Separatist and Dissenting Churches

The term Separatist refers to Christians who did not support some of the fundamental principles of the Established Church (Church of England), such as a hierarchy of clergy and the wearing of clerical vestments. Unlike the Puritans, who hoped to reform the Church from within, the Separatists believed that they could only bring about what they required by separating from the Established church and reorganizing themselves independently. The Separatist movement gathered momentum from the 1570s, and while there was some opposition to it from the Established Church and the State during Elizabeth's reign, with the imprisonment of some of its leaders, official attitudes hardened considerably after the accession of James I in 1603, and meetings had to be held in secret. Most of the leading religious nonconformists of the later 16th century were graduates of Cambridge University, which at that time led the country in radical religious ideas. Many Cambridge graduates became priests who were deprived of their livings and sometimes excommunicated for preaching views contrary to those of the Established Church, and for offenses against canon law.

Separatists were also called Independents and were eventually called Congregationalists. Independents were most influential politically in England during the time of the Commonwealth (1649-60) under Oliver Cromwell, the lord protector, who was himself an Independent. Subsequently, they survived repression and gradually became an important religious minority in England. One group of Separatists left England for Holland in 1608, and in 1620 some of them, the Pilgrims, settled at Plymouth, Mass. The Plymouth Separatists cooperated with the Puritans (nonseparating Independents within the Church of England) who settled Massachusetts Bay (1630). In England the Puritans had hoped to purify the Church of England, but in New England they accepted the congregational form of church government in which each local church was independent. Thus, the churches of the Separatists and the Puritans became the Congregationalists of the United States.

A fundamental belief of the Independents was the idea of the gathered church, which was in contrast to the territorial basis of the Church of England whereby everyone in a certain area was assigned to the parish church. Independents believed that the foundation of the church was God's Spirit, not man or the state. Those who were definitely Christian believers, therefore, should seek out other Christians and gather together to make up a particular church. This belief was the basis for the autonomous local church of the Independents, which became a principal tenet of Congregationalism.

[from Britannica.com]