Uncontrollable Church Protests

England in the 1640s endured unprecedented religious fracturing. The momentum for religious freedom spread like wildfire, fueling the political divide in a nation at war with itself. Even the Sunday morning church service was not immune to the conflict as religious protesters disrupted sermons with angry outbursts, shouting out messages with all the fury of ancient prophets. Filled with righteous indignation, Quakers, Levelers, Anabaptists, Separatists, and others burst into church gatherings to challenge the doctrines of their ministers. This happened so often that on December 22, 1646 the House of Lords ordered local authorities to arrest anyone “who shall disturb any minister in holy orders” while he is “exercising his public calling.” 

The church protests eventually spilled overseas as religious rebels continued pouring into New England colonies, and even Harvard College was not immune. The school, which began as a training center for Puritan ministers, held regular services on their campus. In July of 1654, during an infant baptism ceremony, one man entered the chapel to stop the service and instruct them of their errors. If his objections were more academic than other church protests, it was because the protester was none other than the college president himself. The views of Henry Dunster, Harvard’s first college president, had moved away from Puritan orthodoxy toward the Anabaptist practice of adult baptism. He was soon dismissed from his office at the college, taken to court, exiled from Boston, and his last few years were spent as a preacher in Plymouth Colony. 

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“So the Priests, and the Prophets, and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the House of the Lord. Now when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking..., and all the people took him, and said, Thou shalt die the death.”

(Jeremiah 26:7-8; 1599 Geneva Bible)

See: The Life of Henry Dunster (1872) in Google Books.