From Puritans to Revivalists .............................................................

Lecture 27

Revivalism ... is both a Christian practice and a tradition of Christian

theology. Interestingly enough, this tradition of Christian theology

arose in the Reformed tradition. It is a response to problems that arise

among Reformed theologians and Reformed churches, and especially

in America among the Puritan churches.

T

he original context of American Revivalism was a problem the
Puritans had about church membership. In the 17th century, New
England Puritans (Congregationalists) began requiring a profession
of faith as a condition of membership in the church. In contrast to early 17th-
century English Congregationalists, this was not simply a confession of the
Christian faith, that is, demonstrating knowledge of basic Christian doctrine.
Rather, it was an account of the experience of the grace of Christ having
worked in your life to produce conversion and true saving faith.

This requirement of profession inevitably caused problems when the
baptized children of church members did not have a conversion experience.
Church members had the right to get their infant children baptized. Baptism,
however, did not secure church membership. When they grew up, these
children had to be able to narrate a conversion experience before they could
join the church. The Puritans attempted to solve this problem by introducing
the Halfway covenant in 1662, which allowed baptized non-members to
have their children baptized. This solved the problem of dwindling church
membership as well as a political problem because the Congregational
church had become the established church in Connecticut and Massachusetts,
where only church members had full citizenship. Solomon Stoddard, a
Massachusetts minister, took the further step of allowing halfway members
to partake of communion as a converting ordinance. Samuel Hopkins argued
to the contrary, that when the unregenerate use the means of grace, such as
sacraments, scripture, and prayer, they misuse and profane them, and thus
become all the more abominable in God’s sight.