Revisiting Church Covenants: The Importance of the Covenant Idea to Congregationalism and Recent Challenges to It

The twentieth century saw the decline of church covenants in Baptist churches. This peculiar break with what was such a prominent part of congregationalism is the subject of this study. Both Champlin Burrage (1904) and Charles Deweese (1990) document the history and importance of church covenants within congregationalism (which includes Baptists). The church covenant was to congregationalism what apostolic succession was to episcopal churches: their grounds for being and license to practice the sacraments. The covenant idea is necessary for the free church since the only force holding a member to a church is his or her commitment, i.e. covenant. Our Congregational and Baptist forefathers concluded that church covenants were an essential ingredient of church membership and foundational for church discipline. Covenants were definitional to the local church, signed by members, and expected to be honored until the forces of consumerism and individualism, exemplified by Wade Burleson’s (2016) argument that they were abusive, hit the churches. In the generation since Deweese’s book, church covenants have continued waning. Even traditionalist organizations, like 9Marks, rarely mention the role of the church covenant in the church’s life. Nevertheless, faithful Christians today, seeking to recover the full New Testament church, sense there is something awry amid increasingly consumer-driven churches. They yearn for tools to do so. Church covenants are one such tool.

Introduction

The twentieth century was nearly framed by two significant books on church covenants: Champlin Burrage’s in 1904 and Charles Deweese’s in 1990.¹ Both still hold up well and deserve the attention of students of church history, especially among Baptists. They show how and why the church covenant was a vital organ of congregational—and thus Baptist—church practice. While Burrage lamented the demise of the church covenant among English Congregational churches and tied it to spiritual decline, what he could not see was the waning of the church covenant among Baptist churches in the twentieth century. Deweese could. However, Deweese estimated that by the last decade of that century, the church covenant was returning to prominence. After all, the covenant idea is necessary for the free church since without establishment and parishes, commitment was the only force that held a member to a church. Deweese claimed that interest in church covenants was on the rise “in recent years” (for him, the 1980s) and chronicles a purported renewed interest in church covenants through the 1960s.² That has not come to fruition. In the generation since Deweese’s book, church covenants have continued waning and are now often mere curiosities of a bygone age in older, traditional churches and absent altogether from many—probably the vast majority—of newer churches.³ Michael Haykin noted, in 2015, that church covenants “have fallen into disuse in recent days.”⁴ Even traditionalist organizations, like 9Marks and their associated scholars, which major on polity, rarely mention the role of the church covenant in the church’s life. This peculiar break with what was such a prominent part of congregationalism is the subject of this study.

The Church Covenant Idea

The church covenant is an embodiment of what John Fawcett (1740-1817) called the “blest…tie that binds.” It is the expression of “the covenantal relationship that is established between Christians.”⁵ It is the practical expression of “the church covenant idea.” That idea was inherent in the Anabaptist conception of the free church. But their expectation of a church covenant was informal. They claimed, “One does not need to take an oath.” However, baptized members were expected to “remain a member, and not desert” even at the cost of losing one’s life because of persecution.⁶ Although there is a hint that some early Christians covenanted in Pliny the Younger’s letter to Emperor Trajan (c. AD 112), when, describing Christian assembles, he mentions that they, as part of worship, “bind themselves by an oath,” there’s no evidence that this practice was successfully passed down through the centuries to the Anabaptists or that the Baptists inherited their practice from the Anabaptists.⁷ The practice of covenanting became formal and written with the English Congregationalists and reached full-flower with them in New England. Baptists inherited it, as they inherited much else, from the Congregationalists.⁸

The idea of a covenant was in the cultural air Christian Englishmen breathed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.⁹ Since the idea of covenant was foundational to English—perhaps broadly European—society, men’s association in guilds, companies, and in their fidelity to the monarch, was understood in terms of a covenant. They instinctively contracted to give faithful allegiance to the whole in exchange for the protection of their part.¹⁰ So, it was natural that earnest English believers—Puritans—would seize upon the covenant. Indeed, the “Pilgrims” of Mayflower fame, defined their relationship to each other, in the Mayflower Compact, in covenantal language, declaring, we “solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic.”¹¹

That covenant idea is the commitment that holds congregational churches together. More recently, Jonathan Leeman advocates for the church covenant idea. He argues that “church membership is…a covenant union between a particular church and a Christian.”¹² Churches affirm faith and baptism and promise to give oversight; the individual submits to a “particular body and its leaders. This entire exchange can be summarized with the word covenant.”¹³ Indeed, for Leeman, the covenant idea is “nothing more or less than the existence of the local church—the visible church on earth…The local church exists when Christians commit to giving one another authority over themselves, and they do so expressly….”¹⁴ Early Congregationalists and Baptists would easily recognize and heartily affirm Leeman’s definition.

Early English Baptists inherited and carried on the Congregational idea “of a church covenant as a solemn agreement voluntarily entered into by a particular congregation of believers.”¹⁵ The First London Baptist Confession (1644) defined a church, in part, as believers “joined to…each other by mutual agreement.”¹⁶ The influential New Hampshire Baptist Confession of 1833 came with a covenant which served as a first draft to the John Newton Brown covenant (1853) which became normative among Baptists in America. Both the 1963 and 2000 Baptist Faith and Messages agree that “A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ” consists of “baptized believers who are associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel….”

William Crowell (1806-1871), in his mid-nineteenth century church manual, noted “That any number of disciples may, for good cause and in an orderly way, form themselves into a church by mutual covenant….”¹⁷ Covenanting is what makes the group of believers into a church. “It is this covenant which unites the baptized believer in church fellowship to the members of that church….”¹⁸ Not long after, Edward T. Hiscox (1814-1901), noted that a new church is formed “by uniting in mutual covenant.”¹⁹ Such a covenant, Crowell clarifies, may be “expressed or implied.”²⁰ For the original Congregational and Baptist churches, covenants were expressed. The idea of the covenant bond of church members to each other became incarnate in written covenants. So, Charles Deweese defines a church covenant as “a series of written pledges based on the Bible which members voluntarily make to God and to one another regarding their basic moral and spiritual commitments and the practice of their faith.”²¹

A church covenant was not primarily concerned with beliefs but with conduct.²² Burrage says it defines how church members are to give themselves over to faith and service, promising “to work for the Lord’s profit, to avoid evil, and to do good.”²³ Deweese explains, “A covenant deals mainly with conduct (although it contains some doctrinal elements).”²⁴ Leeman explains, “If a statement of faith articulates what a church believes, a church covenant articulates how it agrees to live together.”²⁵

