Video Transcript: Puritanism in America Part 1

And this is part one of the course "Religion in a Colonial Context" (1492 to 1789). We're going to talk about lecture one, Puritanism in America. Let's pray and then we'll get started.

Our gracious Lord, we stop at the beginning of this semester now and at the beginning of this course to give our thanks to You, not only for this course but for all of our courses, for all that we have to learn. We pray that You would be with us in these deliberations. We thank You for the men and the women who shaped American Christianity, this unique expression of the Christian faith, and we're grateful for them. We pray that we might learn from them what it means to be a Christian in our world, in our time, and to shape the church in our world, to shape the church and our culture. So, we are grateful and grateful to stand on their shoulders and to learn from them. We ask Your intervention in our class today, but also in the common life at Gordon College, our common life together throughout the day, throughout the weekend, that we may demonstrate grace in our own lives but also grace in the life of the community. We pray these things gladly in the Name of Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Okay, as we get going here, we're hoping we'll have a lot of questions. I mentioned the other day that my friend Ted Hildebrandt, my friend and colleague, Ted Hildebrandt, is taping this course, but we're going to try to totally ignore that if that's okay, Ted. That should not impede you from asking questions or impede me from roaming. This is kind of fixed where it is, so I don't think there's much we can do about this, but I do like to roam a bit, and so the taping won't be affected by that. As you ask questions and as we get started to get to know each other, would you just give me your name when you ask a question or make a comment or something? I’ve just got to start putting these names and faces together here for the course, and that's a way for you to learn each other's names as well.

So, we'll start with part one: Religion in the Colonial Context. So, lecture one: Puritanism in America. All right, Puritanism comes to these shores. I want to start talking about the colony in Jamestown, Virginia. The colony in Jamestown was founded in 1607. There may be some of you here from Virginia who are familiar with this place, but the colony in Jamestown was founded in 1607. It was the first permanent English settlement established in the New World. The colony at Jamestown was founded basically as a trading colony. It wasn't founded—it was founded to carry on the trade of the British Empire, basically. What happens, kind of a strange story with the colony of Jamestown, we start to lose the history of the colony at Jamestown, and we certainly don't seem to have a very clear religious history of the colony at Jamestown. So, the history at Jamestown becomes rather clouded. The Jamestown Colony that you see just a picture of, kind of an artist's imagination of it, gets actually lost in history. So, technically, Jamestown 1607 is really the first British colony, but that really doesn't affect us because it doesn't have a very strong, solid kind of religious base for the study of American Christianity. But we do want to mention the colony of Jamestown because it was important as a British kind of landing place in this new world, and it was important for carrying on trade in this new world early on, but then it gets lost in a bit of a mystery.

So, we go to number B in your outline. If the outline is helpful to you, please use it. If it's not, just don't worry about it at all. I'll be going by that outline, so we’ll go to number B. We'll have the Pilgrims come to America. The Pilgrims come to America. Now, the Pilgrims who come to Plymouth in America are—they have really two leaders, and we'll talk about those leaders in just a minute. Before we do, let me just mention about the Pilgrims because that's kind of what we call them. Sometimes, the Pilgrims in Plymouth—by the way, who has been to Plymouth? How many of you have been to Plymouth colonies and plantations? If you haven’t been to Plymouth, it's really a wonderful place to visit, and a wonderful place to see 17th-century life come to life when you go to Plymouth. It's a fascinating place.

But those who came to Plymouth from England, you can call them Puritans if you want to, but they weren't Puritans in the pure form, no pun intended. These people were Puritans, people who wanted to purify the Anglican Church from within, and we'll talk about that when we talk about more about the Puritans. But they wanted to purify the Anglican Church from within. They were people who stayed within the Anglican Church or tried to stay within the Anglican Church, but they received quite a bit of harassment and so forth. The Pilgrims, however, were Separatists. These were Independents or Separatists. These were people who had already separated out from the Anglican Church in England, and so they came to America to find a place for them to settle as Separatists or as Independents. So, if you want to call them Puritans, that's fine, but that would be kind of a loose word for these Pilgrims because they were already Independents. The Puritans in Boston didn’t happen to like these Independents, these Pilgrims, or these Separatists because the Puritans in Boston, that we'll talk about, felt that you needed to stay within the Anglican Church and purify the Anglican Church.

