In the seventeenth century, the Puritans of New England understood their colonial endeavors in North America as aimed towards directly fulfilling God’s will on earth as those who, in the words of John Cotton (1585–1652), hoped “themselves to be in Christ, in whom all the promises are yea, and amen.”[1] But the prolongation of the Puritan experiment eventually called for a reassessment of the projected goals of their commissioned society, particularly due to the ravages of King Philip’s War (1675–78).[2]
1. John Cotton, “Gods Promise to His Plantation (1630),” Electronic Texts in American Studies. 22. ed. Reiner Smolinkski, 6.
2. See Jill Lepore, The Name of the War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.
A figure who significantly factored into this intramural reappraisal was Increase Mather (1639–1723). Despite his best attempts to preserve it, Mather was forced to modify and eventually concede the founding millennial vision of New England Puritanism in the face of a growing decline in zeal and thus regenerate church membership among the later generations of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In this article, I chronicle how this modified vision ultimately resulted in a religious establishment widely bereft of genuine piety at its core and became a purely externalized project of reformation. From this brief historical assessment, we who are living at a time when calls for “Christian Nationalism” are increasing can learn much from Increase Mather and the New England Puritanism he sought to preserve in his own day. Let’s consider the details of his story and what it can teach us as those contending for a brighter future for the American church in the present.
The New England Way: A Vision of a Godly Society
A great deal of the Puritan idealism in New England was a matter of contingency. Difficulties in the mother country gave the founding fathers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s and 40s greater leisure to implement their ideals than their transatlantic counterparts in England. Aptly summarized by Cotton, the “New England Way” consisted of maintaining the following ideal: “Gods [sic] institutions (such as the government of church and of commonwealth) may be close and compact, and co-ordinate with one to another, and yet not confounded . . . . It is better that the commonwealth be fashioned to the setting forth of Gods [sic] house, which is his church: than to accommodate the church frame to the civill [sic] state.”[3] This Congregationalist vision for church-state partnership sought what David D. Hall categorizes as “godly rule,” a theocentric system that sought to bring each stratum of society into submission to Christ as an organic whole.[4] Consequently, this vision entailed strict conformity for its success. As noted by Francis J. Bremer, “There was no toleration for those who publicly dissented from the New England Way . . . Their goal was to be free to institute and practice what they believed to be the one true faith.”[5] After all, Mather was convinced that in New England, God had been “pleased to shew them the Pattern of his House, and all the forms thereof,” obligating them to keep the New England Way lest they risk divine wrath for willfully disobeying God’s clear instructions.[6]
3. John Cotton, “John Cotton to William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele [After March 1636],” in The Correspondence of John Cotton, ed. by Sargent Bush, Jr. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 243-49.
4. David D. Hall, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 79. Accessed May 5, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central. See also William Lamont, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603–60 (London: Macmillan, 1969).
5. Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (Hanover, CT: University Press of New England, 1995), 92.
6. Increase Mather, “The Epistle Dedicatory,” in [The necessity] of reformation with the expedients subservient thereunto asserted in answer to two questions, I. What are the evils that have provoked the Lord to bring his judgements on New-England?, II. What is to be done that so those evils may be reformed? / agreed upon by the elders and messengers of the churches assembled in the Synod at Boston in New-England, Sept. 10, 1679 (Boston: Printed by John Foster, 1679).
Despite this vision for what New England might become, the Puritans in America such as Mather were convinced that God could very well dispatch with both Old and New England if they did not keep their covenant with him. According to Leonard J. Trinterud, beginning with William Tyndale in the sixteenth century the Puritan outlook was taken up with the “covenant-contract theory” in which “God’s promises constitute[d] a covenant, or appointment, by which God promises certain blessings to men on the condition that they keep his law.”[7] This bilateral relationship meant a country such as England which had so exceptionally received the gospel and the Scriptures was obligated to uphold all of Christ’s expectations. Failing to do so would surely invite his wrath and displeasure. In this respect, Christian nationalism for the English Puritans was honoring England’s default status as consisting of an already Christian people in need of further reformation to become more fittingly Protestant.
