A Sermon by the Reverend Ellen Rowse Spero
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church,
Chelmsford, Massachusetts
A revised version of this sermon was delivered on November 13, 2005 at First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church of Chelmsford, on the 350th anniversary of the congregation.
Copyright 2006, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
Last week, I shared the story of the very beginnings of First Parish, established as a Puritan "Church of the Standing Order" in 1655, gathered in a covenant of "visible saints", with the Rev. John Fiske as their first minister. One of the underlying assumptions of the "visible saints" was that each person who entered into the covenant of this congregation, as was true for all the New England Churches of the Standing Order, had had an experience of God’s saving grace or "regeneration" so as to know that they were indeed one of the saved. The first generation of Puritans who founded both town and church were religious idealists who were trying to create a utopian Christian community. Their church covenants reflected their faith that they were God’s chosen people called to live together in a new promised land. The two values stressed in their covenants were mutual love and support for one another or community, and strict adherence to God’s law as written in the Bible, or obedience. The Puritans did not believe in free will. They believed God chose them. That said however, they saw that the authority for discerning whether one was chosen, was vested not in a church hierarchy or in rituals and sacraments but in the congregation itself, "…a body of loving individuals mutually pledged to faithfully to seek and to heed truth together, in ongoing community" (Wesley et al, p. 1). . As I said last week, the key phrase in the covenant this congregation probably used was, "We covenant with the Lord and one with an other; and doe bynd our selves in the presence of God, to walke together in all his waies, according as he is pleased to reveale himself unto us in his Blessed word of truth." With this phrase "reveale himself unto us", the Puritans were essentially saying they were accepting the promise offered them by God as they experienced it individually and had it affirmed in this chosen community of the faithful. Belief was not enough. Membership into God’s people was determined by experience.
This was fine for the first generation of Puritans who fled religious persecution in England and who settled here firmly grounded in their religious experiences, who had been willing to suffer the hardships of the wilderness to create their utopian Christian communities, "God’s City upon a Hill." They knew what they meant by the language of their covenant. The problem, as with all communities founded by idealists, was the second generation, and the generations after that. The children and grandchildren of these immigrant Puritans did not grow up with the same experiences as their parents. God didn’t reveal Godself to them the way God apparently had to their parents. According to Wesley et al., "A decline in church membership by the second generation posed a challenge to the Puritan church leadership…When (the first generation) established their congregational parish church system, their battle had been to win freedom from government and higher ecclesiatical control. Succeeding generations, faced with quite different circumstances, showed a variety of attitudes toward the authority of the parish church itself. Because they did not choose this community as had their parents, but had grown up in the quiet villages of New England, they exhibited a wider range of personality and spiritual aspiration. Though they loved the church and regularly attended its services, many second generation New Englanders were disinclined to admit publicly their sinfulness and need of a conversion experience, which they perhaps had never felt so strongly as their elders. To them, such testimony was an unnecessary ordeal not worth the benefit of full church membership, namely the right to take communion" (p. 2-3).
The other change was the type of immigrants who were now coming to New England. Once the Puritans had accomplished their initial foray into the wilderness and set in place stable systems of government and commerce, in moved the merchants, with their interest in establishing trade and expanding markets. Not all were Puritans or even English. The Puritans did have a social hierarchy. At the same time, they also recognized the health of their community meant valuing the common good, and to ensuring that the gap between the haves and the have-nots was not too great. While all were not equal within the community, all were taken care of. The merchants chafed under rules that controlled individual profit in trade, and that demanded obedience to strict religious views. Because they were not believers and members of the church, they were by default, second-class citizens, forced to follow all the rules without access to any of the benefits. According to Pope, "…the Puritan restrictions on church membership created within every town three distinct groups, not unlike concentric circles, distinguished not by economic status but by their relationship to the church. At the core were the communicants with all the privileges and responsibilities of membership. The second ring included the children of the church, both minors and adults who were in covenant, subject to discipline, but excluded from communion. The outer ring consisted of inhabitants without personal or birthright connection with the church. Colonial law required their attendance at church, they contributed to the minister’s rate, they participated in town affairs but their role in the church was almost entirely passive" (p. xx).
