Westminster Directory of Publick Worship - what are "our plantations in the remote parts of the world"?

[Sam Jer]

In the Westminster Directory for the Publick Worship of God, in the section dealing with the prayer before the sermon, the directory directs the pastor to pray:

for the blessing of God upon the reformed churches, especially upon the churches and kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland, now more strictly and religiously united in the Solemn National League and Covenant; and for our plantations in the remote parts of the world:

What is the meanimg of "our plantations in the remote parts of the world"? Does it refer to colonies? If so, which? Or does it refer to missionary endevours abroad? If so, where? Or is it both? Or some third meaning?

 

[iainduguid]

In the 1640's it likely had the New World colonies in view, I would imagine. Virginia and New England spring to mind, along with some of the West Indies, like Barbados

 

[Northern Crofter]

In the Westminster Directory for the Publick Worship of God, in the section dealing with the prayer before the sermon, the directory directs the pastor to pray:


What is the meanimg of "our plantations in the remote parts of the world"? Does it refer to colonies? If so, which?

Colonies. Yes:

1607 Jamestown, Virginia
1609 Bermuda
1612 Surat, India
1620 East coast of Newfoundland (island) and Plymouth, Massachusetts
1625 Barbados and Saint Kitts, Caribbean
1628 Nevis
1630 Boston, North America and Mosquito Coast, Central America
1632 Antigua and Montserrat, Caribbean
1638 Belize (British Honduras)
1639 Chennai (Madras), India

Or does it refer to missionary endevours abroad? If so, where? Or is it both? Or some third meaning?

No. N/A. No. No. (sorry - I don't know about you but I get annoyed when people don't answer all my questions! )

 

[Sam Jer]

Colonies. Yes:

1607 Jamestown, Virginia
1609 Bermuda
1612 Surat, India
1620 East coast of Newfoundland (island) and Plymouth, Massachusetts
1625 Barbados and Saint Kitts, Caribbean
1628 Nevis
1630 Boston, North America and Mosquito Coast, Central America
1632 Antigua and Montserrat, Caribbean
1638 Belize (British Honduras)
1639 Chennai (Madras), India

How involved were the Christians in these places with the Westminster assembly? Were there any delegates from these "plantations"? Did they swear to the Solemn League and Covenant? Were the reforms applied in them?

 

[Northern Crofter]

How involved were the Christians in these places with the Westminster assembly? Were there any delegates from these "plantations"? Did they swear to the Solemn League and Covenant? Were the reforms applied in them?

How involved were the Christians in these places with the Westminster assembly? I don't know of any evidence that they were.

Were there any delegates from these "plantations"? None that I am aware of (nor were there any from Ireland which was one of the 3 kingdoms involved in the SL&C). Nor would the plantations have expected any such representation - that would, after all, become one of the big gripes in the colonies...

Did they swear to the Solemn League and Covenant? Some likely would have before heading to the New World as it was subscribed to by vast numbers in Scotland, England, and Ireland. Later some of these colonies became dumping grounds for banished Covenanters.

Were the reforms applied in them? Probably not to the extent they were in Scotland, but again, neither were they in Ireland or even England, and, again, the colonies were often places for non-conformists to be sent so not much would be expected in the way of covenanted reform. Sadly, as long as they turned a profit, there was often not as much care as should have been exercised toward their spiritual health.

 

[darrellmaurina]

How involved were the Christians in these places with the Westminster assembly? I don't know of any evidence that they were.

Were there any delegates from these "plantations"? None that I am aware of...

It's been years, probably decades, but I remember reading long ago that some of the Congregational pastors in New England were "sounded out" about an appointment to the Westminster Assembly but declined without being formally asked. I cannot at this point recall the names with certainty and would rather not rely on memory for matters like this.

We do not always appreciate the degree of time and danger involved in transatlantic crossings in the early 1600s. A minister had to weigh the very real risk of death at sea against the benefits of going to England for an assembly where he was certain to be a minority (the Dissenting Brethren were, after all, only five to seven men, depending on the specifics of the points at issue). The New Englanders had no realistic hope of persuading the majority at Westminster to accept the Congregational Way. The benefits of their presence would have been to say, from firsthand experience, "We have put into practice what we preach, and here is how it works and why," and to make a forceful exegetical argument against the majority position. The best they could hope for would be toleration, and perhaps the New Englanders believed the men already named to the Westminster Assembly, by virtue of their arguments, would convince the majority, if not of the Assembly than of Parliament, to refrain from imposing a mandatory presbyterian system on all the churches of England.

That is how things ended up working out in practice when the Parliamentary debates made clear that imposing presbyterian uniformity was not going to work so long as Cromwell controlled the Army.

(For those who read my signature line and wonder what on earth an ARP member is doing saying such things, I was licensed to preach for many years in the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, served on the board of the Congregational Studies Conference, and edited a critical edition of the 1648 Cambridge Platform back in the 1990s. I drive over an hour to an ARP church that used to be URCNA because, after moving to Missouri, that's the closest confessionally Reformed church of any type that will accept my infant baptism. I'd be a member of a Reformed Congregational church if there were an option less than three hours away across state lines, which is the closest one to me. My elders are fully aware of my views and recognize that my church joined the ARP and changed its confessions AFTER I joined, so it's not me but my church that changed its views on church polity.)

 

[Northern Crofter]

A minister had to weigh the very real risk of death at sea against the benefits of going to England for an assembly where he was certain to be a minority (the Dissenting Brethren were, after all, only five to seven men, depending on the specifics of the points at issue). The New Englanders had no realistic hope of persuading the majority at Westminster to accept the Congregational Way.

Instead we got the wonderful back-and-forth writing between Samuel Rutherford and Thomas Hooker. If anyone wants to dig in to their discussion of presbyterian vs. congregational polity, there is a dissertation (available here) by Sang Hyuck Ahn which I found to be an excellent exploration - reading something like Rutherford's Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline has a lot of profit in and of itself, but it makes much more sense with some backgrounding into the dispute between the two men/sides. One of my own personal takeaways was realizing how much presbyterianism (at least in the US) has adopted what Rutherford argued so strongly against (the taking of membership "vows" or the concept of congregational covenants, for example).

 

[darrellmaurina]

@Northern Crofter, You hit the nail on the head about the issues of taking membership vows and congregational covenants being centerpieces of the difference between the Presbyterian view of a "parish church" (though replacing the diocese with a presbytery), and the Congregational view of a "gathered church."

American church life, by necessity in a disestablished context, has accepted the gathered church principle. Ironically, the closest thing we have today in American Protestantism to a de facto "established church" is the Baptists in the South, and they, of course, believe in church membership being based on personal profession following conversion.

My wife is Korean and has an undergraduate degree from what used to be Chongshin College and Seminary in Seoul (now Chongshin University), the denominational college and seminary of the Hapdong Presbyterians. I will read the "take" of a Korean writer on these issues. I am **VERY** much aware, from direct firsthand experience, that Korean Presbyterianism doesn't operate anything like American Presbyterianism, and John Knox and John Calvin would scratch their heads and say, "their form of government is stranger than their language." I know far too much about how Korean Presbyterianism works in practice and I will be interested in reading how a Korean scholar evaluates the historic views of church government debated during the Puritan era.