Westminster Assembly

Background

In England during the first half of the seventeenth century, King Charles I and Parliament clashed over political and religious questions. The Puritans in Parliament believed that the reform of the Church of England remained incomplete. Church government was also in dispute. Opinion was divided over whether to adopt episcopacy, in which bishops govern; presbyterianism, in which councils of elders govern; or independency, in which each congregation governs itself. On June 12, 1643, while royalist and parliamentary armies were fighting a civil war, the Long Parliament, as the English Parliament of the time is known, summoned an assembly of divines by ordinance. On June 22 the king forbade the assembly.

Proceedings

• July 1, 1643: The assembly opened in the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey. The members nominated by Parliament were 121 ministers, 10 members of the House of Lords, and 20 members of the House of Commons. The prolocutor was William Twisse.
• Summer–autumn 1643: During its first three months the assembly revised the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. On August 17 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland approved the Solemn League and Covenant, and in September the English Parliament also accepted it. This agreement called for uniformity among the churches of the three kingdoms. Accordingly, the assembly undertook to write a new confession of faith, and Scottish commissioners joined its work.
• Debate over church government: The members were all Calvinist in doctrine. On church government, however, three parties engaged in prolonged debate: the Presbyterians, who formed the majority; the Independents, including Thomas Goodwin; and the Erastians, who held that the state should exercise church discipline.
• 1644–1645: The assembly completed the Directory for Public Worship at the end of 1644. By ordinance of Parliament in January 1645, the Directory replaced the Book of Common Prayer.
• 1646–1647: In September 1646 the assembly submitted the first nineteen chapters of the confession to Parliament, and in December the remaining fourteen. In 1647 it added scriptural proof texts to the confession and prepared the Larger and Shorter Catechisms.
• 1649–1653: By February 22, 1649, the assembly had held 1,163 regular sessions. Thereafter it met as a standing committee to examine candidates for the ministry, and it effectively ceased meeting around March 25, 1652. It was never formally dissolved; the assembly passed out of existence with the dissolution of the Rump Parliament in April 1653.

Results and Influence

In England, presbyterianism failed to take hold, as the Restoration of 1660 reestablished the Church of England. The Church of Scotland, by contrast, received the assembly's documents and approved the Larger and Shorter Catechisms in July 1648. These documents subsequently became the doctrinal standards of Presbyterianism worldwide.

Korean Presbyterians adopted the Twelve Articles of Faith at the Independent Presbytery in 1907. The Twelve Articles were modeled on the 1904 creed of the Presbyterian Church in India and are regarded as having been influenced by the Westminster Confession of Faith. Korean Presbyterian denominations today are reportedly divided between those that follow the original 1647 text and those that follow the 1903 revision, which added two chapters.

Assessment

The Reformed tradition regards the assembly as one of the most important councils in the history of the Reformed churches. There are, however, critical assessments as well. The assembly was an advisory body convened by Parliament rather than by the church, and final authority rested with Parliament. Others regard it as the product of a political situation in which Scottish military support was needed. Presbyterian and Reformed churches adopt the assembly's documents as doctrinal standards. By contrast, Methodist and Holiness churches in the Wesleyan tradition do not use these documents as doctrinal standards because they understand predestination differently.