Congregationalism’s Covenant

Church covenants arise directly from congregationalism’s belief that the church consists of those making a true profession of faith who “willingly join together in Christian communion and orderly covenant,” thus uniting themselves into “peculiar congregations.”²⁶ Robert Browne (1540–1630), who along with Henry Jacob, is a father of modern congregationalism, emphasized the identity of the church as a company of the covenanted. For Browne a voluntary covenant bound church members together and to God. In 1581, he along with Robert Harrison, gathered followers in Norwich, England. They consented to join themselves corporately to the Lord to become a single covenanted fellowship.²⁷

Henry Jacob (1563–1624), a semi-separatist, established a church in 1616, which became a fountainhead for Baptists, especially after his death.²⁸ At the founding, the members joined hands and stood “ringwise” (i.e. in a circle). Jacob, followed by the others, made a profession of faith and repentance. Thus, they covenanted to walk together in God’s ways.²⁹

Covenanting, in early Puritanism, was sometimes practiced by non-separatist Puritan ministers remaining in the established church.³⁰ Frequently a formal covenant was devised as a means to mark off those who belonged to the genuinely committed church within the parish from the nominal believers in the parish. These covenants committed the members to “turn to the Lord in all sincerity,” to forsake worldliness, bind themselves to a common rule, admonish each other’s failings, and the like. Some began to call these covenanted fellowships proper churches, thus verging on separatism. Most pastors, like John Cotton while still in England, remained committed to both their parish and their covenanted church-within-a-church. But even Cotton considered the covenanted group “the essential church.” Its members were bound together “in nearer fellowship with God and one another.”³¹ By the time he emigrated to New England, he had apparently been fully converted to the logic of congregationalism and concluded “mutual covenant one with another…gives the first being to a church,” for “that which doth not give them jurisdiction or power over one another, makes them not a Church by divine right.”³²

In New England, where congregationalism dominated, the churches adopted the requirement of a “testified regenerate membership” and a church covenant to which all members pledged themselves.³³ Thomas Hooker (1586–1647), would express their vision: “Visible Saints are the only true and fit matter whereof a visible Church should be gathered.”³⁴ For John Eliot (1604–1690), a founding New England Puritan pastor, a true church was no less than the gathered “company of visible saints.”³⁵ The church covenant was the agreed-upon description of what a visible saint looked like. The visible saints who can rule the church are those who covenant to the church. Thus, the covenant identified who was part of the church and could take part in its decision-making. Hence, Burrage notes, “In congregational polity the covenant was fundamental.”³⁶

Since a congregational church was the voluntary association of believers, the church covenant was the formal expression of that relationship.³⁷ Gregory Wills describes church covenants as “a natural development of the Puritan move to the voluntary church,” in contrast to the parish church with its boundaries that included the unconverted.³⁸ As a voluntary assembly of believers, what held a local church together was a commitment of the individual members to God and each other; that commitment was expressed in a covenant. For Congregationalists the church covenant provided the “basis of the proper method of forming a church.”³⁹ Church covenants were “one of the essential ingredients of Congregationalism,” during the seventeenth century.⁴⁰

At the end of the seventeenth century, covenanting had become standard in Congregational churches on both sides of the Atlantic. John Norton (1606-1663), pastor at both Hertfordshire, England, and Ipswich, Massachusetts, described a proper church member in Congregationalism as one

who is admitted to the external communion of the church, professes the name of Christ, is separated from the world by external and covenanted holiness (the kind which is properly recognized by common sense and formally inheres in the church covenant itself) and is endowed with a knowledge of God, true religion, and a character of purity without scandal in his outward life.⁴¹

To these Congregationalists the church was a “company of good people” committed to mutual care and “watchfulness over each other’s conversation.” Typically, in examples which Geoffrey Nuttall (1911–2007), Congregational minister and church historian, said “could be multiplied,” a “company of good people” would form and draft a covenant. For example, at Axminster, Bartholomew Ashwood (1622–1680) led a company to “incorporate themselves into One Body.”

On a solemn day of prayer and supplication, voluntarily giving up themselves to the Lord and to each other by the will of God, solemnly covenanting and engaging to walk together in a due and faithful attendance upon the Lord Jesus Christ in all his ordinances and appointments and in faithful discharge of all those duties relating to the members of a church of Christ, so were embodied and constituted a church of Christ.⁴²

Likewise, another “company of good people” at Rothwell, England, “after many seasons of prayer,” claimed God had “given them a mind to work.” So, they joined themselves “to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.” Their covenant committed them “to walk with God together in gospel-faith and order, as a particular church, in the performance of all duties towards God, towards each other, and towards all men, in the strength of the Spirit of Christ and according to his Word.”⁴³

The purpose of these covenants, according to William Bartlet (c. 1615–1682) of Devon, was to show “how and in what manner the godly are to embody” (i.e. to incarnate—or live out—the Christian life). “They are to voluntarily to give up themselves to the Lord and one another, as those of Macedonia did, 2 Cor. 8:15 (sic), to walk together in all the ordinances of Christ,…in a mutual consent, covenant, or agreement…Jer. 50:5.”⁴⁴

Covenants were used to hold churches together whose members practiced paedobaptism and exclusive credobaptism. That is, some Congregational churches were a mixture of infant-baptizing and believers-only baptizing.⁴⁵ Henry Jessey (1603–1663), pastor of the Jacob-Lathrop-Jessey church, tolerated differences on baptism, pioneering mixed churches. These churches “formed the foundation for subsequent Particular Baptist development.”⁴⁶ Jessey’s church continued to have a mixed membership, some receiving believers’ baptism and others content with their infant baptism.⁴⁷ It became the first of several mixed Congregational-Baptist churches in England. John Bunyan’s church in Bedford, England, was such a church.⁴⁸ This demonstrated that the larger Puritan theology and Congregational polity was the unifying principle, and that the original Baptist identity was Congregational.⁴⁹ The covenant helped bind together Puritans of various beliefs about baptism. 

