Congregationalists

Congregationalists are Protestants whose congregations govern themselves directly rather than submitting to the government of elected elders or appointed priests and bishops. Congregationalists reject the imposition of more than minimal restraints on a local church’s actions by higher ecclesiastical authorities or on an individual member’s beliefs by prescriptive creeds. Congregationalists have occasionally drafted descriptive creeds, including most notably the Savoy Declaration (1658), a counterpart to the Presbyterians’ Westminster Confession.

English Congregationalism drew its initial impetus from Robert Browne’s book A Treatise of Reformation without Tarrying for Anie (1582). Brown and other radicals organized independent underground congregations, with one in the town of Scrooby eventually coming under the leadership of Puritan cleric John Robinson. In 1608 Robinson and lay elder William Brewster oversaw their flock’s flight to the Netherlands; in 1620 Brewster and much of the congregation migrated again, planting Plymouth Colony in North America. Plymouth’s Pilgrims stressed their autonomy from the Church of England. Within a decade the Massachusetts Bay Colony had been established north of Plymouth by more moderate Puritans who denied any such autonomy. Nevertheless, Massachusetts Bay’s Puritans followed Plymouth’s Pilgrims in choosing Congregational church government. Migrants from Massachusetts carried Congregationalism with them as they settled the rest of New England.

In 1648 New England’s Congregational churches adopted the Cambridge Platform defining their common polity. Beginning in the latter part of the century, as these churches endured a prolonged period of perceived decline, their ministers responded by modifying that polity in order to give themselves greater leverage over both their lukewarm churches and their secularizing communities. The crisis of “declension” continued until the Great Awakening, when a surge of conversions brought fresh vitality to churches led by New Light clergy like Jonathan Edwards. At the same time, the Awakening’s excesses triggered resistance on the part of churches led by Old Light clergy like Charles Chauncy. Tensions between these two blocs anticipated Congregationalism’s eventual division into distinct Trinitarian and Unitarian denominations.

Further reading: Williston Walker, The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (New York: Scribner’s, 1893; reprint, Philadelphia-Pilgrim Press, 1960).

—George W. Harper