Sesquicentennial History, part 1

Our Congregational Heritage

Beyond its tradition, First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa stands as an expression of a religious tradition that has made important contributions to world Protestantism and to the history of the United States. That tradition, essential to understanding the development of this Church, must be traced back to sixteenth-century England.

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation in England initially had its roots in political rather than spiritual concerns. King Henry VIII (ruled 1509-1547) required a male heir to assure the political stability of his realm and found himself increasingly frustrated that his marriage to Katharine of Aragon had failed to produce such a son. Henry, therefore, sought annulment of this first marriage within England's official Roman Catholic Church in order to undertake a second marriage that might result in his desired heir. When the king's search for dissolution of his marriage proved unsuccessful, he secured Parliamentary legislation separating England from the religious jurisdiction of Rome. But the church Henry went on to create differed little from that of Rome except in permitting the King's remarriage. The legislation established the monarch as "Supreme Head of the Church on Earth" in place of the Pope, and in the king's name bishops administered a church that retained Catholic doctrine, ceremony, and Episcopal church governance. This church, moreover, was England's official church; Henry VIII and his successors, like almost all monarchs of the early modern period, believed that religious uniformity was essential for national political unity. Thus, the monarch regarded dissent from the official church as a treasonous act.

While this new, official Church of England became a bit more Protestant in doctrine and ceremony during the reigns of two of Henry's children, Edward V (ruled 1547-1553) and Elizabeth I (ruled 1558-1603), and even survived an attempt to reestablish Catholicism under Mary (ruled 1553-58), it remained a state church, administered by bishops, with a "high church" or Catholic ceremony. Many in England, drawing inspiration both from the simple, early Christianity that they found in the New Testament and the theological teachings of Continental European reformers like the Frenchman John Calvin (1509-1564), wished the English Reformation to go further.

Several different groups reflected this impulse for what John Milton called "the reform of the Reformation." The Puritans wished to remain within the Church of England but sought to "purify" it of Catholic ceremony and to substitute John Calvin's presbyteries or consistories (councils of clergy and laymen) for Episcopal church governance. A more radical theological outlook was that of the Separatists. The Separatists took the revolt of the individual conscience, so central to the Protestant Reformation, to its logical conclusion in a doctrine of complete local autonomy. They believed each congregation, composed of individuals who were "gathered" in a voluntary association, ought to be self-governing, electing its own pastors, teachers, and elders without state or Episcopal control. The only outside allegiance of such a church was to Jesus Christ. These tenets would become the guiding principles of Congregationalism.

By the 1570s English Separatists were meeting to pursue their vision of Christianity. Such meetings incurred the increasing persecution of the monarch because they defied the state church. Under Elizabeth I the government outlawed Separatist religious meetings and executed three Separatist leaders in 1593 for their religious beliefs. Elizabeth's death brought a new monarch, James I (ruled 1603-1625), and increased persecution of religious dissenters. Confronted at Hampton Court in 1604 with Puritan demands for religious change, James insisted that Puritanism was revolutionary in defying the state church; the logical result of such defiance, according to James, was that, if there were no bishops, there soon would be no more King. He threatened: "I will make them conform themselves [religiously], or else I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse."

Despite royal persecution, however, both Puritans and Separatists continued in their religious nonconformity. The most significant of the Separatist groups was that gathered at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire in 1606. Scrooby was the seat of a vast manor possessed by the Church of England's Archbishop of York. But it was in the very home of the Archbishop's estate manager and postmaster, William Brewster, that the Scrooby group met. They were soon joined by John Robinson as Pastor and by Brewster's foster son, William Bradford.

As religious persecution in England increased, the Scrooby Separatists fled England for Holland in 1608. Settling in Leiden, the Englishmen enjoyed the greater religious freedom of Holland, but in other regards found life there a mixed blessing. Their lifestyle in Holland was an urban one, requiring men and women trained as farmers to learn new skills. They additionally saw little opportunity for propagating their faith in Holland, and they worried about the expiration in 1621 of a truce in the Dutch War for Independence from Spain that threatened to plunge Holland into renewed conflict with early seventeenth-century Europe's greatest Roman Catholic power. Finally, their children were becoming more and more culturally Dutch. Thus the Leiden congregation resolved to immigrate to the New World in further search for religious freedom. Their ensuing voyage would lead to their being remembered as "The Pilgrims."