It is an obvious fact that is so obvious it is often unstated and can be overlooked: Baptist polity is inherited from the Congregationalists.⁵⁰ For that reason, it’s confusing for Deweese to suggest that “British Baptists of the 1600’s initiated the use of church covenants in the Baptist experience.”⁵¹ In reality, baptistic congregationalists depended on Congregationalism for the idea and the text of church covenants.⁵² Deweese himself admits that “Baptist churches often inherited the church covenant directly from their Congregational roots,” although he classifies Congregationalists as “another religious tradition,” as if Baptists were a distinct Christian movement from the outset.⁵³ The fact that some churches consisted of credobaptists and paedobaptists covenanted together shows that is mistaken.⁵⁴

For the General Baptists, the importance of the church covenant is not as clear. According to Burrage, the focus on believers’ baptism in the forming of a church over-shadowed the use of the church covenant. For Thomas Helwys (1575–1617) and John Murton (1585–c. 1626) baptism came to take the place of the church covenant for how one entered the church.⁵⁵ However, in theory, for Helwys, like Robert Browne earlier and unlike the Mennonites, the act of a church covenanting granted the authority to baptize without succession from a previous church.⁵⁶ That is, the church covenant was the precondition for a church legitimately baptizing. 

The Particular Baptists, likewise, emphasized the priority of the covenant. John Spilsbury (1593–1668) argued that “a covenant was the initiating document of a church.” Church covenants precede baptism and admit to the church members who commit themselves to it.⁵⁷ Some objected to Spilsbury’s use of a church covenant, “insisting that believers’ baptism was the proper entrance into the church.”⁵⁸ But Spilsbury held that a church could be formed by people who had not yet been legitimately baptized, according to Baptist principles, when the members covenanted together. That act made them a church and thus granted them the authority to baptize.⁵⁹

English Baptists and their Congregational brothers adopted church covenants. The Broadmead Baptist Church in Bristol, adopted one in 1640.⁶⁰ Elias Keach (1666–1701) wrote, in 1697, that all members “must solemnly enter a covenant to walk in the fellowship….”⁶¹ In 1699, in Norfolk, England, the Baptist church of Great Ellingham confessed, in their covenant, “An explicit covenanting with, and giving up ourselves to the Lord and one another, is the formal cause of a particular visible gospel church.”⁶²

Church Covenants in America

Across the Atlantic, in New England, Congregationalists and Baptists were more nearly universal in their insistence upon the usefulness of church covenants.⁶³ The Cambridge Platform (1648) described the polity of the Congregational church in New England. It stated, “A Congregational church is by the institution of Christ a part of the militant, visible church, consisting of a company of saints by calling,  united into one body, by a holy covenant.”⁶⁴ In early New England, new churches were organized when the inhabitants of a specific territory accepted one another’s conversion, upon the evidence of their testimony, and covenanted together.⁶⁵ The covenant, explained Williston Walker (1860–1922), describes how church members “give up themselves unto the Lord, to the observing of the ordinances of Christ together in the same society.” This covenant is best when it is “express & plain.”⁶⁶

In general, these fundamental covenants were…a simple promise to walk in fidelity to the divine commandments and in Christian faithfulness one to another. …Such covenants were renewed, made more explicit against definite forms of prevalent sin, or otherwise amended, with much freedom, to meet the exigencies of ecclesiastical life. …The essential matter was the agreement, not its verbal expression.⁶⁷

Church covenants became so important to New England congregationalism that three leading Puritan pastors, Richard Mather (1596–1669), Hugh Peters (1598–1660), and John Davenport (1597–1670) joined to defend the practice. They were at pains to argue that covenants were not merely for “Brownists” (i.e. separatists).⁶⁸ Thomas Lechford (c. 1590–1644) recounted how this was lived-out in New England. A new church would enter into a “Covenant with God, and one another (which is called their Church Covenant, and held by them to constitute a Church),” paraphrasing the covenant thus:

To forsake the Devill, and all his workes, and the vanities of the sinfull world, and all their former lusts, and corruptions, they have lived and walked in, and to cleave unto, and obey the Lord Jesus Christ, as their onely King and Law-giver, their onely Priest and Prophet, and to walke together with that Church, in the unity of the faith, and brotherly love, and to submit themselves one unto another, in all the ordinances of Christ, to mutuall edification, and comfort, to watch over, and support one another.”⁶⁹

The Congregational practice of organizing churches with covenants was retained by Baptists, through the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. John Hammett notes that church covenants were “constitutive for Baptist churches in North America.”⁷⁰ Cyril Eastwood wrote, for Baptists “the church covenant brings the individual church into being just as believers’ baptism is the sign of a person’s covenant which brings the individual Christian into being.”⁷¹ Deweese noted that original Baptists “viewed covenants, along with believer’s baptism and church discipline, as means of nurturing and safeguarding the New Testament emphasis on a regenerate church membership.”⁷² Mark Dever explained, “When persons joined a Baptist church, they subscribed to its covenant.”⁷³

William Screven (c. 1629–1713) planted his Baptist church in Kittery, Maine, with a covenant.⁷⁴ When he and at least ten members transplanted to Charlestown, South Carolina, becoming the first Baptist church in the South, they took that covenant with them. The church, under Pastor Richard Furman (1755–1825), adopted a new covenant in 1791, revised in 1852, and remains their covenant today.⁷⁵ Meanwhile, the Charlestown Baptist Association’s Summary of Church Discipline (1774) called for new church members to subscribe to their church’s covenant.⁷⁶ In 1853 John Newton Brown (1803–1868) published a covenant in his Baptist Church Manual that became standard, still often found pasted into hymnals or displayed prominently on church walls. It won such wide acceptance with Southern Baptists that it was included in the 1956 Baptist Hymnal.⁷⁷

Covenants Signed & Enforced

Signing a confession of faith has roots back to the early church, with Basil (330–379) noting that an apostate is “fighting against his own handwriting, which he put on record when he professed the faith.”⁷⁸ Hammett notes a Biblical precedent in Nehemiah 9:38 where, after a time of renewal, the leaders of Israel “make a firm covenant in writing; on the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests.”⁷⁹ Signing covenants was common and expected apparently from their origins in Congregationalism until the 19^th century, but declined in the 20^th century.⁸⁰

