Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about when the English came to America. This is the fifth message in a series of messages entitled " The Myth of Christian America. " Now up to now, in the first four messages, we've been looking at the background to the settling and founding of America. We started out talking about what the original historic Christian faith actually was. We saw that it was a faith tied very closely to the kingdom of God.
Christians originally saw that you cannot try to unite the kingdom of God with any kingdom of this world. There can never be any such thing as a Christian nation in this age. Yet we saw how after Constantine's conversion, Christians tried to make the Roman Empire a Christian Empire. But they failed miserably. We then looked at Martin Luther and the Reformation, and we saw that the Reformation was no return to historic Christianity.
Yet as I talked about, the Reformation did have a profound effect on the English settlers who came to America. Well next we looked at John Calvin and his rule in Geneva, Switzerland. We saw how Geneva was the seedbed of Puritanism. We talked about how the Englishmen who had fled to Geneva during the reign of Queen Mary came back to England after her death and wanted to remold England along the lines of Calvin's Geneva.
Finally, last night we saw just what it was like when the Puritans got their opportunity to govern England, and when they tried to turn England into a large-scale Geneva. So-called Christian England was not Christian England. It was not a Christian nation, any more than Geneva had been a Christian state, or Rome had been a Christian Empire. Now, it may seem strange to you that we spent so much time on the spiritual events that preceded the colonizing of America.
But the point was to help you to thoroughly see the absolute impossibility of having a Christian nation. The term is essentially an oxymoron, that is, a term that is self-contradictory, like the phrase " freezing hot " or " deafening silence. " The only Christian nation that can exist at this time is the Kingdom of God. The kingdoms of the world in this age cannot be made Christian. When professing Christians have tried to create a Christian nation, they've always failed miserably.
In fact, they've ended up with enormous blood guilt on their hands. Incidentally, when I use the term " America " tonight, I'm talking about the land that presently occupies the 48 contiguous states of the United States. I certainly recognize that Canada and Latin America are also part of America in the larger use of the term. But tonight, I'm using it in the limited sense that citizens of the United States often use it.
Because we're looking at where the English settled in the New World, not where the other European powers settled. Now tonight I want to demonstrate to you that the English settlers had already violated Jesus ' teachings in their hearts before they ever set foot in America. In other words, the thirteen colonies weren't entities that started out Christian, and then they somehow went bad. No, they began in violation of Christ's teachings. Let me show you. Let's go to some of his teachings in Matthew 5:38 through 46.
The Sermon on the Mount is the chief code for citizens of the kingdom of God. More than anywhere else in the Scripture, it is here that Jesus set forth how His citizens were to live. He said, beginning with verse 38 of Matthew 5, " You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also.
And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him too. Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away. You have heard that it was said, " You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. " But I say, " Do you love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.
" For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? Okay, so that's one principle, or maybe several principles combined together, but they have a similar theme of not resisting evil people, of repaying good for evil, turning the other cheek, etc. Now, another commandment for those who would be citizens of God's kingdom, Matthew 6:24.
Jesus said, " No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. " To begin, let's go back to that first passage from our king and lawgiver Jesus Christ that tells us not to repay an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Jesus gave us a commandment, not a suggestion, not a recommendation, but a commandment that we don't resist evil with force.
We turn the other cheek, we don't pay back evil for evil. We not only submit ourselves to those who would burden us, but we even go further than they demand. We love our enemies, and return good to them when they treat us wrongly. But you see, that was not the heart attitude of the English settlers towards the native peoples who were already here in America when the settlers came. The settlers left England with their minds already made up that they were NOT going to turn the other cheek.
Instead, they were going to return evil for evil. They were going to exact vengeance for any wrongs done to them. And they weren't about to take any lip from the Indians. They were the superior ones. They were the Christians. They were the civilized people. The Indians were the heathens. They were the savages. And the English were not about to treat them as equals. Let alone treat them the way that Jesus tells us we should even treat our enemies.
So the way the English settlers viewed and acted towards the Indians was very unchristian, very unchristlike. For example, I'd like to read to you a few very representative excerpts from a pamphlet published in 1582 by Sir George Peckham. This was about 25 years before the founding of Jamestown. Now Peckham, I'm sure you've not heard of his name, I had never heard of him either, he was a partner of Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
That name may ring a bell with you if you remember your American history, because he had been involved in several attempts to colonize North America during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. And it was through his exploration that the English crown claimed much of the land in North America. Okay, so this is what Peckham wrote in his introduction to his pamphlet, kind of summing up his arguments.
He says, " The second chapter shows that it is lawful and necessary to trade and traffic with the savages, and to plant settlements in their countries. " I say that the Christians may lawfully travel into those countries and abide there, and the savages may not justly impugn or forbid them. Out of respect for the mutual society and fellowship between man and man prescribed by the law of nations. Now, I have no idea what he means by the law of nations.
There's no such law that existed, and certainly the Europeans would not have felt that the Native Americans would have had the right to come over to Europe and settle there. So this is more of a made-up rationalization. He then continues, saying that there are two conditions under which it is lawful for Christians to establish settlements among the Indians, and his arguments would apply to any primitive society. I'll quote from him again.
