PETERSHAM – On Saturday, members of Petersham Orthodox Congregational Church presented a “living history” in honor of the church’s 200th anniversary.

Organized by Barbara Hanno, the June 24 event featured individuals portraying historical figures connected to the congregation’s establishment in 1823. The presentation was comprised of fictional conversations between the major parties involved in the split between members of the original church family. This led to the establishment of the Petersham Orthodox Congregational Church and the First Congregational Parish, Unitarian.

According to the program, “The re-enactments (explored) the emotions and reactions of the congregants” involved in events of the period.

In introducing the event, Rev. Geoffrey Smith, pastor of the present-day church, provided a brief history of what led to the separation of the two congregations. The original church, he said, was founded in 1733, when all communities in Massachusetts were required to establish a meeting house for the purposes of worship and community gatherings. At that time, the building of the colonial meeting house was paid for with tax monies.

Saturday’s event was held at Town Hall which, Smith pointed out, was the location of the second Congregational meeting house. It was, he said, built prior to the split.

“There were religious movements sweeping through the country – and small towns like Petersham – that were changing people’s religious awareness and beliefs,” Smith explained. “One of those movements was called the Great Awakening, in which revivalists like Rev. Jonathan Edwards and Rev. George Whitfield urged churchgoers on to greater spiritual awareness.

Smith added that prior to the revivals, preaching was dry and academic. There was a lot of apathy among the congregations, and church membership was diminishing. In response to this, ministers influenced by New England Puritanism, Scots-Irish Presbyterianism, and a form of Lutheranism called Pietism, began calling for a revival of religion and piety.

“These started in the 1710s here in New England,” he said. “The most influential were in nearby Northampton under Jonathan Edwards in 1734, and spread out through Massachusetts and Connecticut.”

Whitfield, who traveled here from England, wrote after taking stock of New England’s churches that, “The generality of preachers talk of an unknown, unfelt Christ. And the reason why the congregations have been so dead, is because dead men preach to them.”

Whitfield would go on to preach more than 18,000 sermons throughout the colonies before his passing in 1770.

“The Great Awakening and other theological changes of the time,” Smith said, “opened the door to people questioning authority and (led to) an upheaval in social order, leading to new alignments and factionalism.”

The resulting division in Congregationalism resulted in the creation of four factions, “two of which matter to us here in Petersham,” Smith said. “There were the ‘Old Lights,’ led by Charles Chauncy, advocating Universalism, which later became the Unitarians. The moderate ‘New Lights,’ the majority of Congregationalism, followed a path…led by Jonathan Edwards and his selfless love-based New England theology.”

The split became official on June 25, 1823, after a Congregational Ecclesiastical Council was called—at which time Orthodox members separated from Unitarians.

Among those portrayed individuals important to the founding of the Petersham Orthodox Congregational Church were Rev. Smith, Larry Buell, Jean Robinson, Robert Hall, Richard Lent, Tally Lent, Dana Robinson, Frederick Day, and Barbara Hanno.

Rev. Luther Willson—a Unitarian minister at the First Parish Congregational Church at the time of the split—was portrayed by his direct descendant, Frederick Day. Deacon William Willard and Catherine Willard, members of the Congregational Church around the time of the Revolutionary War, were portrayed by their direct descendants, Robert Hall and Jean Robinson.

Saturday’s celebration was organized in conjunction with the Petersham Historical Society & Friends. The event was also made possible by volunteers from both the First Congregational Church, Unitarian and Petersham Orthodox Congregational Church, and Petersham Memorial Library.

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.

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