The Real Pilgrims

The Pilgrims who landed in the rugged New World 350 years ago this month do not fit the stereotype that has been built up around them. Even learned persons often tend to regard those first settlers as an elderly, austere group, stiffly pietistic, dour, and repressive. The most reliable data refute this image, and those who continue to hold it rob themselves of a source of great inspiration.

One of the hopes of those conducting a fifteen-month anniversary observance in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is that the misconceptions about the founding fathers will be corrected. We share that hope, and we urge Christians all across America to help dispel the faulty image.

It comes as a surprise to many to learn, for one thing, that the 102 persons who came over on the Mayflower were a youthful group. Mostly they were young couples with children. William Bradford was just thirty-one when he was elected governor of the group not long after their arrival, and some other leaders were in their twenties.

To be sure, the Pilgrims were devout. As stated in the Mayflower Compact, their primary motivation in coming to the New World was spiritual. Many in the group made the journey mainly out of a desire to live in a place where they could worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. Finding a new home was the only way to achieve this, says one noted historian, for “no government in Europe at that epoch would have tolerated the existence of such a society, outside and independent of the established institution.”

But the faith of the Pilgrims was not nearly so ascetic and restrictive as is generally assumed. Modern historians have been recognizing that the Puritan outlook allowed for a great deal of creative and enjoyable expression. The Pilgrims were a lusty lot, full of vision and daring. Only that kind of character would have ventured the risk of such unknowns and the most certain adversities of taking up life in a vast wilderness.

In political matters they have the reputation of conducting a highly regulated society. But the distinguishing mark of their social covenant was not so much a proliferation of laws as a belief in sound government. The Mayflower Compact, a governing agreement for the colony they were about to establish drawn up while the first Pilgrims sailed the Atlantic, eloquently expresses the need for and proper role of civil authority. Samuel Eliot Morison calls the compact “an almost startling revelation of the capacity of Englishmen in that era for self-government.” Perhaps not all Englishmen in those years deserve a share of credit for this ability, but the Pilgrims surely do. The compact subordinates the civil under the religious, yet shows a realistic understanding of the former’s place in human affairs.

Here is the complete text:

In the Name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, etc. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and the Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience. In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth and of Scotland, the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini, 1620.

The priority the Pilgrims gave to nourishing the intellectual life is worth noting as well. Within a generation of the landing at Plymouth, a printing press was in operation in New England. Considering the circumstances of those early bleak days, when survival itself was an achievement, this speedy development was little short of amazing. Bradford himself was an intellectually gifted man, as seen in his own work Of Plymouth Plantation, which ranks among the major literary achievements of his time.

The Pilgrims’ faith was well grounded because they took the Scriptures seriously. They brought the Geneva Bible over on the Mayflower, and they subscribed to the Bible wholeheartedly. As a result, their faith held them together in the face of intense hardship—including the death of more than half their people within a matter of weeks after the landing during that winter of 1620–21.

Thanksgiving was one biblical precept the Pilgrims kept constantly before them. Bradford records how they repeatedly gave praise to God for special deliverances. The year of the first Thanksgiving Day, he says, was one in which a long spring-summer drought threatened their crops, and they “set apart a solemn day of humiliation, to seek the Lord by humble and fervent prayer, in this great distress.” That day was clear and hot, relates Bradford; yet toward evening the sky became overcast and a long soaking rain ensued, which astonished even the Indians. Seasonable showers thereafter gave the Pilgrims a good harvest, and they set apart a day for thanksgiving.

Despite this manifestation of God’s grace, humanly speaking the Pilgrims had little for which to be thankful. They might easily have turned to cynicism and, like the children of Israel, complained that God had brought misery upon them. But so great was their faith and their hope that they still found reasons for giving thanks.

Surely God’s subsequent bountiful blessing upon America must be related to the Pilgrims’ trust in him and his Word, and it is good that Thanksgiving week is also Bible week in the United States. Both themes are special challenges to affluent, church-going Americans in the current permissive climate. Might our wrong picture of the Pilgrims be the result of a subconscious feeling that they set too high a standard? Maybe we have tried to undercut them because they make us look bad. Do we really dare to follow their example of discipline and devotion?

Actually, we may not have a choice. For them it was a matter of survival, and it may soon be so for us as well.

God And Games

A Presbyterian clergyman recently spoke out against the practice of having ministers offer invocations at football games, rodeos, and boat launchings. It takes “a great deal of ingenuity,” he said, to defend this custom of public prayer as “a meaningful acknowledgement of God’s presence and activity in the world.”

We think he is right. God cannot be institutionalized, tamed, or used by men. Surely he can be present in the stadium as well as in the sanctuary, but to doff one’s hat to God in thoughtless fashion at the behest of men in the pursuit of money, to attempt to secularize the sacred and create an aura of sanctity—this smacks of blasphemy.

Prayer at public events is no worse, however, than the claim that the Gospel is preached and God is present and at work in a redemptive way in confrontations, marches, revolutions, shootouts, and murders. And anyone who holds this view should not cavil over prayer at sports events.

For our part we affirm that we live in a secular state, and that the perfunctory invocation at sports events is a mockery of true religion and an affront to deity. The singing of the national anthem is enough. Let people join in prayer to God only when that prayer springs from the heart.

Recycling The Empties

The collection—surely one of the most unusual ever taken in a church—stretched beyond the two pulpits, out two side doors, and down a corridor. The “take” weighed nearly a ton; it was inspired by a church-school class on ecology and a young women’s adult study group.

