The Long Road to Sainthood: Indian Christians, the Doctrine of Preparation, and the Halfway Covenant of 1662

This essay explores the origins and expansion of New England Praying Towns in the context of the ongoing theological and religious debates of 1646–1674. This period spawned significant debates regarding the extent of the Abrahamic covenant, the requirements for church membership, and the nature of conversion. The ministers present at the Synod of 1662 gathered to settle the question of “extended baptism,” an issue where Indian and English concerns intersected. Reformers who promoted a generational vision of church membership emphasized the efficacy of spiritual preparation for younger generations and the power of a broader and more inclusive church covenant. This development benefitted Algonquians living in Praying Towns because theological preparation validated efforts to catechize and instruct Praying Indians in religious matters. Likewise, a broadening vision of church membership enabled some colonists to consider the possibility that Indians might be included within their religious communities. These projects, launched before the formalization of the Halfway Covenant in 1662, presented a tangible example of spiritual preparation in practice and served to validate the conversionary process within the colony at large. English observers found Indian conversion impressive (or reacted with intense skepticism) because most theologians considered Indians unlikely converts, especially in larger numbers. For Algonquians demonstrating an interest in English spirituality, church membership represented a degree of parity with their New England brethren. Tracing the development of New England missions, the pathway to church membership, and the debates on both missions and extended baptism reveals both the possibilities and limits to the inclusion of Indian Christians within New England's religious institutions.

When History Repeats Itself: The Theological Significance of the Abrahamic Covenant in Early Jewish Writings

Alongside ‘Mosaic discourse’, Second Temple period authors increasingly looked to Abraham as a source of instruction and authority. This article focuses on the growing importance of the Abrahamic covenant through the lens of five re-tellings of Israel's history that link the past with the present: the Damascus Document, the Apocalypse of Weeks, 4 Ezra, Nehemiah 9, and Galatians. This article argues that various authors placed themselves within a historical narrative that spotlighted the Abrahamic covenant in order to identify themselves as the elect and demarcate the boundaries separating them from the non-elect. The ideological orientation of each text can account for why the Abrahamic covenant, rather than the later Mosaic pact, became the basis for identity politics.

Ruth and Esther: Negotiable space in Christopher Wright’s The Mission of God?

In the volume entitled The Mission of God, author Christopher J.H. Wright (2006) endeavors to search for a missional hermeneutic that unlocks the Bible’s grand narrative. The book’s comprehensiveness and extensiveness would be difficult to match in years to come. However, the books of Ruth and Esther are notably overlooked and mentioned only in passing. This glaring omission implies an insignificance and irrelevance of the two books in contributing to the hermeneutic of missions. Should these two books be included or excluded in the grand narrative of the mission of God? This paper positions Ruth and Esther at an indispensable place in a missional hermeneutic that nuances the intricacies of the Abrahamic covenant, the diaspora, and gender in God’s grand narrative.

Homeless in Galilee

This article has located Jesus’ saying about homelessness in the context of the Roman Empire as it was experienced in Galilee. Homelessness is part of a broader picture that translates into loss of access to the resources of the land. The thesis is that in light of a theology of land resulting from the development of Abrahamic covenant traditions and the prophetic hope expressed especially in Isaiah, Ezekiel and Psalm 37, Jesus proclaimed God’s kingdom as God’s rule over heaven and earth, which implicates restoration of equitable access to the resources of the earth. The Lord’s Prayer, presumptions about the water of Jacob’s well in John 4 and the parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16 are used to demonstrate understandings of violations of equitable access according to Abrahamic covenant traditions and the hope for the restoration thereof.

HAGAR IN CHRISTIAN BRITAIN: GRACE AGUILAR’S “THE WANDERERS”

But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the free woman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. . . . Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.— St. Paul, Epistle to the GalatiansThese Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind . . .— Longfellow, “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport,” 1852GIVEN PAUL’S TORTUOUS, divisive rhetoric, the Jew is always the proto-Christian, deprived of actual historical identity and development. For Christianity, founding itself on usurpation, cannot dispense with the Abrahamic covenant or the sacrifice of Isaac (to Jews, the akedah, binding) that prefigures the martyrdom of Jesus. Because Christianity begins by absorbing Hebraic characters as patterns, it must represent real Jews by a second displacement, as non-Jews: “These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind.” In Christian eyes, the Jew is twice dispossessed — once by metamorphosis into the potentially free Christian, and again by disguise as a creature of bondage.