Pilgrims and God

Early days of the USA and God's relationship with the Pilgrims

Everyone accepts that there were many inhabitants or people who landed in the Americas but did not settle it or make any significant changes.  I will research all of those groups in a different post.

For this post, we do accept the Pilgrims as the first to come to America to settle it for a reason.  These people are the very foundation of our Constitution and their beliefs are what formed the United States.  So maybe understanding them might help understand why the United States and Christianity go hand in hand.

The Voyage of the Mayflower and its story is really the story of the beginning so lets start there.

The Mayflower

The Mayflower was the Pilgrim ship that in 1620 made the historic voyage from England to the New World. The ship carried 102 passengers in two core groups – religious Separatists coming from Holland and a largely non-religious settler group from London.

This voyage has become an iconic story in the earliest annals of American history with its tragic story of death and of survival in the harshest New World winter environment. The culmination of the voyage in the signing of the Mayflower Compact is one of the greatest moments in the story of America, providing the basis of the nation's present form of democratic self-government and fundamental freedoms.

So here we have two groups coming to the Americas or New World - Separatists and settlers.  Before looking at these groups, lets look into the Mayflower Compact.

The Mayflower Compact

Although the original document has been lost, three versions exist from the 17th century: printed in Mourt's Relation (1622), which was reprinted in Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625), hand written by William Bradford in his journal Of Plimoth Plantation (1646), and printed by Bradford's nephew Nathaniel Morton in New-Englands Memorial (1669). The three versions differ slightly in wording and significantly in spelling, capitalization and punctuation. William Bradford wrote the first part of Mourt's Relation, including its version of the compact, so he wrote two of the three versions. The wording of those two versions is indeed quite similar, unlike that of Morton. Bradford's handwritten manuscript is kept in a vault at the State Library of Massachusetts.

Modern version

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 advancements of the Christian faith and 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 to 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 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, 1620.

The 'dread sovereign' referred to in the document used the archaic definition of dread—meaning awe and reverence (for the King), not fear. Also, as noted above, the document was signed under the Old Style Julian calendar, since England did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752. The Gregorian date would be November 21.

Signers

The following list of signers is organized into the six short columns of Morton (1669) with the numbers and titles of Prince. The names are given their modern spelling according to Morison (1966). Use the numbers given for the order used by genealogists and half of unnumbered lists (Samuel Fuller will be the eighth name), but merge the half columns vertically into full columns for the order used by the other half of unnumbered lists (John Turner will be the eighth name).

1.Mr. John Carver  2.William Bradford 3.Mr. Edward Winslow 4.Mr. William Brewster 5.Mr. Isaac Allerton 6.Capt. Myles Standish 7.John Alden 8.Mr. Samuel Fuller 9.Mr. Christopher Martin 10.Mr. William Mullins 11.Mr. William White 12.Mr. Richard Warren 13.John Howland 14.Mr. Stephen Hopkins

15.Edward Tilley 16.John Tilley 17.Francis Cooke 18.Thomas Rogers 19.Thomas Tinker 20.John Rigsdale

21.Edward Fuller 22.John Turner 23.Francis Eaton 24.James Chilton 25.John Crackstone 26.John Billington 27.Moses Fletcher 28.John Goodman 29.Degory Priest 30.Thomas Williams 31.Gilbert Winslow

32.Edmund Margeson 33.Peter Browne 34.Richard Britteridge 35.George Soule 36.Richard Clarke

37.Richard Gardiner 38.John Allerton 39.Thomas English 40.Edward Doty 41.Edward Leister

Pilgrims

Pilgrims (US), or Pilgrim Fathers (UK), is a name commonly applied to early settlers of the Plymouth Colony in present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States. Their leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownist English Dissenters who had fled the volatile political environment in England for the relative calm and tolerance of 16th–17th century Holland in the Netherlands. Concerned with losing their cultural identity, the group later arranged with English investors to establish a new colony in North America. The colony, established in 1620, became the second successful English settlement (after the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607) and later the oldest continuously inhabited English settlement in what was to become the United States of America. The Pilgrims' story of seeking religious freedom has become a central theme of the history and culture of the United States.

This theme will continue to be the reason for this blog and will explain how we started so close to God and how we are now moving so far away and why.

May God grant us the courage to follow in the same foot steps as our Founding fathers and may he give us the courage to once again turn this nation's eyes, heart, and spirit upon him.