We'll see that the Pilgrims—the people we call the Pilgrims or the Separatists or the Independents—had one thing in common, however, with the Puritans in Boston. The one thing that they had in common was they felt that the church should be organized by the congregation. They didn't have the name yet; they eventually would have the name "Congregationalists," but they don’t have the name yet. But they believed that the congregation should be the one that’s kind of running the church. Well, as a matter of fact, so did the Puritans in Boston. They were still Anglicans, but in Boston, they felt that the Anglican Church should be run along congregational lines rather than hierarchical lines. So, the Puritans and the Pilgrims will have one thing in common, and that’s going to be important for later on in our outline.

There are two leaders coming into the Plymouth Colony. The first is a man by the name of William Brewster. By the way, remember we mentioned the other day in the syllabus, I give you the list of names in the syllabus that are important for the course, and so that list of names you'll find—most of the names I talk about, you'll find on that list. Let me also just say I give you the dates of the people that we talk about, not for memorization purposes. You don't have to know exactly when William Brewster lived and died, but I give you those dates just to be able to place them somewhere in history. So, just to be able to kind of focus when they were around and when they were active.

These were—this is William Brewster’s dates, a very, very important person. He was called "the Elder." William Brewster is kind of identified as the spiritual leader of the people who came over, these Puritans who came over in 1620. He’s identified as kind of the spiritual leader of them, so he’s an important name for these Pilgrims who land at Plymouth, an important leader for them. The other person who's important is William Bradford. Again, the dates of William Bradford. William Bradford was the kind of political leader of the group that came to Plymouth, and he helped to lay the political foundations for the people who landed at Plymouth.

He's, in a sense, William Bradford is the first governor of this small group. Now, this is a very small group, but William Bradford is the first governor of this group. This is a replica here of the Mayflower, of course, that they came over on. One of the things, by the way, when you go to Plymouth and you go onto the Mayflower, the replica of the Mayflower, think of what it was like to cross the seas in that world for two or three months. It was brutal. It was a brutal way to go, and think of 120 or 150 souls on that ship crossing the seas in that world, not knowing whether they were going... they had an idea of where they were going, of course, but that was pretty brutal. But Bradford becomes the kind of political leader.

Now, the thing that you hear about with William Brewster and William Bradford, the thing that you hear about is the Mayflower Compact. When these people shipped on board before they actually landed in Plymouth—by the way, if you haven't been to Plymouth and you go to see Plymouth Rock, don't expect a rock the size of this building, because that's what you kind of think of when you hear Plymouth Rock. It's about maybe this big or so. They finally had to put a gate around it because tourists felt it would be a good idea to chip off pieces of the rock to take home with them. So, the rock is not very big, but when they finally do land, they have this Mayflower Compact on board ship, led by William Bradford and signed by all the men on the ship. Then they go ahead and land.

The compact itself is very interesting, and by the way, this will all be on the PowerPoints, which are going to be on Blackboard, so you don't need to worry about copying things down. If there's a text, you'll be able to go over this stuff at your leisure. In the name of God, Amen, we whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the faith, etc., having undertaken for the glory of God, an advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, that’s what they were planning to do, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid, and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience, and witness thereof, we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11th of November or the 21st of November by another calendar in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James of England, France, and Ireland, 18th and of Scotland, the 54th, the year of our Lord 1620.

Now, the three things I'd like you just to take note of having undertaken: one, for the glory of God; two, the advancement of the Christian faith; and three, honor of our King and Country. So, take note of those three things in the Mayflower Compact. They were committed to those three things, which were those three ideals. The first two of which, of course, are religious ideals because they were here for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith, and thirdly, honor of our King and Country. These people are still British subjects; they still think of themselves as British subjects, of course. So, in honor of our King and Country, take note of those three things. This is part of the Mayflower Compact, and the Mayflower Compact preceded any other documents that we have in American history, in the broader American culture. It preceded the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence or anything like that, but there it is, the Mayflower Compact.