He says, " The first is when Christians, by the good liking and willing assent of the savages, are admitted by them to quiet possession. " The second is when Christians are unjustly repulsed, that they do seek to attain and maintain the right for which they do come. In other words, he's saying, " There are two conditions that authorize Christians to go over to America and settle there among the Indians. The first is if they give us permission to come. " The second is if they wrongfully forbid us to come.
And of course, anytime the Indians forbid them, they were doing it wrongfully. So in other words, these two conditions aren't conditions at all. He's saying it's always right for us to go over there. Okay, he continues: " Moreover, it shall be necessary either by speech, if it be possible, or by some other certain means, to signify unto them that once a league of friendship with all loving conversation is admitted between the Christians and them. " Remember the old use of the word " conversation " means conduct.
" Then the Christians from thenceforth will always be ready with force of arms to assist and defend them in their just quarrels, from all invasions, spoils, and oppressions offered to them by any tyrants, adversaries, or neighboring tribes. " And this is a benefit that is so much the more to be esteemed because of how much the person upon whom it is bestowed stands in need thereof. Okay, did you follow what he's saying? His English, of course, is a bit stilted because it's very old.
He's saying that when the English Christians come to America, they should point out to the Indians how it will be to the benefit of that particular tribe to let the English settle among them. Because if the Indians will do that, will let the English settle there peacefully, then the English with their superior weapons will be able to provide protection for the Indians.
Okay, he continues: " But if after these good and fair means are used, the savages nevertheless will not be satisfied, but barbarously will go about to practice violence, either in repelling the Christians from their ports and landings, or in not allowing them afterwards to enjoy the rights for which both painfully and lawfully, they have ventured themselves thither.
" Then, in such a case, I hold it is no breach of equity for the Christians to defend themselves, to pursue revenge with force, and to do whatever is necessary for the attaining of their safety. For it is allowable by all laws in such distresses to resist violence with violence, and for their more security to increase their strength by building of forts for avoiding the extremity of injurious dealing. It's interesting, he says it's allowable by all laws. Well, it's not allowable by the laws of the kingdom.
The laws that Christians are supposed to be living under. Now, I wouldn't have read to you from that pamphlet if that was just one man's opinion. It wasn't. What he wrote was exactly the attitude of nearly all the English settlers, whether they were Anglican, Puritan, or non-religious. But the only ones who were different at all were the Quakers. Okay, do you see now why I say that the attitude of the English settlers and explorers was not Christian?
They came with the attitude that we have a God-given right to America, a God-given right to settle there. And if the native inhabitants attack us for doing so, then we not only have the right to defend ourselves, but we have the right to take revenge on them. But Jesus tells us not to resist evil. He tells us to turn the other cheek. The New Testament forbids Christians from taking revenge on anyone, let alone on a people who are defending themselves from our encroachment.
So do you see that before so-called Christian America ever even gets off the ground, the Christians who are planning to come here had already decided to trample on Christ's teachings. They had already decided we're going there whether the natives like it or not, and if they resist us, then we're going to resist them back with force, and we'll take revenge on them for any wrongs that they do to us.
Can you picture Jesus and his apostles settling on someone else's land, and then taking up arms to defend themselves when the landowners tried to oust them? Can you picture them not only defending themselves, but then taking revenge on the landowners and slaughtering them to make an example to all the others? Well, you see, that's not the way of Christ. And so from day one, this was not Christian America. From day one, the English settlers ended up having to violate the kingdom teachings of Jesus.
Now, Sir George Peckham was an Anglican, and as I mentioned several nights ago, the Anglicans were heavily influenced by Martin Luther's teachings. If you want to know why they didn't apply the teachings of Jesus Christ in their dealings with the Indians over here, it's because they were following in the footsteps of Martin Luther, not in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. As we saw the other night, Luther found a way to argue around just about every kingdom teaching of Jesus.
If someone can read the New Testament and still come away with the view that it's alright to slaughter and torture peasants without mercy, it's alright to put Anabaptist to death, and it's alright to burn down Jewish synagogues and drive the Jews out of your country. No, not just that it's alright, it's something you must do if you want to please God. What you've come away with is not Christianity.
You might use all of the terms of Christianity, and you might, in your mind, hold an intellectual assent to the doctrines, to the theology of Christianity. But you are not a citizen of God's kingdom. What you've got is really a pagan religion dressed up in Christian clothing. And as I said, the Anglicans followed in the footsteps of Luther. Okay, you may be thinking, maybe the Anglicans came here with the wrong view in their hearts about the native Indians here.
But surely not the godly and good pilgrims and Puritans. Well, I hate to tell you, but in truth, their attitude towards the Indians was no different than that of the Anglicans. I want to read to you an excerpt from a work of one of the most respected Puritan ministers of his time, John Cotton. The year was 1630, and the Puritans had just begun to migrate to Massachusetts in large numbers.
They had been there for a few years, and at that time John Cotton wrote a pamphlet entitled " The Divine Right to Occupy the Land. " And it's dealing with the fact that the Puritans were occupying the land here in America that once had been controlled by Indians. Now, his work, John Cotton's pamphlet, sounds so much more spiritual than the pamphlet written by the explorer and adventurer, Sir George Peckham. But, you know, in the end, it sets forth the very same policy. Let me read.
He starts off reading the text from 2 Samuel 7:10. " Moreover, I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more. " John Cotton continues, " The placing of a people in this or that country is from the appointment of the Lord. " Question: Wherein does this work of God stand in appointing a place for a people?
