ABSTRACT
The Half Way Covenant The Historical Background In March 1662 the Massachusetts General Court issued a call for a church synod to discuss an issue that had with each passing year become more pressing-the issue of baptism and Church membership. As we recall, the early Congregationalists upheld the view that “regenerate membership was an absolute essential to the properly constituted Church.”1 Only one category of people were excluded from the need to covenant with God and their fellow men to be become Church members-the children of already regenerate saints. ese children of regenerate members were seen to be Church members (and as such were baptized) through partaking in the covenant of their parents. With the maturity of this generation, however, there arose the serious problem of their own progeny. Could these children of Church members who had not undergone regeneration be admitted into baptism? Could this third generation be incorporated into the Church, and, if so, on what basis? Ministerial concern with this problem of what essentially the boundaries of the community were and the terms of membership therein progressed throughout the 1650s. In fact, the serious dissensions among ministers and Churches over a narrow or broad definition of collective membership (that is, over the inclusion or exclusion of this third generation from Church membership) resulted first in the Ministerial Assembly of 1657 and later in the Half Way Synod of 1662.2
As has been recognized by many scholars (and, indeed, as feared by its albeit few ministerial opponents), the Half Way Covenant bespoke a fundamental reorientation in the nature of New England Congregationalism.3 In reworking (and broadening) the terms of entrance to the Covenant, the Synod of 1662 effectively transformed the ideal model of community, a move that, in conjunction with other developments, led to a repositioning of the borders of membership as well as the basic terms of membership in the collective.
