Conservative Revolutionaries

Transformation and Tradition in the Religious and Political Thought of Charles Chauncy and Jonathan Mayhew

Oakes

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781532602177
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Boston Congregationalist ministers Charles Chauncy (1705-87) and Jonathan Mayhew (1720-66) were significant political as well as religious leaders in colonial and revolutionary New England. Scholars have often stressed their influence on major shifts in New England theology, from traditional Calvinism to Arminianism and, ultimately, to universalism and Unitarianism. They have also portrayed Mayhew as an influential preacher, whose works helped shape American revolutionary ideology, and Chauncy as an active leader of the patriot cause.Through a deeply contextualized re-examination of the two ministers as "men of their times," John S. Oakes offers a fresh, comparative interpretation of how their religious and political views changed and interacted over decades. The result is a thoroughly revised reading of Chauncy's and Mayhew's most innovative ideas. Conservative Revolutionaries also unearths strongly traditionalist elements in their belief systems, centering on their shared commitment to a dissenting worldview based on the ideals of their Protestant New England and British heritage.Oakes concludes with a provocative exploration of how the shifting theological and political positions of these two "conservative revolutionaries" may have helped redefine prevailing notions of human identity, capability, and destiny.

part 1

Transformation and Tradition

1

Earlier Lives

On June 2, 1748, Jonathan Mayhew began a series of seven Thursday lectures at West Church. By the time they ended on August 25, they had established him as one of the leading critics of the Calvinist orthodoxy of his day. Just under a year after a controversial ordination on June 17, 1747, Mayhew had already been effectively ostracized by most fellow Boston clergy. According to a letter to his father of October 1, 1747, he could rarely get preaching assistance although “The People of my Parish seem to be well united—none having left us since my ordination. As to the Ministers of the Town, I have no correspondence save with one or two of them.” The practical implications were considerable. Not only was Mayhew’s workload increased because he could not participate in the usual round of pulpit exchanges, he was excluded from a Boston clergy association and from participation in the town’s regular Thursday Lecture. In his 1766 “Memoir of Dr. Jonathan Mayhew,” prominent parishioner and Massachusetts official Harrison Gray reported that the Boston clergy generally “treated him with great coolness and indifference for some Time,” and that neither the First nor Brattle Street churches subsequently “invited him to preach,” despite his strong connections with Chauncy at First. The ever-confident and energetic Mayhew assured his father that “thro’ God’s Goodness to me, I live very happily and contented” without such collegial support. He compensated for his lack of opportunities elsewhere by starting his own lecture series.14

Gray may have somewhat exaggerated the immediate popularity of Mayhew’s presentations when he reported that they were “attended by Gentlemen of the first Character in Town and Country: And by the generality of the Clergy of the Town of Boston and of the Neighbouring Towns. His Audience was always crowded.” The West Church member’s subsequent judgment that Mayhew’s sermons “upon these occasions gave universal satisfaction” was certainly misleading. Mayhew’s Seven Sermons were soon published in Boston (1749) and an edition was released in London in 1750. They went on to attract such acclaim overseas that they were instrumental, if not decisive, in the decision by the University of Aberdeen to award Mayhew an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree the same year. But the response in more orthodox Bostonian circles was much cooler. Akers noted that “with the exception of Chauncy and [Samuel] Cooper [of Brattle Street Church] and later Andrew Eliot [of New North], the Boston clergy treated him with a cold, stony silence.” More populist reaction to Mayhew’s ministry was much more forthright. An anonymous letter addressed to “The Rev. Mr. J——n M——w,” which was published in the Boston Evening-Post of April 17, 1749 under the soubriquet “Philanthropos,” entreated him rather disingenuously

to pursue your Design with Modesty, sound Sense and good Reasoning; the two last I’m convinc’d by the Share I have heard of your Sermons you will not be much at a Loss for, and the first you might attain by a good deal of Self-denial, and a little Attention to the Conduct of your Superiours in like Cases.15