Notice, of course, that they are governing themselves for the general good of the colony. That’s why they’re setting up this Mayflower Compact. For us today, we use the term common good. We say, “Well, does it help toward the common good?” Well, they use virtually the same language. “We’re setting up laws and ordinances for the general good of the colony.” So, that is the Mayflower Compact. There is a religious element to the Mayflower Compact, and there is a political or civil element to it. The Mayflower Compact served both of those purposes, and the folks who landed at Plymouth did not see those purposes at odds with each other. They didn’t see those purposes as contradictory to each other; they saw those two purposes—religious purposes and civil purposes—as pretty much glued together. So, that gives us a sense of the Pilgrims coming to America, and of course, these two names—Brewster and Bradford.

Now, section C in your outline, following them, there was a tremendous Puritan immigration to America. The Puritan immigration, the larger Puritan immigration to America, began about 1628. This larger immigration, starting about 1628, became very, very important in shaping not only the religious culture of America but the civil culture as well. You can see in your outline, I’m going to mention four names here. First is John Cotton. This is a picture of John Cotton here. John Cotton (1584-1652) was an early important leader of Boston. You should associate John Cotton with Boston—not only as a religious leader but as a political leader as well, a civil leader of the people. So, Cotton is important. Boston is important when you think about John Cotton.

The second one I want to mention is Richard Mather. Richard Mather helped to set up a Puritan colony in a place called Dorchester. Now, today, we think of Dorchester as part of Boston. It’s just part of greater Boston, but of course, in the 1620s, 30s, and 40s, Boston was a very small community, and so Dorchester was a separate community from Boston. It was Richard Mather who helped to establish that Puritan community.

The third one is Thomas Hooker. Now, Thomas Hooker really went out into the wilderness. He founded a place called Hartford. I don’t know if any of you are from Hartford, Connecticut. There is a Thomas Hooker Church in Hartford, Connecticut. It’s not the original Puritan church, of course; it’s the fourth church on that site, but the whole Hooker family is buried behind that church. Now, in those days, of course, today you drive from here to Hartford in a couple of hours, but in those days, this was wilderness. You left the confines of Boston or Dorchester, and you’re going out into what we think of today as western Massachusetts and down into Connecticut. That was a real wilderness experience. So, we have to remember to take our thoughts back to the 17th century when we think of these things.

Then I want to mention John Winthrop. John Winthrop was very important and was chosen governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Boston. He was chosen governor 12 times, so that tells you how important John Winthrop was. Now, John Winthrop gives us a bit of a quotation here. John Winthrop said he wanted to build a “city upon a hill.” So, whenever you hear that expression “a city upon a hill,” we’re building a city upon a hill, whenever you hear that expression, you can thank John Winthrop. That is his understanding of Boston and the Massachusetts Bay Colony because, as far as he was concerned, we are going to be an example to the world of what it means to glorify God in our civic life—not only in our religious life but in our civic life, in our life together, in our common life, for the common good. So, John Winthrop was a very important person in setting up the image of what he and the others intended for Boston and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Another thing, we’re still under this Puritan immigration to America. We’ve mentioned some names of people. But having said that, let’s take note that most of these people we mentioned were Anglican priests. You can see John Cotton in his Anglican robes with the Bible in hand here. Most of the people we've mentioned are of the Anglican establishment. They are of the English establishment, and they are pretty staunch Puritans, of course. They want to stay within the Anglican Church; they want to purify the Anglican Church from within. They brought the Anglican Church over with them, but they want to purify the Anglican Church from within. But these people are basically Calvinists. Later on, in the lecture, we’ll discuss the critical contributions that the Puritans made. These people are basically Calvinists, and as Calvinists, they are Anglicans, of course, but they’re Calvinists in their theological orientation.

