Article

The Greatest Drama Ever Staged

Lee Gatiss
Friday, May 20th 2016
Mar/Apr 2011

“Missionary” is not the first word that comes to mind when one thinks of the Puritans. Keen disciples, passionate pastors, devotional writers, powerful preachers, precise theologians-yes. Radical revolutionaries and reformers, even. But not missionaries. The recent Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (Cambridge University Press, 2008), which features twenty in-depth studies by a stellar cast of the great and the good in Puritan studies today on a whole host of subjects related to Puritanism, has no chapter on their missionary endeavors nor even an index entry for “evangelism.” Yet as far as the Puritans themselves were concerned, all their efforts in theology, ministry, and even politics were focused on bringing glory to God through the salvation of sinners, their biblical edification, and their establishment in the fellowship of the church until the Lord’s return. In that sense, then, even if they did not use the words “mission” or “evangelism” as we might today, the Puritan story is the story of a persistent, determined, and spiritually minded attempt to reach the lost for Christ.

In this article I hope to restore to our mental portrait of the Puritans this focus they themselves had on God’s mission and ours. In order to do that, we will look briefly at two ways in which the Puritan agenda has been misunderstood (that is, politically and theologically), and then at three more direct and explicit manifestations of the Puritan zeal for mission (in America, Britain, and their local churches). There is much for us to glean from these entrepreneurial and resourceful saints of yesteryear as we ponder our own obedience in the twenty-first century to the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20).

Puritan Politics and the Liberating Gospel

Much has been written about Puritan politics. By politics I mean of course both civil and ecclesiastical politics, for these were so often indistinct in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Troubles between the Puritans and the establishment began because of issues, for example, to do with church ceremonies, the use of particular garments, and liturgical forms. It would be a grave mistake, however, to underestimate the seriousness of such seemingly trivial matters. To the Puritan mind, they were only the tip of the iceberg. The larger question below the surface was much more solemn: What was the nature of true Christianity?

In taking the stand they did on such matters they were not being petty Pharisees, “purists” merely for the sake of it. They wholeheartedly believed they were acting for the gospel itself. They saw the dangers of allowing alternative gospels (especially “free will” Arminianism or superstitious Roman Catholicism) to creep back into the church dressed in official garb under cover of apparent reverence. They feared for their nation should these things be permitted to drag the church back into the dark ages from which the Reformation had rescued it.

For the Puritans, these were issues of conscience. And issues of conscience in religion were not simply about personal preferences and “style.” If they were relentlessly pushed (as they were by Archbishop Laud), they eventually constituted a direct attack on the Lordship of Christ. As the cream of Puritan divines put it in chapter 20 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, “God alone is Lord of the conscience.” Puritan political machinations were often simply the overspill of their pastoral and missionary zeal to see people won for Christ alone and freed by Christ from superstition, impiety, and atheism. If we may frown upon certain groups for going too far in some respects and giving the Puritans a reputation for suppressing all fun in the process, we should at the very least attempt to understand their often very godly and mission-sensitive motives.

Puritan Theology and the Gracious Gospel

Another way in which the Puritans have been misunderstood is in their theology. Puritan theologians of this period have been accused of being dry, dusty scholastics who reduced the faith of their dynamic Reformation predecessors to mere formulas and complicated it with Aristotelian philosophy.

It is true that seventeenth-century theology is not a mere repetition of the earlier work of Luther and Calvin. Yet is that not exactly what we ought to expect? For the enemies of the gospel became more and more sophisticated in their attacks upon it. The main aim of Puritan theologians was to institutionalize and to defend the Reformation’s doctrine of grace against not only Roman Catholics but also radical Anabaptists, anti-Trinitarians, rationalists, and compromisers of various stripes, so it could be passed on safely to the next generation. This was no mere academic exercise, though it often took academic or “scholastic” form, of course, as is fitting in an academic environment.

If accused of being “too precise,” Puritans would reply, “But we worship and serve a splendidly precise God.” Their considerable theological gifts were devoted to preserving the biblical theology of salvation by grace alone from all the corruptions and deviations that assailed it during those turbulent times. This was not merely for the sake of conserving a supposedly pure system of doctrine; what Puritan divines sought to protect was grace itself, the very grace these pastorally minded theologians hoped would reach and save the unconverted.

For all their supposed “scholasticism,” it is clear when one actually reads the works of men such as William Perkins and John Owen that their ultimate desire was to flood bookstalls, pulpits, and homes with the good news of God’s mercy and free gift of life in Christ Jesus, and steer seekers away from pale imitations of this powerful message.

Let us look now at some of the Puritans’ more explicitly evangelistic achievements and goals. I propose to examine their gospel outreach to the Indians in the New World, the unevangelized areas of the Old World, and the unsanctified in their churches. Puritan missionary strategy enthusiastically embraced all three of these spheres.

The Indians in New England

In the 1630s, persecution of some Puritans became so hot that many of them considered emigration to the New World. As Joseph Caryl later wrote on the early progress of the gospel among the American Indians in a 1650 report, The Light Appearing More and More: “The Lord, who is wonderful in Counsel, and excellent in working, hath so wrought, that the scorching of some of his people with the Sun of persecution, hath been the enlightening of those who were not his people, with the Sun of righteousness.” While many colonists were concerned simply to grab resource-rich land from the natives, Caryl spoke of “how much doth it become Christians to let Heathens see that they seek them more than theirs; That the gaining of them to Christ is more in their eye, than any worldly gain.”

