V.

Early Development

Among early theorists of congregationalism were the 17th-century clergymen William Ames, John Cotton, and Thomas Hooker. The essential principles, as understood in New England, were codified in A Platform of Church Discipline (1648), commonly called the Cambridge Platform. In England, Independents exercised considerable influence during Oliver Cromwell's rule, but were subject to discriminatory laws after the Restoration (1660). Thus, the greatest influence of the movement was felt in America.

Over the years, the congregationalism of the Cambridge Platform was subject to modification. The restriction of membership to the regenerate was eased after 1662 by the adoption in many New England churches of the Half-Way Covenant, which gave partial privileges to persons who were sympathetic with the congregational church order but who could not give assurance that they had experienced personal conversion. In Connecticut, the adoption of the Saybrook Platform (1708) provided for ministerial associations and consociations of churches, essentially presbyterian in character. In Massachusetts, also, the early fear of the exercise of control by ministerial associations abated. After the Great Awakening, the concept of regenerate membership was further eroded by the spread of Arminianism, a form of liberalism that rejected the doctrine of election. Finally, the nature of the covenant was transformed; instead of a simple agreement to come together for worship and discipline, it often became a creedal test by which the theologically suspect might be excluded.

For the Puritans, the value system of the state was not secular. They argued that piety and sound morals are essential to good citizenship and that the state may therefore encourage the dissemination of religious truth. Hence, in New England (except Rhode Island), the towns were authorized to tax their inhabitants for the support of public worship. Ordinarily, this meant tax support for the ministers of the congregational churches. The Standing Order, as it was called, came under attack in the 18th century by minority groups, particularly the Quakers, Baptists, and Anglicans. With the growth of religious pluralism, tax support for public worship became increasingly hard to justify, and the Standing Order was abolished in Connecticut in 1818; it was abolished in New Hampshire in 1819 and in Massachusetts in 1833.