As Nuttall noted of covenanting generally, examples of having members sign their covenant could be multiplied. In England’s Bury St. Edmunds “some few professors” led “the way out of Babylon – the corrupt worship, and to separate from them.” They formed a church. Five men and three women on August 16^th, 1646, signed a covenant.⁸¹ At Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, in 1720 after division over the selection of a new pastor, the members of the Baptist church recommitted themselves to one another with a covenant they signed.⁸² In 1770, in Caerleon, Wales, a Baptist church drafted a covenant and had members “set” their names on it. In Wern Panteg (current Trosnant), in 1776, the church adopted a covenant and the members “annexed their names” to it.⁸³

Signing church covenants appeared to be the norm in America too, with Screven, noted above, leading his church, originally in Maine, to sign their covenant.⁸⁴ Later (1749) in America, sixteen founding members of a Baptist church in Titicut, Massachusetts signed a covenant drafted by Isaac Backus (1724–1806).⁸⁵ The Middleborough Baptist Church, in 1756, also signed their covenant. Backus noted that they “solemnly and renewedly sign covenant together; I trust with some real freedom and sense on divine things.”⁸⁶ The First Baptist Church of Warren, Rhode Island did it in 1764. In 1798 the Philadelphia Baptist Association stated that signing the covenant was a part of forming a new church.⁸⁷ As late as the mid-nineteenth century, William Crowell wrote, “It has been customary in most churches to have written or printed articles of covenant expressive of the obligations thus assumed, which every candidate for membership is expected to sign, in token of cordial assent to the same.”⁸⁸ Eleazer Savage (1800–1886) noted that “every member upon joining the church” signs the “instrument,” the church covenant which he hails as “a rich and beautiful summary of Christian duties.”⁸⁹

The church covenant provided the “concrete form by which the membership of the church could be disciplined.”⁹⁰ “A church derived its authority to discipline members on the grounds that a covenant had been made and broken.”⁹¹ For example, in their covenant, members of First Baptist Church of Charlestown pledge, “We promise individually, to pay a respectful regard to the advice and admonitions of the church, and to be subject to its discipline.”⁹² From 1720–1732, members were excluded from the Welsch Tract Church for being “a covenant breaker in regard to the church covenant.”⁹³ Discipline was undertaken for “infractions of one’s pledges.”⁹⁴ Congregational and Baptist churches normally had church covenant meetings during the week preceding service of the Lord’s Supper to ensure that the members were abiding by the covenant. Some churches employed their covenants as part of preparation for the Lord’s Supper, recited by all the members standing.⁹⁵

In America, Deweese notes, “For most of the nineteenth century, covenanting was a basic and significant feature of Baptist life.”⁹⁶ The question then is obvious: how did a feature of congregationalism, which was so prominent and was considered vital to the polity, fade away while churches, ostensibly with that polity, came to dominate the American ecclesiastical scene? 

Challenges to Church Covenants

William B. Johnson (1782–1862), the successor of Richard Furman as the president of the Baptist State Convention of South Carolina and first president of the Southern Baptist Convention, noted the common Baptist belief, until his day, was that “every newly formed church should have a written covenant.” He questioned that belief, likening it to creedalism.⁹⁷ Deweese notes that such claims, comparing church covenants to creeds, became more widespread in the twentieth century. We can speculate as to why. Likely the same cultural forces Carl Trueman described as fashioning “the modern self” are the main culprits. According to Trueman, modernity bends institutions to become “servants of the individual,” to be “inwardly directed.” Thus, institutions, like the church, “cease to be places for the formation of individuals…[but, rather,] platforms for performance.”⁹⁸ Church covenants are all about forming individuals to be Christ-directed disciples.

Likely consumerism, rising since the industrial revolution, plays a part. In consumerism, “nothing outside the consumer should restrain him, not a wedding vow, a familial relation or a church covenant.”⁹⁹ To consumers, the church is intuitively approached as a service provider, where the customer is king.¹⁰⁰ Our relationship to it is practical, not covenantal. Hence, in the modern, Western culture, institutions become goods or services to be consumed, not to shape the individual but to be shaped by it. They serve the sovereignly self-creating individual.¹⁰¹ When such assumptions are in our cultural air, the idea of covenanting to a particular church becomes repugnant. Even if still practiced, by tradition, it becomes meaningless.

There appears to be a positive correlation between the decline of church discipline and the decline of church covenants. Deweese notes that covenants were often associated with “legalistic” discipline so that the decline in covenanting may be attached to the decline in discipline.¹⁰² As the church became less an institution for the formation of Christian disciples and more the venue for the expression of piety or some kind of spiritual service provider, it is logical that the church covenant would decline.

There have been very few formal attempts to defend the neglect of church covenants. Wade Burleson provided one such explanation in his 2016 book, Fraudulent Authority.¹⁰³ He lists five points against covenanting. First, he says, “a church covenant makes the Holy Spirit irrelevant in my life.” He claims, “A church covenant fetters one’s ability to seek the Spirit’s wisdom….” He seems to assume that commitments somehow prevent the Holy Spirit from working. Second, “A church covenant replaces my one true mediator with inferior mediators.” He claims, “Anyone who comes between me and Jesus…is a detriment to my growth.” He is assuming that covenanting with other members of the body somehow contradicts the exclusive role of Christ as the great High Priest (Heb 4:14–16) and that God does not use commitment to a church for sanctification. Third, “a church covenant makes the institutional church equivalent to the kingdom of God.” He insists, “institutional churches who demand spiritual authority over individual believers have wrongly placed their institution on par with God’s Kingdom.” At this point, Burleson ironically cites the persecution of Benjamin Keach (1640–1704) as an example of the abuse of authority he believes is exemplified by church covenants. He is apparently unaware that Keach supported covenanting and drafted his own church covenant.¹⁰⁴ Keach wrote that every person “when admitted [as] members, before the church…must solemnly enter into covenant.”¹⁰⁵ Fourth, Burleson protests, “a church covenant by its nature is designed to protect an authoritarian structure.” He claims that the primary purpose of “most modern covenants” is to bring church members “into submission to church authorities,” and he assumes that is nefarious. Finally, “a church covenant requires something more than a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.” He claims that Matthew 5:37 prohibits such commitments.¹⁰⁶

Burleson’s objections model the “inwardly directed” expressive individualism Trueman described. His arguments are based on antinomian concepts of spirituality, non-sequiturs, question-begging, and radically individualistic assumptions of authority. The book is self-published and with numerous factual and typographical errors.¹⁰⁷ Yet, coming from a former Baptist state convention president and denominational board member, Burleson’s objections fairly represent the feelings of many people in American churches. Those feelings are, in Christian spiritual terms, worldly; that is, conformed to the reigning culture rather than to the Word of God. It has resulted in churches populated with “men without chests” who so routinely lack the tie that binds that they reject the idea of being covenanted to a particular body or, they resent the tie, after having signed such a covenant.¹⁰⁸

