Being a Dissenter: Lay Experience in the Gathered Churches

This chapter examines the collective experiences of lay believers in ‘gathered’ churches (both Congregational and Baptist) before and after the 1689 Toleration Act, and the ways they came to experience various forms of empowerment at a time when traditional categories of ‘laity’ and ‘clergy’ were radically renegotiated. Evidence taken from manuscript church records and other archival sources helps to consider Dissent through the corporate experiences of ordinary church members, both men and women, who were constantly engaged in defining what a ‘true’ church was, as well as the role of religious communities in shaping individual trajectories, especially through the exercise of church discipline. Focusing on disciplinary cases noted in the records of a number of gathered churches opens a window not only onto offences that disturbed and yet typified church life for early modern Dissenters, but also onto the daily lives and experiences of the visible saints.