Wednesday, July 5, 2023

It is the 5th of July, 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org, I’m Dan van Voorhis.

I love it when a show comes together like this one- first came the mailbag question from Dana in Plattsburgh, New York. He mentioned that it was the site of the famous battle of Plattsburgh and known as Montreal’s “English-speaking suburb” (it is just south of the border from Montreal). Others of us know Plattsburgh as the city where Peter Frampton came alive- his "Frampton Comes Alive!" was recorded at CUNY Plattsburgh.  

Dana is the great-grandson x9 of Thomas Hooker. And it turns out Hooker was born on this, the 5th of July, and died on the 7th of July. And it turns out that what he is famous for is, in part, what many of us celebrated yesterday with loud sounds and meat cooked on an open fire. It’s what we here on the Almanac call a real goocher.  

So, Thomas Hooker- was born on this, the 5th of July in 1586 Leicestershire in the English Midlands. He was a Puritan and thus went to Cambridge- the school for dissenters at the time. He took up a job as a preacher and lecturer until the reforms of William Laud under King Charles I lead him to leave with other separatists for Holland. Finding too much freedom there, he made his way to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1633 to the town of New Town- soon to be renamed after his other dissenters Alma Mater: Cambridge.  

He would have a run-in with John Cotton, the famed preacher and early leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The two would have a quarrel over suffrage- that is, the right to vote. Cotton believed that only land-owning men who were also church members should vote, whereas Hooker believed that all men (yes, men) should have the right to vote. Church membership under Cotton’s regime was not a given, even for Christians. You could be a worshipping Christian, but unless you had given a public affirmation of faith and conversion experience, you were unable to become a member.

[It should be noted that the Great Awakening took place as the New England church lessened these restrictions, giving more an opportunity to become members].

And so, finding a lack of religious toleration from those who proclaimed it, Hooker and others moved south into modern Hartford, Connecticut. (Another preacher, Samuel Stone, who came with Hooker, was from Hertford in England and chose this name, English spelling was a fluid thing).

It was in Hartford that Hooker helped draft the “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut”- in it, he claimed universal male suffrage and borrowed from the English enlightenment ideas that the power of the government came from the consent of the people whose powers were being stewarded by the government. Was this the first written constitution as some have claimed? Well, let’s say it is “among the oldest,” and certainly, for a colony is the oldest (shoutout to San Marino). And we know that Thomas Jefferson was a fan and borrowed the language of the “consent of the governed” that would make its way into the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution.

In church history, Hooker is often associated with the doctrine of “preperationism”. Amongst the Puritans and English dissenters, there was an obsession over what the theologians call the “ordus salutis” which is the “order of salvation.” As Calvinists, they wanted to protect the sovereignty of God in election and thus would want to understand the way in which one comes to faith as rooted in the eternal decrees of God. Hooker would teach that there were things a person could do to “prepare” themselves for divine grace- namely, hearing the law and being contrite. Despite some painting Hooker as a “Crypto-Arminian” that is a “secret free-will guy,” his theology has been vindicated in modern research. Although his more lax church membership and theory that the soul could be prepared for conversion with the preaching of the law would be prominent in the works of Jonathan Edwards and the first generation of Great Awakening preachers that would eventually begin to bend away from some Calvinist ideas about conversion.

Like all of the great New England families, he has an impressive list of descendants from his son Samuel and then the Dwights of New Haven (Timothy was president of Yale) the Pierpont family (of JP Morgan fame), and the Taft family (of presidential fame). So- Dana of Plattsburgh- you’re in good company. Just missing the goocher of a birth/death day match, he died on the 7th of July in 1647 at the age of 61.

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary from the prophet Jeremiah:

 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me. 6 He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. 7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 5th of July 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. 

The show is produced by a man who, ooh, baby, I love the way… he produces this show- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man telling you that a “goocher” comes from Stand By Me and the character from which I received my childhood nickname- I’m Dan “Verno” van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.