In what ways is this statement about those ejected in 1662 true and in which ways is it false?
“Many of these men and their families suffered much hardship; the United Reformed Church, as well as present-day Baptists and Congregationalists, are their heirs.”
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It seems true to me in a fairly straightforward and uncontroversial way. Many of the congregations formed at the ejection found their way into English congregationalism and from there into either the URC or the Congregational Federation. Others were and remained baptist. So if you were to trace the history using the “family tree” idea you would find that the three “denominations” (suspect the Federation wouldn’t like the term) would be the heirs. As I’m sure you’re aware the English Presbyterians mostly went Unitarian and then pretty much ceased to exist inEngland, with the PCE that came into the URC being primarily diaspora Scottish.
I’m guessing your question implies that there has been a falling away on the part of the URC (and maybe the others) that surrenders its right to claim to inherit the legacy of 1662. My feeling is that this probably imposes too much uniformity on what happened then and selects some aspects of 17th Century Christianity for what seems to me a rather artificial preservation.
I can’t claim to be an expert on the ejection but my impression is that it was pretty various and not at all unified. It turned quite quickly into “non-conformism” (I’m thinking of people like Watts) with its association with political radicalism, scientific education and middle class upward mobility.
Our (and here “we” are mostly the URC but I also mean all those who descend from non-conformity – at a push even the Methodists) history is a complicated and unique one. There really isn’t anything like English non-conformity in any other country (although there are close analogies with Wales in some respects) and we should be both proud of our past and aware how dynamic and multi-faceted it is.
It is a difficult question you pose, Phil. Historical fact often doesn’t fit the straight jacket of self-satisfied proclamations such as that from the URC website adorned with the Archbishop of Canterbury; at the same time it doesn’t fit the hagiographical traditions of Scottish and American Presbyterianism either.
If we are talking 1662 specifically then the Baptists are not, as a general rule, heirs to that tradition as they either never held parochial livings in the established churches or were kicked out in 1660. So we are dealing with Congregationalists and (mainly) Presbyterians. The trouble is, if we are drawing a family tree it comes to a dead end for the Presbyterians as they either became Unitarians or (to those that kept to trinitarian and Reformed theology) Congregationalists in the mid 18th century. Further, I think there are relatively few Congregationalist congregations that can trace a linear line of descent to a 1662 congregation or even the indulgence of 1672 as most originate in 18th and 19th century industrialism.
It becomes again difficult when we look at what ‘Presbyterian’ meant. For some, like Richard Baxter, it was a name of convenience for what used to be called ‘Puritan’. Definite issues of church government lacked importance for them. For others, such as the senior Edmund Calamy (grandfather to the famous biographer), ‘Presbyterian’ meant what it means today (i.e. Westminster Presbyterianism – something Calamy was central to writing). Even ‘true’ Presbyterians divided – in 1660 Calamy saw the future in negotiating with the Episcopalians to make the bishop only ‘primus inter pares’ in a synodical system (Ussher’s Reduced Episcopacy) – to preserve true ‘Reformed’ doctrine within the national church rather than allowing a nonconformist Reformed orthodoxy to be merely tolerated alongside Roman Catholicism and heretics such as Unitarians and Quakers. On the other hand Presbyterians such as Lazarus Seaman believed that it was better to join the congregationalists from the outset rather than submit to episcopacy, its Arminan clerics and its restored ‘popish ceremonies’. One thing is certain – none of the Presbyterians wanted to leave the Church of England, because that would be a schism they had in the 1630s, 40s and 50s always set out to avoid. There was a lot of back room dealing going on. I agree and don’t agree with Nick Brindley – on one hand there was lots of variation, on the other many of the ejected looked to the leadership of those in London (Calamy, Reynolds, Baxter) to decide which way to jump – in the end Edward Reynolds took the bishopric of Norwich (and ran it like a presbytery), Richard Baxter fell out with Bishop George Morely at the Savoy conference on the Book of Common Prayer and was ejected and Edmund Calamy who was recognised by most at the time as the leading figure of ‘true’ English Presbyterianism, was prevailed upon by other ‘true’ Presbyterians to reject the offer of a minor bishopric and his hope of settlement and lead the refusers out of the Church of England.
The Ejection, therefore was a close thing and a complicated thing, with many of those leaving making last minute decisions based on what their brethren would do and what the faithful of their congregations asked them to do. It wasn’t done lightly and no one did it for gain (even if nonconformity later became a badge of rich) but it was done on the basis of principles – i.e. that orthodox Reformed theology was not a position that could be compromised for the sake of a pension or a bigger congregation and it certainly wasn’t to form a self satisfied and nebulous ‘dissenting’ tradition.
