Dissenter

A dissenter (from the Latin dissentire, 'to disagree') is one who dissents (disagrees) in matters of opinion, belief, etc.^[1] Dissent may include political opposition to decrees, ideas or doctrines and it may include opposition to those things or the fiat of a government, political party or religion.

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The central piece of the Puritan theology is doubt. What is going to happen to my soul? What can I do to be saved? Will I be saved? These are the central questions the Puritans were asking, and they're questions to which they can never find an answer. So they are by nature doubters; questioners thinking about received wisdom. Remember, they've left England to get away from the Orthodox Church, which believed it did have the answers, and so they're constantly questioning not only the Church of England, but their own clergy, those in authority; questioning, arguing. It's one reason they believe so strongly in education, learning to read and write so that you can take down notes of the ministers, and record things, and think about things and read the Scriptures, and come to your own conclusions about the Scriptures. The right to question, to reach one's own conclusions: it's really the heart of the Puritan tradition, as they're really trying to get at this relationship between themselves as individuals and God. And the colony does attract others who were questioning and others who were doubting. And so dissenters are going to emerge within this colony. questioning one another. Remember, they have not only a church that practices this descent, but also in the public sphere you have questioning, doubting; you have annual elections; you have Winthrop- is elected governor, more often than not, but he's defeated a few times by others who don't like Winthrop, or disagree with that direction he is taking. So on the one hand, we're creating this community of the godly where we hope everyone will be a part, but then you do have differences of opinion. So Winthrop and Thomas Dudley are almost constantly at odds. They're called, somewhat ironically, "the two brothers," although they are arguing for most of the 1630s and 1640s. Now you can tolerate some dissent, and some dissent is healthy, but if a dissenter is calling into question the whole reason for being here, then that could be a problem. And so it's a difficult system to navigate.It's difficult position to create here as we have people questioning, people reading, people thinking, and they're not just supposed to listen to the sermon and accept it; they're really supposed to think about it. And because this is a system where you have the ministers essentially giving two hour lectures on Sunday and then coming back in the afternoon for another two hour lecture. You want people to be thinking about what the minister is saying. And the ministers have to come up with new things to say every week about much the same things, as we're trying to show people how to live their lives and how to create a society. There is so much here that can be questioned; you'll find people asking questions, debating things, arguing about things in the public square, in meeting house, in the marketplace. It's the whole center of their identity as one of trying to figure out where they stand in relationship to God. It's a question to which their isn't in answer. And each of us is trying to get at this. No matter what your social status, is we have no idea knowing who is saved and who is not. And because the central thing we want to have answered is the one thing that can never be answered, we're always going to be in doubt, always going to be questioning ourselves, our elders, our leaders, and trying to figure out where we stand in this world. It's one of the most difficult things these Puritans are trying do, is trying to imagine what their position is in this world. And remember, it's a world that they've created. They've arrived here and they've left behind all of their own understanding of the world as it existed in England. New England is a completely new world and it's extraordinarily difficult for the Puritans to navigate it, to understand it, to make sense of the New World and their lives in it.

Usage in Christianity

Dissent from the Anglican Church

In the social and religious history of England and Wales, and, by extension, Ireland, however, it refers particularly to a member of a religious body who has, for one reason or another, separated from the established church or any other kind of Protestant who refuses to recognise the supremacy of the established church in areas where the established church is or was Anglican.^[2]^[3]

Originally, the term included English and Welsh Roman Catholics^[2] whom the original draft of the Nonconformist Relief Act 1779 styled "Protesting Catholic Dissenters". In practice, however, it designates Protestant Dissenters referred to in sec. ii. of the Act of Toleration of 1689 (see English Dissenters).^[1] The term recusant, in contrast, came to refer to Roman Catholics rather than Protestant dissenters.

Dissent from the Presbyterian Church

The term has also been applied to those bodies who dissent from the Presbyterian Church of Scotland,^[1] which is the national church of Scotland.^[4] In this connotation, the terms dissenter and dissenting, which had acquired a somewhat contemptuous flavor, have tended since the middle of the 18th century to be replaced by nonconformist, a term which did not originally imply secession, but only refusal to conform in certain particulars (for example the wearing of the surplice), with the authorized usages of the established church.^[2]^[1]

Dissent from state religion

Still more recently, the term nonconformist has in its turn, as the political attack on the principle of a state establishment of religion developed, tended to give way to the style of free churches and free churchman. All three terms continue in use, nonconformist being the most usual, as it is the most colourless.^[1]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Dissenter". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 318.
^ ^a ^b ^c Cross, F. L.; Livingstone, E. A., eds. (March 13, 1997), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed.), USA: Oxford University Press, p. 490.
^ Parker, Irene (2009). Dissenting academies in England: their rise and progress, and their place among the educational systems of the country. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-74864-3.
^ "A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE OLD PRESBYTERIAN DISSENTERS". Archived from the original on 2015-08-13. Retrieved 2015-09-13.