They believe that the Bible should be not only the source of our religious life, it's not only the rock, the kind of foundation of our religious life, but it is also the foundation, the rock, and of our church and how the church should be, should be organized, and how the church should be run. And by Church, we're talking, of course, about the Anglican church. So they were convinced that when you open the Bible, you'll see that the church is supposed to be run by the congregation. So the one place where they had a real discussion with the Anglican Church was over the word, over the church hierarchy. They did not like the hierarchy of the church; they did not like this kind of Archbishop, Bishops, you know, priests, lay people, and so forth. They did not like this hierarchical nature of the church, and they're going to run the Anglican churches here, but they're going to run them in a congregational kind of style. So they're going to—the congregation, a group of people, is who's going to kind of run the church. So now, that’s the one thing they had in common with the people down in Plymouth, because the people in Plymouth, as we've said, were also congregational. They also felt that they should run the church at that time as well.

Okay, let me just mention before we leave this kind of Puritan immigration to America, let me take the year 1640 as an example here. 1640. So we said that the Puritan immigration started 1628, and so now let's fast forward 12 years to 1640. It is estimated that by 1640, there are about 20,000 Puritans here in America. 1640. So within 12 years, about 20,000 Puritans came over. That's a lot of people for that day and for that age; that's a lot of people. And where did they go when they came? You're right in the midst—you are sitting in the middle of Puritan territory. So they went and founded colonies in places like Ipswich, Salem, and eventually Danvers and places like that, and of course, Boston. So we are living every day in Puritan World, which was founded by these people, basically. So this is where they came, and they had a tremendous impact, obviously, not only on religious life but on Civil Life as well.

So now, yes, yes, the Puritans were... right, right, yeah, that's a good question. These early Puritans that we're talking about here, were very devout Anglicans. They were priests in the Anglican Church, most of them, and they were very devout. But there were two places, really, where they disagreed with the Anglican Church. One place—and we haven't talked about the first one because it's not so germane to what we're talking about—but one place where they disagree with the Anglican Church was over liturgy. They felt that the Anglican Church was too Roman Catholic in its liturgy, in the liturgy of the worship service. This is too Roman Catholic; we don't find this as biblical. We want a simpler liturgy in the Christian church that conforms more to what we read in the Bible. So they wanted a simpler kind of liturgy.

And now the second one is the one we've talked about: they wanted to, in a sense, flatten the leadership of the Anglican Church and have the leadership be a congregational leadership. They wanted the congregation to make the decisions of church life. That didn't mean—we'll see this later too when we talk about their notion of vocation, because they had a very specific notion of vocation—that didn't mean that there still shouldn't be priests, and that there still shouldn't be priests who specifically are called by God to preach the gospel and to give communion and baptize and so forth. That didn't mean that, but it did mean in terms of organizing the church and in terms of kind of running the church, running the church in terms of finances, running the church in terms of who should be the ministers of the church, and so forth. They wanted a congregational style. So they are at odds with the Anglican Church for sure over those two issues, and partly the reason the Puritans came here in such great numbers is that King James and others really pretty much despised the Puritans, and there was a lot of harassment going on with the Puritans in England. So they came over here to find that freedom to be who they thought they should be as Anglicans.

Does that help a bit? Something else on where we are so far on this?

Okay, so we're still under Puritan immigration to America. So now let me just mention here—I'll come to this in just a minute, oops, sorry about that. Okay, let me just mention that eventually—and I'll mention this again further—but eventually in 1648, the Pilgrims in Plymouth and the Puritans in Boston and other places came together and they got over their differences with each other, their theological differences. They came together, and they formed what was called the Cambridge Platform. Now, the Cambridge Platform—there’s kind of a subtitle to this— the Cambridge Platform is the charter of American Congregationalism. So they decided in 1648 to form another kind of Christian church, and they're going to call it Congregationalism. So they come together, they form Congregationalism. So technically now, after 1648, these people who were Anglicans—now, of course, not all the Anglicans join this—but these people who were Anglicans now become a different denomination. They become Congregationalists. So they settle the differences, they form the charter of American Congregationalism, called the Cambridge Platform, and now they are a new denomination.

