In the first post of this series, I provided an introduction to Puritanism in America, its English origins, some theological and congregationalist distinctives, and laid out the conditions that led up to the Half-Way Covenant. I do not offer these posts as a critique of the Puritans. There are myriad scholarly and popular works that tell us that the Puritans were multi-dimensional, complex, joyful, family-oriented, Godfearing, intelligent, and educated people with strong convictions about faith, piety, church, community, and country. The historical record also shows that the Puritans were not necessarily puritanical, at least not in the popular image of the prudish, sexless, self-righteous, tea-totaling, mirthless Bible-thumper often featured in American fiction. The American historian W.J. Rorabaugh quotes Rev. Increase Mather, influential New England Puritan minister, “Drink is in itself a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan; the wine is from God, but the Drunkard is from the Devil.” Similarly, sex within the covenant of marriage was an Edenic joy that, with God’s blessing, would result in the gifts of children and family life, whereas the pursuit of sex outside of it was a selfish and shameful act that made a mockery of marriage and which warranted condemnation by the community. The Puritans understood the fallen world in which humanity dwells and considered themselves reformers seeking to build a community discerning of God’s gifts and their abuse. So, to reduce Puritan culture in New England to self righteous pietism would be irresponsible, and it is not my intent.

However, the best way I know to clearly draw out the considerable differences between New England Puritanism, along with the sects and denominations that claim its legacy, and traditional, orthodox, Confessional Lutheranism is to examine New England Puritan theology, congregational polity, community politics, and social structures in bold relief with all the wonderful complexity of its social life moved to the background. That will be the main topic in the next, and final, post in the series, “Line in the Sand or Mighty Fortress?” For this post, I will examine how John Winthrop’s vision of “a city upon a hill” made the transition from a stirring shipboard covenant that declared “the care of the public must oversway all private respects by which not only conscience but mere civil policy doth bind us,” to a vibrant, boisterous, and eccentric port of call that would serve as a boiling tea pot of revolutionary fervor, and eventually to an ordered society, conscious of class, education, wealth, and breeding, that held Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes in higher esteem than it did Rev. John Cotton or Rev. Increase Mather.

2. A City Upon A Hill Becomes the Hub of the Universe
Boston, Massachusetts had not been founded when John Winthrop used the phrase “a city upon a hill” to describe his vision for a Puritan community in New England but it is this city that became the physical embodiment of Winthrop’s ideal. Although Boston proved an imperfect and short-lived reflection of that vision, because of its religious, social and geographic centrality to Puritan New England, its early importance as a seaport and its rapid transformation into a largely secular city that regarded the Puritan church as an institution increasingly concerned with itself and its own inner circle, Boston served as the funnel through which all the necessary ingredients were siphoned to incubate the dominate strains of modern American Christianity.

The Massachusetts Bay Company was a commercial enterprise chartered by King Charles as the result of efforts by Rev. John White, of Dorchester, England to establish clarity around land grants in New England. Had Charles known that the Company was becoming a means by which Puritans were planning to escape the persecution and imprisonment he so ardently supported, it is doubtful he would ever have granted the charter. Many wealthy Puritan landowners were investors in the Company and some, including John Winthrop, were taking influential roles as directors. The Puritan investors made certain that their leadership of the Company could not be contested by hostile investors at some future annual stockholders’ meeting by establishing that the location of such meetings would be in New England, not London, and that any investors in the Company unwilling to make the journey to New England were required to sell their shares to those prepared to take the risk. To ensure absolute control of the Charter they took the original copy with them across the Atlantic.¹ As a legal and commercial entity, their fortunes were now literally in their own hands.

As Puritans they also carried with them a set of Christian principles that were themselves in transition somewhere between the Thirty-Nine Articles of Anglicanism, the Westminster Confession, the Savoy Declaration, and the Second London Baptist Confession. Cut off from these diverging currents back in their native England, American Puritanism began to take on the individual character of its most influential exponents in their new land. Noteworthy among the English arrivals to New England during the Great Migration of the decade following the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were Puritan clergy. However, with the exception of Rev. John Cotton of Boston, Lincolnshire, England, and one or two others, these men were not necessarily on the New England Puritans’ list of preferred leaders. Neither was John Winthrop an ordained minister, but a lawyer and wealthy land owner who was considered something of a lay teacher. Under these circumstances, with their lives and fortunes at peril, practical necessity and Christian principles were distilled by Winthrop down to two fundamental and complementary ingredients, 17th Century English society and the Mosaic Law.

In many ways, the American Puritans were not unlike other Christian communities from the post-Apostolic era who were tasked with bringing together many disparate interests into a cohesive expression of the Christian life, among them status, property, and God.² Winthrop, as governor of the new Massachusetts Bay Colony, attempted to integrate these interests in “A Model of Christian Charity,” preserved as a sermon delivered by Winthrop onboard the Arbella, before it reached New England. Although Winthrop initiates his articulation of the Puritan utopia with the words “God Almighty,” his focus quickly shifts to more earthly matters:

God Almighty, in his most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity, others mean and in subjection.

Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity” looked very different from Paul’s description of a Christian community in Galatians 3, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Instead, “A Model of Christian Charity” is framed by the economic facts that brought this band of Christian adventurers together. They may be equal in the eyes of God, but their relative importance to the Company is measured in shares owned. That sober fact would determine each member’s status upon arrival in New England, and would be reflected throughout their community, right down to the distribution of land among them. Winthrop goes on to say that this is God’s plan:

THE REASON HEREOF: First, to hold conformity with the rest of his works. Being delighted to show forth the glory of his wisdom in the variety and differences of the creatures; and the glory of his power, in ordering all these differences for the preservation and good of the whole; and the glory of his greatness, that as it is the glory of princes to have many officers, so this great king will have many stewards, counting himself more honored in dispensing his gifts to man by man, than if he did it by his own immediate hands.

