Half-Way Covenant

The Puritans of the 17th century believed that only adults who had experienced a personal conversion -- an experience that they were saved by God's grace -- and who were accepted by the church community as having signs of being saved, could be full covenanted church members. In the theocratic colony of Massachusetts this also usually meant that one could only vote at a town meeting and exercise other citizenship rights if one was a full covenanted church member. Increase Mather supported a church membership provision, written by his father Richard Mather in 1662, called the Half-Way Covenant, which permitted the children of fully covenanted members to also be members of the church. Children were baptized as infants but could not become full members until they were at least 14 years old and experienced a personal conversion.