Half-Way Covenant
The Half-Way Covenant was a form of partial church membership adopted by the Congregational churches of colonial New England in the 1660s. The Puritan-controlled Congregational churches required evidence of a personal conversion experience before granting church membership and the right to have one's children baptized. Conversion experiences were less common among second-generation colonists, and this became an issue when these unconverted adults had children of their own who were ineligible for baptism.
"Half-Way" redirects here. For other uses, see Halfway (disambiguation).
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 sectarianism. The Half-Way Covenant also opened the door to further divisions among Congregationalists concerning the nature of the sacraments and the necessity of conversion. Liberal Congregational churches extended church membership to all professing Christians, and in time many of these churches became Unitarian. The revivalism unleashed by the First Great Awakening was in part a reaction against the Half-Way Covenant.
Abandonment[edit]
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 Sydney E. Ahlstrom writes that during the First Great Awakening (1734–1745), "The ideal of a regenerate [church] membership was renewed, while Stoddardeanism and the Half-Way Covenant were called into question."[33] Jonathan Edwards, Stoddard's grandson, was influential in undermining both Stoddardeanism and the Half-Way Covenant, but he also attacked the very idea of a national covenant. Edwards believed there was only one covenant between God and man—the covenant of grace. This covenant was an internal covenant, taking place in the heart. Infant baptism and the Lord's Supper were covenant privileges available only to "visible and professing saints".[34] Opponents of the Awakening saw Edwards' views as a threat to family well-being and the social order, which they believed were promoted by the Half-Way system.[35]
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 New Light followers of Edwards would continue to insist that the church be a body of regenerate saints.[36] The liberal, Arminian Congregationalists who dominated the churches in Boston and on the East Coast rejected the necessity of any specific conversion experience and would come to believe that the Lord's Supper was a memorial rather than a means of grace or a converting ordinance. As a result, they believed that distinguishing between full members and half-way members was "undemocratic, illiberal, and anachronistic".[37] These liberal currents would eventually lead to beliefs in Unitarianism and universal salvation and the creation of a distinct American Unitarian denomination in the 19th century.[38]
Puritan declension theory[edit]
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 sectarianism.[42] Pope and Edmund Morgan found that many church members were very scrupulous in Massachusetts. While second-generation colonists were having conversion experiences similar to those of their parents, the second generation often doubted the validity of their own experiences. Pope and Morgan theorize that it was scrupulosity rather than impiety that led to the decline in church membership.[22]
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]