So this really, really, what that means is—in terms of denominational life, what that means is we’ve only seen two denominations so far in our course. I mean, we’re only— we’re only 45 minutes in to go, but anyways, we’ve seen two. We’ve seen Anglicanism, of course; people are Anglicans, and now we see a second denomination, Congregationalism. That's going to be very interesting in the American religious experience. Denominations are hard to keep track of. We’re going to kind of try to keep track of them. It becomes very difficult with the Baptist when you get about 99 different Baptist denominations and so forth. So it gets hard at times, but so far so good because we’ve only got two: we got the Anglicans, we got the Congregationals. So we’re up with the Cambridge Platform.

But... yes, no, the Pilgrims were separatists. They were what's called Independents, or they were separatists. So before they come over here, they’ve already—in England—they've already separated themselves from the Anglican Church. But they come over here as separatists, but they formed their life down in Plymouth as Congregationalists because they believe that’s the only way to form the church. But they don’t actually become—I would say maybe an identifiable denomination—until the Cambridge Platform. They're running the church in Plymouth as a Congregational Church, but they're already separatists, whereas the Puritans were not. The Puritans were still Anglicans when they come over here. That's the distinction between the two. But then they come together, and yeah, would this be sort of a process more—more...

It was the—by this time, by 1648, because they've lived together kind of long enough now, you know, 28 years or so because the Pilgrims came in 1620, and then starting a big flood in 1620 the Puritans, they... I think they just realized that we have so much in common with each other that we're ready to just put this behind us. And the one thing we really have in common is how to run the church, which is a pretty important issue in this new world. So I would say it was more kind of a natural evolution that happened by which they made this pronouncement. Yeah, and the animosity was behind them. In fact, one of the women who came over on the Mayflower and settled in Plymouth—one of those women—moved to Boston, and in one of our field trips, we're going to pass the site of her home and actually her burial place in Boston. So there was even a little bit of interaction here between them in terms of trade, and then some of them moving to Boston, but one woman in particular moved to Boston, married in Boston, had a family in Boston. So I think it's those kinds of things that finally said we're ready to do this together.

Yeah, anything else about this Puritanism coming to America under this leadership first of all, and then this thing that they have in common with the Pilgrims and they decide to form a really a denomination?

Now, there were some Puritans who settled south of Boston and who start to settle south of Boston, so they're getting closer and closer to Plymouth. So they're coming closer and closer geographically. But the four that I mentioned in terms of Puritan leadership are I think probably the four most important leaders in the Puritan community at this time. Right, the other thing is we haven’t yet, which we’ll talk about now, but we haven’t yet talked about reaction to the Puritans, and so with reaction to the Puritans, there will also be a move further down toward Cape Cod, but then even further down toward a colony called eventually called Rhode Island. So that—but that’s going to be a reactionary...

The Cambridge Platform is the break with the Anglican Church. This is a new denomination. One of the things that we're going to see in one of our trips to Boston—right opposite the State House, actually—is Congregational House. And the Congregational House is the kind of the headquarters for Congregationalism here in New England, but there are reliefs on the front of Congregational House, and one of them shows this Mayflower Compact and so forth. So, but now with the Cambridge Platform, this is no longer Anglicanism. This is Congregationalism. This is a new denomination.

It wasn’t geographical in England. Puritans were over the map geographically in England. There were a lot of Anglicans in England who were Puritans who wanted to purify the church in these couple of ways that we mention: the liturgy and church polity. So they weren’t geographically located in one place; they came over here from a lot of different geographical areas in England. But they did have this kind of difference with the church wherever they were located in England, and they did receive some fairly strong harassment from the government because King James I, for example, despised the Puritans. He hated the Puritans, and he saw them as really antagonistic to the church and so forth. A lot of church leaders really despised the Puritans. They felt that these Puritans were causing disruption in the church and so forth. But they weren’t geographically located in one place in England. They are in London, of course, which becomes the great battleground in a sense.

They did want freedom to form the church as they saw fit, which they weren’t allowed to have in England. I mean, they did want that, and they did want a city set on a hill. They did want to be able to form a colony that is exemplary for what it means to be Christian but also for what it means to live for the common good. They found those two things they weren’t finding in England. They weren’t experiencing that in England.