Winthrop then articulated his vision of a commonwealth, wherein each citizen would act as a moderating influence on all others, so that the rich don’t “eat up” the poor and that the poor don’t rise up against the rich, and so that the regenerate may exercise their graces. Having firmly established a society based on classes,³ Winthrop then called for bonds of brotherly affection to be knit more tightly because “every man might have need of another.” God can rightfully claim all things as his own and “no man is made more honorable than another, or more wealthy etc., out of any particular and singular respect to himself, but for the glory of his creator and the common good of the creature, man.”

Thus, classes of men, rich and poor, is God’s design, and the bonds of affection within their community will be based on four things: 1) love for each other as Christians; 2) the common necessity to survive in the wilderness; 3) to prosper so that they may do more service to the Lord; 4) and they run the risk of being punished by God if strict piety is not maintained. Winthrop’s underlying message is less inspirational than cautionary:

We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies: when he shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations: ‘the Lord make it like that of New England.’ For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill: The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world: we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us, till we be consumed out of the good land wither we are going.

In the event that any on board the Arbella were not persuaded to Winthrop’s vision, he closed his discourse by citing the exhortation by Moses in Deuteronomy 30 to choose God’s ordinance and his law as the means to life. The last words of “A Model of Christian Charity” are, “For He is our life, and our prosperity,” which would’ve been a fitting motto for Winthrop’s “city upon a hill.”

The Arbella’s first landing was in Salem, settled in 1626 by the Dorchester Company. The visit was intended to be a friendly introduction of themselves to an established Puritan community with whom they would now be neighbors. Winthrop and a small party called at the church in Salem “seeking communion for themselves and the baptism of a child born at sea.” To avail themselves of these precious sacraments upon arrival in this new and strange land, and to have them administered by the hands of a neighboring Puritan congregation, would signal that, at least spiritually, they had truly survived the long voyage and now their work to carve out a new community from the wilderness would seem less forbidding. “But Salem refused to accept them inasmuch as the church there had come to hold that the seals of the church (baptism and communion) should be offered only to covenanted members and those recommended by a similarly organized congregation.”⁴

This incident was reported to Rev. John Cotton in England, who was offended enough by the treatment of his former parishioners to write “a critical letter to the Salem minister about the church’s practices.”⁵ Thus, before ever arriving in New England, Cotton became a player in the divisions and disputes between congregations over church polity. This incident is a kind of foreshadowing of the complications that resulted from what is essentially a social movement among Puritan laymen under the formal charter of a commercial enterprise which founded itself on Biblical models. Winthrop, although their leader, could neither perform baptisms nor administer communion. Nor could he draw on any higher learning in theology or Biblical hermeneutics to help steady his hand on the rudder as such conflicts would arise. He was, by all accounts, a good man with a gentle nature, but as governor of the new colony, having delivered his band of believers to their new home, he was still very much at sea in matters of both church polity and statecraft. This lack of strong leadership by Winthrop allowed conflicting opinions to take root and create division early in the group’s life in their new home, effectively reducing his role from leader to negotiator.

Within a week of the Salem incident, another serious test of “A Model of Christian Charity” arose from the very land they had journeyed to possess. Sailing south from Salem, the Arbella weighed anchor in what would become known as Boston Harbor, and two small parties were dispatched behind the Shawmut peninsula to explore both the Charles and Mystic rivers for suitable sites. Along the Mystic River lay an appealing site, with land already cleared by Indians, which was surrounded by many acres of arable farmland complete with freshwater streams. Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley contested Winthrop’s approval of the Mystic site because he favored a different site along the Charles River. Dudley rejected Winthrop’s estimation of the Mystic site and argued that a corroborating second party should be sent to confirm the initial report. In fact, Dudley led the second exploration party to the Mystic site himself, in effect usurping Winthrop’s authority in the decision. The dispute over a site for the settlement lasted over a week, during which time the settlers remained onboard ship, anxious to disembark and get to work building their new homes. Finally, unable to resolve the dispute over the location of their permanent settlement, Winthrop agreed to a temporary solution which put the settlers and their supplies ashore at Charlestown, a point determined to be midway between the Charles and Mystic sites. There, a makeshift camp could be established on land while Winthrop and Dudley continued their wrangling over a permanent location.

This conflict, whether due to Winthrop’s moderation or Dudley’s argumentativeness, left the party vulnerable to two very serious threats that arrived almost simultaneously. Once on land, disease debilitated the newcomers, first with dysentery, then with scurvy sweeping through the camp. Unused to living in such makeshift conditions, the settlers were careless in their sanitation practices. Combined with being unaccustomed to the available native foods, living in close quarters, and sweltering under the summer sun, the settlers were terribly weakened, and succumbed in epidemic proportions. As they battled for their health, with some aide by physicians from the older communities of Plymouth and Salem, they received some chilling news.