The first group of Separatists departed Plymouth, England aboard the Mayflower on September 16, 1620 led by Elder William Brewster and William Bradford. Pastor Robinson, who remained in Leiden with those who were to follow this first expedition, died in 1625 before he, too, could cross the Atlantic.

The Pilgrims reached the coast of Massachusetts in November 1620 after what Bradford described as a "Longe beating at sea." But, before going ashore, they agreed to a political expression of the religious ideals of English Separatism in the Mayflower Compact. Just as Separatist congregations were religiously self-governing, so, too, was this Separatist colony to be politically self- governing. In the Mayflower Compact the Pilgrims endowed themselves with the power to make their own laws and to elect their own governors. Under this compact they established a small settlement at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. Their colony was never large, numbering by 1637 only 549 settlers. But as William Bradford wrote:

...Out of small beginnings great things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea, in some sort to our whole nation.

The Pilgrims' influence on American traditions of self-government was great and their effect on Protestantism as it developed in America was equally important. The Pilgrims soon found themselves vastly outnumbered in Massachusetts by Puritan settlers who founded Salem in 1628 and Boston in 1630 and numbered perhaps 20,000 colonists by 1640. But the Separatist church tradition of the Pilgrims, the "Congregational Way," became that of the Puritans, as first the Salem Church in 1629 and then other churches covenanted to exist as independent congregations.

Representatives of these Massachusetts churches held their first synod at Cambridge in 1648 and affirmed a Congregational system of church administration with interchurch fellowship. The Cambridge Platform asserted:

Although churches be distinct and therefore may not be confounded one with another; and equal, and therefore have not dominion one over another; yet all churches ought to preserve church communion one with another, because they are all united into Christ.

The beliefs of these New England Congregationalists in religious and political freedom contributed to the drive for American independence in the eighteenth century. But the American victory in the Revolutionary War brought important changes for Congregationalists. The victory opened the way for American expansion into the Northwest Territory which was to become the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Many Congregationalists settled in the new territories and the need to serve their spiritual requirements led New England Congregationalists in 1801 to agree to a Plan of Union with the Presbyterians to cooperate in establishing churches in the frontier territories. Although the two Protestant groups differed in their ideas on Church government, they were both Calvinist in theology, and the Union persisted until 1852 as the framework within which occurred much Congregational westward growth. Congregational and Presbyterian cooperation was particularly strong in Wisconsin. Congregationalists also carried on missionary work on the frontier through a number of organizations that were consolidated in 1826 as the American Home Missionary Society. It was such effort that contributed to the gathering of First Congregational Church, and other Wisconsin churches. Indeed, by 1840 the Wisconsin Territory had thirteen Congregational churches.

In the year of our founding 1842...

John Tyler, a Whig, was President of a United States of 26 states. Elected Vice President to William Henry Harrison in 1840, Tyler became the first Vice President to take the Presidency on a President's death (Harrison died on April 6, 1841).

Wisconsin was still a territory six years away from statehood.

Milwaukee County had a population, according to the recently published 1840 census, of 5,605 persons.

In the southern states slavery flourished and this institution was already an issue dividing the south from northern, non-slave states.

The universal right to vote by free men was not everywhere accepted. Rhode Island experienced a minor rebellion, Dorr's Rebellion, on the issue of whether those without substantial property should have the right to vote.

Free, public education was an idea beginning to win acceptance in northern states; Connecticut established such a system in 1842.

Labor conditions in northern states were summed up by two events in Massachusetts: a court case, Commonwealth v. Hunt, upheld for the first time the right of workers to unionize to secure higher pay; and the legislature passed a "progressive" child labor bill, which proved impossible to enforce, that limited the workday of children under twelve employed in manufacturing to ten hours.

Communication was slow; the telegraph system of Samuel F.B. Morse was not demonstrated until 1844 and the invention of the telephone was more than four decades in the future.

A medical breakthrough occurred when ether was used for the first time as an anesthetic.

John Charles Fremont, with his guide Kit Carson, set out at the head of a government expedition to explore the Rocky Mountains. Fremont's journeys helped to open up the Far West.

Next Page: The Gathering of Our Church

History Page: A Sesquicentennial History