Bob,

Disciples Of Jesus Christ - The Pledge

Why Come Out Now

My wife and I have been attending two small study groups - one with people from the Catholic church we attend and one with people from a non-denominational church we attend.  Yes, we do attend two different churches - and not because we have different faiths - we are both Catholics.   I converted to Catholicism when we got married.

We attend two churches because one has great music and is a great lift of the spirit from that angle along with the fact the minister is really good and delivers high quality sermons.  We have two Catholic churches close to us in Nashville and  both have excellent Priests, so we get a spiritual lift from the long tradition of the Catholic church and excellent sermons as well.

Two hours with God on Sundays is not hard to do when both places are great.

Anyway - both of these small groups covered a lot of the same material - Being Disciples of Christ and what it means to follow Christ.  I often find it interesting how both churches - not related - discuss the same thing during the same week.

In one of the groups we discussed how the country is losing the values of Christianity and what a shame it is.  In the other we discussed politics and how unethical politicians have become.  I have a deep love for this country and for Christ - so I put two and two together and said it is time to do what little I can to make this place a better place and to get people to understand what might be happening in this country - if we are not careful.

Also, in one of the groups - we discussed what Jesus might have meant by turn the other cheek.  It was a Jewish custom to slap the face of a person using the back of their right hand across the face.  Never the other hand or the other cheek.  So Jesus was not saying take one of two paths - fight or flight (normal responses).  He was saying turn the aggression on the other person and let them see what they do is not right by their own actions and words.  Turn then the other cheek - be different, be bold, be pure, and full of love.

Turning the other Cheek as Jesus Would Have Wanted it

There are two really good stories that bring this to life.  Mother Teresa was one of those stories.  She held the hand of a little starving girl and entered a bakery to ask the baker for some bread for the hungry little girl.  The baker was insulted and spat in Mother Teresa's face.

Now you and I would understand fight or flight.  Most of us would think of fight and get angry.  Or, we would think of flight and turn and walk away.  Not Mother Teresa, she truly understood turn the other cheek.

She simply said "Thank you sir for the gift, now may you be so kind as to give this little girl some bread to eat!"

I do not know what happened, but I can imagine that store owner was about 1 inch tall and felt like the garbage bag he was.  By turning the other cheek - she showed him his evil and turn the tables without fight or flight.

The second story was Desmond Tutu and when he was crossing a rushing river.  There was a tree that was used as a temporary bridge and he was crossing it at the same time a white land owner was crossing.  naturally, the two men met in the middle.  And the white land lord said "Out of my way, I do not move over for Gorillas."

Desmond simply stepped down in the running water, looked the man in the face, and said "I do!"  

Again he showed that fight or flight is not turning the other cheek.  He moved, he countered, and he most likely made the white land lord feel very small.  However, that kind of bigotry probably held the man back from seeing the truth.

The Simple Pledge

1. I promise to put C-H-R-I-S-T back in Christmas - I will honor the day as his Day of Birth.  The day our Heavenly Father decided to come to earth and live with us.
2. I promise to stand before those that want to take God out of this country and I will use humility to help them understand the value of being a Christian Nation.
3. I promise to stamp out greed, corruption, malice, prejudice, and hatred when I can show love and compassion.  I will smile and be polite when attack.  I will turn the other cheek to show strength and not weakness.
4. I promise to return this great country to the land our fore fathers made it and for the brave who built it.  I will honor their desires by acting and voting as they would have desired.

I will bring forth more truths and views with each post.  I want this to be as close to true historical facts about the love affair this country and God have experienced for may years.  I hope many of you share material so we can keep this thing going.

Your job, please let me know if you want to take the pledge.  I want to do my part to get three people to take this pledge and mean it.  I then want you to go out and get three people to do the same.  Together we can bring this country back on a morale axis, one christian at a time.

God grant us the strength to take up this challenge and honor you and your Son Jesus Christ and all that you have done for this country.  Let us put it back on the path of righteousness as our previous generations did.  And let us not make the same mistakes they have made by changing how we honor you and by removing you from this country.

Bob,

Giving Thanks To God

Thanksgiving day history

In the United States , we have a deep connection to Christianity.  So in a time when Christianity is being slowly stripped from this country - I will be a single voice to cry out against the injustice to mankind, to our country, to God, and to Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.

This blog will not be politically correct, it will not pull punches, and it will not always be right - because they are my views.  I hope many people make comments and join me in the pledge I will propose soon in this blog when ready to reveal my desires.

This day we call Thanksgiving, has a special meaning and not to shoppers everywhere, but to Christians.  This has traditionally been a day of Giving Thanks to God and not seeing how many deals we can scoop up on Black Friday but to share our blessings with our family and friends.

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It became an official Federal holiday in 1863, when, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens", to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26. As a federal and public holiday in the U.S., Thanksgiving is one of the major holidays of the year. Together with Christmas and New Year, Thanksgiving is a part of the broader holiday season.

The Pilgrims first Thanksgiving

The event that Americans commonly call the "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in 1621. This feast lasted three days, and it was attended by 90 Native Americans (as accounted by attendee Edward Winslow) and 53 Pilgrims. The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating "thanksgivings"—days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought.

The most interesting fact of all of this is that the Pilgrims started off being a socialist type community.  In other words, each was to reap the same as others - they were Christians after all.  However, some where lazy and did not do any work and they nearly starved for the first three years.  The Native American Indians came to the rescue and provided food to the Pilgrims.  They eventually developed a system where each had their own land and harvested their own food.  This change brought about the first abundant feast and why they shared it with the Native American Indians.

Thanksgiving proclamations in the first thirty years of nationhood

The Continental-Confederation Congress, the legislative body that governed the United States from 1774 to 1789, issued several "national days of prayer, humiliation, and thanksgiving", a practice that was continued by Presidents Washington and Adams under the Constitution, and has manifested itself in the established American observances of Thanksgiving and the National Day of Prayer today. This proclamation was published in The Independent Gazetteer; or, the Chronicle of Freedom on November 5, 1782, the first being observed on November 28, 1782:

By the United States in Congress assembled, PROCLAMATION.

It being the indispensable duty of all nations, not only to offer up their supplications to Almighty God, the giver of all good, for His gracious assistance in a time of distress, but also in a solemn and public manner, to give Him praise for His goodness in general, seventh.
JOHN HANSON, President.
CHARLES THOMSON, Secretary.

On Thursday, September 24, 1789, the first House of Representatives voted to recommend the First Amendment of the newly drafted Constitution to the states for ratification. The next day, Congressman Elias Boudinot from New Jersey proposed that the House and Senate jointly request of President Washington to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for "the many signal favors of Almighty God". 

As President, on October 3, 1789, George Washington made the following proclamation and created the first Thanksgiving Day designated by the national government of the United States of America:

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."

President John Adams declared Thanksgivings in 1798 and 1799. No Thanksgiving proclamations were issued by Thomas Jefferson but James Madison renewed the tradition in 1814, in response to resolutions of Congress, at the close of the War of 1812. Madison also declared the holiday twice in 1815; however, none of these was celebrated in autumn. In 1816, Governor Plumer of New Hampshire appointed Thursday, November 14 to be observed as a day of Public Thanksgiving and Governor Brooks of Massachusetts appointed Thursday, November 28 to be "observed throughout that State as a day of Thanksgiving".
A thanksgiving day was annually appointed by the governor of New York from 1817. In some of the Southern states, there was opposition to the observance of such a day on the ground that it was a relic of Puritanic bigotry, but by 1858 proclamations appointing a day of thanksgiving were issued by the governors of 25 states and two territories.

Lincoln and the Civil War

In the middle of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, prompted by a series of editorials written by Sarah Josepha Hale, proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November 1863. The document, written by Secretary of State William Seward, reads as follows:

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. 

Since 1863, Thanksgiving has been observed annually in the United States.

Post-Civil War Era

 

Servicemen eating a Thanksgiving dinner after the end of World War I. (1918)

During the second half of the 19th century, Thanksgiving traditions in America varied from region to region. A traditional New England Thanksgiving, for example, consisted of a raffle held on Thanksgiving Eve (in which the prizes were mainly geese or turkeys), a shooting match on Thanksgiving morning (in which turkeys and chickens were used as targets), church services, and then the traditional feast which consisted of some familiar Thanksgiving staples such as turkey and pumpkin pie, and some not-so-familiar dishes such as pigeon pie. The earliest high school football rivalries took root in the late 19th century in Massachusetts, stemming from games played on Thanksgiving; professional football took root as a Thanksgiving staple during the sport's genesis in the 1890s, and the tradition of Thanksgiving football both at the high school and professional level continues to this day. In New York City, people would dress up in fanciful masks and costumes and roam the streets in merry-making mobs. By the beginning of the 20th century, these mobs had morphed into "ragamuffin parades" consisting mostly of children dressed as "ragamuffins" in costumes of old and mismatched adult clothes and with deliberately smudged faces, but by the late 1950s the tradition had vanished entirely.

