Our Puritan Heritage

Elton trueblood highlights a serious dilemma for ministers: “The totality of Christian witness is fractured today because of the emergence of opposing parties, one of which may be called activist and the other pietist.” Where should our emphasis lie: upon activism or pietism?

Perhaps a re-examination of the Puritan understanding of the ministry can help us in our struggle with this matter. The lives and works of such ministers as Richard Baxter, William Ames, and John Preston in England and Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, and John Cotton in New England show a remarkable balance: they were simultaneously pietists and activists, holding the two emphases in creative tension.

Their piety centered in a dynamic devotional life. It was assumed that the minister would have an experiential knowledge of the Gospel he preached, knowledge initiated by a definite conversion experience and sustained by daily communion with God. Although intensely personal and mystical, this devotional experience did not lead to anti-intellectualism and the notion of absorption into Diety. “As therefore the Spirit leads us to the Word, so the Word leads us to the Spirit,” explained Thomas Shepard, “but never to a spirit without and beyond the Word.” This Word-related introspection was not an end in itself but had a goal: the preparation of a man for the high calling of ministry, especially the paramount function of proclamation of the Word.

Their piety was reflected in preaching. In the Puritans’ view, God used preaching to reach out in grace to mankind; their task was to summon all men to respond with serious commitment to God’s call. Hooker affirmed: “A plain and powerful ministry is the only ordinary means to prepare the heart soundly for Christ.”

The “plain style” structure of Puritan sermons had three segments: Doctrine, Reasons, Use. The initial task in the first division was to explain the meaning of scriptural doctrine, usually through exploration of the immediate context or by exegesis of key words. In this manner the Doctrine section meticulously “opened” the Scriptures to the people, and provided clarity of instruction from the outset. The second division, the Reasons, contained evidence to substantiate the doctrine; it generally looked to related texts for support. The final segment, the Use, sought to apply the doctrine set forth. It was the climax of the sermon, and it invariably exhorted men to make a decision.

The Puritans were convinced that if preaching did not influence the affections, it could not convey redemption to man, so they placed a heavy emphasis upon the Use of the sermon. True evangelists, they pressed for personal decisions with a persuasive appeal couched in simple, direct, and often compelling language with one dominant aim: eliciting individual response to the call of God.

Their piety permeated their writing. The Puritan ministers considered literary endeavors an integral part of their expression of pietism. Despite the prominence of preaching, they viewed writing as a valuable form of ministry. They wished to record the providence of God as they perceived it in their personal lives; hence the innumerable diaries, autobiographies, and histories of the period. They wrote not only to trace their own spiritual journeys but also to communicate God to persons who could not be reached by the spoken word.

The Puritan pastors were also activists. They were activists in ecclesiastical life. The gathered congregation bound together by a church covenant was one of the two focal points of their churchmanship. Ministers preached the Word, administered the sacraments, and exercised discipline. Exercising discipline included such duties as spiritual oversight and rule (along with elders), visiting the sick, catechizing the children, interpreting “cases of conscience,” and general counseling.

The other focal point of their ministry was their involvement in the larger church. Although many New England ministers abhorred the coercive power of large church councils, they nonetheless organized themselves into synods for the purposes of advice, consultation, fellowship, and common ministry. From their sense of church history, they professed association with the evangelical churches in England and Scotland and on the Continent, and their writings revealed an earnest desire for unity and fellowship with these churches. They differed among themselves on issues of theology and style of worship and on many points of church policy; yet they criticized one another as brethren. Their debates arose from a desire to reform the shape and structure of the church in accord with the Word of God.

They were activists in education. Samuel E. Morison estimated that, despite frontier conditions, between 1630 and 1650 no fewer than thirty-two Oxford graduates and one hundred Cambridge graduates lived in New England. Harvard College was founded in 1636 to provide an educated ministry and to perpetuate the scholarly tradition of English Puritanism. Ministers were expected to be well educated in the arts as well as in divinity; it was assumed they would know Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. While education was minimized and even depreciated by some later pietists on the Continent and on the American western frontier, it remained the ideal and common practice among the Puritan ministers.

They were activists in society. The Puritans were committed to a social covenant as well as to the church covenant and the covenant of grace. To them the magistrate and minister were equally co-workers in God’s kingdom. Society in general, as well as the church in particular, was to be subject to God’s rule.

Besides encouraging members of the congregation to participate as responsible citizens in the political commonwealth, the minister offered counsel and guidance through preaching. The so-called election sermons dealt not with a theological doctrine but with an analysis of the important political issues just prior to election days. Alice Baldwin and other scholars of American colonial history have underscored the often obscured political contribution of Puritan ministers, who enunciated basic principles of democratic government in their election sermons long before the American Revolution, and who influenced countless citizens who had never studied John Locke or other European political philosophers.

We need to reaffirm what our Puritan heritage tells us about the essential wholeness of the Christian ministry, a ministry characterized by both pietism and activism.—THE REV. RICHARD A. HASLER, United Presbyterian Church, Hornell, New York.

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