A rumor spread from a late-arriving ship that the French were preparing to launch an attack on the infant settlement. Hastily the leaders met, “forced to change counsel.” The settlers were too weak to fortify their temporary location, too weak even to drag the ordnance they had brought from England up from the beach where the sailors had unloaded it. The only solution–the one to answer both problems of defense and disease–was to disperse.⁶

The newcomers divided themselves into seven parties. Each party headed to a separate location, thereby founding seven settlements. Seven isolated groups stood a better chance of recovering their health and would present a greater challenge to raiders than if the entire group were concentrated in one location. After a few months these settlements considered themselves separate communities. One of these communities was on the Shawmut peninsula on the opposite side of the Charles river from Charlestown, and was named Boston. Soon a regular ferry connected the towns, all accessible from the bay by river, and by December the settlers had built homes. It was understood that there would be no energy or enthusiasm for relocating the settlers into a single commonwealth community now. Each of the seven towns boasted of one or two of the most important members of Winthrop’s assistants, each exhibited the tight-knit bonds that come from sharing burdens and cooperating to overcome hardships, each had its own character and unique way of approaching the challenges of providing for their own health and well-being. Winthrop’s Massachusetts Bay Colony would never gain the critical mass of single locality, bonds of shared labor in seed time and harvest, and common divine covenant that characterized his “A Model of Christian Charity.” Instead, the civil government of Massachusetts and the inevitable transition from subsistence agricultural economy to industrial, shipping, and mercantile wealth became the common bonds that defined the survival of Puritan New England.

The ascendancy of Boston was virtually guaranteed by its geographic centrality, its suitability as a maritime port, and its designation as the seat of government with Governor John Winthrop making his home there. Everything flowed to and from Boston as markets sprang up, the population grew, ships made regular visits to port, fishing became a burgeoning industry, and the government expanded its participation in everyday life. Boston became the focus for the common defense of the region, and public works to provide a wharf and other facilities for the common good were undertaken. All the towns founded out of the dispersion of settlers profited from Boston’s success, and similar practices of civic expansion and growth were evident, on a smaller scale, throughout the commonwealth. Each town had its own church and its own minister and retained congregational polity. The ministers made efforts to stay in cordial contact, occasionally soliciting advice, or offering it unsolicited, and maintained correspondence on matters of church practice.

In all of American history, the role of Puritan congregational clergy in the life of New England was unique. Thanks in no small measure to Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity” with its commingling of 17th century English social structure and Old Testament covenant standards for personal piety, the relationship between church and government sometimes exhibited no clear demarcation. The government had full authority to prosecute citizens for all manner of offenses that would appear to us today to fall firmly within the realm of church discipline. Although not all of these laws were fully enforced, the Massachusetts government, at one time or another, required that all citizens attend church services and pay taxes to support their local congregational minister, whether they were fully regenerate members or not. The Massachusetts General Court was empowered to enforce church discipline, at the behest of the ministers, and resolve disputes between congregations. The only reservation in this alignment of church and state was that members of the clergy could not hold public office. However, it was common practice for ministers to deliver lengthy political orations in the weeks leading up to elections and to hold special public instructional meetings on the eve of an important ballot vote. Although they would forebear from actually endorsing a candidate or endorsing a specific side on a ballot question, there would be no mistaking the “correct” position that citizens were expected to take with their vote. The influence ministers wielded and the respect they were shown was disproportionate to someone who neither held government office nor possessed the authority that wealth can bring, but were simply the town minister. This position, including its financial provision, was sanctioned in the Massachusetts State Constitution of 1780.⁷

The intimacy between government and church granted them this power, but they also claimed it for themselves based on their special position as interpreter of scripture and translator of the symbols of high culture. With rare exceptions, congregational ministers were the most educated members of their communities, and they had the forced attention of their fellow citizens for several hours every Sunday for worship and teaching, but also again on Thursdays for more teaching. The sound of the congregational minister’s voice was the primary medium for both spiritual and intellectual instruction available to the average citizen. Consequently, the minister’s opinion on practically any and every topic was given particular favor, and their moral authority was unassailable. Thus, there emerged a unique social, political, and spiritual institution that became known as “The Standing Order.”⁸

The Standing Order was a closed system that influenced, if not controlled, church, state, culture, community, and wealth right through the American Revolution and into the 19th century. This coalition of the seats of authority is not hard to imagine in a culture where Rev. Cotton Mather could address the magistrates of the Massachusetts General Court with: “Syres! I have a Message from GOD unto you.”⁹ But, as seen throughout the history of human institutions, the means by which destruction comes are often contained within their very origins, and they crumble from their own weight upon an insufficient foundation. In the case of the Standing Order, its very rise revealed clues to its future disintegration. “The Cambridge Platform” is one of those clues.

By 1640, the “New England Way” of testing new members for satisfactory evidence of saving faith as the standard for membership was widely accepted, which limited adult baptism to regenerate members only, but allowed for the baptism of their children. A Half-Way covenant had been extended by some congregations to allow their own noncommunicant children to participate in worship as parish members but restricted them from communion. This practice led the Puritans to a crossroads which they labored mightily to avoid, the issue of baptism for the children of their own baptized but unregenerate children. Some churches wished to extend the Half-Way Covenant to prevent the expulsion of their own grandchildren from Christian fellowship and instruction. Where this practice was adopted, it sometimes resulted in the baptism of scores of children at a time, aged from infancy to early twenties, often with multiple baptisms in a single family. Others strictly refused the Half-Way Covenant, and this position was not without precedent. We need only recall the Salem church’s refusal to administer communion and baptism to Winthrop’s group upon their arrival. This hard line position mimicked the class-based social structure endorsed by Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity” within the spiritual ranks of Puritan congregations by distinguishing communicants from parish members. What distinguished the spiritual classes was not the possession of property and wealth but participation in baptism and communion.