Something else about these Puritans? So when you go to Salem or Danvers or even here, but Ipswich especially, was a huge Puritan colony. When you go to those places, Boston of course, we'll see a lot of Puritan sites. In Boston, the home of a couple of these people we mentioned—their home is still in Boston. Not the house itself, of course, but a great monument to their homes in Boston. Unfortunately, people walk by it every day; they never notice. Wow, this is where John Cotton lived. They’re too busy; they don’t read the plaque. We’re going to read all the plaques, so that’s a good thing. We’re going to see the plaques.

Okay, anything else here about how we start to understand these Pilgrims and Puritans and Congregationalism?

Let me just go back for just a minute here.

Okay, now, if you look with me to number D in the outline, not everybody was happy with the Puritans. So, there were some people who were rightly so, perhaps, unhappy with the Puritans. There were reactions to the Puritans.

There were a lot of different reactions, kind of infighting and so forth, but there were three major reactions to the Puritans that we want to take note of. These are all really, really important reactions to the Puritans.

The first one was by a guy named Roger Williams, and here are the dates of Roger Williams, 1604-1683. To the right is kind of a sketch of Roger Williams. He was the first.

Now, in the next lecture, lecture number two, we’re going to start off by talking more about Roger Williams biographically, giving a little bit of a biographical sketch of Roger Williams. But all we need to know here is that Roger Williams had been a Puritan, so he knew what it was like to be a Puritan. But he found that when it came to religious freedom, the Puritans didn’t have a good grade on that.

An example of that, for example, in Boston—this would be true of the other Puritan colonies as well—you had to be a Congregationalist to vote. You had to be a member of the church. Of course, the voting was limited to men in that world as we know, but you had to be a Congregationalist, had to be a member of the church.

Roger Williams felt, “Boy, I’m feeling a little uncomfortable here in Boston because I don’t just believe in religious toleration. I don’t just believe that you should tolerate other religious views; I think you should allow freedom for other religious views.” So Roger Williams, unhappy with the Puritans, and they unhappy with him when he started espousing this kind of thing, Roger Williams left Boston and went south and founded Rhode Island and named his city Providence.

Now, we’ll talk a little more about that when we get to our next lecture, but he was one of the first reactions to the Puritans, and his reaction was so strong that he actually formed another colony in reaction to the Puritans. So that’s the first reaction.

The second reaction was George Fox. Here are his dates, and we are actually going to lecture more on George Fox later and give you a little more historical data on him.

But George Fox—there are the dates of George Fox—there’s a picture of George Fox. George Fox founded a group of people called the Quakers. And we’ll talk a lot about the Quakers, so we don’t have to worry about them right here and now, but here, sufficient to say that the Quakers were a break-off group from the Anglican Church in England. So they were a group that had already broken off. They’re also a separatist group in England already.

The Quakers started arriving in Boston, and the Puritans were very unhappy with these people. Now, they’re not just unhappy with them because they broke off from the church; they are unhappy with them theologically. They had a lot of theological differences with the Quakers, and we’ll talk about those theological differences when we lecture on the Quakers specifically on George Fox and the Quakers.

So they were so unhappy with the Quakers, as a matter of fact, that the first four Quakers—four of the first Quakers who came to America, including Mary Dyer—here’s a statue of Mary Dyer. We’ll see her statue at the State House when we walk by her statue.

The Puritans decided the way to get rid of these Quakers was to hang them on Boston Common. So Mary Dyer was one of the first to be hanged on Boston Common.

The Quakers were a people of peace, a people of Shalom. They believed in peace; they did not believe in warfare. They lived peaceable lives, but the Puritans started to hang the Quakers on Boston Common. You need to remember, when we walk across Boston Common, that Boston Common was a hanging ground right up until the 19th century. I'm not sure when the last people were hanged on the Boston Common, but it was a hanging ground. People would come and see these Quakers being hanged. Not a good thing, you know, to be hanged.

The Quakers were a real reaction to the Puritans, and they started to hang them. So, the Quakers said, "Oh, we’ve got to get out of here. Where are we going to go?" Let's go to Rhode Island and join Roger Williams in Rhode Island. We'll talk about that later.