Answer: First, when God spies or discovers a land for a people, as in Ezekiel 20, verse 6, says, " He brought them into a land that he had spied for them. " And that is when either He gives them to discover it themselves, or hears of it discovered by others, and fitting them.
Second, after God has spied it, when He carries them along to it, so that they plainly see a providence of God leading them from one country to another, as in Exodus 19:4, " You have seen how I have borne you as on eagle's wings and brought you unto myself. " John Cotton continues: Third, " When God makes room for a people to dwell there, as in Psalm 80:9, " Thou prepare us room for them. " He continues: " Now God makes room for a people in three ways.
First, when He casts out the enemies of a people before them, by lawful war with the inhabitants, which God calls them unto, as in Psalm 44:2, which reads, " Thou didst drive out the heathen before them. " Cotton continues, " But this course of warring against others and driving them out without provocation depends upon special commission from God, or else it is not to be imitated.
" Second, when God gives a foreign people favor in the eyes of any native people to come and sit down with them, either by way of purchase, as Abraham did obtain the field of Machpelah, or else when they give it in courtesy, as Pharaoh did the land of Goshen unto the sons of Jacob. Third, when God makes a country, though not altogether void of inhabitants, yet void in that place where they reside.
Where there is a vacant place, there is liberty for the sons of Adam or Noah to come and inhabit, though they neither buy it nor ask permission. So that it is free from that common grant for any to take possession of vacant countries. Indeed, no nation is to drive out another without special commission from heaven, such as the Israelites had, unless the natives do unjustly wrong them, and will not recompense the wrongs done in a peaceable way.
And then the foreign people may right themselves by lawful war and subdue the country unto themselves. He continues, " This may teach us all where we now dwell or where we after may dwell. Be sure you look at every place appointed to you from the hand of God. " We may not rush into any place and say to God, " This is by your permission. " Rather, we must discern how God appoints us this place. There is poor comfort in sitting down in any place that you cannot say, " This place has appointed me of God.
" Can you say that God spied out this place for you, and there has settled you above all hindrances? Did you find that God made room for you either by lawful descent, or purchase, or gift, or other warrantable right? " Now, as I said, John Cotton sounds so much more spiritual than Sir George Peckham. But in the end, he hasn't said anything different. He quotes a lot of passages from the Old Testament that have no relevancy whatsoever as to how a Christian should conduct himself.
To the two situations that George Peckham laid out, he adds a third one, saying that if God has told you to make war on a people, then you have the right to do that. But he's not claiming that in the case of Massachusetts. So in the end, he says there are two situations, like Peckham said. One, if the people allow you to come and settle there, either to buy land from them, or they give it to you, then it's alright to do it. Secondly, he said, " If the land is vacant, then you can come there and take it.
And if the people object, and as he puts it, unjustly wrong you, well, then you have the right to pay back evil for evil and make lawful war upon them. " But you see, there is not one drop of Christianity in what he said. That is not how people of the kingdom of God conduct themselves. America was not a vacant land at that time. I mean, there would have been huge tracts in Russia where nobody lived.
But I can assure you the English would never have thought about, " Well, then it's fine for us to go over there and settle there, since no one is there. " No, they would have never claimed this right towards any " civilized people. " It was only right because they were applying it to people who were uncivilized, at least in the eyes of Europeans. Now, I do think there was plenty of room in America, both for the Indians and for many from England and other European countries to settle here.
I think if the English settlers had come to America with the mindset of, " We are going to live by what Jesus says. We will turn the other cheek. We will pay no wrong to anybody. If they put extra burdens on us, we will not only do what they say, we will even go a second mile with them. " I think God would have blessed that. And without having to spill any of the blood of the native people here, I think the English could have settled here. Maybe not in the masses that they wanted to.
They would have had to show a lot of consideration and make sure that their being here was a blessing to the Native people, but I think that easily could have been done. They certainly brought a lot of things that the Native people were very happy to have. Okay, having said that, now let's talk a little bit about the first permanent English settlement in America, which was Jamestown.
Now, whether we're talking about the settlers at Jamestown, or the Pilgrims, or the Puritans, it's important to remember that none of these colonists came to America in order to found a new nation. Some of the literature that's put out there would give you that impression. But the settlers came here as English citizens. They had no desire to start a new country.
In fact, in the charters that King James gave to the settlers, he declared that any children born to the English settlers in America would be English citizens. And that's what the settlers wanted. Back in the early 1600s, when the first settlers came, and for a long time thereafter, nobody was thinking in terms of founding a new nation.
Now as we look at Jamestown, we're going to see how the settling and the growth of Jamestown in Virginia clearly violated the kingdom teachings of Jesus that we read just a few minutes ago, not only about turning the other cheek, but also about not being able to serve both Jesus and mammon. The settlers who came to Jamestown came here with the mental attitude expressed in the pamphlets that I've read to you. Now, they preferred to live peacefully with the Indians.
They didn't come over here with the mindset that we're going to enslave the Indians, or we're going to conquer them and eradicate them. On the other hand, they did come here with the view that they had a God-given right to settle here, and they weren't going to accept any trouble given to them by the Indians, and that they were going to repay evil with evil if the need arose. They weren't going to turn the other cheek, they weren't going to be non-resistant.