There were ministers and laymen alike who thought the New England Way and its implications for the sacraments was hypocritical, and rejected the policy. At least one church, in Newbury, erected a “reformed English parish system where they admitted to baptism and the Lord’s Supper all but notorious sinners.”¹⁰ Presbyterian Dr. Robert Child challenged the New England Way in 1646, arguing for the admission of all godly men to the sacraments, and was imprisoned for it. Baptists participated in the dispute with a simple solution, “eliminate infant baptism.” Finally, a synod of Puritan ministers from Massachusetts and Connecticut was called by the Massachusetts General Court to address the question. The Connecticut delegation, perhaps sensing a power struggle with hard-line Massachusetts ministers, chose not to participate.

One product of this synod was “The Cambridge Platform” of 1648, which is noteworthy, if for no other reason, for how little it deals with the issue it was supposed to address. In fact, all the provisions for the baptism of children under the controversial Half-Way Covenant which were discussed by the synod were stricken from the final draft as a compromise necessary to produce agreement on the document. Instead of taking a position on baptism that would resolve the crisis, “The Cambridge Platform” promulgated it while making a rather dismissive gesture to those supporting the Half-Way Covenant by saying:

..If not regenerated, yet [children of the Half-Way Covenant] are in a more hopeful way of attaining regenerating grace, and all spiritual blessings, both of the covenant and seal; they are also under church watch, and consequently subject to reprehensions, admonitions and censures thereof, for their healing and amendment, as need shall require.¹¹

The strict New England Way ministers were not necessarily in the majority but they ran roughshod over those more sympathetic to the plight unfolding slowly before their eyes by condemning these sympathies as “innovation.”

Ironically, while “The Cambridge Platform” provided nothing substantive in a synodical position on The Half-Way Covenant, its preoccupation with matters of church polity unintentionally left the back door open for individual congregations to institute or extend the Half-Way Covenant anyway. “The Cambridge Platform” examined different aspects of congregational polity and purity, and declared the congregational model the only one worthy of the Church Militant in the age since Christ’s coming. It then praised the church as the assembly of the visible saints, provided for a church covenant among those visible saints, prescribed excommunication and the standards for membership, allowed for the election of church officers and the calling of pastors and teachers, but ultimately declared that the will of the congregation reigned supremely over all these offices and practices, and was second in authority only to the will of God. Since each congregation could make such decisions on its own, “The Cambridge Platform” was a kind of trojan horse that could be used for conveying all manner of invasive ideas into the heart of Puritan New England. Unwitting as this open back door was in “The Cambridge Platform,” the practice of congregational sovereignty over such matters as membership, and the seals of the covenant in baptism and communion, was already established before Winthrop’s party arrived, as their treatment by neighboring Salem brings to mind.

But, even Salem was not immune to the appeal of the Half-Way Covenant. Rev. John Higginson, who was called as minister at Salem in 1660, tested the waters in his congregation by announcing that “had he thought they would not accept their responsibility toward their children, he would never have accepted the ministry of the Salem church.”¹² With the Salem congregation’s acquiescence, Higginson baptized 433 persons over the next twelve years. In the decade prior to his ultimatum Salem had baptized a total of 156 persons. But few ministers were as daring as Solomon Stoddard,who offered open communion by 1690. Incidentally, Stoddard is also noteworthy as the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards, who succeeded him as minister in Northampton, Massachusetts.

The dissolution of The Standing Order did not occur because of “The Cambridge Platform.” The seeds had been sown long before and “The Cambridge Platform” gave nascent sects and movements latitude for justifying their drift away from the old New England Way orthodoxy toward a new Boston Brahmin orthodoxy. By the time of the Great Awakening and the rise of the New Lights ministers and theologians the back door was wide open for congregations outside of Boston to succumb to the “enthusiasm” of revivalism and Methodism, and for congregations within Boston to succumb to liberal temptations such as latitudinarianism and Unitarianism. The Standing Order, which exercised its implacable authority through the expulsion of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, the execution of the Quaker “Boston Martyrs,” the handling of John Eliot’s “Praying Indians” during King Philip’s War, and the Salem witch trials, would be unable to maintain its facade of unanimity while the fissures between and within congregations, latent since the arrival of the Arabella under the vision of Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity,” widened until it was no longer relevant.

Boston led the way in the dissolution of the Standing Order, although there was a distinctively different assault mounted by churches outside the city. There, in smaller New England towns like Northampton and Uxbridge, the Great Awakening sprang to life as something of a repudiation of the Half-Way Covenant as a means of reviving the church. Modern American Evangelicalism still bears the distinctive markings of righteousness based on works of “the Law,” a personal “born again” experience, and entertaining preaching and worship that spread throughout New England and on into the American South, thanks to itinerant preachers emulating the crowd pleasing techniques of George Whitefield.

Nothing so theatrical characterized the rise of Boston Brahmin orthodoxy, although there were many dramatic watershed events, among which can be cited the loss of Harvard College to Unitarian leadership. Founded in the wake of the Anne Hutchinson Antinomian controversy, Harvard College was established for the proper training of Puritan clergymen on New England soil. In the wake of Hutchinson’s trial, the stalwarts of the Standing Order determined that their Puritan congregationalism was vulnerable to schism brought about by heterodox interpretation of scripture and the appeal of charismatic leaders. What was needed was a more skillful, better equipped clergy, so the commonwealth founded New College for that purpose in 1636. Renamed in 1639 for its first major benefactor, Rev. John Harvard, who bequeathed his library and half his estate to the college, the first assault on this Puritan institution of higher learning came when its very first president, Henry Dunster, converted from Puritanism to become a Baptist. By the time of the American Revolution, Harvard College was the preferred educational institution for the majority of New England’s sons, but the number of students preparing for the ministry had been eclipsed by those studying law. Noteworthy among the latter group was John Adams. By the early 18th century, Harvard was considered too liberal by an influential group of alumni, including Rev. Increase Mather, who founded the Collegiate School, later named Yale College, in Connecticut, as a way of meeting the ongoing need for preparing clergymen in the New England tradition. By 1805, Harvard’s leadership was resolutely Unitarian and representative of the new Boston Brahmin orthodoxy.

