Question

I'm asked to explain the cause, course, and consequence of the Half-way covenant. I have nooo clue. Can anyone help?:(

Answer 1

Half-Way Covenant, religious-political solution adopted by 17th-century New England Congregationalists, also called Puritans, that allowed the children of baptized but unconverted church members to be baptized and thus become church members and have political rights.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/252432/Half-Way-Covenant

Answer 2

It was promoted in particular by the Reverend Solomon Stoddard, who felt that the people of the English colonies were drifting away from their original religious purpose.

Answer 3

Purpose: It consisted of a very simple statement of desire to unite as a congregation under Christ the Head of the Church.

Reason: The people of the English colonies were drifting away from their original religious purpose.

Consequence: The objective basis of spiritual life in the church was not clearly
perceived and therefore neglected.

This led to a heated controversy soon aftcr the settlement of America between the Puritan leaders in the old and the new world on the question of the Scriptural basis and neccssity of church covenants. Among large numbers in the homeland the idea was never very popular. Many could find no Scriptural warrant for Robert Browne's contentions and attacked them vigorously. In 1634 John Cotton wrote his Questions and Answers upon Church Government to defend the idea and practice. One of the objections was that the New England churches sealed these covenants with unnecessary oaths. To this charge Cotton replied in his Defence of the Answers made unto the Nine Questions or Positios, sent from New England. The English Puritans also feared that their brethren in America would insist that church covenant was indispensable to the organization of the true church of Christ. Therefore in 1637 they sent a letter requesting the opinion of the ministers of New England on their position. By the time Richard Mather wrote An Apologie of the Churches in New England for Church-Covenant the idea and practice became more general in England also. However, it never gained the wide-spread popularity there which it attained in the new world.

Answer 4

Oooooh,
half-way there,
oooOooh!
livin' on a prayer!
Puritans
will make it they swear
'Caus they've
got a half-way prayer...