The Experience of Dissent

This chapter examines developments in John Owen’s thinking about church government, church membership, and the observation of the sacraments. It will outline his experiments in ecclesiology in the 1640s, when the Independent party emerged as a movement for reform within the national church. It will suggest reasons for his apparent lack of interest in ecclesiology in the 1650s: a period in which his principal writings make little reference to the benefits of church membership, and in which Owen’s own ecclesiastical affiliation cannot be traced. It will discuss the renewal of his interest in church life in the 1660s and beyond, particularly as his Restoration works on the principles of public worship, together with a very complete set of auditor’s notes covering almost twenty years of his preaching, offer new ways of understanding the challenge he faced in turning local church principles into local church practice.