Equally dramatic, though not as easily articulated, is the transfer of regard for moral authority from congregational ministers to members of the rising merchant class. As the Half-Way Covenant and other changes to church polity advanced, the insular inner circle of visible saints became surrounded by a growing number of parishioners. While the visible saints increasingly focused their attention inward, to their regard for the purity of the church, the rising merchant class were turning their attention outward to the blessings of commercial opportunity. While no less devout than the visible saints, the merchant class was also intent on making Boston more profitable. A bellwether of the rewards the merchant class enjoyed was Brattle Street Church, Boston’s fourth congregational church and the first to be built in thirty years. Brattle Street was built with merchant donations and sustained with merchant support. As a result, Brattle Street became Boston’s most exclusive church thanks to a method for financing the church’s business that much resembled how the members conducted theirs. Pews were purchased and their location in the church reflected the member’s prestige in the community. Similarly, Brattle Street operated under the direction of committees, led by parishioners, who exercised authority in cooperation with the Standing Order communicants. Since pew rents paid the bills, these wealthy parishioners carried great clout, even to the calling of ministers and the paying of their salaries. The financial power of these parishioners, the wealthy pew proprietors, extended to church doctrine as Brattle Street gradually became more liberal to reflect the refined tastes of its wealthy members. Brattle Street was perhaps the first Boston church to adopt Arminianism and reject the double-predestination of Calvinism. One would not select Brattle Street for fire and brimstone preaching as wealthy Bostonians were not paying top dollar for pew rental in order to be admonished for their depravity in front of their neighbors and the street riff-raff who may be populating the galleries of a Sunday morning.¹³

Brattle Street Church may have charted the new course but it was not alone on that drift into Boston Brahmin orthodoxy. And “drift” it was, rather than an outright revolt against the Standing Order. The new Boston Brahmin orthodoxy rather ignored the Standing Order, it simply didn’t recognize its authority, and by so doing it collected other wayfaring congregations that drifted with it. Historian Peter S. Field calls it more of a “humanitarian” than a theological change. Field quotes from Joseph Haroutunian’s Piety Versus Moralism: The Passing of New England Theology, “Boston was liberal before it became Unitarian, and its Unitarianism was primarily ethical and social.” This transition was not marked by the same fiery debates that attended the Half-Way Covenant controversy for decades under the Standing Order. Rather, it was a placid drift toward rationalism in religion, toward developing social sensibilities. The Boston Brahmin teaching was centered on enlightened ethical values over doctrinal purity, as the very term Brahmin from Hinduism refers to the exalted status of intellectual achievement.¹⁴

A new kind of preaching was needed from a new kind of minister. With money to spend, Boston churches became a beacon for up-and-coming intellectuals who had the learning and the personal charisma to hold their own in the pulpit before the monied classes. The new Brahmin minister was afforded more time for intellectual pursuits since their posh salaries eliminated the need for augmenting their income by tutoring school children, cultivating their own food, or raising chickens to provide for their family as they might have under the Standing Order. In fact, Brahmin ministers had time for literary pursuits, and many were widely published. Many became fixtures on the social circuit, with automatic entrée, by virtue of their position, to everything from gala society events to small, formal teas in the best of homes. They also served on the boards of hospitals and lobbied for the endowment of art institutions. They were important simply because their parishioners were important. Furthermore, bachelor Brahmin ministers were highly eligible candidates for marriage to daughters of the newly wealthy. In short, the social status of the Brahmin minister rose along with the status of their pew proprietors. The wealthy merchant class supplanted the inherited nobility of the Puritan founders as pillars of society. There was a parallel transfer of the basis for moral authority from the Standing Order minister as interpreter of scripture and keeper of the symbols of high culture to the Brahmin minister as the spokesman for the liberal sympathies of the wealthy merchant class with authority assumed by the minister’s association with the wealthy and powerful. The rich now wielded the symbols of high culture and became to Boston and New England what the de’Medici family had been to Renaissance Florence, Italy.

The Brahmin minister’s attitude is evident in the city’s dismissal of the so-called Great Awakening that was sweeping small New England towns like wildfire as merely so much anti-intellectual hysteria perpetrated by unscrupulous itinerants upon a largely illiterate and unsuspecting populace. “…It became evident that religious enthusiasm would wane as rapidly as it waxed. As a result, by the 1750s many [Boston] ministers concluded that the successive revivals had done much more harm than good.”¹⁵ It is doubtful that many had observed these revivals first-hand.

Gradually, the prominence of the church in community affairs was eclipsed by the prosperous and diverse population that grew the wealth that built the city that became, in the eyes of its wealthy classes, the “hub of the universe.” Although the transition was subtle and multifaceted, what happened and how it happened may be best summarized by an author neither American nor Puritan writing about an analogous transition from private piety to public power. In his “Letters Concerning the English Nation,” written in the early 1730s, the great French philosophe, Voltaire, describes his experiences observing and conversing with an English Quaker. Voltaire finds many things to admire about the Quaker and equally many things that perplexed him. At the end of his series of four letters titled “On the Quakers,” Voltaire makes a poignant observation suggesting the fate of the English Quakers, one with remarkable parallels to the Puritans in New England:

I am not able to guess what fate Quakerism may have in America, but I perceive it dwindles away daily in England. In all countries where liberty of conscience is allow’d, the establish’d religion will at last swallow up all the rest. Quakers are disqualified from being members of parliament; nor can they enjoy any post or preferment, because an oath must always be taken on these occasions, and they never swear. They are therefore reduc’d to the necessity of subsisting on traffick [trade]. Their children, whom the industry of their parents has enrich’d, are desirous of enjoying honours, of wearing buttons and ruffles; and quite asham’d of being call’d Quakers, they become converts to the Church of England, merely to be in the fashion.

