The Freedom of Association and Ecclesiastical Independence

Abstract

Associational freedom played a key role in reconfiguring ecclesiastical and political thought during the Interregnum. This chapter explores how Puritan Independents such as Henry Jacob and John Goodwin advanced arguments for the freedom of association by claiming a dual freedom to exit from true churches and to join or even to establish new formal ecclesiastical societies. During the English Revolution some Independents began to assert more controversial claims for the freedom to exclude others from their churches, over matters such as paedobaptism, for example. These ecclesiastical positions resonated with wider debates over institutional legitimacy during the 1640s and 1650s and also with changing views on the bonds of society and the limits of individual liberty at a time when England’s most revolutionary experiments with both popular government and godly forms of church life were being undertaken.