Know your Pilgrims

Roy W. Doak is correct when he points out that the Pilgrims were Separatists, not Puritans. A syndicated article in the Bangor Daily News’ Thanksgiving Day issue incorrectly confused the Pilgrims with the Puritans. The Pilgrims were somewhat more liberal and tolerant than their Puritan neighbors.

Mr. Doak is partly wrong, however, when he says that “The early Pilgrim Church evolved into today’s Congregational Church.” The original Pilgrim Church, which was independent for many generations, is now Unitarian Universalist. It affiliated with the Unitarians in the early 1800s, and has never belonged to any other denomination. The Dissenting Church in Gainsborough, England, from which many of the Pilgrims came, also became Unitarian.

Before about 1820, “congregational” referred to independent congregations who governed themselves by democratic vote. Most of those congregations had been established by the Puritans. They were not a denomination in today’s sense. In the early 1800s the more conservative Trinitarian Congregationalists and the more liberal Unitarian Congregationalists went their separate ways.

Who split from whom? That’s a matter of opinion.

The conservatives took the name “Congregational,” formed an organization, and trained their ministers at Yale. The liberals took the name “Unitarian,” formed an organization, and trained their ministers at Harvard. The Pilgrim Church joined the Unitarians, although some members split off and joined the Congregationalists. The Unitarians merged with the Universalists in 1961, forming the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

Unitarian Universalists are still “congregational” in style of church government. The original Pilgrim Church in Plymouth, Mass., remains both liberal and Unitarian Universalist. Rev. J. Mark Worth Ellsworth