As to the question. As someone baptised into the URC and who has great affection for it I would have to answer the question by saying that the historical/doctrinal line is broken and this is just using history as a means to further ulterior motives (shrinking congregations, better use of resources shared with CoE). The URC can claim a handful of ex-Congregationalist meetings that historically look back to 1660-62/72 but doctrinally, the progress within it of liberal Protestantism, Barthianism and sheer ‘it doesn’t matter, because were into ecumenicalism ’, means that many of the clergy of the URC (but not all) would be swiftly disinherited as ‘heirs’ if they came face to face with the ejected of 1662.
Not that I would say the ship is totally lost, though.
It’s a small point of detail, I know, but I think some baptists were thrown out in 1662 – http://greatejection.blogspot.com/2011/07/baptists-and-1662-chart.html
Hi Nick,
Well I agree it is a small point of detail and I did say ‘as a general rule’ – but that list has to be viewed with deep suspicion, if not contempt – it is more a product of the sort of hagiographical wishful thinking that is readily apparent in nonconformist historical writing. The junior Edmund Calamy started this tradition in his Account and Continuation by fudging the figures of nonconformists ejected in 1662 and that list is a product . For example John Canne was never a baptist and was a separatist from the 1620s – so he rejected the establish church from the start. Likewise army chaplains were not ‘ejected’ as the regiments of the New Model Army were disbanded in 1660. There are others on that list like Vavasor Powell (who was not ejected in 1662 as he was already in prison in 1660) who were congregationalists with believers baptist leanings – i.e. that adult believer’s baptism was the preferable entry into the church but it was not imposed as a condition of church membership on those who would make a profession of faith and could show signs of a godly life. At least one in that list was licensed in 1672 as a presbyterian!
Looking through A.G. Matthews, Calamy Revised – a more reliable researched source than Palmer’s edition of Calamy – I can count only 2 from that list who were baptists AND ejected from their livings in 1662 – John Tombes being the most prominent. I am sure there were a few more and the Welsh data is slightly confusing, but by and large I stick to the argument that ‘as a general rule’ baptists had never already left.
had already left rather…
Sorry, Phil. I will give you your blog back
Not at all. Fascinating.
I have to say it seems a bit odd to me to think that the (hypothetical) opinions of people from the mid-sixteenth century should be determinant of our view of what’s appropriate to do and believe today. I’m sure they would find strange and unacceptable in all sorts of ways and that in some of those there would be value in taking notice of them and that in some there would not.
The English Presbyterians were very particular group, defined in large part by there mediating stance on both church and state political order, and as a tradition turned out to be absolutely incapable of dealing with the processes of enlightenment, abandoning orthodoxy for Unitarian deism.
From the point of view of “legal inheritance” (and this may be the most comprehensible sense we can give the word “heir”) the Unitarians are probably in the best place to claim it, so perhaps the strangest thing about the statement you quote, Phil, is their absence from it.
I meant mid-seventeenth, of course, but it would apply to any time, including the sixteenth century. There is only one person who has the authority to determine our faith (and I do mean Jesus and not the “sovereign individual” of liberalism).
Dear Nick, if I may ask, can you explain what you mean by ‘The English Presbyterians were very particular group, defined in large part by there mediating stance on both church and state political order’?
Dear EV, strongly suspect you’re more of an expert here than I am so that I’m asking for trouble, but anyway here’s what I mean.
The division between the Presbyterians and the Independents in the mid seventeenth century, as I read it, was primarily around the issues of on the one hand attitudes to the monarchy (where the Presbyterian “party” remained loyal to the monarchical principle while the Independents came to depart from it) and on the other church establishment and toleration (where the Presbyterians like their Scottish counterparts retained an attachment to the idea of a national and established church that the Independents came to reject). In this sense they stood between the body of emerging Anglicanism and the more thoroughgoing dissent of the Independents, who in some ways approached an Anabaptist ecclesiology of the voluntary gathered community of the saints. The Presbyterian party, on this account, would occupy a middle ground (which is often the right ground to occupy although not, in my opinion, in this case).
It may well be that in this they were closer to the mainstream of the Reformed tradition (which has a strong theocratic strain) than the traditions that came to form the basis for English Congregationalism but I would be inclined to suspect that this was one reason why they were ill-equipped for life outside the established church and did not survive the eighteenth century leaving the non-conformist space to the successors of the Independents until the evangelical revival called Methodism into being and Scottish migration allowed the growth of a voluntarist Presbyterianism largely descended from the Covenanters via the Secession churches of eighteenth century Scotland.
(We haven’t much from you yet, Phil, so am I going to get a thunderbolt from Donny at this point as well?)