1939 to 1941

Abraham Lincoln's successors as president followed his example of annually declaring the final Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving. But in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt broke with this tradition. November had five Thursdays that year (instead of the more-common four), and Roosevelt declared the fourth Thursday as Thanksgiving rather than the fifth one. Although many popular histories state otherwise, he made clear that his plan was to establish the holiday on the next-to-last Thursday in the month instead of the last one. With the country still in the midst of The Great Depression, Roosevelt thought an earlier Thanksgiving would give merchants a longer period to sell goods before Christmas. Increasing profits and spending during this period, Roosevelt hoped, would help bring the country out of the Depression. At the time, advertising goods for Christmas before Thanksgiving was considered inappropriate. Fred Lazarus, Jr., founder of the Federated Department Stores (later Macy's), is credited with convincing Roosevelt to push Thanksgiving to a week earlier to expand the shopping season, and within two years the change passed through Congress into law.

Republicans decried the change, calling it an affront to the memory of Lincoln. People began referring to November 30 as the "Republican Thanksgiving" and November 23 as the "Democratic Thanksgiving" or "Franksgiving".Regardless of the politics, many localities had made a tradition of celebrating on the last Thursday, and many football teams had a tradition of playing their final games of the season on Thanksgiving; with their schedules set well in advance, they could not change. Since a presidential declaration of Thanksgiving Day was not legally binding, Roosevelt's change was widely disregarded. Twenty-three states went along with Roosevelt's recommendation, 22 did not, and some, like Texas, could not decide and took both days as government holidays.
In 1940 and 1941, years in which November had four Thursdays, Roosevelt declared the third one as Thanksgiving. As in 1939, some states went along with the change while others retained the traditional last-Thursday date.

And hence, Black Friday was born and shopping became the reason for the season; not giving Thanks to God as many of the Presidents before had done and recognized.

let history show, that the day of backing business and not making Thanksgiving a day of God was not created by the "Big Business" party but by the party associated with the middle class.

Thanks for the beginning of taking God out of my country for the sake of a dollar to put it in Fred Lazarus's pocket.

Funny name Lazarus - wonder where I have heard that name before - oh yeah the bible.  The individual Christ raised from the dead.

1942 to present

On October 6, 1941, both houses of the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution fixing the traditional last-Thursday date for the holiday beginning in 1942. However, in December of that year the Senate passed an amendment to the resolution that split the difference by requiring that Thanksgiving be observed annually on the fourth Thursday of November, which was sometimes the last Thursday and sometimes (less frequently) the next to last.  The amendment also passed the House, and on December 26, 1941, President Roosevelt signed this bill, for the first time making the date of Thanksgiving a matter of federal law and fixing the day as the fourth Thursday of November.  However, for several years some states continued to observe the last-Thursday date in years with five November Thursdays (the next such year being 1944), with Texas doing so as late as 1956.

Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has presented the President of the United States with one live turkey and two dressed turkeys, in a ceremony known as the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation. John F. Kennedy was the first president reported to spare the turkey given to him (he announced he didn't plan to eat the bird), and Ronald Reagan was the first to grant the turkey a presidential pardon, which he jokingly presented to his 1987 turkey (a turkey that would indeed be spared and sent to a petting zoo) in order to deflect questions regarding the Iran–Contra affair. George H. W. Bush, who served as vice president under Reagan, made the turkey pardon a permanent annual tradition upon assuming the presidency in 1989, a tradition that has been carried on by every president each year since.  The pardoned turkeys are typically sent to a farm to be pampered for the remainder of their lives (a time scale typically on the order of months, since most domestic turkeys have been bred to grow so much that they die within two years of birth).

There are legends that state that the "pardoning" tradition dates to the Harry Truman administration or even to an anecdote of Abraham Lincoln pardoning his son's pet turkey; both stories have been quoted in more recent presidential speeches, but neither has any evidence in the Presidential record.  In more recent years, two turkeys have been pardoned, in case the original turkey becomes unavailable for presidential pardoning.

So now in some 330+ years, we have moved this day from being a day of giving thanks to God to pardoning Turkeys and saying God is a bad word or Jesus Christ is a bad word in our society.

I can only imagine what the next 100 years will bring as God is removed from this country.

May God grant us the wisdom to know what we are truly doing and may he grant us the knowledge and courage to change the collision course we are on.  May he also forgive us for our transgressions against him and the great people who founded this country.

Bob,