Minimum age for church membership

Question

I've been looking for information on a minimum age for church membership in colonial Massachusetts, and I can't find much.  There is this earlier post:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/518769/were-there-age-requirements-church-membership-1630s-england

with an answer that in the 1630s, at least, a man had to be "of age" to be a church member.  But being a WikiTreer, I look for sources.  I have trouble finding someone sourcing historical documents that demonstrate this requirement (although for a while it was required to be a church member to be a freeman, and to be a church member required a conversion narrative, both of which suggest an adult requirement.)

I am interested specifically in age requirements for membership at the Old North Church in Boston in the early 1700s.  One website I saw said that membership requirements were relaxed in the 1690s. Is it unsafe to assume a man admitted as a member was 21 or over?  Is there a good source for this stuff?

Comments

I added the tags pgm and massachusetts to help get the attention of people who are most likely to have this information.

I don't believe that anyone is following the tag age_requirements

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Interesting question and I haven't got a clue.

Answer 1

Well, seems that there was no minimum age.  Seems that about 8-9% of new church members were under 20.  (Surprise to me; I was writing a spiel on how OF COURSE they must have been over 21.  You've been spared.)

See:

"At Dorchester, Massachusetts, for example, in the period 1640-1730, only thirty-four (8.9%) of the 382 new communicants whose ages are known were under the age of twenty; only three, all girls, were under seventeen (one each at age thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen). In the same years, 202 (52.9%) of the new communicants were in their twenties, and ninety-four (24.6%) were in their thirties.22 At New Haven, in the years 1685-1739, only fifty-four (7.9%) of the 681 new communicants whose ages are known were younger than twenty.23 Data from eighteenth-century An- dover and Norton, Massachusetts, and Norwich and Woodbury, Con- necticut, reveal the same pattern.24 One must conclude, therefore, that most famous conversion of the eighteenth century, that of four-year-old Phebe Bartlet of Northampton, was a remarkable exception."   

Ross W. Beales, Jr. “In Search of the Historical Child: Miniature Adulthood and Youth in Colonial New England.” American Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 4, 1975, pp. 379–398. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2712328.

https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.bpl.org/stable/2712328?seq=9#metadata_info_tab_contents
 

Comments

Here are the footnotes for the quoted text (I found them of interest, so...)

* 22 Based on data in the Records of the First Church at Dorchester in New England, 1636- 1734, ed. Charles Henry Pope (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, 1891), and in genealogical materials cited in Ross W. Beales, Jr., "Cares for the Rising Generation: Youth and Religion in Colonial New England," Diss. Univ. of California, Davis, 1971, pp. 244-46.

* 23 Based on data in the Historical Catalogue of the Members of the First Church of Chri New Haven, Connecticut (Center Church), A.D. 1639-1914, comp. Franklin Bowditch Dexter (New Haven: The Church, 1914).

*24 Philip J. Greven, Jr., "Youth, Maturity, and Religious Conversion: A Note on the Ages of Converts in Andover, Massachusetts, 1711-1749," Essex Institute Historical Collections, 108 (1972), 119-34; J. M. Bumsted, "Religion, Finance, and Democracy in Massachusetts: The Town of Norton as a Case Study," Journal of American History, 57 (1971), 817-31; Gerald F. Moran, "Conditions of Religious Conversion in the First Society of Norwich, Connecticut, 1718-1744," Journal of Social History, 5 (1972), 331-43; James Walsh, "The Great Awakening in the First Congregational Church of Woodbury, Connecticut," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 28 (1971), 543-62.

*25 On Bartlet, see Edwards, Faithful Narrative, in The Great A wakening, ed. Goen, pp. 199- 205.

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Excellent finding, Patricia!

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Wow!  This is truly excellent!  Thank you!  It’s hard enough in genealogy just to decide whether something is reasonably likely, but you’ve gone and attached numbers to this likelihood.

Answer 2

Doing a google search brings up a lot of hits ...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/361286.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Way_Covenant

https://biblehub.com/library/greene/the_development_of_religious_liberty_in_connecticut/chapter_iii_church_and_state.htm

https://study.com/academy/lesson/massachusetts-bay-colony-religion-history-economy.html

There are lots more articles as well.

Comments

Some of this I already mentioned in my post.  I see in these links vague comments, like "such membership was conditioned upon exacting tests" and statements that don't directly address the question, like "the Massachusetts law of 1631 forbade any but church members from becoming freemen of the colony".  The conditions (1) a man must be of age to be a freeman and (2) a man must be a church member to be a freeman do not imply the conclusion: a man must be of age to be a church member.
 

Or take the page on the Half-Way Covenant, which says a conversion narrative had to be given to become a member.  Could a 20-year-old not provide a conversion narrative? Where is that written?

But say I believe that even if it wasn't written down, a man had to be effectively of age to become a member.  My main concern is that this condition may have been far relaxed by the early 1700s.  So I'd really like a source addressing how these rules passed into the 18th century.

Answer 3

I think you want to start with the "Cambridge Platform" and see if there were addendums or adjustments made at a later time. I haven't studied Congregational Church history, but only have a few notes about it in the early days.

Comments

A little 'light reading' about it is here on Archive.org. See p. 71, item 7.

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Thank you.

Answer 4

It may have varied with the denomination and in the case of the Congregational Church, with the specific parish. You might try the Congregational Library and Archives site http://www.congregationallibrary.org/

They are involved in a digitization project whereby they are making church records earlier than 1800 available online. They don't have Old North digitized, but do have Old South and my favorite, Braintree First images and transcription. My church missed out (founded in 1826) but is a great way for those resources to be digitized and shared while the original church keeps possession if they want.

http://www.congregationallibrary.org/nehh/collections