Puritan evangelism among Native Americans was supported by high profile Puritans such as John Owen, William Bridge, Thomas Goodwin, and Philip Nye. The cause was pushed along by Henry Whitfield, not a direct physical ancestor of the eighteenth-century evangelist George Whitefield but certainly a spiritual ancestor. Whitfield published letters from men like John Eliot, the so-called “Apostle to the Indians” whose extraordinary productivity in preparing sermons and publishing sacred texts in an Indian language was unprecedented and never duplicated. French and Spanish Roman Catholic missionaries focused on rituals and sacraments, claiming huge numbers of converts, but Eliot and Puritans like him taught and translated God’s Word, believing that even on an entirely foreign mission field, the Word of God would prove living and active, the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.

Puritan missionaries in America have been criticized for a certain amount of underlying racism and accused of using missionary efforts to consolidate military conquests. In certain places there was some segregating of Indian converts into “praying towns” likened by a few to concentration camps. To be fair, they ought to be seen against the prevailing norms of their own lifetimes and not judged entirely by the standards of later centuries, and it should be remembered that Eliot founded an academy that was notable for educating English, Indian, and African students together. But whatever mistakes we may see in hindsight, it is clear the Puritan missionaries were motivated above all by the vision of Revelation 5, where people “from every tribe and tongue and nation” stand together in praise and adoration before the Lamb of God.

The Indians in Old England and Wales

In his short tract, The Hirelings Ministry (1652), Roger Williams, the controversial founder of Providence (Rhode Island), highlighted another important sphere for mission. There are not just Indians back in America, he said, but “we have Indians at home, Indians in Cornwall, Indians in Wales, Indians in Ireland….Who can deny but that the body of this and of all other Protestant Nations (as well as Popish) are unconverted?” The Puritans saw the challenge of reaching the unevangelized dark corners of the land and took it on with relish.

Some outreach to areas outside London happened almost naturally as Puritan merchants traded with other parts of the country, taking the gospel along with their wares. Mission to areas outside the immediate gravitational pull of the capital was much slower. Preachers were sometimes sent by the government to border counties as tools of military or economic policy, to remind the populace of their spiritual duties of loyalty to the crown and diligent labor, but not necessarily to call them to fruitful obedience to the higher power of the Messiah who died for sinners.

One innovative approach to more biblical evangelism was attempted by the wonderfully named “Feoffees for the Purchase of Impropriations” (one of whom was John White, the great-grandfather of John and Charles Wesley). For several years, this lay-led initiative sought to buy up advowsons, the legal right to appoint ministers in parish churches often held by local landowners, and then to appoint reliable Puritan preachers and evangelists. Their holdings and interests were scattered but showed a marked concentration in unreached areas of Wales and its borders. The Feoffees also augmented the stipends of ministers in poorer areas to help improve the quality of the preaching ministry there, and others funded “lectures” in market towns with the aim of reaching business people with the gospel. Such were the strategic ambitions of these bold trustees that increasingly anti-Puritan forces within the government forced their suppression in 1633, but not before the conversion of many English and Welsh “Indians.”

The Indians in Our Churches

The Puritan minister William Whately of Banbury once exclaimed, “What does one do when the ‘unsanctified world’ exists right within one’s own parish?” The most comprehensive Puritan answer to that question was given by Richard Baxter in his book The Reformed Pastor, which was clear that “we must labour, in a special manner, for the conversion of the unconverted.” Yet preaching alone was not sufficient for this task. With Paul in Acts 20 as his model, Baxter taught people not just from the pulpit but excelled in teaching them also “from house to house.”

In fact, Baxter invited the whole town to his home and took them, one by one, family by family, through a catechism, asking questions to probe their understanding, teaching and exhorting them where necessary. From experience he learned that this could lead to more spiritual understanding in half an hour than could ten years of preaching. Through his faithful diligence, many nominal Christians and entirely unchurched families were brought to a living faith in Christ.

Baxter’s model of ministry was highly focused on clergy activity. Laymen had their place, particularly fathers in pastoring their families, but Baxter’s model is perhaps open to the criticism that the pastor was in danger of becoming too dominant, like a medieval priest. We may probably wish to involve laity more in evangelism and elders in pastoral visitation, reckoning lay-led small groups as the basic unit of pastoral care. But in an age of multicampus ministries and video-link sermons, where whole congregations may not know or be known by their preacher, Baxter’s personal approach to the Indians in his church may stand as a sharp rebuke to more distant pastoring techniques, which may reach thousands but only on a more superficial level.

In these ways then, the Puritans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sought to fulfill the Great Commission. They made their share of mistakes. But their politics and their theologizing sought to protect the gospel and its liberty, so that in their mission to pagan foreigners, superstitious countrymen, and nominal churchgoers they could employ every creative means at their disposal to win the nations for Christ. There is much for us to ponder in their example.

Friday, May 20th 2016

“Modern Reformation has championed confessional Reformation theology in an anti-confessional and anti-theological age.”

Picture of J. Ligon Duncan, IIIJ. Ligon Duncan, IIISenior Minister, First Presbyterian Church
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