Covenant: An Ancient Idea for Extraordinary Times

Abstract

Ervin argues a tripartite thesis: that the so-called "Preamble to the Design" was envisioned from the start as a covenantal affirmation in the tradition of the church covenants of New England; that in exploring that Congregational tradition the architects of Restructure rediscovered covenant as a concept within the Stone-Campbell tradition itself; and that periodic rituals of covenant renewal within all three expressions of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) could strengthen covenant as both an ecclesiastical principle and a model for a just society. Drawing on the papers of William Barnett Blakemore and the records of the Commission on Brotherhood Restructure, the article traces the covenantal tradition from seventeenth-century Puritan New England through Alexander Campbell to the work of Ronald E. Osborn and the adoption of the Provisional Design in 1968.