This book examines the life and work of the Reverend John Callender (1706‒1748), placing him within the larger context of the emergence of religious toleration in Puritan New England in the later part of the seventeenth century and the early part of the eighteenth century. A cursory survey of the array of literature about colonial American church history reveals the well-worn theme of persecution, but the subject of the reluctant consent to toleration by the Puritans in New England is a relatively understudied subject. John Callender was a product of both Puritan and Baptist influences, and his life and work serve as one example of the contribution to the newfound toleration between Baptists and Congregationalists in the early eighteenth-century.
The goals of this study are fourfold: to identify the nature and rise of toleration in New England at the close of the seventeenth, and into the eighteenth-centuries; to highlight the rise of toleration between the Baptists and Congregationalists in Boston, and detail the first official ecclesiastical act of toleration; to study aspects of Callender’s contribution to the new-found toleration by surveying key parts of his life and ministry; and to study Callender’s works, analyzing theological aspects of his tolerant thought, and detailing his contribution to the discipline of history in general, and to Isaac Backus’s work on New England Baptist history more specifically.
Academic Significance of the Study
The specific conditions surrounding the emergence of religious toleration between the Congregationalists and Baptists in Boston in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has not been treated at length. An in-depth study of John Callender’s contributions to the idea of denominational tolerance will strengthen the depth of this research, as he was a product of the official ecclesiastical display of toleration by the Congregationalists in 1718.
This book contributes to two major areas of church history. First, the study of the relationship between the Puritans, Baptists, and other groups in colonial New England in the light of the rise of toleration, rather than through the lens of persecution, provides a unique distinctive. Second, an examination of the life and work of John Callender adds to the field of Baptist history, since lengthy treatments of John Callender’s life and thought have not been written.
This study will focus on toleration as the change in context in New England rather than summarizing instances of Puritan persecution in the colonies. I mention some of the oft-studied instances of persecution throughout, but I do this in order to provide a context for an examination of the rise of toleration in Puritan New England. I approach this particular aspect by first synopsizing the changing definition of “Puritanism” from previously understood parameters, as propounded by scholars such as Peter Lake and Jerald Brauer. Part of the changing definition of the term includes viewing Puritanism in terms of “piety.”1 Understanding this angle of Puritan history helps guide my analysis of how the Puritans dealt with the changes in their society that led to a “grudging toleration,” a term that historian William McLoughlin frequently employs.2 In addition, I will show how the New England Puritans, newly established in the colonies, were characterized differently than their English counterparts. This form of “transatlantic Puritanism” plays a role in how the Puritan establishment reacted to dissenters in the coming decades.3
My focus then narrows from the broader context of toleration in New England to the contentious, then cooperative relationship between the Baptists and Congregationalists in Boston between 1692 and the mid 1730’s. This time period is somewhat confined, because it falls between two distinct periods in American Church History—the founding, flowering, and decline of the New England Way from the early 1630’s to the early 1690’s, and the beginnings of the Great Awakening in the late 1720’s. During the decline of the Puritan theocracy, toleration arrived more fully due to pressure from British government, economic factors, immigration to New England by dissenting groups, and as a result of the Act of Toleration in 1689. Toleration came about “grudgingly,” because the Puritans were fearful of the godlessness that would evolve as their laws were overruled by the tolerationist government of Britain.4 Puritan angst was fueled mostly by the fear of becoming unholy in the sight of God, and losing their privileged status as a “city on a hill.”5
When some Congregationalists in Boston and other parts of New England began to scruple infant baptism, establishing Baptist churches as a result, and when the Quakers arrived bringing with them perceived ecclesiastical disorder, the Puritans reached the apex of their apprehension by hanging four Quakers, and by publicly whipping several leading Baptists. After these events, toleration emerged more swiftly, due in part to the external factors previously mentioned, and also due to the changing views of Cotton Mather. Since Boston Congregationalism served as the barometer for the rest of New England, the impact of Mather’s eventual embracing of the Baptists opened an avenue for cooperation and harmony between the General Baptists, and what would become the Old Light Congregationalists, in the beginning years of the Great Awakening.
Harmony between Baptists and Congregationalists was achieved in fuller measure in 1718, when, in an unprecedented move, Cotton Mather led the ordination service for Elisha Callender, a Baptist. This event opened the door for cooperation between Congregationalists and Baptists in New England—but more specifically in Boston, its surrounding areas, and Rhode Island. From 1718 to about 1740, the Baptists and Congregationalists enjoyed a period of relative harmony and trust, until the religious landscape was changed by the events of the Awakening.
From about 1728 to 1748, John Callender served as the pastor of the First Baptist Churches in Swansea, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island. Callender had been influenced by the demonstration of toleration in the First Baptist Church of Boston in 1718, because as a member of the Callender family, he had attended services, and probably observed the historic event unfold. During his ministry, in addition to his duties as full time pastor, Callender also worked as a Baptist statesman and pastoral official for various other Baptist churches in Rhode Island and parts of Massachusetts.
