Half-Way Covenant
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The Half-Way Covenant was a form of partial church membership adopted by the
The Half-Way Covenant was proposed as a solution to this problem. It allowed baptized but unconverted parents to present their own children for baptism; however, they were denied the other privileges of church membership. The Half-Way Covenant was endorsed by an assembly of ministers in 1657 and a church synod in 1662. Nevertheless, it was highly controversial among Congregationalists with many conservatives being afraid it would lead to lower standards within the church. A number of Congregational churches split over the issue.
The Half-Way Covenant's adoption has been interpreted by some historians as signaling the decline of New England Puritanism and the ideal of the church as a body of exclusively converted believers. For other historians, it signaled a move away from
Name
The term Halfway Covenant was a derogatory label applied by opponents of the practice. The term used by supporters at the time was "large Congregationalism".[1]
Background
Beginning in the 1620s and 1630s,
The sharing of conversion narratives prior to admission was first practiced at the
As
By the 1650s and 1660s, the baptized children of this first generation had become adults themselves and were beginning to have children; however, many within this second generation had not experienced conversion. As a result, their children were denied infant baptism and entry into the covenant.[5] As this group increased, Congregationalists grew concerned that the church's influence over society would weaken unless these unconverted adults and their children were kept in the church.[8] It seemed that the Puritan ideal of a pure church of authentic converts was clashing with the equally important ideal of a society united in covenant with God.[9]
Proposal
As early as 1634, the church in Dorchester, Massachusetts, asked the advice of Boston's First Church concerning a church member's desire to have his grandchild baptized even though neither of his parents were full members. First Church recommended that this be allowed. The issue was brought up on other occasions from time to time. Thomas Hooker, founder of Connecticut, and John Davenport, a prominent minister and founder of New Haven Colony, believed that only children of full members should be baptized. George Phillips of Watertown, Massachusetts, however, believed that all descendants of converts belonged within the church.[10]
In the 1640s, a protest movement led by Robert Child over complaints that children were being "debarred from the seals of the covenant" led to the Cambridge Synod of 1646, which created the Cambridge Platform outlining Congregational church discipline. Initially, the Platform included language declaring that baptism was open to all descendants of converted church members who "cast not off the covenant of God by some scandalous and obstinate going on in sin". Nevertheless, this statement was not included in the final version of the Platform due to the opposition of important figures, such as Charles Chauncy who would later become president of Harvard College. Samuel Stone and John Cotton supported the more inclusive view.[11]
In 1650, Samuel Stone of
The provisions of the Half-Way Covenant were outlined and endorsed by a meeting of ministers initiated by the legislatures of Connecticut and Massachusetts. This ministerial assembly met in Boston on June 4, 1657.
These recommendations were controversial and met with strong opposition, inducing the Massachusetts General Court to call a synod of ministers and lay delegates to deliberate further on the question of who should be baptized. Like the 1657 assembly, the Synod of 1662 endorsed the Half-Way Covenant. Among the 70 members of the synod, the strongest advocate for the Half-Way Covenant was Jonathan Mitchell, pastor of Cambridge's First Parish, and the leader of the conservative party, President Chauncey.[16]
Under congregationalist polity, the decision to accept or reject the Half-Way Covenant belonged to each congregation. Some churches rejected it and maintained the original standard into the 1700s. Other churches went beyond the Half-Way Covenant, opening baptism to all infants whether or not their parents or grandparents had been baptized.[17]
Adoption
While the conservatives were outvoted in the synod, they continued to publicly protest, and both sides engaged in a
Critics argued that the Half-Way Covenant would end commitment to the Puritan ideal of a regenerate church membership, either by permanently dividing members into two classes (those with access to the Lord's Supper and those with only baptism) or by starting the slippery slope to giving the unconverted access to the Lord's Supper. Supporters argued that to deny baptism and inclusion in the covenant to the grandchildren of first generation members was in essence claiming that second-generation parents had forfeited their membership and "discovenanted themselves", despite for the most part being catechized churchgoers.[19] Supporters believed the Half-Way Covenant was a "middle way" between the extremes of either admitting the ungodly into the church or stripping unconverted adults of their membership in the baptismal covenant.[20] At least in this way, they argued, a larger number of people would be subject to the church's discipline and authority.[21]
By the 1660s, churches in Connecticut were divided between those who utilized the Half-Way Covenant, those who completely rejected it and those who allowed anyone to be a full member.[22] With the colony's clergy divided over the issue, the Connecticut legislature decided in 1669 that it would tolerate both inclusive and exclusive baptism practices. It also permitted churches divided over the issue to split.[23] Several churches split over the Half-Way Covenant's adoption, including churches at Hartford, Windsor and Stratford. One minister, Abraham Pierson of Branford, led his congregation to New Jersey to escape its influence.[24]
The churches of Massachusetts were slower to accept inclusive baptism policies.
