‘Congregationalists Renewing’  
Keynote Talk Given To The Seminar in Plimoth, Massachusetts
Janet Wootton

This keynote talk forms a pair with the one that will be given later by my colleague and co-chair of the Theological Commission of the International Congregational Fellowship, Dr Manfred Kohl, entitled, ‘Renewing Congregationalists’.

I am honoured to be speaking in the context of an American congregational seminar, particularly in the place where our forebears first set foot after fleeing religious persecution in England and Wales. Here is a common point of departure for both our traditions, when English men and women founded a settlement on American soil where they could live out the purity of their doctrine and faith in a new communal life-style.

If I speak from an English context, it is to say that congregationalism can still be seen as a model for communal living, not just for congregations, but as a paradigm for human communities and therefore has a powerful political dimension. Congregationalists can renew, can renew the communities in which they live, by the application of congregational principles to ordinary life.

A Shared Tradition
My own church, Union Chapel, in the middle of London, is proud of its piece of Plimoth Rock – a fairly sizable piece, which was given to the church in the 1870s, and is ‘enshrined’ in a recess set above the door by which the minister enters the church from the Vestry. The recess has a brass plaque commemorating the gift. I have seen visitors from the USA offering homage to the rock, by reaching up to touch it, and even blowing it a kiss! For the people of Union Chapel, it is a constant reminder of our link with American Congregationalists and of our common, deeply held convictions. 

We are a mixed congregation both ethnically and in the denominational background of those who are in membership. Many come from hierarchical traditions like Roman Catholicism and value congregationalism as a religious system that makes sense. Here they find dignity observed without pomp and circumstance; worship of a transcendent God without conferring mystical powers on an elite; recognition of authority with no demand for unthinking obedience and of truth with no offer of blind certainty. 

While some may find security in obedience and certainty, what attracts people to congregationalism is its openness to intellectual honesty and the fact that it values and honours every member’s experience of God. This is evident in the church meeting, in which consensus is sought by the full participation of every member under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I wonder at the God who trusts ordinary human beings to hold such awesome responsibility for the gospel message, until I remember how the same God offers gifts and empowerment and wisdom to those same ordinary people.

In this way, the congregational system is in keeping with Jesus’ own overturning of the established power structures of the world. Where the world honours the rich, the powerful, people with advantages of class or education, Jesus spoke of the first being last, and countered power struggles among his own disciples with references to servant hood, denouncing greed for power as an alien, worldly concept (Mark 10:35-45).

A Shared History
What happened in the confused and complex set of changes that formed the Reformation in Europe was, at least partly, a result of a new understanding of Scripture. The Bible was read again in the original languages, and also began to be translated into the vernacular. This made the original texts available to scholars and to the common people.

The impact of such availability cannot be over-estimated. For us, who have ready access to the Bible in a whole variety of translations, without either awe of an overriding ecclesiastical authority or fear of punishment for reading it, the concept of generations of ignorance is unimaginable. So too is the power that this conferred on those who held the keys to church teaching in their own hands. It is scarcely surprising that people who held such awesome power were unwilling to give it up, to the point of persecuting and murdering those who were brave enough to stand up to them.

There were two great consequences of this open access to scripture, which have relevance to the development of what came to be called congregationalism: freedom to speak and preach directly from scripture and with authority derived only from God’s calling; and a new kind of church order, based on the local congregation, rather than coming down from a higher, national power structure.

One group of dissenters began to form congregations – gatherings – which sought to recreate the patterns of worship and leadership of the New Testament. During the trial of Henry Barrow, John Penry and John Greenwood, the testimony given by the martyrs contains the reasoning behind their so-called ‘sedition’. In answer to examination on his willingness to follow the prayers laid down in the Book of Common Prayer, to keep saints days, say the creed and the Lord’s Prayer, John Greenwood replied that the new congregations refused to be bound, restrained or stinted in the words they used in prayers or preaching, but would continue to be free to speak in the power of God’s Spirit. This they perceived as their inalienable scriptural right.

The hymn, ‘For freedom in worship’ follows the trials of the martyrs as recorded in their own words.¹ It can be found in the book, Peculiar Honours, published by the Congregational Federation and Stainer & Bell in honour of the 250th anniversary of Isaac Watts’ death in 1998.² The hymn was written for the Annual Assembly four years earlier for the 400th anniversary of the death of Barrow, Penry and Greenwood. 