Callender attended Harvard College for his B.A. (1724) and for his A.M. (1726).6 While there, Callender formed friendships with notable Congregationalists including, members of the Mather family and some notable Harvard scholars. As a testament to his education, Callender wrote a “Century Sermon” on the centennial of the founding of Rhode Island. Even though Cotton Mather had initiated an “official” truce by ordaining Elisha Callender in 1718, some Baptists were still actively engaged in seeking recognition from the Congregationalists, as Baptists were still being taxed in other parts of New England. Some Baptists continued to harbor ill will towards the Congregationalists. Thus, in his work, Callender deliberately and specifically called for peace between denominations by utilizing some of the tolerationist ideas he gleaned from biblical exegesis, and from the works of Cotton Mather, Roger Williams, and others.
Thus, during the first half of the eighteenth-century, John Callender contributed to the rise of toleration between Congregationalists and Baptists. But the religious situation would soon change with the climax and waning years of the Great Awakening in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The Awakening brought with it strange new types of revival services full of ecstasy, judgment, and contriteness. For some Congregationalists and Baptists in Boston and Newport, the Awakening represented disorder and divided its participants into New Light and Old Light factions. The division reached across denominational lines, so that the Old Light standing order Congregationalists retained their relationship with many General Baptists, including many Baptists in Boston and Rhode Island.7
Many New Light Congregationalists eventually became Baptists, and contributed to the growth of Separate Baptists. It is here where many Baptist histories begin their study of the growth of Baptists in earnest. Before the Awakening, approximately twenty five Baptist churches had been formed. After the Awakening, the number of Baptist churches multiplied exponentially, due mostly to the influx of the new Separate Baptists. The new post-Awakening Baptist tradition produced scholars such as Isaac Backus, who fought for religious liberty on a national scale, and strove for the notion of separation of Church and State, up to and including the Revolutionary War.8 Baptist literature is voluminous during this time period.
However, the period between 1692 and 1740 saw little in the way of Baptist apologetics and scholarship. The main reason for this stems from the fact that Baptists were so new, and to some degree misunderstood, that they spent the majority of their time fighting for survival—in some cases biding their time in jail for unlawful assembly, or simply staying in hiding. According to some scholars, the only significant piece of literature produced by a Baptist was, in fact, John Callender’s “Century Sermon” (In its published form, the Historical Discourse). Historian William McLoughlin observes, “Although the Baptists and Dissenters waged a determined fight against the establishment in these years, they produced no leaders of any consequence. Elisha Callender, John Comer, Valentine Wightman, and John Callender were probably the most important of their ministers, but with the exception of Callender’s historical sermon in 1739, no Baptist, lay or clerical, produced a tract of any lasting, or even contemporary, importance.”9
Callender’s ministry and scholarship contributed to the continuing peace process between Baptists and Congregationalists during the first half of the eighteenth-century. It was also during this time period that the ideas of the Enlightenment began to make their way into the colonies. Therefore it is important to briefly discuss the effects of the Enlightenment, if any, on the tolerant thought of Callender, since it is his tolerant thought that will be emphasized in this book, and due to the fact that the idea of toleration has been linked with Enlightenment thought in some cases.
On the Effects of the Enlightenment on Callender’s Thought
Callender’s contribution to toleration arrived at a crucial time in the eighteenth century. Callender ministered during the initial years of the growing influence of Enlightenment thought in England, Europe and in the American colonies. I contend that, for the most part, Callender’s perspective was driven by practical means. His published works were sermons delivered from the pulpit, and were not philosophical treatises. Additionally, Callender had been influenced by the newly-found cooperation between Congregationalists and Baptists, and he attempted to further that peace in his ministry and in his life. Therefore, I do not believe that Callender acted out of a purely intellectual and rational sense of toleration due to Enlightenment principles. It is very likely that Callender had read works by Locke, Newton and other thinkers during his education, and although his tolerant language parallels aspects of Enlightenment thought in select passages of his works, his life and ministry were the result of an applied biblical message. In this section I provide three main reasons that support my position.
First, Callender’s tolerant thought was practiced in isolation from formal Enlightenment thinking. Some scholars have linked the idea of toleration in early America with the arrival of Enlightenment ideas from England and Europe. This link is strong indeed, but in some instances the abstract concept of toleration as a pragmatic result of the Enlightenment can be distinguished from the actual practice of toleration in daily life. Some communities in modern Europe and early America practiced toleration as a result of necessity, rather than as the result of an intellectual exercise.
In his book on the practice of toleration in early modern Europe, historian Benjamin Kaplan suggests that in some cases, intellectual theories of the Enlightenment actually materialized after documented instances of the practice of toleration in different communities in Europe.10 Kaplan arrives at this conclusion, in part from comparing “traditional” sources on toleration—which emphasize toleration as an abstract concept, and focus on intellectuals such as Locke and Voltaire, and “enlightened” rulers such as Oliver Cromwell11—to studies from the last ten to fifteen years that shift away from elite circles and offer accounts of toleration being practiced within communities of religiously mixed people who utilized toleration in order to achieve a practical “peaceful coexistence.”12
Although the scope of Kaplan’s study is limited by era and location to early modern E...
