1/9/2024 0 Comments Pilgrims landingThey left England aboard the Mayflower in 1620. The Pilgrims were free to worship God according to the dictates of conscience in Holland but, from their perspective, the Provinces allowed far too much “heresy and libertinism to flourish.” Worried that their children would be corrupted by Dutch society, a group of Pilgrims obtained a patent from the Virginia Company to start a colony in America. Because of their desire to separate from any sort of national church, they became known as “Separatists.” In order to freely practice their faith, a group of them fled to the United Provinces (Holland) in 1609. A subset of them saw no biblical precedent for a national church they thought that each Christian congregation constituted a church and should govern itself. The English Puritans were Calvinists who desired to purify the Church of England. But they also debated the proper scope of liberty of conscience, political liberty, and slavery. He uses the colony as “a fresh lens for examining the contested meaning of liberty in early New England.” Chief among the Pilgrims’ concerns was the freedom to form their own churches, elect their own officers, and determine their own modes of worship. Turner’s The Knew They Were Pilgrims marks the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival in the New World with a history of Plymouth Colony from its founding in 1620 to its incorporation into the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691. These events have been commemorated by a few conservative organizations, (see, for instance, here and here), but major public celebrations have been few and far between. This year and last year should be celebrated as the 400th anniversary of at least three major milestones in American history: the signing of the Mayflower Compact, the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth, and the first Thanksgiving feast (if we ignore, as most Americans do, one that took place earlier in Virginia).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |