Quiet Testimonies - Gulemo

“We owe it to our ancestors to preserve entire, those rights, which they
have delivered to our care: We owe it to posterity not to suffer their
dearest inheritance to be destroyed”.
THE BIRTH OF A TOWN
Junius Letters 1769 - 1771
The century in which Martin Luther translated the Holy Bible into
the German language was one of upheaval in Europe. Discouraged by
the state of the churches, college fellows and students alike began to
reject their hierarchy, “ ‘ separating ‘ from the established churches.”
Every church’s congregation would manage its own affairs submitting
to the Holy Bible as the supreme authority.” The term “separatistcongregationalist”
came into use.
In England in 1609 those who believed in separating escaped with
their families to the Netherlands. These “pilgrims” left Holland in
1620 and “for their better ordering and preservation, ...desiring a
place devoyed of all civil inhabitants,” sailed from South Hampton,
England to the new world.
All Congregational Churches in America trace their origin to these
Pilgrims, the founding fathers. They have become to all Americans,
“a lesson of how a few people persevered with little more than a deep
faith, extreme courage, friends and hard work.”
Forty-one men of all social classes, upon landing at Cape Cod in 1620,
met onboard the Mayflower and drew up the Mayflower Compact,
a covenant recognized by historians as being the first document of a
democracy, “combining themselves together for their better ordering
and preservation to unite politically, living together in a peaceful and
orderly manner under civil authorities of their own choosing.”
The Reverend Mr. Thomas Hooker, founder of Connecticut, like the
Separatist leaders Henry Barrow, John Greenwood, John Penry, the
Rev. John Robinson and Elder William Brewster, was educated at
Cambridge University and was numbered among those who wished to
separate from the established church. He escaped to the Netherlands
in 1630.
Hooker traveled to (Newtown) Cambridge, Massachusetts to serve
as their Separatist-Congregational minister in 1633. In disagreement
with Governor Winthrop
and the belief that the “ ruling
class Magistrates should
serve for life, and opposing
the close union of church
and state,” Hooker received a
commission from Winthrop
and in 1636 left Cambridge.
A colony of sixty or more
men, women and children, led
by their minister, made their
way to the Connecticut River
and Hartford, “ in search of
wider fields for cultivation
and good pasture land and
rest under a government according
to God.” (Harvard
Dorothy B. Taggart
College was built
on Hooker’s homestead.)
“Allowing for differences,”
a synod of the
Cambridge Platform
was draw up for New
England churches.
Each settlement had
an individuality of
its own. Each ‘town’
had its own Congregational
Church,
Pastor, teacher, covenant
and became an
individual community.
(The Separatist-
Congregational churches took the single name Congregational in
1646.)
On May 31 st 1638 the Reverend Mr. Thomas Hooker preached a
sermon at the General Court in Hartford, “laying down the principles
by which government should be established.” Men of the Connecticut
Colony met, and under the leadership of Hooker, drafted the “Funè
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The Hebronian June 2009 Page 14 E-mail your news to: hebronian@gulemo.com