Congregationalists and Presbyterians were hardly strangers in colonial America. Though from different lineages -– the former from English stock and the latter of Scotch-Irish descent -– there was a growing kinship between them.
The 1648 Massachusetts Cambridge Platform affirmed the “substance” of the doctrine of the recently-written Westminster Confession of Faith (even while commending congregational over presbyterial polity). The 1708 Saybrook Platform of the Connecticut Congregationalists went a step further, establishing consociations to handle disputes arising in churches, which more closely resembled Presbyterian practice.
In the words of Williston Walker, the Saybrook Platform “produced a feeling of sympathy with the Presbyterians of the middle colonies, rather than the more independent Congregationalists of Massachusetts.”[1] The ministries of Jonathan Dickinson, Aaron Burr Sr., and Jonathan Edwards embodied this affinity: all three were Congregationalist ministers who became Presbyterians.
By 1766, Presbyterian ministers of the Synod of New York and Philadelphia and the Congregational ministers of the General Association of Connecticut began annual conventions “in order to promote objects of common interest to both denominations.” High on that list was preserving religious liberty, specifically against the threat of the establishment of the Church of England in the colonies, and both parties supported efforts to secure that freedom through political independence.
After the American Revolution, the newly established General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States expressed its desire “to renew and strengthen every bond of union” between the two bodies, recalling “with much satisfaction the mutual pleasure and advantage produced and received by their former intercourse.”[2] Presbyterians began to seat Congregationalists as fraternal delegates to General Assemblies, with the privileges of deliberation and voting. Read more»
John Muether | “The Plan of Union (1801)” | By Faith | September 3, 2026
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