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Thanksgiving for many of us has been presented as a time when diversity worked. When a group of people who came seeking refuge from religious persecution was saved by another group of people. A time when different cultures could come together and share what they had to offer one another, culminating in a feast consisting of corn and turkey that was made to honor that moment.
Sadly, the most recent depiction of this pivotal moment in our history has been turned into an American horror story. A story that depicts white Europeans who came to wipe out all the innocent natives by disease and war. The evil white man brought with them more evil white men who only wanted to destroy and kill, to take land that didn’t belong to them and annihilate anyone who wasn’t white. Because that’s all white people want.
Neither of these versions are remotely true.
The Pilgrims were not fleeing from persecution. Nor did they spread disease or kill an entire village of Native Americans. They simply came to a new world filled with the hope of freedom – freedom to live by the values and principles as defined by the word of God. They came to the new world to give their families that chance rather than being overtaken by a society they felt did not reflect those values. It was so important to them that they risked their lives and the lives of their children to make the voyage. A voyage that landed them far from where they were expecting.
After arriving to the new world it was clear that God had a plan. The circumstances which led up to the first thanksgiving – for both the Europeans and the Native American that helped them – could only be explained by divine providence.
Despite being told this is a time to apologize or to be shameful for our history as a nation, the truth is Thanksgiving should be the most important and revered time for all Americans. A time of remembrance of God’s grace and divine providence for a group of people that risked everything to honor Him, including a Native American by the name of Squanto.
The diversity of God’s grace is what we, Americans, should be celebrating. Not multiculturalism.
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Everything in the article is true except “the Pilgrims were not fleeing from religious persecution,” they certainly were. William Bradford wrote a book about the Pilgrims and why they came to America. We even had religious persecution in America after the Pilgrims. The French and Indian War was about the Jesuits turning the Indians against the Protestants. George Washington wrote about that.
The pilgrims didn’t go to America to escape religious intolerance, which was the case in England. In fact, they had settled in Holland so they could have religious freedom, and freedom they did have. It’s written about their experience there as being a tolerable society to their religious beliefs. However, the pilgrims found that it wasn’t compatible for what they had wanted for their lives and the lives of their families. And so, they hoped for a better life in the new world where they wouldn’t lose their identity as English Protestants (more accurately, Protestant separatists). And not be forced to assimilate into the Dutch culture.
The Protestants in Europe moved around a lot due to persecution. The Pilgrims went to Leiden and found it wanting. They could not make a living and their children were being encouraged to leave their group. So they went to America due to the persecution going on in England as well as the poor life they found in Leiden, and of course there was persecution there as well. All sorts of Protestants from all over Europe came to America due to religious persecution. It was called the Great Migration. The Pilgrims did not just take a Sunday boat outing, only to find themselves blown off course.
The first Pilgrims that came here – the ones referenced in this article – at one time faced persecution for their religious beliefs. They left England for Holland to be free of that. And they found that freedom according to Bradford. What they didn’t find was growth in their economic prosperity despite working incredibly hard. Nor did they find the ability to keep their children from assimilating into the surrounding culture that; on one hand tolerated their beliefs and on the other didn’t hold to the same values they cherished, among other things. I can imagine the threat of the Spanish taking over and killing protestants would have also been in the back of their mind, but that’s just conjecture.
Many Puritans from England would follow in the proceeding years. They were fleeing persecution from the Church of England, the Catholics, as well as from the monarchy who acted on its behalf – starting not long after the first colonists arrived and lasting several years more. That’s the Great Puritan Migration you are referring to (although the first Puritans that came from Europe would be considered part of that migration, naturally).
This may be over simplifying it somewhat, but it was essentially what Bradford described. And for the sake of having people read a three-page article, summing up details to make a point is preferable.
With all this said, I don’t think there’s really an argument here. We can agree that life for them was not easy. The new world offered them hope and the ability to live the way they felt was pleasing to God without fear of persecution or oppression.
I’m happy to have a response to what I said. I don’t know what three page article you are referring to. There are lots of articles on the net and some of them are true and some of them are revisionist history. In this case, I’ve copies of the original books by W. Bradford and G. Washington, which I mentioned. John Fox(e) wrote a huge book, “Book of the Martyrs.” Various edited and revised versions of it are on the web free to read. John Fox was a Calvinist and so didn’t show Calvin in a bad light like some of the revisionists of his book have. Many English Protestants were imprisoned and killed before and during Bradford’s time. William of Orange a hero of the Protestants,created Leiden University, and so the Protestants expected more from that area than could be delivered. They thanked God for the New World, even though it was a “desert” at the time of their arrival.