 

ALL	For freedom in worship recall Henry Barrow John Greenwood, John Penry and others beside - Before High Commissioners, Lords of the Council, Archbishops and bishops, they stood to be tried
EXAMINER (side 1)	Will you confess to a true Church in England Supreme over which is the Queen's majesty With orders of Bishop, of Priest and of Deacon? A curse on your schism and vile heresy!
BARROW (side 2)	Say what you will I will freely forgive you, But no Prince on earth has that supremacy The true Church is governed by pastors and teachers, And this is from Scripture and no heresy
EXAMINER (side 1)	Do you refuse to be bound to our churches, To worship and honour the sacraments there, To go to the Parish Church , keep any Saint's day To follow the creed and to say the Lord's Prayer?
GREENWOOD (side 2)	We will not be bound or restrained in our worship We will not be stinted in word or in prayer, For no written form, but the grace of God's Spirit Can offer the words that all true saints may share
EXAMINER (side 1)	What office hold you, what warrant for preaching Or may anybody who wishes address Your pitiful gatherings, unlawful assemblies In woods where you practice seditious unrest
PENRY (side 2)	I preach by the calling of that congregation Which meets in the woods out of fear of arrest The Body of Christ should be free to make use of The gifts of its members that all may be blessed
EXAMINER (side 1)	You will be taken from out the Fleet prison And dragged through the streets for all London to see And you will be hanged on the gallows at Tyburn So cursed be all traitors who die on the Tree.
ALL	God give us the insight to combat suppression In every disguise that it wears in our day the courage that honours our freedom in spite of Traditions and systems that stand in its way.
	Janet Wootton 1993 © Stainer & Bell Ltd. and Congregational Federation

Freedom of speech was demonstrated not only in the gathering of congregations with unauthorized leadership, but also in a growth of public preaching. Queen Elizabeth I understood the danger of having uncontrolled preaching by people who wished to alter the Church of England and who claimed divine authority for doing so. In particular, she suppressed, ‘prophesyings’ in which a number of preachers would hold a public meeting, and may spend several hours in proclamation, gathering large congregations in market places and other public spaces. One of the most revolutionary aspects of this kind of preaching was that it was not infrequently open to women as well as men.

All of this led to the authorization of learned, ‘safe’ clergy in each diocese as preachers. However, itinerant preachers still claimed to preach by the authority of the congregations which called them. John Penry at his trial was asked by what authority he preached at his ‘unlawful gatherings’, and replied that it was the very congregation which gave him the authority. He required no authorization from Church or State.

In Kent in the 1560s, itinerant preachers spoke to large gatherings on working days in the market places. Later this practice settled to a weekly sermon on a Saturday. By the 1580s, godly preachers had begun to settle in the Wealden parishes. In Cranbrook , a puritan curate was appointed. John Strowd was on the run from the West Country, and was one of the operators of the clandestine Puritan Press of the early 1570s. Eventually, Strowd was restricted from preaching by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Following the ejection of ministers in the 1660s, under the various repressive measures of the Clarendon Code, non-conformist worship and, above all, preaching became a highly dangerous activity. Extraordinary measures were taken to protect the preacher, whose life and liberty might be endangered by his activity.³ I have preached in churches whose architecture bears witness to this. High pulpits have a wide view of the surrounding countryside through large windows, so that the imminent arrival of royal troops could be forestalled by the rapid exit of the minister through a back door leading, in at least one instance, by a rocky descent to a secret harbour where a ring in the rock still shows where a boat was once tied.

The other element of congregationalism that dates to this era is church governance, based on the unit of the gathered or ‘embodied’ congregation. Henry Barrowe wrote, ‘all the affairs of the Church belong to that body together. All the actions of the Church – as prayers, censures, sacraments, faith – be actions of them all jointly, and of every one of them severally: although the body, unto divers actions, use such members as it knoweth most fit to the same.’ ⁴

The image behind the hierarchical church, which for so long had been used to bolster up a feudal political system, was overturned. Previously, God and his angels had been seen as the apex of a triangle of power, which devolved through political and religious rulers, monarchs and their designated governors, and archbishops and their priests, all of whom held power and control over the mass of common people at the bottom of the triangle. Now, the common people were recognized as having direct access to God through penitence and the forgiveness of their sins, and by the possession of spiritual gifts through no intermediary other than Jesus Christ himself. This changed everything. Again, we who live by democratic ideals cannot imagine what it must have meant to see through the pretence which under girded feudalism and a hierarchical priesthood.