The experiences of the second generation Puritans and the new type of immigrant challenged the order and harmony for which the Puritan founders had striven so hard. This particular congregation, founded in 1655, faced these issues at its inception. As Pope notes in his introduction to the Notebook of the Rev. John Fiske, "If Wenham (Fiske’s previous congregation) began with a measure of homogeneity which finally dissipated, Chelmsford started with diversity. Altogether it drew inhabitants from half a dozen towns, and divergent opinions appeared almost at the outset. Within months Fiske had thirty-two communicants in his church, far more than in Wenham, but not all of them treated him with the accustomed deference" (p. xvii). The tension between maintaining the purity of the church and keeping those in the middle ring, the children and grandchildren of the faithful, who did not claim an experience of God’s saving grace, became a huge theological thorn in the side of the Standing Order. Which truly identified one a visible saint: adherence to belief with the accompanying appropriate, upstanding behavior or one’s own experience of the Holy affirmed and lived out in community? Creed or covenant?
One solution adopted by many of the Churches of the Standing Order was called "Half-Way Covenant." It stated, "I do heartily and avouch this one God who made known to us in the Scripture by the name of God the Father, and God the Son even Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Ghost to be my God, according to the tenor of the Covenant of Grace; Wherein he hath promised to be a God to the faithful and their seed after them in their Generations, and taketh them to be his People, and therefore unfeighnedly repenting of all my sins, I do give up myself wholly unto this God to believe in, love, serve, and Obey Him sincerely and faithfully according to the written word, against all temptation of the Devil, the World, and my own flesh and this unto death. I do also consent to be a Member of this particular Church, promising to continue steadfastly in fellowship with it, in the public Worship of God, to submit to the Order, Discipline, and Government of Christ in it, and to the brotherly watch of Fellow Members: and all this according to God’s Word, and by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ enabling me thereunto. Amen" (http://www.pilgrim-platform.org). Entering into the Half-Way covenant allowed the children (minor and adult) of full members to be baptized and hold "half-way" membership in the church until such time as they had and could testify to their "regeneration experience" and be accepted into full membership and allowed to vote and to participate in Holy Communion.
Because of congregational polity, each congregation debated and decided the issue for themselves. First Parish Chelmsford, according to Pope, was the first congregation to adopt the Half-Way Covenant in New England, doing so about 1656 (p. 109). This decision was not made without debate and dissension, as revealed in Rev. Fiske’s diary. He writes for Jan. 1, 1656, "At what time we proceeded in voting the proposition concerning the children of the church, at a full church meeting and voted the third proposition and so on (Brother Adams objecting as formerly) and voted the sending of letters to the church of Concord and Woburn. Brother Adams desiring we should join with him to send his propositions: but was refused" (p. 111). He offers Scriptural support, point by point, for the covenant, including, "The lamb is as well in danger of the wolf as the sheep; the lamb may well as need the benefit of the shepherd’s staff and rod too as the sheep (Psalms 23:4)" (p. 116). In other words, the souls of the children needed to be tended to as well as the parents, until such time as they were mature enough to experience God’s grace for themselves. In order to prepare the children for this experience, Fiske wrote "The Watering of the Olive Tree in Christ’s Garden or A Short Catechism for the First Entrance of Our Chelmsford Children" (short being a relative term, as it is 88 pages long!).
The Half-Way Covenant was controversial, as any compromise would be for a group of people who had braved so much to create their pure and perfect society, and yet wanted to ensure their children’s best interest. It essentially admitted that one could be an upright and devout Christian without having personally experienced God’s grace and that perhaps this grace was not experienced the same by all. Congregations went along with it because they saw church growth. But the underlying issues were not resolved as to what was required to be a member of the church. According to Wesley et al., "The division between those who believed that there were certain dramatic and specific steps to love and faith in Christian life and those who awaited a slow and individualistic development of mature love and trust would more than a century later be at the heart of the arguments in the Unitarian Controversy" (p. 3).