Burleson’s main objection is how covenants can bolster authority and submission in the church. “The premise of this book,” he admits, “is that the major problem in modern evangelical Christianity is the authoritarianism of evangelical leaders.”¹⁰⁹ The reality is that few modern covenants mention authority or the submission of church members (which 1 Thessalonians 5:12 and Hebrews 13:17 encourage.) The 1853 Brown covenant, which became standard among Baptists in America, makes no mention of authority and submission in the church. When we at our church largely adopted it as our church covenant, we saw that omission as a defect and added the phrase “respect its leaders under the Word,” committing our members, counter-culturally, to respect the elders of the church as long as they are abiding by scripture.¹¹⁰

Original Baptist covenants often committed members to submit to church leaders, including Benjamin Keach’s covenant. Keach noted that the church members should specifically, in the covenant, “give themselves up to the watch and charge of the Pastor and Ministry.”¹¹¹ Benjamin and his son Elias Keach’s covenant, drafted in 1697, declared, “We do promise according to our Ability (or as God shall bless us with the good things of this World) to Communicate to our Pastor or Minister, God having ordained that they that Preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel.”¹¹² This was a commitment to support the pastor financially, likely a new concept for members who had come from established, parish churches supported by taxation.

The Woolwich, England church covenant (1757) committed members “That we will abide by, and cleave to our Pastor, and not desert him, or his Ministrations, so long as he shall take the Gospel for his Guide and Rule, and publish the Doctrine of Free Grace, as the everlasting Love of God to his Elect.”¹¹³

While Burleson does us the service of articulating the feelings of many modern people against covenanting, Jonathan Leeman, in his The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love, probably more accurately reflects how covenants came to be neglected among faithful Baptists today. Leeman, as we have seen, helpfully renews the congregationalist doctrine of the church covenant idea, calling church covenanting “a matter of prudence with all upsides and no downsides.”¹¹⁴ Theoretically, he recommends church covenants. Exaltations of the importance of the church covenant, which we have seen characterized early Congregationalists and Baptists, would be harmoniously in place in his book. One would expect Leeman’s main argument to be followed by an application on the importance of church covenants, in typical congregational style. Instead, he argues that church members may leave their churches, thus setting aside their covenant, even for “foolish reasons.” Churches should “grant [members breaking their covenant for foolish reasons] best wishes and blessings for their journey.”¹¹⁵ Nothing is said, in this context, about the importance of covenant-keeping. Rather, Leeman claims that “the church has no choice but to accept the individual’s resignation.”¹¹⁶ Admittedly, Leeman laments that modern churches have not taught their members that they should not resign their memberships like they are checking out of a hotel; that churches have not taught “about the nature of church authority and Christ’s command to submit to it.”¹¹⁷ Nevertheless, amid all the helpful and healthful guidance on the church, the conclusion is that the church member is not bound to his or her covenant. Thus, a covenant that has no tie that binds—a mere decoration on a wall that no one feels obligated to or an aspiration—is not a true covenant. It only appears to be one. It is a docetic covenant.¹¹⁸

The surprising offense of Leeman’s argument, surprising and likely unintentional, is that at the crucial moment of practical application—a church member breaking his covenant and leaving for a foolish reason—rather than the church being empowered to at least express disapproval, even if we admit that we do not want to force disgruntled members to stay, churches may enable such departures. By so doing, he contradicts Keach who insisted that “all Congregational Divines” agreed “that no person hath power to dismember himself: i.e. He cannot without great Sin, translate himself from one Church to another.”¹¹⁹ The Baptist Association in Charlestown insisted, “As consent is necessary to a person’s coming into the church, so none can go out of it without its consent.”¹²⁰ Benjamin Griffith (1688–1768) notes that “a breach of covenant” demonstrates “a black character.”¹²¹ The Charleston Baptist Association claimed that such covenant breakers “ought to be looked upon as trucebreakers, proud, arrogant, dangerous persons, and to be dealt with as such.”¹²² Eleazer Savage called breaking the church covenant “a public offense” of a particularly “high aggravation.”¹²³ Likely, all these last three would recommend, not “best wishes,” but communicating, in some way, to the covenant breaker the moral problem of their breach of faith.

The 9Marks ministry, of which Leeman is the new president, has published very little on covenants. In its first 25 years, it has published numerous books on nearly every conceivable facet of church life (almost all of it wise and helpful). But it has not published a book or booklet on church covenants.¹²⁴ Of its first 243 episodes of “Pastors Talk,” not one was dedicated to church covenanting.¹²⁵ This is not to isolate 9Marks or its leaders for special criticism. They are likely representative of the best of theologically serious, historically informed, evangelical practical theology today. Their lack of emphasis on this feature of congregationalism is not peculiar to them. It is representative of the best of contemporary Baptist teaching on polity. That’s the problem.

The decline in covenanting correlates to the cultural shift away from feeling bound by commitments, technically “gamophobia” (fear of commitment).¹²⁶ Note the rise of divorce (the breaking of the marriage vows) and cohabitation (a couple living together without the benefit of an expressed covenant, which is the logical consequence of the degrading of covenanting) and the fading away of such staple idioms as “a man is only as good as his word.”¹²⁷ Even in secular law, breach of contract is grounds for litigation, and any “meeting of the minds” may be a legally recognized contract. A covenant is more than a contract, not less. In earlier generations, breaking the vows of the church covenant was seen as possible grounds for church discipline. However, now the fact of covenant-breaking is often not acknowledged. The broken commitment itself is not called a sin. This is not to say that we ought to use church covenants to legally bind members to churches they want to leave if we could. But it is to say that we ought to teach covenant-breakers, as they depart, that their failure to keep their commitment is a symptom of a character problem. It shows a lack of integrity.

The Bible speaks frankly about covenant breaking. The Lord is a faithful, covenant-keeping God and expects us to be the same (Deut 7:8–9). Numbers 30:2 says, “If a man vows a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth” (also Deut 23:21–23.) Psalm 76:11 enjoins us, “Make your vows to the Lord your God and perform them” (c.f. Ps 56:12.) Psalm 15 describes the “blameless” person as one who, among other virtues, “keeps his oath even when it hurts.” (Ps 15:4.) The believer is expected to keep commitments even when the situation has changed and fulfilling it becomes difficult or the original sentiment has evaporated. 

