The Confession and Trial of Richard Wayte, Boston, 1640

Abstract

IN recent studies of lay-clerical relations in early New England, historians have sought to determine the direction of the flow of ideas between ministers and ordinary people. Their arguments center on the extent to which leaders and followers shared a collective mentality unusual for seventeenth-century pre-modern societies. George Selement, for instance, has compared conversion testimonials of Cambridge lay people to Thomas Shepard's preaching in order to demonstrate the degree to which churchgoers internalized their ministers' theology of conversion, while David D. Hall has presented evidence that lay people were not merely passive receptacles of elite culture but were active makers of their own world view.' An issue central to this discussion has yet to be touched upon: lay understanding of and participation in church government. First-generation churchgoers devoted more attention to issues involving admissions, discipline, and other procedures than to any subject except the sermon itself. Yet historians know very little about the role of lay people in church affairs. Did they understand the complexities of the Congregational Way well enough to govern churches with their ministers? If so, how did they achieve this understanding? What specific roles did they play in the creation and operation of church government? Historians such as Emory Elliott, Hall, and Larzer Ziff, suggesting that the churches were virtual democracies in the i63os, assert that lay people even created the complex set of laws by which their churches were governed.2 Owing in large