Dear Nick,
Thank you for your response, I was not setting a trap – I just didn’t understand what you meant. I have broad agreement with your view, although I would probably dispute the historical facts. I probably disagree with you on historical facts – but largely agree on your sentiment.
I think it is important to recognise that the 17th century English Presbyterians did not start out as a dissenting ‘tradition’ but rather a Reformed reform movement (if that construction is not infelicitous) within the Church of England – the Presbyterianism of the Westminster Assembly was not meant to replace ‘Anglicanism’ (which, of course, from the seventeenth century perspective is an anachronism) but to turn the national church into a Reformed church ‘according to the Word of God and the example of the best Reformed churches’.
This seems to have been, as you say, somewhat of a stumbling block after 1662. I am surprised that it was – the ur-idea of English Presbyterianism at the Westminster Assembly was that Scripture holds fold a model of the church where there are many congregations under one presbytery (based on the number of believers and presbyters in Jerusalem and the multiple elders/overseers of the church of Ephesus – but also on the immediate post Apostolic ‘city’ churches described in Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr and, to some extent, the Ignatian model city based episcopacy – and, of course, the fourth part of Calvin’s institutes). Added to this was the stress that the Church was a separate ‘commonwealth’ from the Civil State with (in characteristic Aristotlean terms) Christ as King, the ministry as the aristocratic stewards of the keys to His household and the people as the subjects. Although, like Congregationalists (hence I would disagree about the anabaptists analogy), the Presbyterians stressed the mainstream Reformed idea originating in Melancthon that the Christian magistrate should act as a support to the Church.
What surprises me is that, more so than the more atomistic forms of congregationalism, is that this theory provides a good model of a New Testament based church in dissent from a national establishment – it is not atomistic, as it has presbyteries composed of clerical and lay elders to keep a unity, and works on the basis of congregational assent, if not consent.
What I think was lacking in the post 1662 Presbyterians mind was an emphasis of the church as the covenant community of the people of the Gospel – perhaps this was too near to the Separatists they tried so hard not to be and they got hung up with either issues of returning to a Reformed CofE?
Of course, all this was during a time of persecution – and maybe if the original URC – the Happy Union of 1690 between Presbyterian and Congregationalist congregations – hadn’t ended so quickly after persecution was over – the two parts of the Union would have understood the best part of each others’ idea of a Reformed church (as opposed to a collection of sects) separated from the State much better and not falled into unitarian deism or Hyper Calvinist exclusivity, or worst still into a dissenting ‘tradition’ (in the sense that not walking under a ladder or eating Turkey at Christmas is a ‘tradition’ that nobody quite remembers the significance of). Hindsight, however, is a wonderful thing.
To make it relevant – It seems to me that the URC is in danger of similar things today – I would say that the URC has got its mission ‘out of the Church’ right, in fact, compared to some more insular evangelical/Reformed churches I am proud to be a member of the URC. But, personally, I think it needs to rethink what it is to be a church for those within its boundaries. Obviously, it goes without saying, I would look to the Reformed understand of what a biblical Church, but I think it needs to be discussed and not considered an irksome inconvenience agitated by fuddy duddy ‘traditionalists’ (which is the impression I get from reading some articles Reform magazine from time to time).
Also, thank you Phil for this indulgence on your bandwith – I hope I/we are not taking advantage of you. If I am, please say so.
and also sorry for more bad proof reading.
Thanks, EV, that’s really helpful, and thanks, Phil, for your hospitality, I’d love to hear what you think about all this. Your (EV) remarks about what kind of reflection the URC needs are very pertinent. My only reservation is that, without wanting to get hung up on it, there’s a good deal in the history and traditions of English non-conformism that we should value more than we do, just as we could and should learn a good deal from the history of Presbyterianism (although I’d look to Scotland at least as much as to England for that, and especially to the Secession churches as they developed through the UP and UF up to the reunion of 1929).
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Thanks for hosting this Phil. It’s a fascinating history. EV, you have an impressive grasp of our heritage and appreciate your attention to detail. If only Calamy, Reynolds and Baxter had been more committed to one another (or had the time to settle with and appreciate the best their differing but complimentary visions of biblical and Reformed Christianity). Hindsight is a wonderful thing as you say. Though perhaps in this sense we in the URC are more guilty than they for with the benefit of hindsight we may continue to perpetuate the same error. I am aware the Methodists through fruitful fields (their training report) are looking to consolidate their sense of identity and purpose at this time. It is perhaps time for us to take the same journey into our heritage to recover and reconcile a unified vision of biblical and Reformed Christianity and to shape a more constructive ecumenical agenda for the future.
I think it’s great that a simple question has led to such a great depth of response. I am planning to respond.
In the meantime – keep talking. This is a free blog.