In the New Testament, the ethic of faithfulness is heightened. There is no “love” without faithfulness. Christian love “endures all things” (1 Cor 13:6). Jesus’ command to let your “yes” be yes, is not a prohibition of making vows (Matt 5:33–37). It is, like much of Matthew 5, a strengthening of the Old Testament laws, correcting traditions that had created purported loopholes which allowed for breaking promises. Jesus re-affirms that vows must be kept. Even if one merely swears by the altar or the temple, still “Jesus affirms the binding character of oaths.”¹²⁸ That being the case, there is no reason to “swear by” something holy to be relied upon. Oaths are not so much forbidden as unnecessary. If a citizen of the Kingdom of God simply says “yes” it is sufficient to be trustworthy without a formal oath. Burleson claimed that Matthew 5:37 prohibits commitments such as church covenants. But Jesus’ point was not to prohibit them but to make his disciples such people of integrity that they would keep their commitments whether they made them with a simple “yes, I’m joining the church” or if they sign a covenant pledging to “walk together in Christian love.” The signing of the covenant is not so much entering into a contract with a church but providing a testimony, first of all to oneself and to God, that one has made this commitment. Thus, there are not two classes of commitments: those that must be kept (like wedding vows) and those that can be broken if they become inconvenient, like church covenants. In the Kingdom of God, “a person’s word can be relied upon without qualification and without need of the further guarantee an oath might afford.”¹²⁹ In other words, Jesus is saying, “Your word is your bond.” James repeats Jesus’ command and makes it pre-eminent in his ethics. “Above all,” be a person of your word (Jas 5:12). Hence, the implicit endorsement of covenant-breaking by offering a “best wishes on your journey” without reproach, even in churches that traditionally practice covenanting, is inconsistent with Christian ethical standards.¹³⁰

Conclusion

Our Congregational and Baptist forefathers concluded that church covenants were an essential ingredient of church membership and foundational for church discipline. Yet as congregational churches ascended to dominate the American religious scene in the late nineteenth and through the twentieth centuries, covenanting declined. There are only a few possible, logical explanations for this decline. Either the original Congregationalists were wrong, likely the products of their era when covenanting was in the air and somehow that practice was contrary to the spirit of Christianity, or we are. That is, either the first Congregationalists were worldly and as authoritarian as Burleson claims or—second possibility—we have been influenced, more than we care to admit, by a culture that is antinomian, consumeristic, inwardly directed, and suspicious of authority. Either they were worldly, or we are. We know the answer. The faithful among us, seeking the fuller life of the New Testament church, sense there is something awry amid increasingly consumer-driven churches. They try to encourage, inspire, maybe rebuke the increasingly worldly around them in the church. They yearn for tools to do so, to set the church back on track. Church covenants are one such tool.