Irrespective of whether Old England came around to the colony’s spirit of reformation, Mather’s New England would strive to keep to their covenant. His vision granted a greater urgency for spiritual reformation to be prepared for the millennium’s coming. He argued that colonial prosperity came through the preservation of “the power of Godliness” according to the “Life of Discipline” intended to be fostered within their Congregationalist establishment.[8] Thus, one must resist the temptation to codify this disposition within Mather as indicative of postmillennialist optimism. As a millenarian, Mather depicted the kingdom of God as something Christ, not the saints of New England, would unilaterally establish in his timing.[9] Crawford Gribben notes that typically indicative amongst Puritans of this persuasion was an emphasis upon how “their [ecclesiological] distinctives were to be associated with the pure church of the future millennial reign.”[10] It is no surprise then that maintaining what Mather saw as “that Principle of our way,” being the Congregationalist establishment of New England, factored so significantly into his watchful ministry.[11]
7. Leonard J. Trinterud, “The Origins of Puritanism.” Church History, vol. 20, no. 1, 1951, pp. 37–57. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3162047. Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.
8. Increase Mather, A sermon concerning renewing of covenant with God in Christ : preached at Dorchester in New-England the 21 day of the 1 moneth 1677, being a day of humiliation there on that occasion [Sermon concerning renewing of covenant with God in Christ] (Boston: Printed by J.F. for Henry Phillips, and are to be sold at his Shop in the West end of the Townhouse of Boston, 1677), 16. http://ezproxy.sbts.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/books/ renewal-covenant-great-duty-incumbent-on-decaying/docview/2240853839/se-2.
9. Increase Mather, The mystery of Israel’s salvation, explained and applyed: or, A discourse concerning the general conversion of the Israelitish nation. Wherein is shewed, 1. That the Twelve Tribes shall be saved. 2. When this is to be expected. 3. Why this must be. 4. What kind of salvetion the Tribes of Israel shall partake of (viz.) a glorious, wonderful, spiritual, temporal salvation: Being the substance of several sermons preached (London: Printed for John Allen, 1669), 132-39. http://name.umdl.umich.edu /N00091.0001.001.
10. Crawford Gribben, The Puritan Millennium: Literature & Theology, 1550–1682 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 30.
11. Mather, A sermon concerning renewing of covenant with God in Christ, i.
Wandering Off the Way but Still on the Road?
According to Michael P. Winship, by the 1660s the idealism of the first generation in New England had begun to wane for those of the second due to a troubling stagnation in growth rates of church membership.[12] True saints were needed, only there were increasingly few who would profess belief in the same faith of their forebears. This dilemma was chiefly represented in the problem of unregenerate children of baptized church members. Edmund S. Morgan records that since the rigorously Calvinistic Puritans could not “believe that grace was really hereditary,” their ecclesiology risked becoming the undoing of their errand as many of the next generation were showing no signs of personal salvation.[13] Indeed, it would be in this context that what came to be known as the “Halfway Covenant” was first formulated, a proposal that allowed for the unregenerate but baptized children of church members to participate in the life of the congregation without partaking in communion. This formulation was crucial to preserving a Puritan form of a Christian nationalism in New England. Without maintaining a proper religious establishment, their project would be sunk as yet another radical errand beholden to the unwieldiness of their biblicism.
This increasing apathy toward genuine godliness ascertained by Mather prompted him in 1674 to preach a jeremiad he entitled The Day of Trouble is Near, in which he called to mind the faithlessness of the idolatrous Israelites during the prophet Ezekiel’s ministry. For Mather, whether the colonists were personally inclined to favor their inheritance in the cause of reformation was irrelevant: God obviously willed it in allowing them to remain in America for this long.[14] In fact, Mather considered Massachusetts Bay to be a “little Nation” composed of the godly taken from England “over a greater then the Red Sea” to serve as a model for reformation.[15] He declared that “The Lord will not as yet destroy this place: Our Fathers have built Sanctuaries for his Name therein, and therefore he will not destroy us. The Planting of these Heavens, and the laying the Foundations of this Earth, is one of the Wonders of this last Age.”[16]
12. Michael P. Winship, Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 242.
13. Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea (New York: New York University Press, 1963), 126.
14. Increase Mather, The day of trouble is near. Two sermons wherein is shewed, what are the signs of a day of trouble being near. And particularly, what reason there is for New-England to expect a day of trouble. Also what is to be done, that we may escape these things which shall come to pass. Preached (the 11th day of the 12th moneth, 1673. Being a day of humiliation in one of the churches in Boston. (Cambridge, MA: Printed by Marmaduke Johnson, 1674), 4.