A Unitarian writer and satirist, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, later, Anna Aikin, wrote a good deal about the unjust combination of sacred and secular power structures and the way in which religious freedom could challenge this. "The temple is the only place where human beings of every rank, and sex, and age, meet together for one common purpose, and join together in one common act . . . . This is the only place, to enter which, nothing is more necessary than to be of the same species; - the only place, where man meets man not only as an equal but a brother; and where, by contemplating his duties, he may become sensible of his rights . . . It is of service to the cause of freedom, therefore, no less than to that of virtue, that there is one place where the invidious distinctions of wealth and titles are not admitted; where all are equal, not by making the low, proud, but by making the great, humble." and "Every time Social Worship is celebrated, it includes a virtual declaration of the rights of man" ⁵

She also held out great hope for the establishment of a new order in America , to which she saw the torch of liberty being handed on from a class-ridden and religiously intolerant England . She writes, ‘may you no more attempt to blend what God has made separate; but may religion and civil polity, like two necessary but opposite elements of fire and water, each in its province do service to mankind, but never again be forced into discordant union.’ ⁶

However, the journey of the pilgrims to the new world did have an influence on public life. Their theology informed the development of a different way of life and a different power structure in America . Many in England , like Barbauld, looked with longing eyes at the revolutionary spirit in the new world. For my part, a morning spent in Boston was extremely poignant. As I looked at the balcony from which the Declaration of Independence was read to the people, was I a representative of the hate and defeated English, or the heir to a common tradition which in England and early America had suffered at the hands of entrenched and established power structures?

I felt more of the latter, especially since the Church of England is still established in England and still retains the trappings of power. I have recently been involved in the campaign to reform the House of Lords in favour of a properly constituted second chamber. Part of that campaign is to broaden religious representation, which is still held by the presence by right of Bishops of the Church of England. Despite the patent fact that only 10% of the English (Scottish and Welsh figures are different) population regularly attend any place of worship, and that the Church of England has the allegiance of a minority even of those, it still holds a repressive place in the government of the nation.

Isaac Watts, known sometimes as the ‘father of English hymnody’ was the son of a dissenter who was imprisoned for his beliefs. His hymns demonstrate the strength of congregational ecclesiology.

 

Jesus invites his saints to meet around his board: here pardoned sinner sit and hold communion with their Lord.
This holy bread and wine maintains our fainting breath, by union with our living Lord and interest in his death.
Our heavenly father calls Christ and his members one; we the young children of his love and he the first-born Son.
We are but several parts of the same broken bread; our body hath its several limbs but Jesus is the head.
Let all our powers be joined his glorious name to raise: pleasure and love fill every mind and every voice be praise.
	Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

This hymn addresses the singing congregation as the saints of Jesus. Saints are not chosen individuals canonized after their death by a hierarchical power, but the ordinary people of God, and this is in keeping with the way Paul addresses fellow Christians in, for example, I Corinthians 1:2. But the saints are not so by human right or righteousness; rather they are defined in the very next line as ‘pardoned sinners’, and the rest of the hymn shows how they are called and constituted by the headship, life and death of Jesus. The hymn is also worth studying for its theology of communion.

Social Reform
How can we be true today to this powerful tradition? I can tell you how my own congregation is seeking to live out the congregational ideal in worship and social involvement.

One of the ways we use our building is as a day centre and winter night shelter for homeless people. In collaboration with other churches in the area, we open one day a week, and one night in winter. The aim is for enough churches to be involved so that every day is covered.

So on a Sunday, we open our doors and up to 130 homeless and badly housed people come in for a hot meal, showers and fresh clothes. At face value, it looks as though we are simply supporting these people in their life-style and offering no impetus to change. For sure, we start by meeting very basic needs, but, again in collaboration with other churches, we try to offer and encourage change. We offer resettlement advice, which includes help in finding accommodation and a friendly presence when life gets difficult.

Finding someone a home is only the first step. Often the people who end up on the streets have come from institutional care, from children’s homes or from the armed services, where they have never learnt the basic life-skills which they need when living alone. When the first bills come in, they may have spent all their money and may panic. They may find living in a flat too lonely and prefer the camaraderie of the streets. Often drug or alcohol habits exacerbate these problems and we can help by simply being there to talk to when things go wrong.

