Established Congregational churches

Congregational church establishment in New England
1630s–1833
Puritanism in England Disestablishment in the U.S.
The Old Ship Church (1681), a Congregational meetinghouse in Hingham, Massachusetts
Duration	~200 years
Location	New England, Colonial Thirteen Colonies
Including	Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire
Monarch(s)	Charles I of England (early establishment period)
Leader(s)	John Winthrop, Thomas Hooker (early colonial founders)
Key events	Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, Connecticut Constitution of 1818, New Hampshire Constitution#1784

Congregational church establishment in New England refers to the system of legally established Congregationalism in several of the New England colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Once in New England, the Puritans established Congregational churches that subscribed to Reformed theology. The Savoy Declaration, a modification of the Westminster Confession of Faith, was adopted as a confessional statement by the churches in Massachusetts in 1680 and the churches of Connecticut in 1708. ^[1]

In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Congregational churches were supported by public taxation beginning in the 1630s initially with only male members church being able to vote, ^[2] and the church continued to receive state support until disestablishment in 1833. ^[3] However from the start there was some acceptance that freedom of conscience was scriptural as there was in Plymouth Colony. ^[4] The Cambridge Platform, drafted at the request of the Massachusetts General Court during the Interregnum, sought to combine Congregationalist polity with the framework of a legally established church. ^{[5] [6]}

In Connecticut Colony founded by Thomas Hooker, the Congregational Church retained official tax-supported status until after the Revolution with the adoption of the state constitution of 1818. ^[7] New Hampshire also supported Protestant churches, primarily Congregational, through public taxes until 1819. Rhode Island was the notable exception in New England, as its 1663 charter guaranteed freedom of conscience and rejected any established church. The then Congregationalist Roger Williams in 1636 sett up Providence Plantations (that later became Rhode Island) with a formal separation of church and state.

See also

• Separation of church and state in the United States
• Great Awakening
• Half-Way Covenant
• Religion in the Thirteen Colonies

References

1. Youngs 1998, p. 52.
2. "Church-State Relations in Colonial America". National Humanities Center. Retrieved 12 September 2025.
3. "The Religious Landscape of the Thirteen Original Colonies in Early 1700s America". American Heritage. Retrieved 12 September 2025.
4. Olmstead, 1960 & p-16. sfn error: no target: CITEREFOlmstead1960p-16 (help)
5. Bremer 2009, p. 20.
6. Cooper 1999, p. 13.
7. Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Connecticut"  . Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company.

Bibliography

• Bremer, Francis J. (2009). Puritanism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-974087-1.
• Cooper, James F. Jr. (1999). Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in colonial Massachusetts. Religion in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN   0-19-515287-5.
• Dunning, Albert E. (1894). Congregationalists in America: A Popular History of Their Origin, Belief, Polity, Growth and Work. New York: J. A. Hill & Co.
• Olmstead, Clifton E. (1960). History of Religion in the United States. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
• Walker, W. (1894). A History of the Congregational Churches in the United States. American Church History. Vol. 3. New York, NY: The Christian Literature Company. ISBN   978-0-7905-4239-3.
• Youngs, J. William T. (1998). The Congregationalists. Denominations in America. Vol. 4 (Student ed.). Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN   978-0-275-96441-2.