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1. The Puritan Half-Way Covenant - Question of the month Q. Hello. I am a teacher of Advanced Placement United States History. Several of my students have challenged a question that was on a recent test on colonial America. The question, which originally appeared on the 1988 College Board exam, reads as follows: The Half-Way Covenant provided for which of the following?
The issue seems to be the wording of choice A, the correct answer. Our textbook (The American Pageant, Bailey and Kennedy, 10th ed., p. 74) describes the Half-Way Covenant as "offering partial membership rights to people not yet converted." Some of my students did not know where baptism fit into this situation. Were those persons who were granted partial membership under the Half-Way Covenant baptized already or only afterwards? Were all members of the church baptized? I think what my students are asking is "how can a Puritan be baptized if he/she is unconverted?" Their interpretation is that a conversion must precede a baptism. Our textbook also states that following the Half-Way Covenant women made up a larger proportion of the congregations. This led several of my students to choose answer "C." I would appreciate any comments or clarification that you could bring to this matter. (I will note that in 1988 only 24% of the students taking the College Board exam answered this particular question correctly.) My interpretation is that all members of the Puritan church were in fact baptized and only the elect or "visible saints" experienced overt religious conversions. Additionally, although women may have made up a greater percentage of church congregations, they did not gain increased power or leadership positions within the church hierarchy. Anyway, through the process of elimination and the general knowledge that the Half-Way Covenant served to increased church participation, albeit with only partial membership rights, most students should have been able to conclude that choice "A" was the best possible answer.
Addendum. My ever-vigilant class has asked that I make one addendum to this question. They seek to know why a special adjustment in church policy like the Half-Way Covenant was needed at all for the children when their parents were baptized (yet unconverted). If their parents could be baptized without the Covenant, why did they need it at all? Why couldn't they just do as their parents had done to become baptized?
I hope this will clarify our question a little further. A. Hi, Bob, Your students are fortunate to have a teacher who’s so conscientious and intellectually curious (to say nothing of Web-smart), and it’s my pleasure to clarify the Half-Way Covenant. That measure was designed to address a problem that arose as New England churches (and settlements) matured over the first half of the seventeenth century. Most of the founding generation of New Englanders had been baptized as infants in the Church of England before migrating to North America. When they moved to New England, where Congregational churches quickly adopted a narrative of “conversion” as a requirement for full membership (i.e., becoming a “visible saint”), these already baptized men and women complied and generally gained full church membership. As full church members, parents in the founding generation were entitled to have their own infants (the second generation) baptized, and they availed themselves (and their children) of that privilege. The Puritans’ expectation was that “sanctity flowed through the loins”—in other words, that saintly parents would produce equally saintly children—who, having been baptized in infancy would surely experience conversion. But it didn’t work out that way. Instead, many (baptized) members of the second generation came of age and failed to experience conversion. Or, perhaps more accurately, they failed to identify within their own religious experiences anything that seemed to qualify as the inward working of divine grace. What was actually going on in the spiritual lives of the second generation is, in itself, a fascinating question. Were they really less intensely religious than their parents, many of whom had endured persecution back in England? Or could it have been the case that second generation New Englanders so lionized their heroic parents that they couldn’t imagine equalling them in sanctity? In any case, among members of the second generation, acknowledged conversions (and, accordingly, applications for church membership) dropped off sharply, and by the middle of the seventeenth century, Congregationalist leaders were scratching their heads about how to deal with the situation. What made the problem particularly pressing was that members of the second generation were now having children of their own—a third generation, the grandchildren of the founders. So what was the church to do about this growing number of infants? Could they be baptized, as their parents wished? Or would such baptisms compromise the purity of the church? The Half-Way Covenant emerged as the response to this dilemma: a synod in 1662 recommended (which was all that synods could do) to all Congregational churches that they allow all second-generation parents who had been baptized but had never been admitted to the church as full members (by virtue of conversion) to present their children (the third generation) for baptism. In other words, the synod advised churches to accord all second-generation baptized parents a “half-way membership”—the privileges of which included only having their own children baptized. Later in the seventeenth century, there were some Congregationalist leaders (the most famous being Solomon Stoddard, the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards) who advocated extending other church privileges, mainly taking communion, not only to “half-way” members but also to anyone who regularly attended public worship. But that innovation did not meet with as much acceptance as did the Half-Way Covenant. What’s also intriguing is that even though most churches finally embraced the Half-Way Covenant, it encountered a fair measure of lay resistance. In some New England churches, it took several years, even a decade, for lay members to agree to this practice. That’s because support for and against the Half-Way Covenant split neatly across generational lines—the second generation was solidly in favor, while the first generation staunchly resisted. There were some intriguing family dynamics at work: the second generation (many baptized but unconverted) still ardently desired the security of baptism for their children, while many members of the first generation were hanging tough, insisting that their grandchildren were not entitled to baptism. (So much for the modern-day assumption that grandparents spoil the rising generation!) What seems to have been going down was sheer psychological blackmail on the part of the first (founding) generation: they were trying to induce their own children (the second generation) to convert and become full church members by depriving their grandchildren (the third generation) of baptism. One formidable group of folks, those first generation New Englanders . . . no wonder they awed their own children well into adulthood. As for the preponderance of women in New England’s Congregational churches, that phenomenon arose for reasons unrelated to the Half-Way Covenant. And despite their numbers, female Congregationalists exercised an influence (considerable though it was) on church policy that was strictly informal—which is to say that women often got what they wanted done in the churches, but always by the power of gossip, rumor, and their influence over fathers, husbands, and grown sons. But that’s another question—and one that might someday make it into the AP tests. But if you want a quick study of the Half-Way Covenant itself, the best source is still the last chapter of Edmund Morgan’s Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea (New York University Press, 1963). And if you want an absolutely full-dress treatment, try either Robert Pope, The Half-Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan
New England (Princeton University Press, 1969) or the relevant chapters in Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping
of New England Culture, 1570-1700 (Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia / publ. by the University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
2. Predestination since the Puritan Era Q. How has the doctrine of predestination affected people's behavior and thinking since the Puritan era? A. It is almost impossible to approach a question like this, for it's like asking how the concept of democracy has affected Americans from the 18th century onward. But here goes. I have three main points in response. The first is that predestination exercised a broader impact on Americans through the Civil War era than one would normally or naturally suppose, given our modern commitment to unfettered freedom in all spheres. Through the mid 19th century, ordinary folks seem to have held a remarkably grim view of life, its limitations, the pervasive imminence of death. Whether most folk also believed that they would be doomed in the afterlife we simply do not know, owing to the absence of poll data. But there can be no question that many, perhaps most, Americans saw the future in dire, not progressive, terms, and most believed in the reality of hell for others if not for themselves. Second, in the middle third of the 19th century this mood shifted, gradually but decisively. Even so, the underlying structure of predestination--namely, that God controls human destiny--persisted. Third, that last point--that God controls individual and corporate destiny--probably held firm until the mid 20th century for average folk, although the intellectual elite gave up on that notion after World War I if not earlier. Finally, it is worth noting that strict predestination--the idea that
God controls every action--probably never held much sway, but the
larger meaning of the concept, noted above, exercised broad influence.
3. Predestination Today? Q. I have my American Literature students explore the question of how much Puritan influence remains today in American society. They and I wonder whether the doctrine of predestination is currently accepted by any denomination in the U.S. Linda A. Dear Linda: To the best of my knowledge, the only sect that still holds to a literal view of predestination is the Primitive Baptists in the Southern Highlands, and even they break into progressive and traditional wings on the matter. But the traditionalists do believe that every action we take, down to the most insignificant gestures, are, ultimately, predestined. Many Reformed groups hold that God's absolute sovereignty must be upheld despite the human responsibility. Differently stated, both claims are true, though seemingly incompatible from the limited perspective of humans. I believe this would be the official position of most conservative Presbyterians and Baptists in the 1990s, including the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, a numerically slight but intellectually influential denomination centered at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. Hope this helps.
4. Puritans and "Young Goodman Brown" Q. One of my favorite Hawthorne stories is "Young Goodman Brown," in which a character comes upon a ceremony of devils in the forest. I have often wondered about the historical accuracy of this story. Did the Puritans really see the forests that surrounded them as a kind of hell? Louise Boston, MA A. Dear Louise: Hawthorne is one of my favorites too--and "Young Goodman Brown" would be an ideal story for high school classroom use! Now to your question. Broadly speaking, the Puritans did regard the forest as a kind of "hell," in that they identified it as the haunt of the devil (and, of course, the Indians, whom the Puritans took to be devil-worshippers). In addition, the Puritans believed, as Hawthorne's story suggests, that witches held their rites in the forest. Christine Leigh Heyrman Professor of History University of Delaware
5. Puritan Child-Rearing Q. In your essay on religion, women, and the family in early America, you describe three very different modes of child-rearing among the Puritans. Given their tight communities, would the Puritans really have allowed such divergent ways of bringing up children? Would they not have tried to enforce one method? Katherine Grape Springs, TX A. Dear Katherine: There's a bit of confusion here: your question, I think, alludes to the work of Philip Greven, who argues in The Protestant Temperament that three different styles of child-rearing prevailed among early Americans--not the Puritans. Most historians now tend toward the view that the Puritans typify Greven's "evangelical" temperament--in other words, that their mode of child-rearing focused on "breaking the will" of children. Christine Leigh Heyrman Professor of History University of Delaware
6. Close-Packed Puritans Q. In one of your essays, you note that some historian attributes the Puritan's quarrelsomeness to the fact that they lived close-packed in small rooms. Have other historians agreed with this interpretation? Phil New York, NY A. Dear Phil: Well, let's back up a little here: it's John Demos who has speculated that a quarrelsome public life in early New England may have arisen from their cramped private spaces. Some historians find Demos's interpretation compelling or at least suggestive, while others have advanced different explanations of why early New Englanders were such a litigious lot--using the courts to resolve disputes far more often than most Americans do today. Some legal historians have argued that Puritan New England was a culture
in which taking matters to court was not an extraordinary, time-consuming, or
expensive recourse but a routine way of settling even the most trivial
disputes--in other words, the behavior that looks litigious and quarrelsome
measured against contemporary standards was simply normative for that place
and time. Meanwhile, social historians have found that New Englanders were
highly selective about whom they sued in court--that people were unlikely to
use the courts to resolve their disputes with members of the same town but
sued "strangers" living beyond their borders with impunity. In short, New
Englanders were highly parochial and localistic, and whenever they became
embroiled in a dispute with an "outsider," they turned to the law.
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