Until 1676, opponents of the Half-Way Covenant in Massachusetts were successful at preventing its adoption in all major churches. That year marked the beginning of a long series of crises in Massachusetts, beginning with
As the Half-Way Covenant became widely adopted, it became typical for a New England congregation to have a group of regular churchgoers who were considered Christians by their behavior but who never professed conversion. Often, these half-way members outnumbered full members. One Massachusetts estimate from 1708 stated the ratio was four half-way members to each full member.[28]
Abandonment
The Half-Way Covenant continued to be practiced by three-fourths of New England's churches into the 1700s, but opposition continued from those wanting a return to the strict admission standards as well as those who wanted the removal of all barriers to church membership.[29] Northampton pastor Solomon Stoddard (1643–1729) attacked both the Half-Way practice and the more exclusive admission policy, writing that the doctrine of local church covenants "is wholly unscriptural, [it] is the reason that many among us are shut out of the church, to whom church privileges do belong."[30] Stoddard still believed that New England was a Christian nation and that it had a national covenant with God. The existence of such a covenant, however, required all citizens to partake of the Lord's Supper. Open communion was justified because Stoddard believed the sacrament was a "converting ordinance" that prepared people for conversion.[31] Stoddardeanism was an attempt to reach people with the gospel more effectively, but it did so, according to historian Mark Noll, by "abandoning the covenant as a unifying rationale".[32]
Historian
The Great Awakening left behind several religious factions in New England, and all of them had different views on the covenant. In this environment, the Half-Way system ceased to function as a source of religious and social cohesion. The
Puritan declension theory
Nineteenth-century Congregationalist ministers Leonard Bacon and Henry Martyn Dexter saw the Half-Way Covenant's adoption as the beginning of the decline of New England's churches that continued into the 1800s.[39] Some historians also identify the Half-Way Covenant with Puritan decline or declension. Historian Perry Miller identifies its adoption as the final step in "the transformation of Congregationalism from a religious Utopia to a legalized order" in which assurance of salvation became essentially a private matter and the "churches were pledged, in effect, not to pry into the genuineness of any religious emotions, but to be altogether satisfied with decorous semblances."[40]
Historian Sydney Ahlstrom writes that the covenant was "itself no proof of declension" but that it "documented the passing of churches composed solely of regenerate 'saints'."[41] Historian Francis Bremer writes that it weakened the unity of the Congregational churches and that the bitter fighting between ministers over its adoption led to a loss of respect for the Puritan clergy as a social class.[26]
Historian Robert G. Pope questioned the "myth of declension", writing that the process labeled decline was, in reality, the "maturation" of the Congregational churches away from
Historian Mark Noll writes that by keeping the rising generation officially within the church the Half-Way Covenant actually preserved New England's Puritan society, while also maintaining conversion as the standard for full church membership. Due to its widespread adoption, most New Englanders continued to be included within the covenant bonds linking individuals, churches and society until the First Great Awakening definitively marked the end of the Puritan era.[43]
See also
Notes
- ^ Winship 2018, p. 192.
- ^ Noll 2002, p. 39.