Well, the Jamestown settlers did have conflicts with the local Indians, but eventually they were able to work things out and live peaceably side by side, although the peace was very fragile. But Jamestown wasn't making a profit for the investors in the Virginia Company, and the whole settlement was about to collapse, when it was suddenly saved. By God? No, by tobacco. So now we get into that second teaching of the kingdom that when we serve mammon, we reject Jesus as our Lord.
Now it's certainly right, and it's even commanded that we work and provide for our family needs. But when we go beyond that, when money and profit becomes our master, when we do wrong to other people in order that we may prosper, we're rejecting Jesus Christ as our Lord. And this is exactly what happened in Virginia. In 1610, John Rolfe, whose wife and child had died in Bermuda during the passage to Virginia, had brought with him some tobacco seeds from Bermuda.
Now the Jamestown settlers had already tried to raise tobacco for export, but the species of tobacco that was native to Virginia wasn't to the liking of Europeans. However, the Bermuda variety the Europeans liked, and Rolfe discovered that it thrived in Virginia. And it became the salvation of Jamestown economically and to the further settling of Virginia. John Rolfe made a fortune off of exporting this new variety of tobacco to Europe.
He later married Pocahontas, as you probably remembered, and soon other settlers joined him in becoming prosperous by raising tobacco. Now, today, I think most committed Christians would see some real spiritual issues with raising tobacco. Because essentially, you're growing something that you know will shorten the lives of most of those who use your product. You know that it's addicting, and that this addiction causes people to spend money on cigarettes when perhaps they can't even afford it.
We also know that smoking is very inconsiderate of others, and it's even harmful to them. But did anyone know about those issues back in 1610? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. You see, Columbus and his sailors were the first Europeans to become acquainted with tobacco. They brought it back from the New World to Spain. And soon it had become an addictive habit throughout Spain. Well, from Spain, it spread throughout Western Europe, including England.
In fact, in the year 1604, this is three years before the founding of Jamestown, King James himself had written a tract against the use of tobacco. In fact, he labeled tobacco use as sin. Here are some of the things he pointed out in his tract. He said that smoking introduces something foreign into our bodies, something that is detrimental to it.
Although his medical reasoning in his tract reflects the often erroneous medical knowledge of his day, he did correctly point out that smoking was " loathsome to the eyes, hateful to the nose, and dangerous to the lungs. " He talks about the fact that smoking had become a new fad in Europe. Men were taking it up simply so that they wouldn't be seen as being out of touch with the latest new thing.
So as a result of this social pressure to conform, tobacco was sucking in more and more people who would never have tried it otherwise. Fortunately for English women, it wasn't faddish for them to use tobacco, and so they were spared from this. At least they were spared from the direct use of it. Now, King James also pointed out that using tobacco is addicting. In fact, he noted that the addiction to tobacco was very similar to the addiction of alcoholics.
He talks about the fact that smokers could only travel for a few miles. It is for only a brief time before they would have to stop, get out of their carriage at someone's house, and run over and see if the person would let them use a live coal to get their pipe going, because they didn't have matches back then, and they didn't have cigarette lighters. King James also noted in his pamphlet that some men were spending 300 to 400 pounds a year on their tobacco habit, which would have been a huge sum in those days.
And all that money could have been put to so much better use. He pointed out that smokers would inconsiderately fill dining rooms and other places with their smoke that was quite obnoxious to their wives and to other non-smokers in the room. Well, King James summed up his argument by saying that " using tobacco is a sin by which persons harm their bodies, waste money, and inconsiderately impose on others. " Well, over 400 years later, all of that is still seen as being true.
So people knew that when the settlers at Jamestown began growing tobacco. It wasn't some innocent enterprise that no one dreamed of as being harmful. Although today's complete medical knowledge wasn't there, there was enough information that Christians should have known better than to have grown it. But you see, mammon had become the master of the Virginia planters, and they thereby rejected Christ as their Lord. And it wasn't long before tobacco completely dominated every aspect of life in Virginia.
By the year 1617, Virginia shipped ten tons of tobacco to England, despite the fact that King James railed against tobacco. Imports of tobacco into England increased to 30 tons in the year 1622, and then to 250 tons by 1628. By 1639, it was exporting 1,500 tons of tobacco to England. And finally, by the end of the century, by 1699, Virginia and nearby colonies were exporting more than 10,000 tons of tobacco a year. Tobacco became the leading item of commerce between the colonies and England.
In fact, tobacco became the dominant form of currency in Virginia and Maryland. You paid for things with tobacco. Prices were often set in tobacco, so many pounds or whatever. In fact, even taxes could be paid with tobacco, and the court would fine you so many pounds of tobacco, so many barrels, whatever. And the vast majority of laws that were passed in Virginia and Maryland during the 1600s concerned tobacco. In fact, guess what the first law passed by the House of Burgesses in Virginia was?
This was the first elected lawmaking body in America. Well, its first law was setting a minimum price for the sale of tobacco. In fact, export duties on tobacco were among the principal source of revenue for Virginia and Maryland. Tobacco had become everything, despite the fact that people could see its harmful nature. Yet the evils of tobacco growing became much worse than just that. In 1619, a Dutch ship brought 20 black slaves to Virginia, and they were put to work, raising tobacco.
