The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2
I. Tremendous Shift From Theocratic Puritanism to Advent Expectancy
The Separatist Pilgrim Fathers, holding to their Calvinist faith, fled from England with the purpose of establishing their own form of congregational churches in Holland. But finding conditions there unfavorable, in time they migrated to New England. Such were the Mayflower Pilgrims. However, several Puritan colonies were likewise established in the New World. The Massachusetts Bay group in particular proceeded to establish a theocracy, with all that that involved, and citizenship was dependent upon church fellowship. CFF2 266.2
However, shortly thereafter Providence was founded, in 1636, by the Separatist Roger Williams, whose opposition to theocratic government so irritated the Massachusetts authorities that his banishment was decreed. So it was that the Rhode Island colony came to be established, affording liberty of conscience and offering refuge for the persecuted minorities of all groups. CFF2 266.3
1. INVOLVEMENTS OF THE PURITAN THEOCRACY
The Puritans had fled from Old World persecution that they might worship God in their own way. But they no sooner found asylum for themselves than they began to oppress those who differed with them. In establishing their Puritan theocracy they took the Bible as their civil code, with civil rights contingent upon profession of the Puritan faith. And the Puritans, it should be added, were the chief theologians of seventeenth-century Colonial days—with heavy emphasis on the sovereignty of God and the arbitrary dictums of divine predestination. CFF2 267.1
The Massachusetts Bay colonists were seeking to purify the Anglican faith and to displace its heavy ritualism. They were unfriendly to the Separatists. Rigidly Calvinistic, the Puritans sought to establish in the New World the Genevan discipline, with its stern intolerance. Moreover, the Puritans regarded themselves as the appointed custodians of righteousness, with power centralized in the hands of the clergy. Because of the bearing of their theocratic concept on our quest, we repeat that under it God was the lawgiver, the Bible the statute book, and the minister the interpreter of the divine law—with dissenters suppressed. Fortunately, there was Connecticut for the Congregationalists, Rhode Island for the Separatists, and Maine for the individualists. CFF2 267.2
Under the formulas of those rugged days religion was accounted the chief thing. The state was considered really a part of the church, and politics a department of theology, with citizenship restricted to church members. Thought was often regimented and expression circumscribed. Thus with Puritanism came intolerance, and persecution inevitably followed. The power of the Colonial clergy was profound, marked deference being paid to them. Ministers of religion were the chief advisers of state. And the pulpits were high and remote from the congregation, such position typifying the elevated place assumed by the sacred office. CFF2 267.3
2. RHODE ISLAND BECOMES HAVEN FOR SOUL FREEDOM
It was in this setting that Roger Williams (d. 1683), provocative antagonist of Puritanism and apostle of religious liberty, became the incarnation of individualism. He stood for the sanctity of the human conscience. Because of controversy with Massachusetts administrators over theocratic pressures, disregard of conscience, and the synodical government of the Congregational churches, he was banished, fleeing to Rhode Island to develop a colony based on the platform of soul freedom and liberty of conscience. Providence thus became an asylum for the oppressed of all creeds, or none—a “shelter to persons distressed for conscience.” 1 Meanwhile, in Massachusetts persecution was visited on dissenters, and stripes were frequent. The witchcraft trials were a case in point, with the climax reached at Salem. But all this led to a reaction. The old order was destined to pass. So much for the seventeenth century. CFF2 268.1
3. ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND BILL OF RIGHTS
With the eighteenth century came a changing religious outlook and attitude. The groundwork of religious liberty was established, and the gates of the colonies were gradually opened to adherents of the religious faiths of the Old World—Catholics, Separatists, Puritans, Quakers, Presbyterians, and Baptists from Britain, as well as Lutherans, Dunkers, Moravians, Mennonites, Huguenots, and Salzburgers from the Continent. All found sanctuary in the New World. CFF2 268.2
The traditional union of church and state disintegrated under the impact of this revolutionary philosophy of individual freedom of personal rights and beliefs. The experiment of a theocratic Bible commonwealth had been weighed and found wanting. The influence of the clergy in civil matters was consequently weakened and increasingly restricted. And the Declaration of Independence of 1776, and the Constitution, with its Bill of Rights, inaugurated a new era. CFF2 268.3
4. RELIGIOUS REVIVALS ENTER THE PICTURE
While the intellectual leadership of the clergy remained high in the eighteenth century, nevertheless religion was at low ebb in the opening decades. The original Puritan fervor had passed, and Arminianism, Deism, and Rationalism made their inroads. The extended religious revival movement had reached its climax in the Great Awakening of 1740. Following certain revivalist pathfinders came Jonathan Edwards (to be noted soon), most conspicuous figure of his generation, but preaching an extreme predestinationism and setting forth God as a Being of wrath, with man as “utterly helpless in his moral strivings.” 2 His preaching terrified the people. Samuel Hopkins (d. 1802) took the same positions, along with Edwards, whose pupil he was. 3 CFF2 269.1
On the other hand, Charles Chauncy (d. 1787), of Boston, cold and prosaic, was the principal critic of the revival. Coolly intellectual, he gravitated into Universalism (see pages 277, 278). Nevertheless, some thirty thousand or forty thousand members were added through the revivals. One hundred and fifty new Congregational churches were formed between 1740 and 1760, with marked increases among the Presbyterians, Separatists, and Baptists. CFF2 269.2
5. MULTIPLE SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY PRINCIPLES
The principles of religious liberty were derived from many sources—Quakers, Baptists, Nonconformists, Dunkers, and to some degree from Anglicans, Lutherans, and the Reformed. Then there were also the religiously indifferent, embracing such leaders as Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin. Philosopher John Locke made a marked impress. And Voltaire’s views on religion found acceptance among many American liberals. CFF2 269.3
Thus the political and religious liberation of eighteenth-century France and England exerted a weighty influence in America. And with the coming of the American Revolution the long struggle for religious freedom and separation of church and state was virtually won, and the principle of soul freedom established. CFF2 270.1
6. RESURGENCE OF ESCHATOLOGY BEGINS UNDER SPALDING
But there were yet other factors. For example, there was JOSHUA SPALDING (1760-1825), luminous “day-star” of the returning premillennial hope, as he was aptly called. He was a student of theology under Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Hopkins, both postmillennialists, but he broke with their views on the millennium. He was pastor of the Tabernacle Church at Salem. Earnest and studious and a “good reasoner,” he was the cause of revivals of a different sort that sprang up wherever he preached. His notable book Sentiments Concerning the Coming and Kingdom of Christ (1796) was staunchly premillennialist, and exerted a far-reaching influence. CFF2 270.2
Comprising nine lectures, the book was in sharp conflict in an eschatological viewpoint with that of his teacher, Samuel Hopkins. He had reverted to the Early Church positions. The chapters concerning “The Coming of Christ,” “The Last Trump,” “The First Resurrection,” and “The New Heavens and New Earth” were of particular significance. The millennium will not occur, he averred, until after the glorious second advent of Christ. 4 This will bring the redemption of God’s people on the one hand and the destruction of the wicked on the other. 5 But that was incipient Conditionalism, soon to break out into the open. CFF2 270.3
Spalding contended that the final events were drawing near, when the saints would be garnered unto Christ at the sound of the last trump. 6 The great “Day of the Lord” was drawing near, when He would consume the wicked. And all this would precede the setting up of the millennial kingdom. Then, following the destruction of the old world, would come the new earth and the New Jerusalem, wherein will be no weakness, error, sin, or death. 7 The New Jerusalem would come down from God out of Heaven. 8 The first resurrection and the New Jerusalem were tied together by Spalding. Such was his ringing testimony just as the eighteenth century was closing. CFF2 270.4
7. JOSEPH LATHROP EMPHASIZES “TIME OF THE END.”
There was also a growing eschatological emphasis upon the “time of the end” by such as Congregationalist Joseph Lathrop (d. 1820), in The Prophecy of Daniel, Relating to the Time of the End (1811). CFF2 271.1
A new day was dawning. It was a vibrant period, a transition hour, leading into a tremendous awakening on the impending return of Christ as the resurrection and the life, about to break forth both in the Old World and in the New. 9 The next developments were inevitable. CFF2 271.2
But we must go back, briefly, to Edwards and Hopkins. CFF2 271.3