The third reaction was a reaction from one of the most important women in American Christian history, and her name was Anne Hutchinson. Anne Hutchinson lived in the Boston community, no doubt about that. Anne Hutchinson did two things to cause the Puritans to be very, very upset with her. Let me mention the two things that Anne Hutchinson did.

Number one: Anne Hutchinson started to lead in her own home. She started to lead theological discussions and Bible studies, not just with women, but with men in her home. This really threatened the social norms of Puritan society because women do not teach theology. Women do not lead Bible studies. Women do not talk about theology. That’s the place for men. That is not the place for women. She was breaking all kinds of social norms and boundaries in the community, and they were very threatened by that. So, she was a threat here, number one.

Number two: The second place she was a threat to them is because she started to talk a lot about the grace of God rather than about predestination. The Puritans believed in predestination. We’ll talk about that when we get to their theology, but she started to talk a lot about the grace of God rather than predestination and the good grace of God and maybe even, dare we say, the grace of God that comes to every person. This grace of God and so this kind of antinomian discussions that she was having in her home, the Puritans found very threatening. They brought her to trial. This is kind of an artist’s rendition of what the trial of Anne Hutchinson might have been.

They brought Anne Hutchinson to trial, and Anne Hutchinson was excommunicated from the Boston community. So, where was Anne Hutchinson going to go? Where shall I go and be free as a woman to speak and be free to speak my theological ideas? What I need is freedom. Well, I’m going to go and join Roger Williams down in Rhode Island. Of course, that becomes the place of refuge for disenfranchised people in the Boston community.

Anne Hutchinson is the third kind of reaction, the third real pushback to the Puritans and to the way they ran things, and even a beginning bit of a pushback to Puritan theology. So, Roger Williams is first, the Quakers are second, and Anne Hutchinson is third. These are three pretty major ways of getting at the Puritans and so forth.

Any questions about these three? As I mentioned with the first two, with Roger Williams and with the Quakers, we’ll be talking a lot more about them in the course. So, right here I mention them just in their adversarial position to the Puritans, but we’ll be talking a lot about them.

Mary Dyer was an absolute total heretic, and you have to hang heretics, of course, because heretics will eventually unglue the social order completely. The reason you hang heretics is to maintain the social order. Anne Hutchinson, however, was seen as a person who had strange theological ideas, but some of them were discussable. She wasn’t seen as the outright heretic that Mary Dyer was. So, hanging was used to maintain the social order with Mary Dyer, but Hutchinson was seen differently. We still had to maintain the social order, but we wouldn’t hang her because she was trying to figure out theology. However, we had to get rid of her, so we threw her out, and she found refuge in Rhode Island.

Something else about the reaction of these people: Some of you have sat with me in courses before, and sometimes we get writing, so I like to give you a five-second break. Take a five-second break, in fact. Usually, on Fridays, I give you a ten-second break, but because we're just starting the course, I won’t do that today. Just take a five-second break to stretch and figure out your life and what you’re doing in life and everything. Who needs that attendance sheet? Does anyone need the attendance sheet? Who has the attendance sheet? Where did it land up? Does anyone else need this? This way we’ll get a sense of who’s still with us and if anybody has added the course. Great, so we’ll get this kind of straightened out. Okay, a five-second break today, but a ten-second break most Fridays. So, we’re rejoicing in that.

Yeah, go ahead, and we don’t meet on Monday. Remember, you’ve got a Monday holiday, so there’s no class on Monday. Next week is going to be a short week, I mean Wednesday and Friday, and then the week’s over. So, a short week next week.

Oh, no problem. You’re welcome to do whatever you want with that course.

Okay, bless your hearts. Are you ready for the next section? Now we need to talk about the decline of Puritanism.

In order to talk about the decline of Puritanism, let’s look at the second word on the halfway covenant and then let’s look at the two questions I have here in terms of the decline of Puritanism. The decline of Puritanism is really demonstrated by what’s called the halfway covenant. The halfway covenant was developed in Congregationalism. Remember, these people are already Congregationalists. The halfway covenant is developed within Congregationalism between 1657 and 1662.

