Every year, Americans remind
themselves of the Pilgrims. Children in school don black costumes, buckled hats
and shoes, or wampum and feathers to reenact that most national of American holidays.
Yet, the rosy glow that once surrounded the telling of our first Thanksgiving has
clouded as the legacy of these Puritan founders has been blamed for some of the
worst in America’s history: our brutal treatment of the natives, the shortcomings
of the Protestant work ethic, even America’s hypocritical attitudes towards
sexuality (the latter a flaw more attributable to the Victorians than to 17th
century Elizabethans).
My life changed dramatically when I
discovered that my father’s family were descended from the Puritans who left
England for religious reasons to settle in Massachusetts. As a Californian, I
knew nothing of my father’s deeper ancestry or of anything that linked me to
New England, so I was surprised to learn -- through a chance meeting with a 10th
cousin -- that my ancestor was a Yorkshire shoemaker who left his native land along
with his entire congregation in 1638. Inspired by Alex Haley’s Roots and the genealogical work of African-American
scholar Henry Louis Gates, I began to study “my” people more seriously and unwittingly
became one of their staunchest defenders.
“Puritan” was originally a derisive term
aimed at a group of reformers who wanted England’s church and society to
further purify itself of idolatry and corruption subsequent to Henry VIII’s
break-up with the Vatican. As the Puritans met resistance and scorn, they
formed their own sects. Their charismatic preachers were hounded and tossed in
jail and congregations took to hiding in secret. They were radicals. They
wanted changes in how their church and government treated them. They were
innately anti-authoritarian, communal, and visionary when many of their Old
World countrymen just wanted calm after decades of strife and war. Only strong beliefs
in their ability to recreate themselves and their society could have sustained
them through subsequent years.
Their life-transforming mission, undertaken
in devout seriousness, drew on principles of self-determination and resilience.
Their sermons, letters, journals and poems attest to rigorous self-examination
and an inherent optimism in their ability to create change. They came to America
between 1620 and 1640 in order to establish ideal communities that would encourage
every soul to bloom. But they encountered what it means to be both human and
angel, flesh, blood and soul. It is
an awesome thing to set high standards for oneself and one’s community.
In some ways, they were America’s first great
failures – their experiment in New England only lasted 50 to 70 years. Intense
fractures over theological interpretation and how to create “godly” communities
resulted in heresies and expulsions; innocents were tried as “witches” and tensions
between commercial, political, and religious interests led to further
splintering and spiritual exhaustion. By the late 18th century, the Puritan
movement survived mostly as a vestige in remnant churches and homesteads though
many of their values continued to underpin a nascent American culture.
Perhaps it is only because I
discovered my connection to these people that I came to be their rally girl. These
were not the rugged individualists of America’s later frontier stories. These all-in
founders insisted on civic participation, education, and strong local government;
they were not above challenging their leaders. They believed in
interdependence, cooperation, a relatively advanced egalitarianism, and
resourcefulness. Marilyn Robinson, author of a study on Puritan thought in The
Death of Adam, notes it was not in the aristocratic, deist culture of the
South where the abolitionist movement first took root, but rather in the north
where citizens felt an urgency of purpose about shaping society.
A
key emblem of our shared American success story has been the triumph over adversity,
persecution, loss, and sorrow -- whether it takes the form of slave narratives,
the pioneer burned out of his log cabin, or even the successful revival of
Native languages. In the Pilgrims’ model of cooperative and local government,
in their willingness to grasp hardship and shape it into something salvageable,
we have a beacon for going forward. My Pilgrim’s Pride may not have established
their shining City on the Hill, but their courage to conduct deep personal
inventories and willingness to reinvent themselves could be key to renewing a
somewhat jaded American soul.