Now, thankfully, at that time, after they had served a period of indenture, these black slaves were given freedom. But the time came not that long afterwards, where black slaves were brought there permanently to work on the tobacco plantations. Another evil of tobacco is the fact that it requires so much land. Tobacco depletes the soil rapidly. And rather than trying to organically restore the soil, most of the Virginia planters simply abandoned the land once it had been spent.
They destroyed more forested areas, and began the cycle all over again. Now, this may not have been so bad, other than for its wrongful use of God's creation, if America had truly been vacant. But it wasn't. People lived here. Yet the English treated land in Virginia and Maryland and in other places as though it was there for the taking, without any regard for the impact they were having on the Indian population.
Well, there in Virginia, the Powhatan Indians saw that they were going to be shoved out of existence if they didn't do anything. So in 1622, they organized and led a well-coordinated series of surprise attacks on several English settlements along a 50-mile stretch of the James River. 347 colonists, men, women, and children were killed, and many others were kidnapped. Well, just as had been set forth in the pamphlet I read to you, the response of the Virginia settlers was vengeance.
A year after the massacres, the English leaders in Virginia pretended to work out a truce with the Indians. After agreeing on the terms of the peace treaty, they then proposed let's drink a toast to seal the truce. However, the liquor they brought to seal the agreement with was actually laced with poison. And when the Indians drank it, 200 of them died, and then 50 more of them were slaughtered by the settlers.
Thereafter, the English colonists repeatedly killed Indian men and women, and captured their children and sold them as slaves, or used them as slaves. In fact, the English systematically decimated entire villages, seizing or destroying the crops that were there to force the Indians totally off of the land. Now you need to understand that the situation in Virginia was not an isolated instance. I realize you may be thinking, " Well, that surely the godly pilgrims and the Puritans didn't shove out the Indians.
" But oh yes, they did. The exact same thing happened in New England, and in other places where the English settled. Not because of tobacco, just because of the English settlers ' selfish desire to get more and more land. The pattern happened over and over. At first, the Indians were willing to peacefully coexist with the settlers. But as the settlers kept coming and coming, the Indians realized that their lands were disappearing.
So then they reacted by massacring the English settlers, and the English settlers responded with equally vicious massacres of the Indians. And in the end, the English eventually triumphed. They had the superior weapons, and they had an endless number of people who could keep coming over. As a result, whole Indian tribes became extinct, and those who did survive kept getting pushed further west and further west.
You also may be thinking that surely the pilgrims and Puritans were free of guilt when it came to serving mammon. I mean, after all, their primary purpose in coming to America was to be able to worship freely. And yes, that was their primary purpose, at least at first. But before long, mammon became their master as well. Now, New England soil wasn't as easy to farm as the soil in the Chesapeake Bay Area. So tobacco never really became their master in New England.
However, their love of mammon produced something that was far, far worse. It didn't happen right away, but eventually Massachusetts prospered by merchants there purchasing molasses from the West Indies, distilling it into rum, then taking the rum to Africa, selling it there, and using the profits to purchase African slaves, and then taking the slaves back to the West Indies to sell them there to work on the sugar plantations. So did this start off as a Christian nation? No, I don't think so.
Now let's talk a bit about the group known in our history books as the Pilgrims. Who were these people, and why did they come to America? Well, during the early colonial period of America, if you had asked someone in either America or in England about the pilgrims, they would not have known who you were talking about. Nobody called this group of people pilgrims, not even themselves. The references to them in various writings of the time generally call them separatists, brownists, or Independents.
It was not until after the American Revolution that anyone referred to these people as the Pilgrim Fathers. But since we all know them today as the pilgrims, that's the term I'm going to be using. They were English Calvinists with very similar beliefs and practices as the Puritans. The difference between them and the Puritans is that the Puritans wanted to keep the Church of England. But they wanted to purify it of so-called popish practices and of those who were teaching man's free will.
You see, the law in England required that everybody attend the Church of England. You weren't free to attend another place of worship, and you weren't free to just stay home on Sunday mornings. You were required to go to church. And the Puritans had no quarrel with that. They were members of the Church of England. They attended the Church of England. They just wanted to reform it.
In contrast, the separatists, like the people we know as the pilgrims, they felt that true Christians should leave the Church of England altogether and meet separately. As a result, during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James, the Separatists were persecuted not only by the Anglicans, but also by the Puritans as well. Now the pilgrims were essentially a congregation in England of separatists, who had hoped that with King James ascending to the crown, that perhaps their situation would get better.
But when they saw that that wasn't going to be the case, they sought permission from him to leave England and go settle in the Netherlands. Well, he denied them that permission, but eventually they were able to sneak out of the country in the year 1608, and they went to Amsterdam. The next year they moved to Leiden, where enjoying full religious freedom, they remained for almost 12 years. Leiden was a city in the Netherlands.
However, whereas most of the pilgrims had been farmers in England, in Leiden they had to work long hours in the city doing various types of work. In fact, to make ends meet, they also had to farm out their children to various employers to get income from them as well. In the year 1617, discouraged by their economic difficulties and by the pervasive Dutch influence on their children, the pilgrims voted to immigrate to America. Now, without Jamestown, I don't think there would have ever been a Plymouth settlement.
