Talk:Half-Way Covenant

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[edit] Communion

In "The Shaping of American Congregationalism" by John Von Rohr, p. 119 in the section on the Half Way Covenant it says that participation in the Lord's Supper was not allowed those who had only been baptized but had not experienced adult conversion. Revmoran (talk) 01:07, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reasons for the Half Way Covenant

Several different sources give several different motivations behind the half way covenant. One author, Richard Lyman Bushman, in his book "From Puritan to Yankee," places the half way covenant in the context of efforts to maintain church discipline over the broader community as fewer individuals tooks steps to become full church members.

On page 4 of Robert Ferms article [1]about Congregationalism and the Founding of Middlebury College he writes: In 1648 the “full” members of the church were defined in the Cambridge Platform as those who were orthodox in belief, free from gross and open scandals, and who gave a public testimony of their regeneration. But not all among the new generations could meet those tests and therefore many could not be baptized, or cleansed from the guilt of original sin. Thus, the Half-Way Covenant of 1662 was adopted which allowed the children of unregenerate parents to be baptized. In 1677 Solomon Stoddard, pastor of the church in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards, argued as a Calvinist that no one can tell who is regenerate so everyone should be allowed to come into the church (as long as they are orthodox and free from gross and open scandal) and take the Lord’s Supper as a means of regeneration. Later, in the 1740s and beyond, Jonathan Edwards and his successors, the New Divinity, sought to return to the stricter requirements of the Cambridge Platform and required public testimony of regeneration, even from those who were already members of the church. The result was Edwards’ dismissal from the Northampton Church, where he had become the minister upon Stoddard’s death in 1729.

This wiki article is just to simple-minded and doesn't reflect hte complexity of the issue.Revmoran (talk) 22:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)