THE PURITAN EXPERIMENT:
Westminster Conference Papers 2019
Authors Joseph Pipa, Jeremy Walker,
Robert Strivens, Matthew Bingham, Douglas
McCallum, Paul Smith
Published by John Harris. £7.50
from jfharris@ntlworld.com
The Puritan era continues to be a rich resource for believers today. These six papers were read at the 2019 Westminster Conference; they comprise a readable and relevant overview of Puritan concerns.
William Perkins (Church of England) and Thomas Manton (Presbyterian) are each given a chapter: personalities of the past come alive. There are chapters on the ‘Principle’ and ‘Practice’ of Puritan Worship. The collection is rounded off with a chapter on ‘The Emergence of Independency’ and one entitled ‘The Pilgrim Fathers: The Men and their Motives.’
Mainstays of today
Chapters on Perkins and Manton remind us that, despite a distance of so many years, the Puritans were concerned with matters which remain mainstays of evangelicals today – preaching, pastoral care and godliness.
While having much in common with modern evangelicals, it is clear from this volume that the Puritans devoted much thought to issues that have been neglected in recent years. In particular several chapters note that Puritans came to hard-won convictions about the nature of God, honouring corporate worship, and the limits of state oversight of churches. Jeremy Walker asks: ‘Is there nothing more in the gathered church than in a crowd of any other people? Is there nothing more in baptism or the Lord’s Supper than there is in having a bath or eating lunch?’ (p.31). This book helps us grapple with these questions. Failure to do so leaves us adrift when challenged by government policy to shift worship services online.
Embody the Puritan spirit
The challenges facing the churches today will not be met with better organisational ventures or financial drives. We need to embody the Puritan spirit exemplified in this book. That means we hold Scriptural convictions about how to experience God together; are willing to make sacrifices to enable such worship; and in the end we are ‘ready to be forgotten’ (p.101) as God gets the glory.