When the Pilgrims voted to move to America, Jamestown had been in existence for ten years. It was now on its feet and turning a handsome profit. As I mentioned earlier, in the year 1617, Virginia had exported ten tons of tobacco to England. And the pilgrims made their decision to come to America before the Indian massacres that occurred in Virginia in the year 1622.
If those massacres had occurred before the year 1617, when the Pilgrims made their decision, I don't know that they would have voted to come here as a place to start a new life. Now, from my diggings into American history during the past five years, I realized that from my history classes in grade school and junior high and high school, I came away with all sorts of myths about the pilgrims.
To begin with, I had always had the idea that the pilgrims were fleeing to America to escape religious persecution, and that they had established something like an independent state here outside of the reach of the English king. But that's not what happened at all. To begin with, as I just mentioned, they had already obtained freedom of worship in the Netherlands. They were not having an issue with religious persecution at that time, other than the fact that they were having to live as exiles in another country.
But nobody in Holland was persecuting them, and they were free to worship as they wished. The problem was, if they returned to England, they would have been persecuted there. Secondly, one of the misunderstandings I had was that the pilgrims didn't come to America because they believed in freedom of religion. They wanted to establish a settlement where they could worship freely in accordance with their own beliefs.
But they never intended that some other religious group could move into their settlement and freely practice what they believed. In fact, the Plymouth colony prohibited Quakers from moving there. A third misunderstanding was that the pilgrims didn't believe in separation of Church and State. From day one, Church and State were united at Plymouth. And when I say that they prohibited Quakers from settling in Plymouth, I mean they passed a law prohibiting it.
You could be fined or imprisoned just for attending a Quaker meeting. Likewise, the idea that I had that the pilgrims were coming to America to establish an independent state is totally false. They had obtained permission and letters patent from King James to come to America. They came here by his permission and under his authority. In fact, their intention was to settle within the boundaries of the Virginia colony.
What happened was, because of storms and navigational errors, they ended up in New England, off the coast of what is now Massachusetts. And with winter coming on, they decided to just find a place there instead of going on to Virginia. Now it would certainly be correct to say that the pilgrims came here for religious reasons. They wanted to be able to worship the way they felt was right, and not have to do it in a foreign land such as the Netherlands.
In their minds, Virginia, which is where they were heading, was sort of an extension of England. It was under the authority of English laws and the English king, and the people who were settling there were nearly all English. However, they didn't have sufficient funds to finance a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, which as I said earlier, was not an inexpensive thing. Nor did the pilgrims have the right connection with King James to get his permission to come over here and start a settlement here.
Instead, what the Pilgrims did was to negotiate a financial agreement with a man named Thomas Weston, who was a prominent London merchant. He was someone who William Brewster, one of the elders of the Pilgrim group, personally knew. So it was Thomas Weston and a group of financers that he put together who financed the pilgrim's voyage to America. And it was this company of investors who was able to get for them letters patent.
But the Pilgrims were under contract with the investors to send back furs, timber, and other goods for a certain number of years. So in the end, the investors would get back all of the money that they had put into this venture, plus make a handsome profit. Now you need to understand, again, these investors, their motivation was almost entirely economic. They were not part of the church that the pilgrims attended. In fact, they weren't even necessarily sympathizers with it.
They were simply making a business investment. And based on what was happening in Virginia at that time, it looked like a fairly prudent investment. They knew there was great risk attached, but it looked like a strong likelihood of making a handsome profit. Now, as things turned out, the investors weren't very happy with the return on their investment. When the pilgrims finally disembarked from the Mayflower and started a very rude settlement there in Plymouth, they really had nothing to send back to the investors.
Half of them had died over the winter. They were thankful just to be alive. And they had an enormous task ahead of them to get the settlement built up, to get corn planted, and things like that, so that they would be prepared for the next winter that came up. So what they sent back were just rocks, which were used as ballast so that it would keep the ship from turning over, and the investors were quite unhappy.
Now, later, the pilgrims were able to send timber and things like that, but never in the amount that the investors expected, and they had always felt cheated by the pilgrims, and there was quite a bit of friction between them, and they even threatened the pilgrims with legal action. Now, of course, technically, the pilgrims were in New England illegally, as their letters patent granted them permission only to settle in Virginia.
However, King James, once he heard about what had happened, he let things pass, and he never forced them to move to where they were supposed to be. In fact, Plymouth Plantation never really prospered, and after about 10 or 15 years, it was smaller than it had been at the beginning. A number of families moved out, started other settlements, etc., and it became fairly insignificant.
It did, however, survive as a permanent settlement, but it was later included in the grant made by the King of England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where the Puritans were settling. So Plymouth was an independent colony only for a relatively brief period of time. Okay, having said that, the pilgrims and what happened with them were very important for two things. First of all, it was the beginning of something very new, something that was very important in the history and ethos of America.
And that was using America as a haven for dissident religious groups to come to to be able to freely practice their beliefs. The pilgrims were the very first ones to come to America for that reason, and they paved the way for many others. And it was certainly a momentous decision in world history on the part of King James to allow the pilgrims to settle in America. You see, none of the other European powers, any of the major ones, would have allowed their dissidents to come over and settle their colonies.
