WHY THEY MATTERED: THE RETURN OF POLITICS TO PURITAN NEW ENGLAND

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 683-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK PETERSON

Puritans had big stories to tell, and they cast themselves big parts to play in those stories. The fervent English Protestants who believed that the Elizabethan Church urgently needed further reformation, and the self-selecting band among them who went on to colonize New England, were sure that they could re-create the churches of the apostolic age, and eliminate centuries’ worth of Romish accretions. By instituting scriptural forms of worship, these purified churches might have a beneficial influence on the state as well, and bring about the rule of the godly. If a purified English church and state could inaugurate reformation across all of Christendom, spread the gospel to infidels around the globe, and usher in the millennium, then all the better. In 1641, an anonymous tract called A Glimpse of Sions Glory announced that the new puritan-controlled Parliament would bring on “Babylon's destruction . . . The work of the day [is] to give God no rest till he sets up Jerusalem in the praise of the whole world.” The leading minister of colonial Boston at the time, John Cotton, predicted that as soon as 1655, as Michael Winship summarizes Cotton: the states and Christian princes of Europe, under irresistible supernatural influence, would have instituted congregationalism [Massachusetts’ form of church polity] and overthrown Antichrist and Muslim Turkey. The example of their churches’ pure Christianity would have brought about the conversion of Jews and pagans across the globe. Thereafter, the churches of Christ would enjoy the millennium's thousand years of peace before the climactic battle with Gog and Magog at the end of time. Those are big stories.

1959 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Fulton Maclear

Modern studies of church and state in America have begun to modify some older conclusions. Much attention has been given to the Constitutional “solution” of separation and its contradictions and problems in practice. Similarly, church historians, qualifying an older assumption that conservative churches ultimately shed the forms of “classic Protestantism” and permitted American religion to be shaped by the sectarian heritage of the radical Reformation, have begun to re-examine the background of ideas. This re-examination is urgently needed in treating America's last disestablishment contest, the struggle over the state churches in New England which raged until the 1820's. For this struggle had unusual significance.


2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Smit

Boundaries for church and state regarding the regulation of the ministry of the Word: seen from two church polity traditions This article focuses on the boundaries for church and state with regard to the regulation of the ministry of the Word – seen from two independent church polity traditions. Until now the South African courts have not given an indication of how these boun- daries should be understood or how these apply within the South African context. The purpose of this article is not to make a judicial comparison. The purpose is to show that two indepen- dent church polity traditions, namely the German and the reformed, developed general principles for the boundaries of church and state with regard to the regulation of a minister’s position in law. In both traditions church polity is regarded sui generis, and recognises the church’s right to regulate a minister of religion’s position independently from the state. In conclusion it is found that the boundaries between church and state for the ministry of the Word are primarily determined by the principle that church and state should not in any way influence or interfere with one another's separate mandates or duties. The ministry of the Word is the responsibility of the church and not the state. Therefore the state does not have the competency to regulate the ministry of the Word.


Author(s):  
Gretchen Murphy

This chapter examines Harriet Beecher Stowe’s depiction of the separation of church and state in her regional New England novels, Oldtown Folks and Poganuc People, both set in the early republic. It argues that while Stowe’s evangelical vision of religion led her to praise the purification of religion from politics, her simplified story of disestablishment enables a more complicated intertwining of Christianity with democracy. Drawing on family lore and regional history for both novels, Stowe criticized the New England Federalists and Calvinists of her father Lyman Beecher’s generation for treating religion as a political tool, but she also credited them with safeguarding Christianity from the forces of secularization that she associated with the French Revolution. Her novels thus seek to adapt state religion by depicting sites of intense, irrational belief (Spiritualism in Oldtown Folks, Christmas wonder in Poganuc People) that leaven Federalist and Calvinist rationalism with enchantment for the purpose of democratizing Christianity. Stowe’s historical progress narrative depicts Christianity made more democratic when it is seized from the hands of elites and politicians, yet this shift transforms it into a more powerful tool for regulating society. Strengthening the moral efficacy of religion, Stowe’s vision depicts a weakening of the state and public polity, because in Stowe’s libertarian New England history, democracy of the “people” and the “folk” is reassigned to Christianity in the private sphere.


Author(s):  
S.S. Hasanova ◽  
R.R. Hatueva ◽  
A.L. Arsaev

This article discusses the pros and cons of applying professional income tax. Professional income tax is not mandatory, but an alternative way to pay 2 taxes on self-employment or part-time work. The introduction of this tax can mediate an increase in revenues to the state budget, which is of particular importance for the country in post-crisis conditions.


Author(s):  
Liubov Melnychuk

The author investigates and analyzes the state Chernivtsi National University during the Romanian period in Bukovina’s history. During that period in the field of education was held a radical change in the direction of intensive Romanization. In period of rigid occupation regime in the province, the government of Romania laid its hopes on the University. The Chernivtsi National University had become a hotbed of Romanization ideas, to ongoing training for church and state apparatus, to educate students in the spirit of devotion Romania. Keywords: Chernivtsi National University, Romania, Romanization, higher education, Bukovina


Author(s):  
Arjun Chowdhury

This chapter provides an informal rationalist model of state formation as an exchange between a central authority and a population. In the model, the central authority protects the population against external threats and the population disarms and pays taxes. The model specifies the conditions under which the exchange is self-enforcing, meaning that the parties prefer the exchange to alternative courses of action. These conditions—costly but winnable interstate war—are historically rare, and the cost of such wars can rise beyond the population’s willingness to sacrifice. At this point, the population prefers to avoid war rather than fight it and may prefer an alternative institution to the state if that institution can prevent war and reduce the level of extraction. Thus the modern centralized state is self-undermining rather than self-enforcing. A final section addresses alternative explanations for state formation.


Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge

Chapter 3’s discussion of kingdoms and orders in the context of political life leads naturally into the topic of this chapter: the church, the state, and their relationship. The present chapter locates the state (or, better, political authority in general) in relationship to Chapter 3’s categories by presenting it as one of the orders by which God’s structures the world. It is an important actor in the temporal kingdom, where God has ordained it to preserve the world through law. The church in its essence is an agent of the spiritual kingdom, bearing God’s redemptive word to the world. The themes of preservation and redemption, the kingdoms, and the orders find many of their concrete expressions in themes of the church, the state, and their relationship.


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