CHRIST-APP by philtierneyblog

STORY SEVEN: MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY

Many contemporary American Christians conflate the Puritan colonists of the first half of the 17^th century with the Founders of the United States, 150 years later. That’s inaccurate. This is what happened.

Inception:

The increasing strife between different Christians in the British Isles led up to the English Civil Wars. That strife and those wars caused some Christians in the United Kingdom to migrate elsewhere.

The Pilgrims wanted to separate from the Church of England. They believed the English Church was too Catholic and not sufficiently biblical. They sought religious liberty. And so, they decided migrate to Leiden in Holland, where they felt they could worship freely. Leiden was a sanctuary city, which welcomed religious refugees, back then.

While the Pilgrims enjoyed the freedom to worship as they wished, during their 12 years there, they were only able to find menial jobs and were stuck in poverty. They were presented with the decision to remain poor in Holland, return to England or migrate to the New World.

One of several “merchant adventure” (venture capital) companies was recruiting colonists for their enterprise in the America. The Pilgrims entered into an agreement with the company. The Pilgrims would receive transportation by ship, a crew, livestock, tools and supplies for one year. In return, they agreed to return the produce from their labors for seven years. The bargain was struck, and in 1620 the Pilgrims arrived in what is now Massachusetts.

The Pilgrims found the climate to be inhospitable for abundant agricultural produce. They failed to meet their obligations and their creditors were displeased. Their inability to repay their creditors in a timely fashion reflected badly on them and their religious convictions.

The Puritans were another nonconformist English religious sect. Unlike the Pilgrims, they didn’t want to separate themselves from the Church of England. They wanted to create a purified version of it. They left England, not so much to find the freedom to worship, but even more to establish what they thought would be a pure, biblical, Christian commonwealth that would remain under British sovereignty and protection.

The Puritans learned from the failures of the Pilgrim venture. Instead of contracting with an existing company, they established their own mercantile company. Colonist who wanted a stake in the profits of the venture had to buy shares in the company. It was understood that only Puritans could own shares. The Massachusetts Bay Company was founded and gained a charter from the British Crown to establish a colony.

Massachusetts Bay Colony was established in 1630, ten years after the Pilgrims settled Plymouth Plantation. The Puritans envisioned their new colony would be “a city on a hill.” They hoped it would be a beacon to shine the light of the Gospel to the rest of the world. Beacon Hill in Boston became the center of the new colony.

Puritans’ faith in God was integral to their lives. The Bible was central to their beliefs. They wanted their laws to be based on biblical laws. They wanted the structure of their government to be a theocratic commonwealth with a limited form of democracy. Only Puritan men could vote. Puritan ministers could not hold political office, but had a strong role in nominating the most prominent members of their congregations for election to public office. Officials were elected by local congregations. Biblical Christian faith ruled the colony, and prominent Puritan men mediated God’s rule.

Abuses and Consequences:

As almost inevitably happens, it wasn’t long until abuses began to take place. Many of the abuses took the form of religious intolerance and excess. Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded for the freedom to believe and practice the Christian faith unmolested. However, within a few years of its establishment, the Puritan leadership of the colony persecuted colonists who diverged from their norms.

In 1635, five years after its founding, Massachusetts Bay Colony banished the Reverend Roger Williams for “new and dangerous opinions.” Those dangerous opinions were political in nature. He opposed the notion that government had the right to judge or punish any of the Ten Commandments that dealt with obligations to God (such as Sabbath laws). He believed that only laws related to crimes against other people (such as theft or murder) should be adjudicated by the government.

Two years later, Anne Hutchinson was banished from the colony in 1637. She was found guilty of teaching Scripture as a woman. She was also found guilty of teaching that people could have relationship with Christ apart from the authority of a congregation and its clergy. The colony founded on freedom of belief banished people for their beliefs.

In 1659, two Bostonians, Robertson and Stevenson, were hanged for being Quakers. Later, Mary Dyer and William Leddra were also hanged as Quakers. The British Crown intervened when word arrived of the executions. The king outlawed the practice of imprisoning or executing Quakers in Massachusetts Bay Colony. That was the beginning of the Britain’s moves to reign in the excesses of Puritan political practices.

During the years 1692-1693, scores of the members of the colony were accused of witchcraft, arrested and tried. Nineteen citizens of Massachusetts Bay Colony were executed for being in league with Satan, possessed by demons or practicing witchcraft. It was then that the Crown intervened, once again. The British government revoked the power of Puritans to elect Puritan governors to the colony. Instead, a royal Governor was appointed to the colony, in part, to restrain the excesses of their religious fervor.

New judicial regulations were imposed by London. Chief among them was a new law that prohibited criminal convictions based on hearsay testimony without corroborating physical evidence. Additional British troops were deployed to the colony to keep Puritans from violating the rights of colonists. Ironically, the British Crown increased taxes on colonists to support the government and military personnel stationed there. Eventually that led to rebellions, which eventually ignited the Revolutionary War.

Novel Theological Underpinnings:

Initially, Massachusetts Bay Colony merged strict and particular regulations on Christian faith and practice with its government and business. Devout Puritan Christians firmly believed they were doing God’s will. They absolutely believed they were following God’s call on a mission to create a “new Israel” in a new Promised Land. They heartily believed that God would bless them with material prosperity as long as they were faithful, morally upright and hardworking. They believed their material success would show the world that they were God’s people and and that their model of the fusion of Church and State should be emulated. Puritans linked material blessings with faithfulness, moral purity and hard work. That was the birth of the “Puritan work ethic.”