I mean, you had to be a good Catholic if you were going to come over on behalf of the Spanish or on behalf of the French. So this was something entirely new. Instead of persecuting religious dissidents, or putting them to death, or jailing them, or torturing them, just allowing them to go and settle in your colonies across the seas. This got them out of your hair. It was giving them what they wanted, and it helped to build up land and possessions for your country.
I mean, King James didn't do it out of great fondness for the pilgrims. In fact, during that time that they had been in the Netherlands, they were continually smuggling and disseminating tracts in England that criticized the Church of England and criticized King James. So it was quite a great decision to allow them to do this and what had opened up for the future history of the United States.
The second thing is that even though the Plymouth settlement never was very important, never really played any other role in American history. The pilgrims paved the way for the Puritans. The Puritans too wanted to escape persecution under King Charles and under William Laud, his archbishop, there in England. And once the Puritans saw that the pilgrims made a go of it there in New England, they thought, well, this would be perfect. We settled there.
We're not part of Virginia, where the Anglican Church was the established religion. But up here in New England, I mean, it wasn't called New England then, we can have our own church and do things our way. And Massachusetts Bay Colony was a very significant thing in the history and founding of America. Now, we can hardly leave our discussion of the pilgrims without talking about three other things. One, why are they known to us today as the pilgrims? Two, what was the Mayflower Compact?
And three, what about Miles Standish and his courtship with Priscilla Alden that we all read about in grade school? As to the first question, as I've mentioned, this group of separatists didn't call themselves the pilgrims, nor did anyone else in their day. That name comes from the fact that William Bradford, in his history of Plymouth Plantation, used the term briefly in describing those members of their church in the Netherlands who decided to make the journey to the New World.
Bradford described these travelers as pilgrims, since they were making a voyage for religious reasons. It wasn't until after the American Revolution that the name of the pilgrims was given to the whole group, and that's also when the term " Pilgrim Fathers " was invented. And the second question about the Mayflower Compact. Well, from our grade school history, most of us have grown up believing that the Mayflower Compact was some momentous document in the founding of America.
But again, if in say the year 1630 you had asked anyone in the colonies about the Mayflower Compact, they wouldn't have known what you were talking about. That term wasn't even used until after the American Revolution. And it was part of the lore that the new post-revolutionary Americans were using to create a glorified history of themselves. They're the ones who invented the name Pilgrim Fathers, and they're the ones who invented the name Mayflower Compact.
In fact, they're also the ones who turned the Mayflower Compact into something much bigger than what it actually was. In truth, the original Mayflower Compact disappeared in the 1600s, because no one placed that much significance on it. We only know about it because William Bradford briefly mentioned it in his history of the Plymouth settlement. The reason it was drawn up was because the pilgrims had decided to settle in a different place than where they were supposed to be.
Furthermore, a lot of the passengers on the Mayflower were not part of the Pilgrim's Church. These other English settlers on the Mayflower were coming over here for economic opportunity, not for religious reasons. And they didn't particularly have any appreciation for the pilgrims. So since this group of settlers were outside the jurisdiction of Virginia and its governor, they had to come to some sort of agreement as to how they were going to proceed if they ever hoped to survive the hard winter ahead.
The brief agreement they came to, which after the American Revolution was glorified with the name Mayflower Compact, really doesn't say very much. In fact, it's only one paragraph long, I'll read it to you. It says, " In the name of God, amen, we whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord King James. " Now in that day and age, the word " dread " meant revered. Anyway, continuing, " 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 advancement of the Christian faith and the honor 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 politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid.
And by virtue hereof, we do enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers, 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 11th day of November, in the reign of our sovereign Lord King James of England, France, and Ireland, the year 1620.
Now, as an attorney, I would have to say that this agreement almost certainly wasn't legally enforceable. For one thing, it was much too vague. It doesn't say how laws are going to be made or how officers are to be chosen. Furthermore, many of the passengers on the Mayflower refused to sign the agreement.
Actually, I think one of the reasons it was drawn up was to serve as evidence that they weren't trying to escape the reach of King James, and that they were still his loyal subjects, even though they had settled in a different place than he had permitted them to settle. But the real historic significance of the so-called Mayflower Compact is that it reflects how two institutions played an important role in the establishing of democracy in America.
The first institution was the parliamentary system that had been in force in England for several centuries before the Mayflower landed in America. And even though most of the men on the Mayflower probably wouldn't have had the right to vote in England, as they weren't landowners, still, the limited democracy that did exist in England at that time set the pattern that was followed in the American colonies.
In fact, before the pilgrims landed here, the Virginia settlers had already set up the House of Burgesses, a democratically elected legislature. Historically, the creation of the House of Burgesses in Virginia was of far more significance than the so-called Mayflower Compact. It was the House of Burgesses in Virginia that set the precedent for the other colonies. But the Mayflower Compact also provides evidence that the second institution that promoted democracy in America was congregationalism.
That is, churches that were governed by the members of the Church selecting their own leaders and submitting to those leaders. The pilgrims had been practicing a congregational type of rule among themselves for over 12 years before they came to America. So it was very natural for them to extend this congregational practice from ruling the church to ruling the settlement. Now, we need to be careful that we don't take what I just said and run too far with it.