As a Confessional Lutheran, I find Voltaire’s commentary eerily appropriate to the generations of Puritan offspring, how their half-way membership in Puritan congregations led to disenchantment with the faith of their fathers, how the wealth they acquired from their own industry did not gain them full membership into their parents’ church but did gain them entry to the temples of commerce, of education, of culture, of society, and of government which made their parents’ church unnecessary. However, Puritanism did not die. Quite the contrary, it gave birth to many, disparate religious movements either from its emphasis on personal piety as an outward sign of regeneration, or its self-identification under God’s law with the Mosaic covenant, or its insistence on a pure congregationalist polity. To demonstrate how disparate these Puritan progeny are, both the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association claim “The Cambridge Platform” as an historic foundational document.¹⁶ The end of Puritanism in America was but the birth of American Christianity.

1. Thomas H. O’Connor, Bibles, Brahmins, and Bosses (Boston: Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, 1991).
2. Darrett B. Rutman, Winthrop’s Boston (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1972).
3. The differences between people Winthrop cites are differences by station determined by birth, not the distribution of talents and ability among all people. The differences between creatures Winthrop cites should be seen as the differences between species, as between fish and birds, and not variety between individual birds or individual fishes. For example, the wealthy brought servants with them onto the Arbella, and once in New England their servants worked, but as a practice it would be below their station for noblemen to labor. Certainly, if a tradesman were accomplished and successful he could purchase more land and enjoy his wealth but members of the nobility could simply award themselves more land by virtue of their station. Consider how talents and gifts are distributed within a single modern Christian congregation. We certainly wouldn’t declare a newborn infant to be an ear or an eye in the body of Christ at birth.
4. Rutman.
5. Rutman.
6. Rutman.
7. Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1780. Article III of “A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
8. Peter S. Field, The Crisis of the Standing Order (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998)
9. Field.
10. Pope.
11. “The Cambridge Platform,” 1648. Chapter XII, Section 7.
12. Pope.
13. Field.
14. Field.
15. Field.
16. See www.uuworld.org and www.ucc.org for how these two organizations value “The Cambridge Platform.”

“It is with a heavy heart that I bring my latest update on Michael. We have learned that his cancer is too advanced and too aggressive to expect any sort of remission. Our oncologist estimates that with continued treatment Michael most likely has somewhere between six months and a year to live. This is not really a surprise to us, though it is certainly horrible news. From the very beginning, both of us have suspected that this would prove to be an extremely bad situation. I don’t know why; perhaps God was preparing us for the worst all along by giving us that intuition.”

Please continue to pray for our brother and his family.  On the right hand side of Imonk’s blog, Denise has posted her contact info for those who wish to donate to help them keep their insurance and pay their bills.

This news has hit us hard at NRP. We grieve and we pray….

Wittenberg Institute is now offering an MTh Degree that is a directed research option.  This is perfect for Pastors who wish to continue their study into some aspect of Reformation Theology. You will get to work in conjunction with one of the distinguished scholars of the Institute. The Research Methodologies class required for all students is June 28 through July 9 in Everett, Wash.

The M.Th. Research option is for the student that has a focused interest and the desire and drive to complete a guided research program. Wittenberg Institute connects students with scholars who provide direction with topic, significance, bibliographic sources, outline, reading, response and final submission and defense. This program is not intended to replace a course based degree program, rather to give another venue for students who have demonstrated competence in their field of study.

Current areas of interest to Wittenberg Institute thesis advisors include: Old/New Testament, Dogmatics, Homiletics, Catechetics, Historical Theology, Reformation History, Missiology, Apologetics and Ethics.

The candidate must submit a Master’s Thesis of 30,000 – 40,000 words (120 – 160 pages), which addresses some topic, subject, or problem in a field of theological inquiry as illustrated above and demonstrates a grasp of the literature and theological aspects required in the treatment of the chosen project. The Thesis should focus upon the required readings and research for the subject of study as determined by their advisor. The Thesis should be analytically reflective of the required reading and research and provide a “unique” perspective on the specific subject being evaluated. The paper should be adequately footnoted and include a comprehensive bibliography and should be suitable for submission to a scholarly publication. All academic work must be completed by March 1st of the intended year of graduation. Your oral defense will be scheduled upon submission of your Thesis and recommendation from your advisor.

Students are required to attend a 2-week course in Research Methodologies and may schedule independent study in areas related to their thesis topic.

2010 course in Research Methodologies taught by Dr. James Nestingen and Scott Keith 
June 28 – July 9 in Everett, WA

Program Requirements
Expected completion time for the research option 12 months, not to exceed 18 months. Students unable to complete this degree within this time period should not apply.

Wittenberg Institute will provide:

• Remote access to JSTOR and Corpus Reformatorum databases.
• In-Residence, two week course in Research Methodologies in Everett, WA.
• Connection to assigned advisor for duration of program.
• Printing and Binding of Thesis
• Selection of best papers to be included in annual bound journal of the institute.
• Faculty panel for public defense of thesis.