The choir, in black and white robes, marched over and around stacks of bottles—whisky bottles and pop bottles and baby-food jars … relish and rug cleaner, beer and beets.…

The Reverend Dwight S. Large, pastor of Detroit’s Central Methodist Church, explained it all in his sermon: “We live in a moment of history when people choose death, poisoning the air and water with chemicals, and destroying the earth with sewage, pesticides, and trash. Each year we dump 28 billion bottles and 48 billion cans.”

“More important,” he continued, “action by every church and temple … might call attention to the fact that trash glass can be recycled and thus used and reused again and again.” The bottles were destined for a collection station in Ann Arbor, then crushing, melting, and reuse.

Beyond the immediate commendable deed by Central Methodist—an overflow collection to fight pollution—there is something strikingly biblical. Something close to the heart of what the Church should be about. We thought of the vivid imagery of the potter’s wheel (Isa. 30:14) and Adelaide A. Pollard’s beloved hymn “Have Thine Own Way, Lord!”

Spiritually drained people—perhaps not in lines stretching out the doors, but in abundance nonetheless—come to our churches, hoping for a word from the Lord, and yearning for the Holy Spirit. They need to be seared and melted by conviction of sin, molded in the likeness of Jesus Christ, and filled by His power—then sent out into the world again to serve.

Let’s recycle those empties!

On Revolution

If a Christian could have supported the American Revolution (and many did; see pages 46 and 47 of our November 6 issue), then why do we come out so strongly for combating revolutionaries in our own times (as we did on pages 33 and 34 of the same issue)? Besides other reasons to oppose political violence in our time, there is also a fundamental difference between now and 1776. The American colonists fought under the auspices of a realistic alternative government, namely the Continental Congress, duly authorized by the legislatures of the united colonies, but the present revolutionaries in North America are essentially anarchic. Sometimes the trappings of a government are claimed but with little or no substance to legitimate the claim.

How different this is from some of the revolutions at the time of the Protestant Reformation which were fought in the name of rebellious lower magistrates. Even the European underground resistance in World War II, whose sporadic acts of violence had certain similarities to the tactics of today’s revolutionaries, was conducted in the name of exile governments that were recognized by the Allies and would offer a viable alternative as soon as Nazi power could be conquered.

Of course some Christians feel that violence of any kind, including warfare, is never justifiable. And others feel that revolution is always wrong. But those who feel that some revolutions, such as the American, are permissible, yet who object to contemporary revolutionaries, need not feel they are being purely arbitrary. Instead, they can keep in mind the usually clear distinction between civil war waged by governments, higher and lower, and anarchic, terroristic acts of violence masquerading under the name of revolution.

A Striking Necessity?

One of the side effects of the November 3 election was an obscuring of the General Motors strike. Quotations from politicians pre-empted the interest of the news media, and the plight of labor and management in the dispute was neglected. No one seemed to think that a prolonged work stoppage at the world’s largest corporation was worth making into a campaign issue.

It is becoming increasingly plain that the strike is an archaic weapon that advanced technological nations can ill afford. Unfortunately, however, this still seems to be the most dramatic and effective way for workingmen to call attention to injustices. Not by any means, of course, are all strikes the results of injustices. Some are motivated by sheer greed.

Compulsory arbitration appears more and more to be the only solution to labor disputes. The unwritten axioms that lie behind all such disputes are, on the part of labor, the idea that society owes them a living, and, on the part of management, that investment invariably deserves a return. It is the clash of these principles that causes the trouble, and our best answer is to turn to Scripture.

The Bible lays down two firm principles which, if they were observed justly by capital and labor, would change the face of industrial relations: Employers should pay fair wages; workers should give a full day’s labor for a full day’s pay. One cannot escape the conclusion that the workmanship of industrial products today is second class. It might just be that a return to a sense of pride on the part of labor and an increase in productivity as well would lower prices, increase sales, and make possible both higher wages and more profits. If Christianity is for the whole man, the economic aspect of his life is not excluded, and the employment of biblical principles would benefit not only the worker and the employer but also consumers, which most of us are.

Is There A Hell?

The doctrine of hell is not a popular pulpit subject, and many Christians have never heard a biblical exposition of it. Little wonder that few ministers tackle the topic: it is repugnant to most minds, frightens people and stirs up emotional jags, and appears highly inconsonant with the modern conception of a loving God.

According to Scripture, hell (here we have in mind Gehenna or the lake of fire) is the place and state to which unrepentant sinners go after this life. Jesus described it as “outer darkness” when men “will weep and gnash their teeth” (Matt. 25:30), “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). Paul says that “for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury” (Rom. 2:8), and “exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thess. 1:9).

Some groups do not believe in hell even though they believe in punishment. They think that the unconverted will be annihilated. Jehovah’s Witnesses hold this view; Charles Taze Russell, founder of the cult, feared hell and sought to erase his fear by denying its reality. Seventh-day Adventists also believe in the annihilation of the wicked dead. The Unitarian Universalist denomination has no place for hell in its scheme of things.

But whatever one’s feeling on the matter, Scripture affords no evidence either for the non-existence of hell or for a vague sentimentalism by which God will overlook sin or at least bring all men into heaven at last, whether they wish to go there or not.

In bygone days, some Calvinists believed in double predestination: God ordained some to eternal life and some to eternal death. This view no longer commands wide acceptance. Instead, many people believe that man has the power of contrary choice: If he rejects the will of God and remains confirmed in his own will against God, he does so by personal choice. By this rejection his soul is separated from God and from the prospect of everlasting bliss in the presence of the Lord.

Scripture seems to say to men: Choose whom you will serve, but know what the consequences of your choice will be. A righteous God whose holiness has been offended could not remain righteous if he did not pass judgment on stubborn, unrepentant sinners, who have confirmed themselves in their wicked ways. Having been warned of the consequences of their sins, men cannot blame God if he confirms in them for eternity what they have confirmed in themselves in this life.

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