Re: Congregationalist or Puritan

["John S. Quarterman" <jsq@quarterman.org>]

>It was my understanding that our ancestors were Congregationalist not 
>Puritans.   Even though there is quite a difference in the two.  According to 
>dictionary, the were the Scott Presbyterian.  They were stricter than the 
>Puritans.  Right or wrong.
>Myrtle Joyce Longcoy

The actual history seems to have been more complicated than that.

Puritan was more of an epithet than a name that meant much in itself.
There never was a denomination called Puritan, so far as I know.
Puritan was a label applied to people who wanted to purify the church.
It was basically the term used in England for those who wanted to go
farther in the Reformation than the Church of England had done.  Puritans
wanted to stick closely to the Reformation goal of scripture alone as
authority.  In particular, they tended to reject bishops and church
hierarchies, and they had fewer sacraments; marriage, for example,
was to them not a sacrament; rather a secular legal contract.

Puritans who did not remain with the Church of England tended to form
churches that took the Congregational organizational structure.  Most
of the churches of the Puritans in New England were Congregationalist.
Cotton Mather, for example, was a Congregationalist, and I think it's
safe to say that he was a Puritan.  Most Congregationalists were Puritans.

The church in Dorchester, Mass. was Congregationalist, as was the one
in Dorchester, S.C., and the one in Midway, Georgia.  Rev. Joseph Lord
and Rev. John Osgood were Congregationalists; probably Rev. Hugh Fisher
(the one between those two in S.C.) was, as well.

Rev. Osgood was also the first minister in Midway.  Rev. Abiel Holmes
was Congregationalist, so far as I know.  Similarly Rev. Jedidiah Morse.

In Georgia, presumably due to the proximity of Midway to Darien, which
was a Scottish settlement, Scottish Presbyterian influence became greater.
Presbyterians were, after all, in origin the Scottish church founded by
John Knox on Calvinist principles, while Congregationalists were English
Calvinists, so there wasn't a great deal of difference between the two
denominations.

Most of the pastors of Midway were Presbyterian, although the church and
society were always Congregationalist in form.  Methodists often preached
at Midway; when William Bartram visited in 1774, Rev. Osgood had died,
and a Methodist was preaching that particular week.

The S.C. and Midway colony was more willing to listen to other denominations
than the Mathers had been.  This may have had more than a little to do with
why this colony moved south.  Yet in traditions and organizational form,
they were Puritans.  A slightly different kind of Puritans, it's true,
also coming originally from a different area of England.  But Puritans
nonetheless.

In their southern homes they were even more unusual than they had
been in Massachusetts, because they were the only Puritan colony
in the southern states.  Their standards of religious practice,
learning, decorum, etc. made them stand out.

John S. Quarterman <jsq@quarterman.org>
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