Over the next 150 years, New England saw a great deal of change and turmoil that would continue to challenge the Churches of the Standing Order and pull them in different directions. The 1740’s saw the First Great Awakening, a time of religious revivalism that swept the land. In some ways, it hearkened back to the Puritan roots, with its emphasis on personal and emotional experiences of the Holy Spirit. However, many of its preachers were not of the established town churches but itinerant Baptist, Methodist, and even Universalist. While some of the established ministers enjoyed the movement’s call to piety, others were distressed by what they perceived to be an excessive emotionalism led that made one feel good but did not lead one to live a life of good works or thoughtful study of the Bible. The Puritan Congregationalists leaders suddenly realized that they were not the only theological opportunity in town. One minister who clearly felt this way was the Rev. Ebenezer Bridge, who served First Parish Chelmsford from 1741-1792. In a letter of complaint against members of his congregation who had been hosting some of these itinerant revivalist preachers, Rev. Bridge wrote: "Whereas of Late ye Chhs in This Land have bin much Infested with Lay Exhorters, and Some ministers who have left their own Parishes & Charges, and undertaken To play ye Bishop in another man’s Diocese, To the great disturbance of Towns & Chhs. And to ye breach of Christian Communion, in Such places where they have Come; and Whereas this Town and Chh have bin sorely disturbed by ye Conduct Of such persons coming among us & preaching & exhorting In private houses--without Consent Of ye Stated pastor Of this Chh--" (Nov. 4, 1748, p. 694 in Waters). But theological concerns soon receded as the most of the towns and churches of the Standing Order united around the Patriot Cause during the Revolutionary War. As Waters notes in his history of Chelmsford, on April 19, 1775: "The good parson, Bridge, was on the ground and requested the men to go into the meeting-house and have prayers before they went; but the impetuous Sergeant Ford, his patriotism getting the better of his piety, replied that they had more urgent business at hand, and hastened on with his men" (p. 221).
After the war ended, a new nation was established that had in its constitution a separation of church and state, and a guarantee of freedom of religious worship. The theological issues underlying the Half Way Covenant were now up for debate again. The Churches of the Standing Order were no longer so as church and town began to slowly disestablish across New England. Now these congregational (small c) churches had redefine themselves in terms of their theology and their relationships to one another. The differences of opinion between orthodox and liberal clergy and congregations became too deep to hold them together. The orthodox cherished the belief and doctrine part of their Puritan heritage. The liberals cherished the experience piece, the idea of God’s truth being revealed "unto us", even if it challenged long held beliefs, including the Calvinist doctrines of human depravity, predestination, and the trinity. Wesley et al., "In response to the new liberal influence, some more orthodox churches began to insert creedal elements into their covenants, while the liberal churches clung ever more strongly to the Puritan ideal of ’walking together’ in Christian love, without the entailments of creedal stipulations. The fellowship of the Standing Order wad manifestly under strain. Troubled churches, Calvinist and liberal, no longer called on those churches geographically nearest them for help; they called on churches known to be in their own theological camp" (p. 5). Debate between liberal and orthodox clergy turned into namecalling as the stakes grew higher. When a liberal was appointed to a professorship at Harvard Divinity School, the orthodox clergy broke off collegial relations with their liberal colleagues, accusing them of unitarianism. In 1819, aware that the rift between the two sides would not be healed, the Rev. William Ellery Channing decided to take the label "Unitarian" and define positively this distinct community of churches in his famous sermon, "Unitarian Christianity".
