Born in Connecticut in 1696, and ordained a Congregational minister in 1719, Samuel Johnson as a young man had already developed serious doubts about the Congregationalist way of life. He had come to believe that the true connection to the faith of the primitive church was found in episcopal orders and in apostolic succession. He viewed the ordered liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer and Anglican polity as the proper alternative to the rampant dissent and local power struggles of the Congregationalist culture in which he lived and worked.