Half‐Way Covenant

Half‐Way Covenant. The Half‐way Covenant, as it was called by its eighteenth‐century detractors, attempted to resolve New England Puritans' conflicting commitments to constituting the church exclusively with Visible Saints while still extending its discipline over the widest possible population. Congregationalist theory restricted full membership to those who could testify to a personal experience of conversion, but allowed for baptizing their unredeemed children. Left unsettled was whether the offspring of baptized unregenerates could undergo the same rite. The issue became acute during the 1650s when second‐generation New Englanders, many baptized but unsaved, began bringing their babies to the baptismal font. Led by Jonathan Mitchel, the Synod of 1662, held in Massachusetts, determined that these progeny did enjoy a measure of church fellowship and could consequently receive the sacrament. Despite overwhelming clerical support, however, the innovation faced determined resistance from John Davenport, Increase Mather, and many laity, who complained that it debased membership standards and traduced the traditional order. Acceptance mounted after Mather switched sides in 1671 and a series of misfortunes, widely conceded as manifesting God's wrath at New England's sins, encouraged congregations to rethink their dissent. By century's end perhaps 80 percent had adopted the practice, allowing them to discipline half‐way members while, coincidentally, the number of full communicants surged. In the eighteenth century, churches influenced by New Light revivalism discarded the arrangement as too lax, and by about 1825 Congregationalists had abandoned it.
See also Colonial Era; Great Awakening, First and Second; Mather, Increase and Cotton; Puritanism; Religion.

Bibliography

Robert Pope , The Half‐Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New England, 1969.

Charles L. Cohen