What was Mayhew’s main offense in his West Church lectures and elsewhere? According to “Philanthropos” and others who were less polemical in their criticisms, he had “lately assum’d the Dictator’s Chair, and taken upon you to impeach of Weakness and Impie-[ty] the . . . religious Principles of your Country, and seem to think they stand in great need of Correction and Reformation, and that you are bound by virtue of your Office, and by your superiour Abilities qualified to undertake that Province.” Mayhew had principally challenged Massachusetts orthodoxy in Seven Sermons by openly espousing Arminian teaching. This included an explicit denial of the classic reformed doctrine of the total depravity of humankind, as well as open advocacy of a more cooperative understanding of salvation, which required active human participation, rather than depending solely on sovereign and irresistible divine grace.16

The West Church minister was just twenty-six years old when he delivered his controversial Thursday lectures and began to establish his longstanding historical reputation as one of New England’s most prominent and outspoken Arminians. But historians have often neglected to point out that he did not always hold such views. Both he and Chauncy have been so strongly identified in progressive theological terms that they have tended to become divorced, even in the most recent scholarship, from the traditionalist doctrines of their earliest years, which continued to shape elements of their thinking long after they had formally renounced the rigors of conventional Calvinism. But there is strong evidence that both were not only nurtured in New England orthodoxy, as might have been expected. Chauncy publicly maintained its major tenets for nearly four decades after his entry into ordained ministry in 1727. It was only in the course of the Great Awakening that the Boston ministers distanced themselves from more “enthusiastic” tendencies to adopt a more rationalist outlook, and it was not until the late 1740s and the publication of Mayhew’s controversial lectures that either could be clearly identified with Arminianism.

Mayhew’s Early Calvinism

Mayhew’s Calvinist heritage has been well documented, although the lack of historical detail about his education is one of the most striking features of his early biography. Born at Chilmark, Martha’s Vineyard, on October 8, 1720, he was the seventh child of Experience Mayhew by his second wife, Remember Bourne. Experience was the great-grandson of the early settler Thomas Mayhew, who had ruled the Vineyard as “Lord of the Manor,” as well as acting as missionary to the local indigenous population for some forty years. Soon after his father’s death in 1689, Experience assumed control of the mission that was to be his life’s work for the next sixty-five years. Although lacking any university education, he became a pioneer linguist and translator, as well as a published author and prominent missionary, who enjoyed the support of leading figures in the Boston Congregationalist establishment, through the Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England and other connections. In 1726 Experience sent Jonathan’s older brother Nathan to school in Cambridge to prepare him for admission to Harvard. But there is no evidence that Jonathan enjoyed such an educational opportunity there or anywhere else, prior to his arrival at the college at the relatively advanced age of nearly twenty in 1740. All that can be safely assumed is that he had the benefit of his father’s instruction and personal library, such as they were. What is known of Experience’s theological position is that it was generally orthodox, albeit somewhat idiosyncratically and critically so.17

Contra Clinton Rossiter’s exaggerated claim that Mayhew Sr. imparted to his son “a profound mistrust of religious and political Calvinism,” Experience’s writings indicate that his theology was consistent with Puritan tradition until the 1740s, by which time Jonathan was already at Harvard. His late departures from New England orthodoxy were significant, although they centered on a couple of fine points of doctrine, which he addressed in Grace Defended (1744), one of the two longest, if not the bestselling, of his six published works. Experience had been asking questions for some time and he had been engaged in an ongoing dispute in 1743–4 with Jonathan Dickinson, the future President of Princeton, ove...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: Transformation and Tradition
• Chapter 1: Earlier Lives
• Chapter 2: Reshaping the Calvinist Heritage
• Chapter 3: Challenging the Boundaries of Orthodoxy
• Chapter 4: Maintaining Tradition
• Part Two: Conservative Revolutionaries
• Chapter 5: Engaging the Public Square
• Chapter 6: Fighting the Cause
• Chapter 7: Resolving the Big Issue
• Chapter 8: Mayhew, Chauncy, and Revolutionary Change
• Bibliography