Anne Hutchinson

Anne Hutchinson engaged a diverse group of powerful men as well as the disenfranchised during the mid-1630s in Boston’s so-called Antinomian Controversy, the name given to the theological battle between John Cotton, who emphasized free grace, and other clerics who focused upon preparation for those seeking salvation. Hutchinson followed Cotton’s position, presented his theology in meetings in her home, and inspired her followers, male and female, to reject pastors opposing Cotton’s position. Hutchinson’s followers included leading men who opposed John Winthrop’s leadership of Massachusetts Bay Colony; this dispute also became an arena where Winthrop reasserted his power. Hutchinson represents the Puritans’ drive for spiritual development within, including her claim of revelation. She is best understood within a transatlantic framework illustrating both the tools of patriarchal oppression and, more importantly, the appeal of Puritan spirituality for women.

Between Free Grace and Liberty

African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Bishop Richard Allen’s hymnody, when coupled with his anti-racist activism and his encouragement of communal music-making in worship, evoked eschatological freedom from sin and called for socio-political freedom for people of African descent in the years following the founding of the United States of America. To fully comprehend Allen’s hymnody, one should consider the urgency he bore for freedom and justice for black people in America. Allen (1760–1831) first published a hymnal in 1801, followed by a revised edition in the same year; the included hymns articulate his belief that people could receive individual freedom from both sin and God’s wrath at the final judgement. Allen held to the evangelical hope of Christ’s return which would inaugurate the emancipation of all enslaved people; likewise, eschatological justice must include freedom from political bondage for people of African descent in America. While holding the expectation of eschatological freedom and justice, he adamantly pursued this political freedom during his lifetime, as evidenced in his theo-political writings against slavery and other forms of racial injustice. Consequently, While the lyrics in his 1801 hymnbooks do not explicitly speak against contemporaneous racial injustice, Allen’s life’s work and prose suggest that this is an integral part of the context for Allen’s compilation of eschatological hymnody.

Congregationalism Advanced

While the rest of New England followed the Congregationalist lead of Plymouth, there was unity without uniformity. Other churches sought the advice of Brewster and other Plymouth leaders on a variety of religious, political, and judicial matters. Various dissenters arose to challenge the New England Way. One was Roger Williams, who spent time in and developed some of his views in Plymouth. Plymouth had found a minister in Ralph Smith, who participated in the regional synod at Cambridge, Massachusetts, to define errors that had arisen during the Free Grace controversy. Samuel Gorton was another troubler of the established order who spent time in Plymouth. As Plymouth grew, individuals hived off from the original settlement to form new settlements in the colony such as Scituate, Duxbury, and Marshfield. This growth posed challenges to the values of the colony.

The Marrow Controversy

The Marrow controversy (1718–22) most often is understood as a dispute between evangelical and legalistic parties within the eighteenth-century Kirk. Various forms of this analysis, however, leave certain questions unanswered. Rather than a clash between evangelicalism and legalism, the Marrow controversy was a collision between two differing developments of Scottish federal theology. Through the theological refinement precipitated by John Simson’s views, Thomas Boston and Ebenezer Erskine had crafted, from within the Scottish federal tradition, an evangelical federalism that emphasized the freeness and immediacy of grace. Through that same process of refinement, James Hadow had constructed, from within the same coherent Scottish federal tradition, an ordered federalism that emphasized the means through which God sovereignly bestowed his free grace upon sinners. These two federal systems, when confronted with the particular doctrinal expressions of The Marrow of Modern Divinity, produced both radically different readings of the same text and enduring controversy.