Student will provide:

• Books and personal materials required for personal research.
• Travel expenses for all required events

Advisors will provide assistance with:

• Bibliographic sources and research framework
• Clarifying of Thesis topic and description of significance
• Outline and Proofreading of Thesis Chapters
• Preparation of Oral Defense

Research Methodologies Course
This class will teach the techniques for gaining bibliographic ability over the literature and research material of theological subjects, as well as give attention to the planning, preparation, and writing of theses.

The object of the Research Methodologies class is for the student to understand the nature and purpose of research in the theological disciplines. The student should achieve understanding of research methodology applicable to a specific area of theological research study. The student should demonstrate utilization of correct bibliographic forms according to a selected style manual. The student should acquire sufficient knowledge of theological bibliography in various formats to complete appropriate research at the Master’s level Thesis. The student will employ correct thesis format and style according to the standards set by Wittenberg Institute.

Selected Reading List
The University of Chicago Press. The Chicago Manual of Style: The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers. 15th ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003. (Ref LB 2369 .C49x 2003)

Turabian, Kate L. A, Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. 7th ed. Revised by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory C. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller, Church History: An Introduction to Research, Reference Works, and Methods. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).

John Warwick Montgomery, The Writing of Research Papers in Theology (Canadian Institute for Law, Theology and Public Policy).

Admission Requirements
Interested students should complete the online application and include: quality writing sample, references, thesis proposal (description, significance, preliminary outline and bibliography). Applications will not be considered if incomplete. Final acceptance will depend on aligning one of our research advisors with your intended course of study. Although some applicants and proposals may be worthy, there is no guarantee it will match with our advisors interests. Wittenberg Institute has sole discretion over assignment of advisors.

Wittenberg Institute is committed to providing a quality research based M.Th. degree. This program falls outside normal budgeted expenses of the in-residence program and requires additional administrative costs.  To that end, students congregation is required to become a member of the Wittenberg Consortium with a minimum annual contribution of $5000. Wittenberg Institute is supported by this consortium and the benevolence will be applied toward providing continued education programs that meet the academic excellence of our faculty and students. Therefore, a letter of intent to join the consortium and donation to the Wittenberg Institute will be required before full acceptance into the program.M.Th.

Research Advisor List
Dr. Michael Albrecht –  Historical and Systematic Theology
Michael is pastor at St. James Lutheran Church in West St. Paul, MN and Editor of LOGIA Journal. Michael’s doctoral work was on the writings of Prof J.P. Koehler and the Wauwatosa Theology.

Dr. Adam Francisco – Missiology and Apologetics
Adam is Assistant Professor of Historical Theology at Concordia Seminary in Fr. Wayne, IN. Prior to joining the faculty in 2007 where he teaches Islamic studies in the PhD program as well as several graduate electives in Christian apologetics, he served as Assistant Professor of History at Concordia College–New York (2005–2007). Before that, he was the Albin Salton Fellow at University of London’s prestigious Warburg Institute (2004–2005). Dr. Francisco received his BA in Biblical Languages (2000) and MA in Reformation Theology (2001) from Concordia University (Irvine, California) and MSt (2003) and DPhil (2006) in Historical Theology and Christian-Muslim Relations from the University of Oxford.

Dr. Stephen Kennedy – Pastoral Theology and Ethics
Steve holds earned degrees from the University of Southern California (USC) (B.A. and Ph.D.) and Talbot Theological Seminary (M.Div.). Steve has taught at Trinity International Law School Santa Ana, CA; Northrise University Ndola, Zambia; Concordia University, Irvine, CA; Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA and the School of Business Administration, Georgetown University. Steve has also worked as a speechwriter, Policy Analyst and was a Congressional Fellow in Washington D.C.

Dr. Jeff Mallinson – Philosophy of Religion and Epistemology
Jeff serves as Academic Dean and Professor of Biblical Studies at Trinity Lutheran College in Everett, WA. He earned his undergraduate degree in religion from Concordia University, Irvine, and his doctorate from the University of Oxford, where his studies, with advisor Alister McGrath, focused on religious epistemology in Reformation thought.

Dr. Mark C. Mattes – Theology
Mark is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Grand View College, Des Moines, IA. He is author of The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology and is also coeditor of A More Radical Gospel: Essays on Eschatology, Authority, Atonement, and Ecumenism.  Mark is a highly sought after lecturer and the pre-eminent ELCA scholar in the area of Justification by Faith.

Dr. James A. Nestingen – Historical and Pastoral Theology
Jim is Professor of Church History Emeritus at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is a nationally recognized Luther scholar as well as a popular speaker and lecturer.  Nestingen is the author of numerous books and studies, including The Faith We Hold and co-editor of Sources and Contexts of the Book of Concord.

Dr. Rod Rosenbladt – Apologetics and Theology
Rod is a Professor of Theology at Concordia University, Irvine in Irvine, CA, and is also well-known among Lutheran, Reformed and Evangelical Christians as the co-host of the nationally syndicated radio program “The White Horse Inn”.

Dr. Stephen Turnbull – Bible and Preaching
Steve serves as the senior pastor at First Lutheran Church in White Bear Lake, Minnesota and as adjunct Professor of New Testament at Biblical Seminary in Hatfield, Pennsylvania.  He is a graduate of The College of Wooster (B.A.), Luther Seminary (M.Div.), and Duke University (Ph.D.).  Steve’s primary research and teaching interests are in the fields of Biblical Theology and Preaching.

Apparently, the audio player we’ve been using for non-podcast MP3s was somehow causing Internet Explorer (we tested in version 8) to crash and close.

Yikes!