15. Mather, The day of trouble is near, 27.
16. Mather, The day of trouble is near, 31.
Consistent with his millenarianism, Mather was convinced that the colonists of New England were within the last epoch before the onset of Christ’s millennial kingdom. Therefore, the colonists would be mistaken to neglect the providence of persecution as recorded within biblical history toward Israel in order to remove the dross of idolatry from his elect, preparing them for a brighter future.
King Philip’s War (1675–78)
Mather’s fulmination against New England in The Day of Trouble is Near might have been relegated alongside many other previous Puritan jeremiads if it were not for what occurred a year later. On June 20, 1675, the Wampanoags, an indigenous tribe under the leadership of their chieftain Metacom (1638–76), known to the English as King Philip, attacked the settlement of Swansea within the Plymouth colony, beginning what came to be known as King Philip’s War that lasted until 1678. The war would leave one out of every sixteen men dead out of a colonial population of approximately 30,000 at that time.[17]
17. See Richard Slotkin and James K. Folsom, “Introduction,” in So Dreadfull a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip’s War: 1676–1677, eds. Richard Slotkin and James K. Folsom (Hanover, CT: University Press of New England, 1999), 4-53.
Consequently, Mather sought to seize upon the conscience of the colony in light of the war as a proper beginning rather than an end to New England’s exceptional capacity for reformation. Concluding his account of the war, he propounded that God’s work was not done with the colony “because it hath pleased the Lord to make us his people.”[18] Due to his certainty that it possessed significance for returning the heart of the colonists to the original foundations of their commonwealth, Mather adjured his fellow New Englanders to see that God’s preservation of their establishment against the enemies of the church was “for his Names [sic] sake, that it might not be profaned among the Heathen whither he hath brought us.”[19] For a time, fasting and a heightened sensitivity to “provoking evils” of a sinful lifestyle, such excessive dress, swearing, and Sabbath-breaking, prevailed under the auspices of the colonial government. It seemed that Mather’s little Christian nation might have its turnaround.
18. Increase Mather, A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians in New-England, (From June 24, 1675. When the Frist Englishman was Murdered by the Indians, to August 12, 1676. When Philip, alias Metacomet, the Principal Author and Beginner of the Warr, was Slain): Wherein the Grounds, Beginning, and Progress of the war, Is Summarily Expressed; Together with a Serious Exhortation to the Inhabitants of the Land (Boston: John Foster, 1676), in So Dreadfull a Judgment, 79–163.
19. Mather, A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians in New England, 143.
Children of Wrath Counted as Partakers of Grace
Yet a lasting visitation of the Spirit was not to miraculously occur. Despite Mather’s eventual willingness to adopt the Halfway Covenant, no sweeping revival would occur in his lifetime, giving greater popularity to the ideas of Solomon Stoddard (1643–1729), a Congregationalist minister in Northampton. Stoddard would argue that unregenerate children of full church members could partake of communion and have their own children baptized as long as they did not lead “scandalous” lives of outright sin.[20] By 1686, the colonies of New England were merged into the Dominion of New England, which then began allowing for conformist Anglican services in their midst.[21] As suggested by Michael G. Hall, within a matter of sixty years from its founding, “The Puritan commonwealth dreamed of and put in place by John Winthrop was no more; the constitutional framework for the pluralistic, secular society that would be inherited by John Adams was now in place.”[22]
20. It would be the contestation of Stoddard’s teaching on these matters in seeking to return to more strict expectations of membership that eventually led to the expulsion of Jonathan Edwards, his own grandson, from the same pulpit in Northampton in 1748.
21. Michael G. Hall, The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather, 1639–1723 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 206.