- ^ a b Scobey 1984, p. 5.
- ^ Youngs 1998, pp. 40–1.
- ^ a b Hall 2008, p. 145.
- ^ Bremer 1995, pp. 106–7.
- ^ Scobey 1984, p. 6.
- ^ Dunning 1894, pp. 171–73.
- ^ Noll 2002, p. 40.
- ^ Dunning 1894, p. 172.
- ^ Dunning 1894, pp. 173–74.
- ^ Dunning 1894, p. 176.
- ^ Dunning 1894, p. 177.
- ^ Scobey 1984, p. 9.
- ^ Miller 1933, p. 708.
- ^ Dunning 1894, p. 179.
- ^ Youngs 1998, p. 62.
- ^ Dunning 1894, p. 180.
- ^ Scobey 1984, p. 7.
- ^ a b Hall 2008, p. 146.
- ^ Scobey 1984, p. 8.
- ^ a b c Bremer 1995, p. 163.
- ^ Dunning 1894, p. 188.
- ^ Ahlstrom 2004, p. 159.
- ^ Dunning 1894, p. 187.
- ^ a b c Bremer 1995, p. 165.
- ^ Ross, Phillip (2010-07-27). "Reforming Synod of 1679-80". Pilgrim Platform. Retrieved 2024-03-08.
- ^ Hall 2008, p. 148.
- ^ Noll 2002, p. 43.
- ^ Noll 2002, p. 41.
- ^ Ahlstrom 2004, p. 162.
- ^ Noll 2002, p. 42.
- ^ Ahlstrom 2004, p. 287.
- ^ Noll 2002, pp. 45–46.
- ^ Noll 2002, p. 46.
- ^ Noll 2002, p. 48.
- ^ Ahlstrom 2004, p. 391.
- ^ Ahlstrom 2004, p. 392.
- ^ Pope 1970, p. 95.
- ^ Miller 1933, p. 703.
- ^ Ahlstrom 2004, p. 280.
- ^ Pope 1970, p. 108.
- ^ Noll 2002, pp. 40, 44.
References
- ISBN 0-385-11164-9.
- Bremer, Francis J. (1995). The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (rev ed.). ISBN 978-0-87451728-6.
- Dunning, Albert E. (1894). Congregationalists in America: A Popular History of Their Origin, Belief, Polity, Growth and Work. New York: J. A. Hill & Co.
- ISBN 978-1-13982782-9.
- JSTOR 359738.
- ISBN 0-19803441-5.
- Pope, Robert G. (Winter 1970). "New England versus the New England Mind: The Myth of Declension". JSTOR 3786237.
- Scobey, David M. (Jan 1984). "Revising the Errand: New England's Ways and the Puritan Sense of the Past". JSTOR 1919203.
- Winship, Michael P. (2018). Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-12628-0.
- Youngs, J. William T. (1998). The Congregationalists. Denominations in America. Vol. 4 (Student ed.). Westport, ISBN 978-0-27596441-2.
Further reading
Scholarly studies
- Cooper, James F. Jr. (1999). Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial Massachusetts. Religion in America. New York: ISBN 0195152875.
- Pope, Robert G. (1969). The Half-Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New England. ISBN 1-57910-955-1.
Primary sources
- Propositions Concerning the Subject of Baptism and Consociation of Churches. Boston, Massachusetts: Samuel Green for Hezekiah Usher. 1662. The recommendations of the Synod of 1662 begin on page 17 of the PDF document.
External links
- "Half-Way Covenant". U-S-History.com. Online Highways LLC. Retrieved June 25, 2018. Short overview of historical events.
- Lewis, Jone Johnson (April 4, 2017). "A History of the Half-Way Covenant: Inclusion of Puritan Children in Church and State". ThoughtCo. Dotdash. Retrieved June 25, 2018. A comprehensive explanation for people new to the material.
- "Half-Way Covenant". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica, inc. November 18, 2014. Retrieved June 25, 2018. Another, encyclopedia-style historical overview.