Puritan Congregationalism

Timeline

1. 1643–1647Westminster · LondonThe Westminster Assembly, convened during the English Civil War, produced the Westminster Confession, Catechisms, and Directory of Worship, providing Puritans with unified doctrinal texts; but Independents and Congregational delegates insisted on local church autonomy and rejected a national Presbyterian hierarchy.
2. c. 1641–1648Boston · BostonTowns in colonies such as Massachusetts and Connecticut organized worship and disciplinary trials by congregational polity; civil magistrates and the church were mutually dependent yet separate, and local ministers were elected by the congregation, forming a religious-political order quite different from the established church of the mother country.
3. 1648–1650Cambridge (Massachusetts) · CambridgeIn 1648 the New England synod adopted the Cambridge Platform, defining in written constitutional principles local church membership, ordination of ministers, and mechanisms of church union, marking the formal consolidation of Congregationalism in New England and influencing the later religiously plural landscape of the United States.