Friday, September 6, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 6th of September 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

For many, it is the season of going back to school- and for our younger friends, this might bring the standard plays and pageants, stories and myths about our past.

As a professional historian, I have been asked, “What do you think about these simple, maybe simplistic, ways of telling kids stories about our past?” To which I respond: “awesome”. It is the mark of the immature historian (and person) who uses their knowledge for “actually” or “Gotcha!” Stuff. We can start with simple stories and develop them with maturity.

And it is fair to say that the story of the Mayflower and the Pilgrims gets the elementary school treatment and often walks right up to the boundaries of church history with the question: why did they come, and how should we teach it?

Well, it was on this, the 6th of September in 1620, that the Mayflower departed from Plymouth, England, on its way to what would be known as “Plymouth Rock,” named for the location they left. A few things:

They didn’t call themselves “pilgrims”- the Latin word “Peregrine” comes from the Latin translation of 1 Peter and initially came to prominence for those “coming from far off” to a religious feast or site. They did call a few of the travelers “strangers,” such as Myles Standish, who made the journey but did not share the faith of his fellow travelers.

The 100 or so folk on the Mayflower had been called “Brownists” after Robert Browne, a separatist who eventually reunited with the church of England. They were largely “Calvinist,” but it was not the theology of the church they were escaping (King James was sufficiently reformed). It was the hierarchy. They were properly “Congregationalists” and called “separatists” or “non-conformists” because they rejected the hierarchy of the Church of England with its head as the king and Archbishop of Canterbury.

While they left today on the Mayflower from Plymouth, this was the second leg of a trip that began in Leiden in the Netherlands. My ancestral people have tended to do well with religious tolerance, but it was in fact, “too tolerant” for the so-called Pilgrims who believed God’s judgement was going to fall on those Dutch just as they believed it was going to fall on the English they were fleeing.  

The Mayflower was one of two ships that was supposed to take this group to the New World. The second, the Speedwell, was deemed too leaky to make the voyage, and thus, the 100+ voyagers set sail in the 100-foot-long Mayflower (there was no idea this would become one of the most recognizable naval vessels in history—no one thought to draw or paint it, and so we can only imagine what it looked like).

They were supposed to land in Virginia- the established British Colony already settled and named for the Protestant “Virgin Queen,” Elizabeth- James’s predecessor. But the weather famously did not agree, and the ship had its course changed, and they landed in Massachusetts Bay. Because they missed their mark and landed where there was no jurisdiction, they quickly composed the “Mayflower Compact,” as it was believed without a formal written statement of law, a community was doomed (this is an often overlooked novelty with these folk).

If they had buckles (they probably didn’t), they wouldn’t be decorative on a hat nor used on the shoes you were going to traverse in unknown foliage.

Also, they liked color. Really. The Black and White “Addams Family”-style depiction of these folks should end. Yes, they were Puritan in worship- and they didn’t dance around a maypole or celebrate Christmas (that was for Catholics), but they could have fun and liked to wear green and scarlet, and maybe you add some color to your child’s Thanksgiving pageant.

What the new colonies WILL become is dictated much more by the ship, the Arbella, coming a decade later, and colonies had ALREADY existed before them. But these “pilgrims”, separatists, and Congregationalists against the Anglican hierarchy have forever captured our imagination. Today, on this day in 1620, we remember them on the 404th anniversary of their voyage to the New World on the Mayflower.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary and a brief forecast of things to come from the prophet Isaiah: 

See, a king will reign in righteousness
    and rulers will rule with justice.

Each one will be like a shelter from the wind

    and a refuge from the storm,


like streams of water in the desert

    and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.

Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed,

    and the ears of those who hear will listen.

The fearful heart will know and understand,

    and the stammering tongue will be fluent and clear.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 6th of September 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who lives by the motto- the more decorative belt buckles, the better… Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who has always preferred the buckled dress shoe to the messy shoelaces… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.