Flames of passion

The woman was indignant. “I’d better be in heaven someday,” she said heatedly, “because I know my mother is!”

She could have been a third-generation Puritan. In the mid-1600’s, the Puritans had fled English with the hot flames of persecution on their tails. Rather than adapt their beliefs, they adopted a new homeland.

But that first generation of Puritans, passionate and committed, failed to pass on the fervor. The following generations drifted toward spiritual lethargy. Churches once filled with energetic followers of Jesus were now seeing empty pews. The youth were out late, pursuing lewd practices with no time for Sunday morning worship.

We obviously expect too much, responded the Puritan fathers. They wanted to increase church membership, which had been based on spiritual conversion, and so decided to make it easier. Thus developed the Half-Way Covenant, which allowed membership based on baptism. If and when conversion occurred, the member was then allowed full membership but in the meantime, they were half-way members.

These half-way members couldn’t vote but they could inflate the membership roll. The hope was that the younger generations would eventually make a conversion to Christianity. Without the expectation of conversion, the younger generation became more and more self-indulgence and immoral.

By reducing membership to baptism, Puritans communicated that faith wasn’t necessary. Membership was. The sluggish results of the Half-way Covenant made the Great Awakening of the early 1700’s an amazing work of God, injecting fervor and commitment into the cool listless spirituality of the times. When people found Jesus, they responded with enthusiasm and ardor.

Jesus started with a large group of disciples but followers kept peeling off as the cost of following became clearer. Jesus didn’t come up with a Half-way Covenant to keep them. He upped the ante: in comparison to your love for me, it’ll seem like you hate your family. (Luke 14:26)

To follow Jesus means to leave attachments, to cultivate zeal, to risk all. He expected obsession from his followers. The Puritans were hoping to boost church membership with the Half-way Covenant. Their focus should have been on the passion of the people, not the numbers on the pews.

Jesus never made it easy to follow him and neither should we.

And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14:27