as a community set apart from their Dutch neighbors, who were largely tolerant of their religious scruples and held no serious grudges against them, either political or theological. Perhaps the most serious threat to Pilgrims during their twelve-year residency in the Netherlands was the gradual loss of Englishness they observed in their children as they become accustomed to Dutch ways and culture. Meanwhile, those Non-Separatist Puritans who would soon found a second Boston, John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill,” were still in England fighting corruption within their national church. As Non-Separatists, they maintained that they represented the true Church of England and refused to consider themselves separate from it, because any schism meant a failure of unity in the church and was dishonoring to God.⁵

The Puritans who founded Massachusetts, Separatists and Non-Separatists alike, carried the struggle to establish and maintain the Visible Saints to the New World, and soon both communities looked beyond surviving to thriving. They were free from the tyrannical religious edicts of a monarchial overseer and the resulting bureaucracy of incompetent, unqualified, and corrupt clerics, but they were also isolated from their English culture and society.

The first candidates for proselytizing to their faith were the sixty-six Englishmen, representing the London Company, underwriters of the venture, who accompanied the thirty-four Pilgrims on the Mayflower. They also established friendly relations with the Native Americans they found living in the region, few in number, their population having been decimated by diseases borne by earlier European visitors to that region. But soon more settlers came, bringing tradesman skills, the explorer’s daring, mercantile trade ventures, and a desire for wealth among settlers and investors alike. And, all too quickly, relations with their native neighbors grew tense, and then grew deadly. But more importantly, to the⁴ Visible Saints, the new settlers could be Puritan, Anglican, or Catholic, or may be more likely to bend the knee in worship of mammon than care about the purity of the saints. The ability to grow Puritanism in the New World from the “Great Migration,” the tide of some 20,000 new prospects from the Old World arriving over the next decade, would be severely tested.

As the requirements for church membership were put to repeated practical tests over the years, through the process of examining thousands of people petitioning for membership, a kind of “method” for measuring a candidate’s suitability began to emerge. By 1640 there had developed a kind of orthodoxy around these questions which was commonly referred to with terms such as the congregational “way” or New England “method.”

Cotton Mather was a strong proponent of this method which hinged upon an interrogatory approach to determining if a candidate possessed a “saving faith.” Although “historical faith” was important, and may be thought of as the minimum requirement, it represented only a knowledge of the historic truths of the Gospel and of the common social hallmarks of the Christian life, namely that a person be of good repute, live a life free of scandal, and cheerfully avail himself to Christian instruction and church discipline. This may qualify a person to receive the Seal of Baptism and nominal membership in a Puritan Church.

However, full membership, which qualified one for receiving the Lord’s Supper and awarded participation in the congregation as a voting member, was to be reserved for only those members who could successfully demonstrate having a saving faith, a sure and certain regeneration that marked them as part of God’s elect. Under this method the Visible Saints, those who could demonstrate sure and certain election were, in effect, a church within a church.

The New England method can be reconstructed from sermon notes, letters between clergy, and written salvation narratives of the some of the saints. The regularity of these testimonies under the New England method suggest that the “method” was more than the examination of candidates for membership, but that there was also a “method” in salvation narratives.

Puritan clergymen often discussed, in their own circles, the difficulty inherent in discerning saving faith in applicants for membership, and there was constant concern, and occasional alarm, that the method would result in allowing unworthy persons into the congregation. However, they also seemed to settle on a formula that provided some comfort. If a person was absolutely, unshakably confident of their salvation experience then the minister would have sufficient grounds to consider them with suspicion. However, if a candidate had a persuasive conversion story but remained somewhat troubled by the security of their salvation, then the minister could be sure of a sincere and earnest profession of faith.

Though this standardization approached stereotype, most Puritan congregations felt reassured by the New England Method and somewhat absolved from any taint that may come to their congregation in its abuse.

However, the greatest threat to Puritanism in the New World was not from the possibility that they would admit an impostor from among the “strangers” around them but from the Puritans’ own children and grandchildren.

“Saving faith” is not hereditary, neither were the children of a communicant Puritan covered by sentimentality under the salvation their parent possessed. However, the Puritans practiced infant baptism, and that created something of a dilemma. What was to be done with the grown children of Puritans who did not possess the saving faith necessary for full membership in the church?

Growing up Puritan had a single desirable end, that the child would “own” their parent’s covenant. Even with the benefit of a childhood regulated by Christian instruction and church discipline, it was not assumed that their children would automatically be admitted to full church membership and it was demonstrated that there was nothing approaching a full harvest of the elect from their offspring. So the baptized children of communicant Puritans, while denied communion, were included in worship, partook of teaching and preaching, and were subject to church discipline, but it seems as though there was little hope of “converting” them once they passed a certain age.

It was not long before children born in the Old World were of the age considered appropriate for a legitimate experience of saving faith, sometime around their twentieth year or later, and right behind them were coming the children born in the New World. More importantly, baptized but non-communicant Puritan children were marrying and starting families of their own.

Now the dilemma began resembling a crisis. What was to be done with the children of baptized, but non-communicant, Puritan children? Were they to be baptized? That idea was considered radical. Only regenerate adult converts and the children of fully sanctified Puritans could receive the First Seal of the covenant of the purified church.

This third generation, mostly born in New England, created a problem that the Puritan founders had not anticipated. They could not exclude their own grandchildren from their fellowship because to deny them the benefit of church instruction and church discipline would be to relegate them to a status no better than strangers.

But persons, no matter how dear, could not be baptized outside of the covenant of full church membership. This would surely be a violation of the purity of the sacrament and be a fundamental violation of the hard-fought reforms in the Puritan church. Clearly, evangelism in the Puritan church was only a rear-guard activity, designed to defend a “pure” church as it continued its determined retreat from the world, and certainly not a means by which the unchurched elect were reached by the preaching, and hearing, of the Word.

So began a dialog within the Puritan churches of Massachusetts and Connecticut that spanned decades and took many twists and turns along the way but remained tethered to the basic problem who could be baptized among their own fellowship.

The name “Half-Way Covenant” was a derisive label applied by the opponents to an accommodation promoted by some leading Puritan ministers in Massachusetts. Historians have categorized the Half-Way Covenant in widely varying ways, from an attempt to build the tax-paying base of franchised citizens by creating a new category of church membership, to signifying the first slip in a scandalous slide toward open communion, as the opening move by some revisionists toward “presbyterianism,” or as the earliest crack in the separatist defenses that would eventually lead to the dissolution of Puritanism as a sect and the beginning of its more enduring legacy as a model for the parish that embraces its obligation to whole community in which it finds itself.

In the next posting, “A City Upon A Hill Becomes the Hub of the Universe,” we will take a closer look at the Half-Way Covenant and its consequences. In the third and final posting, “Line in the Sand or Mighty Fortress?” we will consider what Confessional Lutherans may learn from the Half-Way Covenant.

^{1 Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1963).}

^{2 John Brown, The English Puritans (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1998)}

^{3 Brown}

^{4 Morgan.}

^{5 Robert G. Pope, The Half-Way Covenant (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1969)}

By Pat K