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1. Champlin Burrage, The Church Covenant Idea: Its Origin and Its Development (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1904), 14. All further references to Burrage are to this book. Charles W. Deweese, Baptist Church Covenants (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1990). All further references to Deweese are to this book. ↩︎
2. Deweese, 88, 91.  ↩︎
3. John Hammett notes that to counter nominalism “some churches” are returning to church covenanting. He does not say whether these churches are a net increase in church covenanting. (“The Why and Who of Church Membership,” Baptist Foundations, Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman, editors [Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2015], 178. Gregg Allison notes, “there appears to be a resurgence of interest in such covenants among some churches today.” He cites the church covenant of Capitol Hill Baptist Church (Washington, DC), which is not new, and that of Mars Hill Church (Seattle, WA) which is defunct. (Sojourners and Strangers: The Doctrine of the Church (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 127n17. The decline of church covenants is shown in Allison’s book of 471 pages, only four of which address church covenants. Further, I inquired directly of Jonathan Leeman about whether church covenants were increasing. His answer was, “I just don’t know” (Email, July 10, 2023). Given his circles, if there were an increase in covenanting, he would likely be one of the first to know.  ↩︎
4. Michael A. G. Haykin, “Some Historical Roots of Congregationalism,” Baptist Foundations, eds., Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2015), 41. ↩︎
5. Allison, Sojourners and Strangers, 124. ↩︎
6. Burrage, 23. ↩︎
7. For the excerpt from Pliny the Younger’s letter, see Allison, Sojourners and Strangers, 125n6. ↩︎
8. On terms: “Puritan” is the umbrella term for “hot Protestants” in England, after the Elizabethan settlement who sought to reform the church according to some type of Reformed interpretation of the Bible. They include those who were willing to stay in the Church of England, Presbyterians who settled on the Westminster Confession (1647), and Congregationalists, often also called “Independents.” Baptists began as a subset of Congregationalists. When Congregational, or its forms, is capitalized, it refers to the denomination. When it is not, it refers to the polity, which Baptists share. ↩︎
9. Geoffrey Nuttall, Visible Saints: The Congregational Way, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), 75.  ↩︎
10. Darrett Rutman, American Puritanism: Faith and Practice (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1970), 25.  ↩︎
11. Thomas Armitage, A History of the Baptists (New York: Bryan Taylor & Co., 1976), 602. ↩︎
12. Jonathan Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 217. ↩︎
13. Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love, 217, emphasis original. ↩︎
14. Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love, 249.  ↩︎
15. Timothy and Denise George, eds., Baptist Confessions, Covenants, and Catechisms (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 14. ↩︎
16. Paragraph 33; see George and George, Baptist Confessions, Covenants, and Catechisms, 45. ↩︎
17. William Crowell, The Church Member’s Manual (Boston: Gould, Kendall, & Lincoln, 1847), 84. ↩︎
18. Crowell, The Church Member’s Manual, 230. ↩︎
19. Edward T. Hiscox, The Baptist Church Directory (New York: Sheldon and Company, 1859), 17. ↩︎
20. Crowell, The Church Member’s Manual, 230. ↩︎
21. Deweese, 81. ↩︎
22. W. T. Whitley, “Church Covenants,” The Baptist Quarterly VII (1934–35), 227. ↩︎
23. Burrage, 14. ↩︎
24. Deweese, viii. ↩︎
25. Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love, 299. Mark Dever notes that members often pledged in church covenants to uphold scriptural truth; see “The Noble Task: The Pastor as Preacher and Practitioner of the Marks of the Church,” in Polity: Biblical Arguments on How to Conduct Church Life (Washington, DC: Center for Church Reform, 2001), 20. All further references to the book Polity refer to this. ↩︎
26. Separatist Confession of Faith of 1596, Paragraph 33, https://www.reformedreader.org/ccc/atf.htm, accessed March 17, 2023. ↩︎
27. George, ed., Baptist Confessions, Covenants, and Catechisms, 14. ↩︎
28. On “semi-separatist,” Murray Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints: The Separate Churches of London 1616–1649 (Cambridge University Press: 1977), 11. Anthony L. Chute, Nathan A. Finn, Michael A. G. Haykin, The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement (Nashville, Tennessee: B&H Academic, 2015), 20. ↩︎
29. Horton Davies, The Worship of the English Puritans (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1997), 94, 275. ↩︎
30. Davies, The Worship of the English Puritans, 86. ↩︎
31. Rutman, American Puritanism, 24. ↩︎
32. Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, 54; according to Rutman, American Puritanism, 110. ↩︎
33. Robert G. Pope, The Half-Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 73–74, 200, 224, 227. ↩︎
34. Thomas Hooker, A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline (London: AM, 1648), preface; also, Horton Davies, Worship of the American Puritans (Soli Deo Gloria Publications), 255. ↩︎
35. Eliot, Communion of Churches (Cambridge, MA: Marmaduke Johnson, 1665), 1. ↩︎
36. Burrage, 98. ↩︎
37. Stanley Grenz, Isaac Backus—Puritan and Baptist: His Place in History, His Thought, and Their Implications for Modern Baptist Theology (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1983), 19. ↩︎
38. Gregory A. Wills, Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority and Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785–1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 20. ↩︎
39. C. Douglas Weaver, In Search of the New Testament Church: The Baptist Story (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008), 20. ↩︎
40. Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 26. ↩︎
41. John Norton, The Answer to the Whole Set of Questions of the Celebrated Mr. William Appolonius (Cambridge, MA: 1958), 26; Rutman, American Puritanism, 111. ↩︎
42. Axminster Ecclesiastica, 13; according to Nuttall, Visible Saints, 74. ↩︎
43. Matthias Maurice, Monuments of Mercy, 15; according to Nuttall, Visible Saints, 75. ↩︎
44. William Bartlet, 106 (referring to 2 Cor 8:5); according to Nuttall, Visible Saints, 75. ↩︎
45. For more on mixed Congregational-Baptist churches, see John B. Carpenter, “The Puritan Roots of the American Baptist Movement,” Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies 10 (March 2025). ↩︎
46. Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints, 27. ↩︎
47. Dennis C. Bustin, Paradox and Perseverance: Hanserd Knollys, Particular Baptist Pioneer in Seventeenth-Century England (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006), 158. ↩︎
48. Deweese, 34. ↩︎
49. Matthew Bingham claims that the term “Baptist” obscures the connection of the Particular Baptists with Puritan congregationalism. So, he prefers to call them “baptistic congregationalists.” Matthew C. Bingham, Orthodox Radicals: Baptist Identity in the English Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 4, 18, 23. ↩︎
50. John B. Carpenter, “Baptist Polity Inherited from Congregationalism,” Journal of Baptist Theology and Ministry 20.2 (2023): 153–72. https://www.nobts.edu/baptist-center-theology/journals/journals/jbtm20b.pdf. ↩︎
51. Deweese, 38. ↩︎
52. Burrage, 182. ↩︎
53. Deweese, 36. ↩︎
54. For more on the Baptist identity crisis, see John B. Carpenter, “Why Baptists Don’t Know They are Puritans,” Founders Journal 129 (2025). ↩︎
55. Burrage, 78. ↩︎
56. Weaver, In Search of the New Testament Church, 20. ↩︎
57. James Renihan, Edification and Beauty: The Practical Ecclesiology of the English Particular Baptists, 1675–1705 (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2009), 48. ↩︎
58. Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints, 26. ↩︎
59. Renihan, Edification and Beauty, 49. ↩︎
60. George, ed., Baptist Confessions, Covenants and Catechisms, 173. ↩︎