But we do not stop there. People are on the streets not only because of their own choices. We saw an enormous rise in street homelessness in the 1980s, years of boom and bust in house prices. We know that changes could be made in children’s homes so that young people are better prepared for life. We see how difficult it is to gain access to statutory sources of help if someone doesn’t have an address or access to mobility.

Now our concern for homeless people urges us to enter a campaign to make things better. London now has a mayor and soon will have its own assembly. As chair of the London churches homelessness network, I have met with the politicians who will be tackling homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse and social services in London . I do not come from a party political standpoint but as a Christian, with a group of Christians, with experience in the field.

All this is very precisely in keeping with our congregational form of Christianity. When we felt called to address the needs of the homeless people all around us in inner London , the first thing we did was to engage in two kinds of research. The second kind was to find out the scale and nature of the problem and possible solutions. The first kind of research we did was to see what the Bible said about homes and homelessness. And we were in for a surprise.

We found that settledness and the possession of a home were not the unmitigated good we thought them to be. In a Bible Study in which four of the six members were living in tied accommodation, we were delighted to read II Samuel 7, in which God responds to King David’s desire to build a Temple. It turns out that God is quite happy in a tent, and that there is something about the desire to settle God down which is tantamount to controlling him! This goes with a distinct strand of Hebrew prophecy and teaching which is anti-monarchic and egalitarian and, indeed, close to the congregational view of human relationship with God.⁷

We found that Jesus left his settled home to take up the life of a wandering preacher and healer and, what is more, frequently called people to follow him, leaving family and home behind, and taking up with the Son of Man who has nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:18-22).

This meant that we could not take a simple paternalistic or superior attitude to homeless people. To some extent, their life-style is closer to what Jesus requires than is the settled and materialistic life-style of people who live in houses. We should allow God to challenge us through the lives and experiences of homeless people, even while we are trying to offer assistance in their need.

I wrote the hymn, ‘Christians join in celebration’, based on Isaiah 65:17ff, as a reflection of congregational Christian theology on the great theme of God’s just reign. Here are the great themes of creation in God’s image, the beginning and ending of time. The present age is characterized by corruption, debt, disease and war, which we as prophets should dare to name and shame.

But the huge scope, as with Isaiah’s prophecy, is based units of a small scale. Human life is actually lived out in little communities, where basic concerns are the nurturing of children, building and living in homes, and producing food. This is where the great themes come to rest, and the mighty Kingdom of God is shown in a hundred human dreams.
 

¹ The Examinations of Henry Barrowe, Iohn Grenewood and Iohn Penrie, before the high commissioners, and Lordes of the Counsel, penned by the prisoners themselves before their deathes. Publisher, William Marshall, London 1690?  (Return to text)
² Peculiar Honours, Stainer & Bell Ltd., London , 1998 (Return to text)
³ Watts The Dissenters, p 227-238, Tudur Jones, Congregationalism in England , p 63-84 (Return to text)
⁴ cited in The Validity of the Congregational Ministry by J Vernon Bartlet and J D Jones - papers read at the CUEW Assembly in 1916, published by CUEW, London. (Return to text)
⁵ A Barbauld Remarks on Mr Gilbert Wakefield’s Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship 1792. (Return to text)
⁶ A Dissenter (A. Barbauld) Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts of March 3rd 1790. (Return to text)
⁷ Wootton, J, Dissent BC , Congregational Lecture, 1989

Christians! Join in celebration,
see the hope in every face,
catch a glimpse of new creation
even here in time and space:
children thrive in peace, undaunted,
work receives its fair reward,
homes are built and crops are planted -
Can we see this world restored?

People join in celebration
where the truth of God is heard
spoken out in confrontation
with the powers that hold the world,
tearing through the web of lying,
naming debt, disease and war,
through the bravest, prophesying,
‘Death and pain could be no more!’

Christians! join the celebration,
sweeping far beyond our schemes.
Dare to hear God’s invitation
in a hundred human dreams.
‘Break your chain-links with corruption,
struggle free of guilt and fear,
join the surge of hope’s eruption,
God ‘s great carnival is here!’

People! join in celebration,
fan the flame from place to place,
form a vivid constellation
starring all the human race.
Let God’s image blaze unhindered,
glorious in diversity.
If our crazed abuse were ended,
then creation might be free.

Janet Wootton (1952 - )
© Stainer & Bell Ltd. and Congregational Federation  (Return to text)