The Pilgrims And The Puritans

If we dig deep in to the fertile soil of Thanksgiving's origins, we can see that it helped cultivate both America and her Christian ideology.

In short, Thanksgiving is a holiday that is uniquely American and uniquely Christian.

We know of the first Thanksgiving celebrations and that the Pilgrims saw themselves, in a sense, as Christian missionaries in the New World.

When the Puritans came to America 10 years later, they came in much bigger numbers and had a much greater historical impact.

When it was all said and done, both the Pilgrims and the Puritans did a lot to shape what would eventually become the United States.

Incidentally, Pilgrims were just like Puritans in their doctrinal beliefs; they simply believed in separating from the Church of England, while the Puritans wanted to reform, or purify it.

When European explorers ventured to the Americas 300-500 years ago, Canada was mainly settled by French Catholics.

Florida, Mexico, and South America would be controlled by Spanish Catholics.

The land in the middle--the land that would eventually become the United States--was largely shaped by Puritan theology.

Historian Page Smith wrote that the Pilgrims and the Puritans provided the dominant religious-world view that would eventually take root in America.

The Pilgrims endured brutal hardships in the early years of their settlement at Plymouth Colony, but it deepened their faith and helped them develop a blueprint for success that the Puritans could later utilize.

Authors Peter Marshall and David Manuel, in their book "The Light and the Glory," wrote the Puritans noticed that "Whatever Plymouth was doing, from all reports God was blessing them more abundantly each successive year."

Puritans studied the Bible, believing it was a source of inspiration and spiritual strength, a road map towards Christian conversion, and a guide for personal conduct and public policy.

The Puritans are often given an unfavorable assessment in the history books, being portrayed as narrow-minded kill-joys who frowned upon all that can be enjoyed in life, when in actuality they were compassionate people who simply sought to live according to biblical standards.

The history of the Puritans is also unfairly characterized by what happened at the infamous Salem witch trials, and while that was a dark chapter in their story, it was a short chapter, especially when compared to the entirety of their Christian experience in America.

The witch trials, which lasted almost a year, were a mysterious deviation from what usually characterized the Puritan way of life, as they had always sought to create an ideal Christian community functioning in peace and harmony.

To be clear, there were certainly people in those days engaged in witchcraft, and those practices were indeed alarming to people of great faith.

It could be rightfully said that many Puritans overreacted to the threat, but it is also true that in the end it was Puritan ministers who urged the governor of the colony to put a stop to the ongoing trials.

According to Marshall and Manuel, the clergy had come to believe that people were "gripped by a spirit of vengeance" and that to continue the trials was not in God's will.

One could make the case that today we should be like the Puritans at their best, but instead we are sometimes more like those Puritans who were, for a time, caught up in the fervor of the witch trials.

News reports today are full of rumor, hearsay, gossip, innuendo, assumptions, subjective overreactions, and modern-day witch hunts. And much of the population allows itself to be swept along in the flood of emotionally-charged communication, allowing hysteria and panic to get the better of them.

That is all unfortunate, because America was always intended to be better than that; furthermore, Christian people are obligated to conduct themselves by much higher ideals.

We can be grateful, at Thanksgiving time, that both the Pilgrims and the Puritans--in spite of any shortcomings--gave us an excellent example to follow. In fact, they took matters of faith so seriously that it makes 21st century Christianity look very superficial by comparison.

The Puritans had a sense of destiny and believed that God had a purpose in America.

Americans today don't fully embrace those views.

But the world would have more stability if we did.

DAVID WILSON, EdD, OF SPRINGDALE, IS A WRITER AND TEACHER AT HEART. HIS BOOK, LEARNING EVERY DAY, INCLUDES SEVERAL OF HIS COLUMNS AND IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON. YOU MAY E-MAIL HIM AT [email protected]. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.