61. Deweese, 36. ↩︎
62. George, ed., “Covenant of Great Ellingham Baptist Church,” 182. ↩︎
63. W. T. Whitley, “Church Covenants,” The Baptist Quarterly VII (1934–35), 227. ↩︎
64. The Cambridge Platform of Church Discipline, Adopted in 1648 and The Confession of Faith, Adopted in 1680 (Boston: Perkins & Whipple, 1850), Chapter II, 6, 51. ↩︎
65. Williston Walker, A History of the Congregational Churches in the United States (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1894), 218. ↩︎
66. Walker, 217. ↩︎
67. Walker, 218. ↩︎
68. Richard Mather, Hugh Peters, John Davenport, An Apologie of The Churches in New-England for Church-Covenant (London: Printed by T.P. and M.S. for Benjamin Allen, 1643), 41. ↩︎
69. Thomas Lechford, Plaine Dealing: Or, Newes from Newe England (London, Printed by W. E. and I. G. for Nath, 1642), 2. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A49890.0001.001/1:4.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext. ↩︎
70. Baptist Foundations, 178. Ian Birch claims that by William Kiffin’s time “covenanting was rejected as a basis for constituting a church” among Particular Baptists though I do not see him documenting that; cf. Birch, The Ecclesial Polity of The English Calvinistic Baptists, 1640–1660 (Ph.D. Thesis, University of St. Andrews, 2014), 27. ↩︎
71. Cyril Eastwood, The Priesthood of All Believers: An Examination of the Doctrine from the Reformation to the Present Day (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1962), 157. ↩︎
72. Deweese, Baptist Church Covenants, v. ↩︎
73. Dever, “A Noble Task,” Polity, 23. ↩︎
74. Deweese, 41. ↩︎
75. Lori Putnam, First Baptist Church of Charlestown, email correspondence, March 10, 2023. ↩︎
76. Greg Wills, “The Church: Baptists and Their Churches in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Polity, 37. ↩︎
77. Capitol Hill Baptist Church, “History of our Church Covenant,” https://www.capitolhillbaptist.org/history-of-our-church-covenant/, accessed March 31, 2022. ↩︎
78. Basil, De Spiritu Sancto, 10.26. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3203.htm ↩︎
79. John S. Hammett, Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches: A Contemporary Ecclesiology (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2005), 118–119. ↩︎
80. Deweese, 82. “Frequently, Baptist churches asked new members to sign the church covenant as a public pledge of their commitment to live according to the standards and expectations of the congregation,” in George, ed., 14. ↩︎
81. John Browne, History of Congregationalism…in Norfolk and Suffolk, 394; according to Nuttall, Visible Saints, 49. ↩︎
82. Haykin, “Some Historical Roots of Congregationalism,” 43. ↩︎
83. Deweese, 37. ↩︎
84. Deweese, 41. ↩︎
85. S. Hopkins Emery, The History of the Church of North Middleborough, Massachusetts (Middleborough: Harlow & Thatcher Printers, 1876), 90. ↩︎
86. Deweese, 44. ↩︎
87. Deweese, 50. ↩︎
88. William Crowell, The Church Member’s Manual (Boston: Gould, Kendall, & Lincoln, 1847), 230. ↩︎
89. Eleazer Savage, Manual of Church Discipline (Rochester, NY: Sheldon and Company, 1863); Polity, 510. ↩︎
90. Renihan, Edification and Beauty, 48.  ↩︎
91. Deweese, 36. ↩︎
92. The Church Covenant of First Baptist Church of Charlestown, South Carolina, https://www.fbcharleston.org/_files/ugd/d87e21_eea9569deaef46d7a67ab2e7fa5166fc.pdf. ↩︎
93. Deweese, 36. ↩︎
94. Deweese, 53. ↩︎
95. Davies, Worship of the American Puritans, 275. ↩︎
96. Deweese, 97. ↩︎
97. Dever, “The Noble Task,” Polity, 32. ↩︎
98. Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism and the Road to the Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 49. ↩︎
99. John B. Carpenter, “Consumerism, Oikos and the Role of Women in the Church,” Theopolis, https://theopolisinstitute.com/consumerism-oikos-and-the-role-of-women-in-the-church/ ↩︎
100. John B. Carpenter, “Consumerism, Oikos and the Role of Women in the Church, Part 3,” Theopolis, https://theopolisinstitute.com/consumerism-oikos-and-the-role-of-women-in-the-church-part-3/ ↩︎
101. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 165.  ↩︎
102. Deweese, 85. ↩︎
103. Wade Burleson, Fraudulent Authority: Pastors Who Seek to Rule Over Others (Istoria Ministries: Enid, Oklahoma), 2016. Burleson is the retired pastor for Emmanuel Baptist Church (Enid, Oklahoma), president of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma 2002–2004, and member of the Southern Baptist Convention International Mission Board (2005–08). ↩︎
104. George, ed., Baptist Confessions, Covenants and Catechisms, 177. ↩︎
105. Keach, “The Glory of a True Church, And Its Discipline Display’d,” Polity, 65. ↩︎
106. Burleson, Fraudulent Authority, 52–54. ↩︎
107. For example, Keach wasn’t executed by the Church of England.  ↩︎
108. John B. Carpenter, “A World of Worthless Words,” Plough (November 13, 2023), https://www.plough.com/en/topics/community/commitment/a-world-of-worthless-words ↩︎
109. Burleson, Fraudulent Authority, 52. ↩︎
110. Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, https://covenantcaswell.org/church-covenant/ ↩︎
111. Benjamin Keach, The Glory of a True Church (London: John Robinson, 1697; Ann Arbor: Text Creation Partnership, 2011), 7, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A47522.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext, accessed March 9, 2023. Also, George, ed., 179. ↩︎
112. Whitley, “Church Covenants,” 230. ↩︎
113. Whitley, 233. ↩︎
114. Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love, 299. ↩︎
115. Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love, 318. ↩︎
116. Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love, 318n11.  ↩︎
117. Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love, 314. ↩︎
118. John B. Carpenter, “The Docetic Covenant and Phantom Church Membership,” Theopolis, February 27, 2024; https://theopolisinstitute.com/the-docetic-covenant-and-phantom-church-membership/ ↩︎
119. Keach, “The Glory of a True Church,” Polity, 79. ↩︎
120. “A Summary of Church Discipline” (Baptist Association in Charlestown, South Carolina, 1774); Polity, 129. ↩︎
121. Benjamin Griffith, “A Short Treatise Concerning a True and Orderly Gospel Church” (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Baptist Association, 1743); Polity, 108. ↩︎
122. “A Summary of Church Discipline” (1774); Polity, 129. ↩︎
123. Savage, “Manual of Church Discipline,” Polity, 511. ↩︎
124. In 2010, 9Marks published a 3,600-word essay affirming covenants; see Matt Schmucker, “Membership Matters—What is Our Church Covenant?,” https://www.9marks.org/article/membership-matters-what-our-church-covenant/. The 2015 Baptist Foundations, copyright held by Mark Dever and 9Marks, is an anthology of 19 chapters by various notable Baptist authors, not one chapter exclusively dedicated to covenanting, with about five pages focused on covenanting; see Michael A. G. Haykin, “Some Historical Roots of Congregationalism,” Baptist Foundations, 40–45. ↩︎
125. On November 14, 2023, Pastor’s Talk did an episode on church covenants, apparently in response to my inquiry about their lack of discussing covenants; see “On Church Covenants,” Episode 249.  ↩︎
126. “Gamophobia (Fear of Commitment),” Cleveland Clinic, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22570-gamophobia-fear-of-commitment#:~:text=What%20is%20gamophobia%3F,the%20Greek%20word%20for%20marriage ↩︎
127. The divorce rate was 39% in the USA as of 2018, with 15% of couples, ages 25–34, cohabitating. “More Americans under 25 cohabit with a partner (9%) than are married to one (7%).” See Belinda Luscombe, “The Divorce Rate Is Dropping. That May Not Actually Be Good News,” Time, November 26, 2018. https://time.com/5434949/divorce-rate-children-marriage-benefits/, accessed September 27, 2021. ↩︎
128. Donald Hagner, Matthew 1–13, Word Biblical Commentary 33A (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1993), 128. ↩︎
129. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, 128–129. ↩︎
130. John B. Carpenter, “The Demise of Integrity as a Sign of Decline,” Truthscript (March 26, 2024), https://truthscript.com/church/the-demise-of-integrity-as-a-sign-of-decline-2/ ↩︎