As Wesley et al notes, "The long, sometimes bitter debate called the Unitarian controversy continued for more than two decades, erupting in a particular congregations, most often when a death or retirement required the congregation to elect a new minister. The basic disagreement concerned the extend of the church covenant. Calvinist Congregationalists insisted that Christian fellowship must be limited to members in agreement concerning many areas of doctrine…Liberal congregationalist Unitarians insisted just as strongly that their church covenant could embrace all who wanted to practice a Christian life" (p. 6). Oftentimes, one party or the other, outvoted, would march out and start a new church across the common, with ensuing battles over property rights and the communion silver. Here, the rift happened less dramatically and more slowly. Previous to the Unitarian controversy, First Parish had been long served by the theologically unitarian Rev. Hezekiah Packard and during it, by the liberal Rev. Wilkes Allen. In the decades after, First Parish was served by not only Unitarian but Univeralist ministers. It was not until 1876 that a group met at the home of Mary and Eliza Winn to break with First Parish and form the Central Congregational Church. As George Parkhurst notes in his history of First Parish: "…most doctrinal changes over the years have been gradual with no abrupt or violent transitions. The Rev. J.A. Chase, minister 1883-1891 stated that ’with the succession to the pastorate of Rev. William Andrews in 1836, the parish soon became pronouncedly liberal and Unitarian. The present (1890) parish embraces a varied constituency that may be roughly classified as Unitarian, Universalist, Materialist, Spiritualist, and Agnostic, but, amid all this contratriety of opinions, there has been a marked growth of unity and organization" (p. 16). First Parish presaged the Unitarian Universalist merger by 100 years, not only in its choice of clergy but also by sharing its worship space with the Universalist congregation of Chelmsford for many years.
It is easy to look back at our Puritan ancestors and think how far we have come as a denomination and as a congregation. We no longer adhere to Calvinist doctrines, nor demand that everyone else do so. We are open to new ideas, new learnings, new voices. We have fun at church. Our children laugh and play here. Women now make up 52% of our UU ministry and I am the second woman to serve here as the settled minister. Hopefully, we are more welcoming of people whom the Puritans would have shunned, or worse, for their gender, for their skin color, for whom they loved, or for what they believed. But looking back of their history, and specifically of those who gathered here 350 years ago today, I am struck by what remains the same, what gifts they have given us that we bear, for better or for worse, today. First, I am struck by the repeated experience of the first generation. Most Unitarian Universalists come from something else in search of a new religious home that speaks truthfully and congruently with their own individual beliefs and experiences. UUs share a similar idealism that we can create something different, something special, something more pure or real. There is sometimes also a similar sense of superiority that goes with this thinking in UUism today. I can’t help thinking that the UUA’s new marketing slogan "The Uncommon Denomination" would resonate with our Puritan ancestors and their ideal of the church of the elect.
The real gift is obviously our congregational polity and tradition of covenant. This is the cornerstone of our free church tradition. Reading our own congregation’s history, it seems that there has been an inclination from the beginning toward a more liberal spirit in our gathering. Underneath then and now is a desire to integrate our individual experiences of the sacred and the holy in with a strong sense and commitment to community grounded in the spirit of love. Knowing our roots, knowing our story shows us how we changed and how we have grown. It also teaches us what has connected us heart and soul through the generations to a Larger Spirit of Freedom and Love.
Resources:
Previous Parsons. Compiled by Jane Drury of First Parish of Chelmsford.
The Notebook of Reverend John Fiske, 1644-1675. Robert G. Pope, ed. Salem, MA: Essex Institute, 1974.
History of Chelmsford Massachusetts. Wilson Waters. Lowell, MA: Courier-Citizen Company, 1917.
Profits in the Wilderness. John Frederick Martin. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
"The Unitarian Controversy and Its Puritan Roots". Alice Blair Wesley, Peter Hughes and Frank Carpenter. Unitarian Universalist Historical Society. http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/unitariancontroversy.html.
"The Halfway Covenant". http://www.pilgrim-platform.org/halfway.htm.
325 Years: The Story of First Parish Church Chelmsford 1655-190. George Adams Parkhurst. North Chelmsford, MA: Picken Printing, Inc., 1980.
A New England Town: The First Hundred Years. Kenneth A. Lockridge.