Page 47 - Wallingford Magazine Issue 54 Late Spring 2025

ter which he was “extended a call to be-
come their pastor.” The committee of fif-
teen appointed to negotiate terms with
Mr. Dana appeared to be unanimous,
although three of the fifteen withheld
their vote. They weren’t quite satisfied
with his explanations of his doctrines or
his “soundness of faith,” and one of the
committee members visited him in an ef-
fort to clarify these matters.

Apparently, the interview was a complete
disaster, primarily because of Mr. Dana’s
grating personality and refusal to give
anything other than short and angry re-
sponses to any questions, and insistence
that any questions about the sermons he
had delivered to the Wallingford congre-
gation could only be discussed before the
ordaining council. Others had meetings
with him, to no avail. Not surprisingly, a
strong opposition to his ordination devel-
oped. Nevertheless, he was voted in by a
vote of 140 for and 62 against.
A committee was formed to mediate this
divide, but the feud then escalated. The
Congregational oversight consociation,
established by the General Assembly un-
der the Toleration Act of 1708, was called
by the opposition to complain that Rev.
Dana was unfit to serve and that the con-
sociation should “determine the whole
matter.”
Thus began what was known as the Wall-
ingford Controversy: a clash between the
Old Lights that believed that the consoci-
ation had to approve of Reverend Dana
as well as the ordination committee
within the church, and the New Lights
that insisted that the church was autono-
mous and not subject to rulings from the
consociation.

This is an important moment in the his-
tory of the First Church, as it was then
known. A major disruption within the
church caused both by the overpower-
ing personality of Reverend James Dana
and the inevitable clashes of interpreta-
tions of doctrine throughout the Congre-
gational church. It sets the stage for the
history of the church all the way through
the Revolutionary War to come and into
the 19th century when Connecticut be-
comes a state subject to a United States
Constitution and legislates a sea change
defining the relationship between gov-
ernment and religion.

Space limitations dictate that we must
end our story here, but please stay tuned,
where we will pick up from here.

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