We have replaced that player and all appears to be well now. If you had this problem and have not been able to access any page on our blog where the old player was present and your browser was shutting down, please accept our apologies.

We’re still going through old posts and replacing the old player in other places, but at least our front page and a portion of our “Freebies!” section are now updated.

If you have any other sort of problems, we take such things very seriously here and definitely pay attention to your comments. Please don’t hesitate to email us and let us know about your experience with our website, good or bad.

For those of you who were having problems accessing our blog, let us now invite you to listen to the sermons Pat recently posted and make sure you don’t miss the free MP3s available from the 2009 Apologetics Symposium. Truly, we can’t say enough great things about that presentation.

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)}

As many of you may already know, Michael Spencer, aka Internetmonk, a good friend of ours, has been diagnosed with cancer. He has ministered to and encouraged literally thousands of discouraged Christians. He has been a friend of New Reformation Press since almost the beginning of our endeavor, and we were his first commercial sponsors. He is a good man, and a solid brother in contending for the Gospel.

He recently posted an update for his readers outlining his situation.

He is unable to work, and his insurance is due to run out very soon. He still faces a lot of expensive treatments for his cancer.

To that end we would like to pass the virtual plate on his behalf. Neither Ted nor I can just stand by. NRP is rendering what help we can. If you are so inclined you can send checks or money orders to Michael and Denise directly.

Their address is: PO Box 313, Oneida, KY 40972

Even a little bit can make a difference. Our prayers and thoughts are with Michael and Denise during this tough time.

Isaiah 9:6

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

We here at New Reformation Press hope you and yours have a wonderful and joyful Christmas. We give thanks this day for the priceless gift we receive in the birth of God’s only Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ.

I apologize for the inconvenience. Please feel to once again peruse those products and listen to the audio samples.

Merry Christmas!

Pastor X approaches another member of his congregation, a man with a terminal illness that is less aggressive but just as deadly as cancer.  This man has a California Medical Marijuana card and legally purchases marijuana to help him cope with the effects of his disease and his medication.  Pastor X says “Elder ______ has cancer and is dying. It’s going to be ugly.”  The man quickly produces half a dozen cigarettes of medical strength marijuana and gives them to his Pastor.  When the Pastor next visits the Elder, he gives him the marijuana.

The preceding story is true, and I suspect happens more often than we might think in California and other parts of the country where medical marijuana is legal.

Another man, a personal friend of mine, has a constellation of illnesses that can leave him bedridden.  He is a devout and confessional Lutheran. He has a great job, a lovely wife and two great kids. He is involved in his congregation on several levels.  His physician had for years prescribed Marinol, a synthetic form of the active ingredient in marijuana, to help treat his illnesses.  Once California legalized medical marijuana, his doctor gave him a recommendation for a medical marijuana card, and he now buys marijuana from a legal dispensary.  It’s much cheaper than the Marinol and far more effective in treating his condition.

As more and more states legalize various forms of pot use, the church is going to increasingly face situations like I have just described.   California appears to be well on the way to full blown legalization.  One of the state assembly bills working its way through our state legislature is entitled AB420.  With a title like that, you can see how this is going to go. (420 is street slang for marijuana.)   Our state is broke, and our elected officials won’t be able to resist the avalanche of tax revenue and jobs legalization will bring.

What is, or what should be the church’s stance on these issues?  I have heard no public discussion in the blogosphere or anywhere else on how the church should deal with the subject.  Granted, it is a complicated and nuanced issue. Medical use and recreational use would seem to be two entirely different subjects.  Once the legal hurdle is done away with, will the church (at least some parts of the church) look at casual use the same way they look at the use of alcohol or tobacco? Is there merit in medicinal use in the eyes of the church?

It is my hope that our best theologians and thinkers will try to get out ahead of the curve and engage the subject in a wise and rigorously biblical way, or at least try to shape the conversation in a constructive way. This issue is running up on us quickly.  Some denominations will automatically be against any use at all. Others will be in favor of any and all use, just because.  I’d like to see the Lutherans engaging the issue. Pastors and theologians hammering out a biblical position, or maybe the CTCR doing a study and issuing a paper, even if it is only a preliminary study.

What do our readers think?  Here are a few questions to get the discussion started.

Do you think the use of marijuana for medical reasons has merit?

Is legalization helpful or harmful to our society as a whole?

If it is legal, is it right for Christians to work in a dispensary or otherwise be involved in the Medical Marijuana industry as a legitimate vocation?

Is Marijuana use sinful in a state that has legalized it?

What are some of the Scriptural passages that would be helpful in shaping our attitudes towards the whole issue?

You may be asking yourself what I personally think about the issue.  I have tried to be non-committal on the whole deal, but I do have several opinions on the subject.

About Pastor X; while he technically broke the law by appropriating marijuana legally obtained by one patient for use by another who was not permitted by law to receive it, I am not going to second guess a Pastor who is trying to help his friend and church member on his deathbed.  Here I would err on the side of mercy.

Likewise, I am not a doctor and would not insinuate my judgment into my friend’s health care decisions arrived at with the help of his doctor.  If the law of the land states that a medication is legal and his doctor prescribes it for him, in my book he is not guilty of sin in the matter.

I do have opinions on the subject of legalization, but they are an outgrowth of my political views, and both Ted and I make a conscious effort to keep our politics off this site in the interest of not placing stumbling blocks in front of the Gospel.  One of the main reasons for this post is to stir up theological discussion so that better minds than mine can shed some Biblical light on the subject and help me and others to have a more fully formed Christian view of the subject.

And no, I do not use marijuana, medical or otherwise, just in case you were wondering.

So, what do you think?