The halfway covenant had a lot of rules or a lot of things that it talked about. But the halfway covenant was an allowance that you could be a member of the church if you were a good, moral person in the community. So, if you were a good, moral person, an ethical person, you could be a member of the church. We’re going to allow you to be a member of this covenant. That would not have been true with the early Puritans, because in the early Puritan world, you were a member of the church only if you were a son or daughter of Christ by faith. If you could demonstrate or articulate in your life that you’re a child of God by faith, that you believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God by faith and that you're his child, then you became a member of the church. If you could give that kind of faith commitment, the halfway covenant allows you to become a member of the church if you’re a good person, if you’re a moral person, if you're an ethical person. You don’t have to give any kind of articulate, clear conviction that you’re a child of Christ by faith, belief in Christ, and so forth.

The halfway covenant also opened up the possibility of people being baptized in the church whose parents were not baptized. So, the halfway covenant allowed for the baptism of children in the church whose parents were not Christians. The halfway covenant also allowed for this, which meant people were coming into the church without a clear kind of heritage of being reared in the Christian church as children.

The halfway covenant was really a covenant that allowed a lot of people into the church who formerly would not have been allowed to be members of the church. But it demonstrated, oh, and also I should say, with the halfway covenant, anybody could take communion. You didn’t have to be a believer necessarily to take communion. Communion was open to everybody. Anybody who’s in the church service, when the call comes for communion, anybody can come forward and take communion. You don’t have to be a member of the church, which in the old days, being a member of the church meant that you had given a profession of faith in Christ to become a member of the church. But now, you didn’t have to be a member of the church. So, it kind of opened up the church to all kinds of membership that formerly would not have been allowed. This is called the halfway covenant, and for a lot of people, it demonstrates a diminishing of what the church is all about, according to the Puritans.

So, the halfway covenant becomes very, very problematic as a sign of the decline of Puritanism.

Now, with this decline of Puritanism, there are two questions to ask. Which comes first: lack of religious zeal or the increase of wealth?

Two things happened with the second, third, and fourth generations of Puritans. The first thing that happened is that they became extremely wealthy. Why? Because part of the Puritan mentality is you serve God by your vocation in this life, and you are very prudent with the money that you make. You do not spend it on yourself; you pour that money back into your business and pour it into the church. So that’s the way you serve God. But the second, third, and fourth generations felt, “Oh, maybe I should spend a little of this money on myself.” So this increase of wealth, and if you go to Salem, and if you go on some of the streets in Salem, they’re going to point out some of those beautiful homes. Chestnut Street, I think, is one of them in Salem. They’re going to point out some of those beautiful homes in Salem, which are massive houses, beautiful structures. These are Puritan homes, but they are fourth, fifth, and sixth-generation Puritan homes. The early Puritans never would have built a home like that for themselves.

There’s this increase in wealth, and along with that comes this lack of religious zeal. By the time you get to the second, third, and fourth generations of Puritans, you do not have the religious zeal of the first generation or maybe the second generation. You’ve lost that. You are not interested in evangelism. You’re not interested in bringing people into the kingdom of God. You’re not interested in discipling people.

So, this lack of religious zeal that was formed by the Puritans out of the Bible—you found that happening starting in maybe the third or fourth generation. These two things happened, but we don’t know which came first. So, was it that they lacked the religious zeal that they decided, “I’m going to spend money on myself,” or was it that they were spending so much money on themselves that they became very self-absorbed and therefore didn’t have the religious zeal of their forefathers and foremothers? I don’t know. It’s the chicken or the egg: which came first? Who knows? But whatever happened, there was a radical decline within Puritanism by the time you get 50 years out, 80 years out, 100 years out. And when you have a decline in religious life like that, something has to take its place. So, we’re going to be interested to see what takes its place.

Okay, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you on Wednesday and Friday next week for a short week. Everybody’s got syllabi, and everybody’s got the writing research papers. Everybody’s got the Finney article. So, we’re ready to go. We’re set.

This is Dr Roger Green in his teaching on American Christianity. This is session number one “Puritanism in America”.