Howard Dean, the Pilgrims, and other far out lefties

There have been a bunch of articles about Howard Dean’s religion over the last two weeks, most of them negative. The main knock on Dean is that he switched denominations (from Episcopal to Congregationalist) in the early 1980s in part because of a dispute over a bike path. This doesn’t seem like much of a story to me–he switched churches/denominations, not religions, because he had a strong dislike for some of the leaders of the church. Is this really so uncommon among Protestant denominations? I’m not the best judge, since my parents treated religious affiliation like George Steinbrenner treated managers in the late 1970s and 1980s–I was raised (more or less chronologically) Catholic, Episcopal, Quaker, Catholic again, Methodist, Unitarian, Episcopal again, and will probably be a reform Jew in a few years. But I know many more people who switched denominations at one point or another. My husband’s family goes to a Conservative synagogue on the high holy days because their local Reform rabbi is underwhelming. President Bush was raised Episcopalian and is now, if I remember correctly, Methodist. Other friends switched from Congregational to Unitarian because of a minister they really admired. For that matter, the Episcopal church began for pretty worldly reasons (though the Anglican church says it’s more complicated than that).

Some of the articles also make it sound as if the Congregational Church is some newfangled, leftist, hippy denomination. Frankin Foer’s New Republic article says:

As he shopped around for churches, it was natural that he turned to Congregationalism, a denomination famous for its informality and liberal stances. Last November, Dean told a reporter from the Forward that he liked that “there is no central authority” in the tradition. By the time Dean joined the church, Congregationalists had already authorized the ordination of gay ministers. Yoga is taught in the church. Sermons sometimes make the case for lefty causes, especially the plight of the Palestinians.

And here’s the always-charming Cal Thomas:

Dean is from a Congregationalist background, a liberal denomination that does not believe in ministerial authority or church hierarchy. Each Congregationalist believes he is in direct contact with God and is entitled to sort out truth for himself.

I would just like to point out that this zany hippie religion is more than a century older than our country is. The first American Congregationalists were the pilgrims–as in the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, the first Thanksgiving, the whole bit. The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony were also Congregationalists; so were more heretical sorts like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. So was Mr. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” himself, Jonathan Edwards. (It’s rather more complicated than I’m making out, since there was no centralized authority, and I think the Presbyterian church has some deep roots in Puritanism too. You can read more here.)

Obviously, the church has changed a tremendous amount over the last few hundred years, and I doubt Edwards or John Winthrop would think much of a presidential candidate best known for signing the civil unions law. But Dean’s religion is not some new agey form of faith thought up in Cambridge or Berkeley in the 1960s. It’s one of the oldest in America, and it’s still pretty widespread in New England.

Correction: I’ve just realized that the “I Am Henry VIII I Am” song I linked to is not about King Henry VIII at all. This Henry VIII Limerick gives a much better summary:

“Henry’s FIRST wife was Catherine of Aragon,
For a TIME thought that she was his paragon,
But to GET a divorce,
Broke with ROME, but of course,
And then FEASTed on quail’s eggs and tarragon.”