22. Hall, The Last American Puritan, 251.
Because New England Puritanism’s essence in Massachusetts Bay consisted of the ability to maintain its Congregationalist establishment in the hope of raising up a regenerate polity, its abrogation rendered the original errand that Mather so doggedly championed effectively lost. Writing when he was almost three decades removed from the trials of King Philip’s War, he ruminated upon the global prospect of Protestantism in the face of perceived Antichristian encroachment prevalent in Europe and did not think all that brightly of the church in America’s prospects to withstand it.[23] Expositing upon Ezra 3:12, he lamented of New England: “Ancient men, though they bless God for what they Do see of His Glory remaining in these Churches, they cannot but mourn when they remember what they Have seen, far surpassing what is at present. Let us look where we will, and we may observe a lessening of the Glory.”[24]
23. Increase Mather, Ichabod. Or, A discourse, shewing what cause there is to fear that the glory of the Lord, is departing from New-England. Delivered in two sermons (Boston: Printed by Timothy Green, sold by the book-sellers., 1702), 63–64.
24. Mather, Ichabod, 67.
When in 1721 a Baptist minister was officially ordained in the colony, a possibility against which Mather would have once used all his clerical persuasion to subvert if he still had it, proved that in the words of Perry Miller, “Increase was old and weary. Puritanism, in the true sense of the word, was dead.”[25] Though Mather hoped King Philip’s War would serve as a clarion call to Reformed obedience, the decline of church membership in New England, and thus the decreased possibility for upholding their original errand, continued apace. Having contended to utilize their exceptionalism for the furtherance of the English Reformation, Mather would leave behind a Christian nation in search of another destiny.
25. Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), 145.
Conclusion
In 1929, neoliberal theologian and father of “Christian realism,” Reinhold Niebuhr, published a short book entitled Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, in which he recounted his experiences as a young minister. His intention was to talk about how he matured from despising pastoral work to growing in deeper appreciation for it through experience. For Increase Mather, his “taming” of his Christian nationalism as a young minister in New England had the reverse effect. So far as the founding Congregationalist, eschatologically-oriented plantation once envisioned by John Winthrop, John Cotton, and Increase’s father Richard Mather was concerned, by the end of Mather’s life it had ultimately proven to be a failed project. To predicate the aspirations of their religiously-charged endeavor on possessing a fully regenerate body politic was unstable from the beginning. While colonial America in the early eighteenth century would eventually experience an outpouring of evangelical revival (especially within New England), this was not something at all caused by the top-down, coercive New England Way of the Puritan fathers. Instead, the revivals overseen by the likes of George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards were in great part a total rejection of this way of thinking in favor of a dynamic, highly individualistic pietism.[26] The deeply Christian roots of the American nation were certainly inspired by the example of Puritan providentialism and practice, yet the flourishing of evangelical religion was not to come in their time.[27] Instead, it arose with the categorical dismissal of attempting to establish true religion apart from it coming alive in the hearts of individual citizens through the direct ministry of the Word and work of the Holy Spirit. True national revival always would depend on regeneration, not magisterial orthodoxy.
26. See Douglas L. Winiarski, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017).
27. See George McKenna, The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
With Mather’s own career in view, therefore, any modern attempts to reconstruct a form of Christian nationalism on the basis of the political theology of the Massachusetts Bay establishment should take greater heed of change over time within the Puritan experiment in America. We should learn from Mather’s own inability to repair the ramparts of righteousness in his own day, for the house of God indeed cannot be built by human hands (Isa. 66:1-2), no matter how godly those hands might have once been themselves. For those trying to labor for the sake of the American church in the present, some three centuries removed from when Mather sought to do the same, we must note the dangers of confusing any particular manifestation of a temporal order with Christian values with the coming kingdom of God. This fact doesn’t mean that Christians do not “Christianize” the world in some sense through our mission in society; our commissioning by Christ certainly includes seeking a more just moral and political order no matter where we are. Rather, we must learn as Mather did that coercion cannot take the place of evangelical conversion. Our understanding of how church and state ought to be normed by the expectation of keeping the sword of the state and the keys of the kingdom exercised within the church distinct for the flourishing of all. Their proper complementarity is preserved by noting that the care of souls and citizens remain separate with good reason.
Near the end of his life, in a diary entry dated June 21, 1709, Mather offered this prayer: “That God will hasten the accomplishment of the glorious things which are to be fulfilled in the Last dayes [sic]. Let the Hearer of prayer say Amen.”[28] The last hope of Increase Mather is the same hope of all Christians in any generation, looking to the coming of Christ’s perfect kingdom as he has promised he will one day establish. That, and that alone, should be our political lodestar in all ages as the people of God.
