Our Church’s Covenant Rooted in the Pilgrims’ Covenant

Rev. Gary L. Marks 2020

            The Pilgrims were Separatists.  They broke away from the Church of England which they deemed could not be “purified” from within the church itself.  It is difficult today for us to grasp the significance of what separation meant.  It is the tendency to think today in terms of a mere difference of opinion regarding ecclesiastical issues.  In England in the 1600s, the church and the monarch were one and had absolute power over the population.  Therefore to separate from the church was an act of treason against the state.  In a monarchy such as England was meant the people were “subscribed” to that which was dictated by the monarch.  In the period under discussion here, the king was James I.   Non-subscription was to be confronted with heavy penalties. Such penalties were anything ranging from arrest and imprisonment to banishment from England and in some cases to execution. 

            English society was ordered from the top downward.  It was a hierarchy with the king at the pinnacle of all social and governmental rule.  The church with its elaborate structures of authority was the instrument of the king and its bishops were enforcers of the king’s absolute rule.  He was in 1606 deemed to rule by “divine right”.  The act of separation was therefore much more than a mere difference of opinion regarding church doctrine. 

            There were a number of Separatist churches in England.  Among them was a small self-declared congregation who gathered in the tiny hamlet named Scrooby.  That congregation met in the old Manor House where William Brewster was post master, a man of religious zeal who invited those of like mind to join his congregation.  It was this religious gathering which was to become the people we have come to know as the Pilgrims of the Mayflower.

            In denying the power of the established church and the king there was a vacuum created with reference to a proper foundation of a “free” church or congregation.  That group preferred the name “congregation” to the word church.  That gathering of “free people” thus united itself on the basis of the biblical idea of “covenant”.  A covenant in the Bible is a sacred agreement, a compact freely entered into by the people.  The agreement is between the people and God and one another.  Although that idea has lost its cogency in people’s understanding in the twenty-first century, it was for the Scrooby Congregation a link between themselves and God and one another.  It could almost be said that it was a vivid presence of the Holy in the midst of earthly life.  In the thinking of Puritan reconstructionists at Cambridge University and to a lesser extent at Oxford as well, the Bible was textbook, ample for the organization of congregation and society.  For the Scrooby Congregation, the Covenant replaced the elaborate stratification of the English Church and society.

            The Scrooby Congregation’s Covenant is preserved in William Bradford’s, Of Plymouth Plantation.  Most scholars agree that the Covenant was drawn up and “owned” in 1606.  Bradford’s recording of the Scrooby Covenant is as follows:

“ . . . the Lord’s free people joined themselves (by a covenant of the Lord) into a church estate, in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all His ways made known or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them.”

(William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed Samuel Eliot Morison, p.9)

I have made much of this simple but sacred agreement but it is not simple in the implication it had in the legacy of the Pilgrim’s future.  The Covenant was the foundational Principle of the Scrooby Congregation which replaced the complex structure of English society in 1606.  It should always be remembered that the one day Pilgrims’ self-identity through the Covenant was not only a separation from the Church of England but it was much more than that.  I contend that the Covenant served as a model for the Pilgrims as they organized their eventual plantation in Plymouth. 

            Though the Pilgrims did not intend to establish a democracy when they sailed in the Mayflower, there was in latent forms, the seeds of democratic self-rule in their covenantal ordering principle.   The “Lord’s free people” determined their every move through the consent of the “major part” of the congregation.  This idea came into play when they were faced to deal with a near mutiny when they landed at Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod.  Those aboard the Mayflower who were not of the Pilgrim church threatened to do as they pleased when they went ashore because they were not in Virginia as designated in their charter.   Under these potentially dire circumstances, they drew up a civic document which in secular form was a reflection of their covenantal self-understanding and church order.  That document was The Mayflower Compact.  It is noteworthy that the signers of the Compact included those not a part of their congregation.  I say that this fact is of great significance because what is usually conceived as the Pilgrims’ break with the Church of England alone had within itself a potential for the manner in which society should be constructed.

There are those today who downplay the importance of the Mayflower Compact.  They rightly point out that the composition of the Compact is similar to language in other charters and agreements of the time.  These reductions of the significance of the Compact itself are not able to account for the fact of the unique circumstances under which it was composed in Provincetown Harbor.  It could be argued that in the familiar language of the charters of the time the Compact was unique in its composition to the desperate situation in which the Pilgrims found themselves.  The Compact was a document of survival in a strange land to them.  The Compact was not merely a “quick fix” to an immediate problem, it was a civic extension of the Pilgrim’s sense of life ordered in “covenantal existence”. 

            The Compact does not proclaim that civic order was to be based upon what we designate as democracy.  Rather, democratic principles were employed in the Compact in order to implement social or civic responsibilities. The Compact was freely entered into by its signers just as the Covenant of 1606 was “owned” back in Scrooby.  I only add here that the Compact was honored in Plymouth well beyond the time when some observers reduced it to a “quick fix” document.

            In another instance the covenantal ideal with proto-democratic implications was employed when the Pilgrims made a compact with Massasoit.  To be brief, it was an agreement between two parties which endured for more than fifty years.  After that circumstances degenerated and the horrors which befell the Native Peoples tragically ensued in New England colonies and then elsewhere across the land.

            I conclude this general presentation on the significance of the Covenant in the Pilgrim’s self-identity with an observation regarding The Covenant of The Church of the Pilgrimage.  From the onset I note that the early Separatist and Puritan churches in New England were founded and perpetuated on the basis of a covenant.  Covenants differ in language because each congregation is in charge of its own congregation and affairs. 

            Having said that I hasten to add that church covenants are also similar in content.  Most contain ideas which are in concert with the Scrooby Covenant of 1606.  Our own covenant preserves a major central idea in the language of the Scrooby Covenant.  The central notion of most covenants is the following:  “ . . . to walk in God’s ways known or to be made known unto us”.  Our church’s covenant employs these words.  The beauty of this covenantal idea is that we don’t claim to be in full possession of truth once and for all.  We are open to “yet more truth and light”, words the Rev. John Robinson issued to the Pilgrims as they departed Delfshaven for the New World. 

Our congregation is in covenant with all like-minded congregations of The United Church of Christ since it was formed in 1957.  A major theme of The United Church of Christ is that “God is still speaking”.  God is not finished with us.  We are “on the way” not claiming to know all there is to know about the Truth.

            The Covenant of The Church of the Pilgrimage is repeated often and has been a part of Communion Services.  It has also been a central part of receiving new members into the life of our congregation.  It has also been employed when confirmands become members of the church.  These acts of conviction reflect our continuing reliance on the ancient PIlgrim Covenant of Scrooby, Leyden and the Mayflower.  It takes note of who we are when we seek to discern our future as a people of faith.  Our Covenant may need revision in its wording but it is and surely should remain central to our work and mission.

 The Church of the Pilgrimage Covenant

We are united in striving to know the will of God, and to walk in His ways, made known or to be made known to us.  We hold it to be the mission of The Church of Christ to proclaim the gospel to all mankind, laboring for the progress of knowledge, the promotion of justice, the reign of peace, and the realization of human brotherhood.  And we look with faith for the triumph of righteousness and the life everlasting.  Amen