The Formative Influence of Plymouth Church on American Congregationalism -- By: Lewis M. Robinson

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 127:507 (Jul 1970)
Article: The Formative Influence of Plymouth Church on American Congregationalism
Author: Lewis M. Robinson


The Formative Influence of Plymouth Church
on American Congregationalism

Lewis M. Robinson

[Lewis M. Robinson, Associate Professor of History, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.]

Plymouth has stood for many years as the symbol of American beginnings. The idea inherent in the town’s slogan, “America’s Home Town,” has been a definite part of the average American’s intellectual equipment. The formative influence of Plymouth on American institutions has been taken for granted by generations of Americans; however, in 1933, Perry Miller challenged this idea in his Orthodoxy in Massachusetts. Subsequent writers have utterly dismissed Plymouth’s role as a formative influence. Writing in the widely read College Outline Series, Marshall Smelser declared that Plymouth “had no permanent influence on American society of any sort which can be measured.”1

Smelser’s summary discard of Plymouth as a factor in our intellectual heritage calls for a reexamination of the evidence pertaining to the influence of Plymouth Church polity and practice. If it can be established that Plymouth did exert an influence on the practice of Puritanism, then certainly Plymouth did influence American society because Puritanism was one of the great intellectual movements of our history. The system of church polity in which Puritanism functioned provided its vehicle of expression, and, in America, Congregationalism was that system. The purpose of this article is to present the positive evidence relative to the influence of Plymouth Church on American Congregationalism.

Considerable relevance to contemporary church issues is seen in the separatist issues raised in the Puritan movement. Puritan theologians and laymen alike were forced to face the soul-searching issue of separation from the established church. To all Puritans, the alternatives were conformity, noncomformity, or separation. Most Puritans chose nonconformity but in varying degrees. The Separatists sought no degree of conformity, but chose complete separation as the means of worshipping according to their conscience. The reason for being of Plymouth Colony was the practice of its church polity, and the heart of this polity was separation from the established Church of England in order to realize the great Puritan ideal of a pure church. Since the rise of theological liberalism in American churches, many Christians have had to face the similar issue of degree of conformity or total separation according to their conscience. It is at this point that Plymouth’s example and influence becomes relevant to their time as well as ours.

The formative influen...

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