Because you see, the settlers in Virginia were nearly all Anglicans, and they weren't used to congregational rule. Yet they also established a representative democracy in their colony, and they did it before the pilgrims had even landed. So congregationalism wasn't the primary source for the democratic spirit in America, but it did help to support it. Okay, finally, what about poor Miles Standish and his courtship of Priscilla Alden?
Well, Miles Standish and Priscilla Alden were real people, because they're mentioned in William Bradford's history. However, Longfellow's poem on the courtship of Miles Standish is entirely fictional. It's not based on anything historic. There's no evidence that Miles Standish ever courted Priscilla Alden, or even that he thought about doing that. Again, it's part of the lore that grew up about the pilgrims after the American Revolution.
In truth, Miles Standish was not even a member of the separatist group that we know as the pilgrims. He was an English professional military officer and adventurer who had seen a bit of action in the Netherlands, helping them in their wars against Spain. And it was in the Netherlands that he met the pilgrims at Leiden, where they were living. The pilgrims later hired him to come to America with them and serve as their military commander.
As far as the records indicate, Miles Standish never joined the Church at Plymouth, although he did attend church services there. Of course, everyone in the settlement was required to attend worship services, whether they were members or not. Now, Miles Standish was both brave and hot-headed. In the second year at Plymouth, some of the settlers had already left Plymouth and established a second settlement.
Word reached standish that the natives were attacking this second settlement, so he led a force of men from Plymouth to save it from native attack. However, when he reached there, he found that there had been no such attack. However, he said that he found evidence that such an attack was being planned. He therefore decided on a preemptive strike against the Indians. So he and his small army of men attacked the Indians, killing their chief and also some of their men.
They drove the rest of the Indians away from their homes. Well, word quickly spread among the Native American tribes of Standish's attack. As a result, many Indians abandoned their villages and fled the area, thinking that they might be the next to be attacked. Edward Winslow, one of the pilgrims who did try to work very closely with the Indians, wrote in his memoirs of the year 1624 that the Indians, " forsook their houses, running to and fro like men confused, living in swamps and other deserted places.
" As a result, they brought manifold diseases upon themselves, from which very many are dead. " Well, wiping out the Indians ended up hurting the pilgrims. That's because they now lost the trade in furs that had been provided by the local tribes. As a result, the pilgrims lost their main source of income for paying off their debts to the merchants in London, who had financed their voyage to America.
So in the end, rather than strengthening their position, Standish's raid had disastrous consequences for the colony, a fact that was noted by William Bradford as well. I have to say that it's sad that the pilgrims had not trusted in God for their protection instead of trusting in earthly weapons. It's also sad that they felt so free to keep establishing new settlements, even though the native people resented this, and finally tried to destroy the new settlements just as they had tried in Virginia.
So what can we say about the founding of America up to what we've talked about to this point? To begin with, we can say that there were two primary things that motivated English settlers to come to America. The first was economic opportunity. And that in itself was not wrong. However, in their thirst for wealth, or even for modest economic opportunity, the English settlers were not fair to the Native Americans, and they violated the teachings of Christ in doing so.
Furthermore, too often, their Lord was mammon, not Jesus. The second thing that drew English settlers to America was religion. By religion, I mean some form of institutionalized Christianity. It fell far short of authentic historic Christianity, but it was something very real. And when I say that institutionalized Christianity fell far short of the real thing, I make no judgment on any of the peoples we've been talking about Anglican, pilgrim, or Puritan. I don't know where they'll stand on Judgment Day.
That's in God's hands. Nevertheless, just like people were willing to endure considerable hardship and even risk their very lives for economic opportunity and the possibility of riches, other people were willing to undergo the same thing just for the opportunity to freely practice their religious beliefs. So religion, that is, institutionalized Christianity, did play a major role in the settling of America, and it contributed enormously to the ethos of the American people.
You know, it seems that the religious right always wants to downplay the key role that money played in the founding of America. On the other hand, the secular left seems to always want to downplay the significant role that religion played in the founding of America. Both things were there, and we're being dishonest if we ignore either one.
At the same time, why I've entitled this series, The Myth of Christian America, is that institutionalized Christianity has always fallen woefully short of the real thing, the kingdom of God. Even people who were as sincere as the pilgrims were didn't understand the kingdom of God. They came here ready to use force when necessary, if the Native Americans wouldn't allow them to settle freely in America. And I don't mean just settling freely at Plymouth. The Indians allowed them that.
But the pilgrim settlers weren't content to just settle at Plymouth. They wanted to keep establishing new settlements. And this was for economic reasons, not for religious ones. And in the end, they did end up killing Indians and wiping out whole Indian villages. Now in future messages in this series, I want to go into detail about the Puritans coming to New England and the kingdom issues that were raised by their presence.
Later, we'll be looking at the growth of the American colonies, and the founding of Pennsylvania, and the significance of it. Later, I want to look at the issues that led up to the American Revolution. We'll be addressing the question, was the American Revolution something in harmony with Jesus ' teachings, or did it instead trample on His teachings? Well, in conclusion, as I've pointed out tonight, the first English settlers violated Jesus ' teachings in order to make their colonies successful.
In contrast, when something is done with God's blessings, you don't have to violate laws of God's kingdom to make it work. When you have to turn to means that are unlawful for a Christian, then you can't claim that the end result is from God. And that's why the idea of a Christian America is only a myth.