Revivalism and Separatism in New England: 1740-1800 REVIEW
C.C. Goen’s account of the 60 year period after the arrival of George Whitefield to the American colonies (1740) details the fascinating story of the “fractalization” of American Christianity [I invented that word I think]. It would be a mistake to infer that the years between the landing of settlers in Roanoke, Va and the arrival Pilgrims at Plymouth, Ma on the one hand and the arrival of George Whitefield on the other was a period of total religious bliss and harmony but one could argue that there was a general consensus that each New England town should have basically one church (unless it was too large to accommodate one church). When dissent arose, dissenters were banished from the parish or the colony before they could divide the assembly. If the group of dissenters was large enough, it could pack up lock, stock, and barrel, and move to some other place (like Thomas Hooker who took his church to Connecticut).
With the Whitefield revivals however, local churches began to split much to the consternation of the established clergy who had hoped that the swelling numbers of converts would all be delighted to become members and attend the churches that had failed to ever inspire them before Whitefield came to town and lit them up with a different fire. The heat from that revivalist fire briefly warmed the “Old Light” ministers and then began figuratively burning their churches down.
The revival-warmed congregants wanted churches that reflected the values that had inspired them to finally convert. They wanted the right to hear itinerant ministers who brought more in the way of entertainment. They wanted ministers who expected and worked for dramatic conversions. They wanted some emotional extravagance (“excitements” the revivalist Charles Finney would call them a hundred years later). They wanted ministers open to lay preaching (exhorters). They wanted ministers who could determine sheep and goats and they wanted churches free of goats. They wanted to hear people’s confessions of born-again experience. They wanted holy lives lived by high standards of purity and piety. They wanted less erudition and more electricity in their worship experiences. They wanted ministers who had been “called” in the tradition of the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road. They cared less about ministers with high GPA’s at Harvard and Yale. They wanted to be free to get revelations of their own. They wanted ministers who were not in the ministry for the salary. And they definitely did not want to pay in taxes for what they were not getting in their established churches.
This book details the story of how they eventually got what they wanted and in many cases, got more of what they wanted than they actually wanted. For ultimately, some of them wound up escaping the dead formalism of their “status quo” parishes only to wind up in the white hot fires of contentious bickering and Puritanical judgmentalism. Once you have established the right of secession, they discovered, there is no going back. Once you make passion and zeal the mark of divine appointment, you head down a road that leads to a good deal of quackery. Eventually, someone’s passion is going to manifest itself in some sort of hallucination (as may have happened with James Davenport in Norwich, Ct.).
It would be difficult for me to provide a full and thorough review of this book because it contains so much that is interesting to me. I will contain myself to a few interesting notes relative to my studies of the early religious history of Middletown:
First, one should realize that much of the revival excitement in the 1740’s was the consequence of the Half-Way Covenant that allowed many people to be half members without ever converting. Many young people had thus grown up as Christians without ever being told what that meant. When they were told (by ministers like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield) it terrified them to discover that they might not be Christians at all according to their minister’s understanding of the scriptures.
Secondly, I learned that the “Old Light” ministers attempted to use a tactic that had worked in the past to reign in the enthusiasm of the Separatists, namely civil coercion. Unfortunately, the demographic high tide was simply too much for their previously sufficient coercive sandbags. They experienced what Robert Bork would later say of the sixties, a “vertical invasion of barbarians.” In short, too many teenagers and adults acting like teenagers at once.
Third, I learned that there were a few key moments when the flood-tide went over the banks and refused to be contained. The revivals of Jonathan Edwards in Northampton and the surrounding region was one of them. The revivals of George Whitefield was a second (1740-). The Separation of the Church at Mansfield, Ct. (1745) was a third. The defection to the Baptists of Isaac Backus in Norwich was a fourth. The statement of Separatist belief by Ebenezer Frothingham (1750) was a fifth. The emigration of the entire Nuwent church to Bennington, Vt (1761) was a sixth. And the declaration of a new denomination (known as the Strict Congregationalist) in 1781 was a seventh. [All of these would have an impact on the founding of Middletown].
[Note to self: Where are the covenant and records of the Nuwent church that were brought to Bennington in 1761 and how many people in that church wound up in Middletown? It is interesting that the “stricter” part of that church relocated to Poultney in 1780 with their pastor, Ithimar Hibbard who also itinerated in Middletown for 20 years before the arrival of Henry Bigelow from Yale]
Fourth, I learned that many of the early Strict Congregationalists societies dissolved. Sometimes they did so because they continued to fractalize (my word). Sometimes, they proceeded along a logical road to the Baptist denominations where they were simply able to be consistent. “Gone to the Baptists” is a frequent entry in their record books Goen writes. Sometimes, they returned to their more stable and ordered churches when market pressures brought those churches into conformity with separatist demands. This may have been made possible when the Unitarian and Universalist elements in those original churches split off to create churches of their own (leaving the original churches free to find middle ground.
Fifth, I learned what I already knew from the records of the Strict churches of Middleton, Vt. Namely that “their [the Separatists] extreme concern that nothing be allowed to mar the purity of the fellowship in Christ led to a morbid preoccupation with the private life of each member.” I was particularly intrigued by the fact that the Caswell family of Middletown came from Mansfield, the Mecca of Separatist perfectionism. It makes sense that Jesse Caswell went further in that direction when he was allowed to by his removal from the culture as a missionary in Siam. It was also interesting to note that some proponents of perfectionism went so far as to declare that their original marital partners were not perfect for them and that they had an obligation to re-partner with the spouses God had wanted them to have from the beginning. Imagine.
Sixth, I learned that Joseph Spaulding, who gave Middletown Vermont its name, was from Middletown, Ct. a rare “one-church town” where THE Church was a Strict Congregational Church led by Ebenezer Frothingham, the author of the Strict Congregationalist’s most rational defense. (i.e. Spaulding would likely have been less of a wild-man than the Mansfielders but still a more demanding person than the town liberals). Interestingly, the Strict Congregational Church of Middletown Vermont was actually formed a few months after the denomination was created in 1781. On September 9 there was a meeting in Killingly Connecticut and the result of that meeting was the publishing of the Killingly Convention Sept 19, 1781. This Historical Narrative and Declaration marks the beginning of the Strict Congregational Convention of Connecticut. It makes total sense that the Congregational Church in Middletown aligned itself with that movement. I wonder if Joseph Spaulding was a member of Frothingham’s church in Ct?
Seventh, I learned that Nathaniel Wood’s attempt to declare himself the pastor of that Strict Congregational Church in Middletown was not without precedent. The churches of Norwich and Stonington, Ct. were riven with contentious claimants to spiritual leadership. James Davenport was perhaps the most famous. But he was not alone. Matthew Smith, Separate pastor in Mansfield and later Stonington later recorded that the tectonic shifts in religious order at the time brought to the surface many people who thought that they were called to the ministry of local churches. He wrote:
“The brethren, at a meeting, appointed for the purpose, having the impression that if it was the Lord’s will that they should have a minister, he would shew it to them, or reveal the man’s name, or the very man. Upon this, one of their number, in a vision or swoon, had a revelation that he himself was to be their minister: but the brethren, not having fellowship with him in that discovery, rejected his revelation; though he declared to me he knew it to be from heaven.”
Eighth, I learned that almost as soon as the new revivals began to stoke the fires of enthusiasm in people, the forces of reason and order began to close ranks against them. Ezra Stiles, for example, described the heyday of the ‘New Lights’ as a time when “multitudes were seriously, soberly, and solemnly out of their wits.”
Ninth, I learned that many Separates were decedents of the Mayflower Separates who were delighted to finally have an option to the Puritan Anglican established churches that had overwhelmed and tried to absorb them. This might explain why Jonathan Brewster, scion of the famous Pilgrim, William Brewster, was so protective of the Middletown Church for so many years after it was founded. I suspect that he may have found himself in a two front war against the enthusiast faction led by Nathaniel Woods and the Yale educated “old school” faction led by Henry Bigelow.
Tenth, I learned that the reason that Norwich was so contentious had to do with a number of factors. They had a rather old minister in Benjamin Lord. Perhaps more importantly, the region was so close to Rhode Island where so many dissenters had been driven in the previous hundred years. As the Rhode Island dissidents filtered into Eastern Connecticut, they inevitably brought with them their resentment of religious control and their fervent love of religious freedom. Ironically, when the dissenters packed up and moved to Vermont (or points West) this region became quite conservative.
Eleventh, I learned that the New Lights had their own preaching style. The author notes that James Davenport was the originator of the “Holy Whine” a hallmark of Separate preachers. One could actually “hear” the sound of a Separate itinerant preacher it is said. Someone referred to it as “the New Light tone.” Serious scholars were told not to “talk like a New Light.”
Twelfth, I learned that Sylvanus Haynes, though a Baptist, had been converted in the Baptist church in Leicester, Ma., a church that had been around for some time before the Whitefield revivals. Haynes would thus have been a Congregationalist growing up and would have been exposed to the New Light leaning works in the library of Thomas Prince but would have probably inherited the Congregationalist and Baptist distrust of emotionalism and over-enthusiasm. It is no surprise that he liked to preach with clear, organized, notes and that his sermons could be published because they would have been written (Many New Lights were suspicious of pastors who wrote out their sermons). I suspect that Ithimar Hibbard did not write his sermons and so I have never been able to find one.
All in all, this was a book worth the time and expense to get and read and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the early religious history of Vermont.
Question for Comment: How far back can you trace the ideas that "animate" your family of origin?
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