Just as in the Congregational churches, ordinary believers came together to create self-governing churches, so with the Mayflower Compact, a group of ordinary people came together to create their own government. It was an astonishing moment in history, though, because it amounted to a real-world dramatization of the increasingly influential idea that civil society was based upon a “social contract” among its members. Here was a case where a group had actually covenanted with one another, and with God.
Covenant