Hardships Breed Persecution:

Naturally, those devout Puritans experienced severe hardships. There were devastating hurricanes and blizzards, droughts and intolerably cold winters. They endured frequent crop failures, famine and disease. They conflicted with natives. The “King Philip’s War” broke out. People felt vulnerable and afraid. They wondered why they weren’t experiencing God’s blessings for their faithfulness, morality and hard work.

Instead of questioning the soundness of their foundational beliefs, they looked for other causes of their afflictions. Their worldview predisposed them to look for spiritual causes for their real world adversities. They chose to interpret unfavorable weather and poor crops as signs that God withheld His blessings. They looked for ways in which they might be displeasing God. They found it necessary to identify and root out whatever might have caused God to withhold His blessings. Since they trusted their own uprightness, they looked for others to blame.

The Evil Within and Its Consequences:

The prominent ministers in the colony concluded that it must be the devil’s doing. Sermons were preached that emphasized the “devil walking among them.” Pastors called their congregations to vigilance. They called upon their congregations to look for the devil at work in their midst. And so, they identified non-conformists, like Roger Williams, to banish. They rounded up heretics, like Quakers, to be executed. They accused their neighbors of witchcraft and hanged them. The premise of their faith was faulty, but they had to demonize others instead.

The accusers of the witches hanged in 1692 and 1693 were devout Puritans. Some of them accused neighbors of witchcraft because they coveted their properties. During the Royal inquiry that followed the witch trials, many of them confessed it. The adage is true that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When religious passion is added to the equation the effect is multiplied because devout people of faith can rationalize almost anything as God’s will. And when that becomes apparent, people become disillusioned.

Their intensely vigilant religiosity did not bestow uninterrupted prosperity. What their Puritanical hyper-vigilance did engender, though, was greater wariness of the wedding of Church and State. The melding of organized Christian faith and government has always eventually bred abuse. The melding of Church and business has bred superstition and corruption. The melding of all three has bred unchecked power. Unchecked power has bred craven hunger for control. And that, in turn, has led to disillusionment and cynicism.

American Christians Replay the Past:

There are American Christians, nowadays, who wonder why Massachusetts and some other parts of New England tend to be more reserved in their expression of Christian faith. They wonder why New Englanders seem less religious than some people in other parts of the country. They wonder why fewer people attend church than in other parts of the country.  They wonder why they are more liberal than Christians in some other parts of the country.

Some, such as the New Apostolic Reformation, actually go so far as to claim that too many people and institutions in New England are under demonic influences. Ironically, this is a clear replication of the faulty theological convictions of the early Puritans. Instead of questioning the soundness of such theological thinking, such modern American Christians choose to forget.

Times may change, but human nature doesn’t. If we choose to ignore the past we’re prone to replicate it. 400 years later, American Christians choose to forget the past. hey choose to ignore the fact that Massachusetts Bay Colony, which occupied most of New England, was steeped in the most ardent forms of biblical Christian faith. They choose to forget that New England had the most ardent Puritan Christian roots of any part of the country. They choose to forget that Puritan Massachusetts established a theocratic commonwealth. They choose to forget that the First Great Awakening began in Massachusetts. They choose to forget that Christian revivalism began in New England almost 200 years before other states even existed. They choose to neglect the real possibility that, having been well acquainted with the excesses of theocratic government and revivalism, they know the extremes to which they can go. Having experienced the efforts of devout Christians to create theocratic government rule, they know its failures.

Lessons from the Past:

Historically, when faith and politics have used one another to achieve their own interests, both have been corrupted. When people of faith, often of the most ardent faith, grasp the power of government to force their ways for God’s sake, others have been demonized and sacrificed. It has almost always involved accusations of some form of evil or other. During the exodus, those demonized were idolaters. During the occupation of Canaan, they were pagans and the followers of other gods. During the Jewish Civil War, they were blasphemers. During the early Church, they were heretics. During the height of Christendom, they were infidels. During the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, they were enemies of God and of Christ. During the colonization of the New World, they were heretics, heathens, nonconformists and witches.

What were the historical consequences of those fervent attempts to defend faith, to impose doctrines and moral behaviors, to extend God’s Kingdom and to control other people? Slaughter. Genocide. Captivity. Loss of independence. Diaspora. Heresy trials. Loss of Christian control in the East and the spread of the Turkish Empire. Genocide of natives, enslavement and dispossession. Skepticism of religious fervor. Separation of Church and State. None of them resulted in the spread of Jesus’s Gospel. They didn’t spread his teachings or his need-meeting love. They didn’t advance receptivity to the Kingdom of God that Jesus taught may abide within.

Many American Christians, these days, refuse to learn lessons from the history of Christians through the centuries. That’s because many American Christians are taught to study what God did among the people in the Bible and then to jump to the present day. Modern American Christians are taught only to apply to themselves what the biblical characters experienced without learning from mistakes made by Christians throughout history. Altogether too many American Christians seem to have been led to believe that the only real Christians were the ones in the first century and themselves. Too many American Christians, like the Puritans, are led to believe that America is called by God to be a Christian nation, God’s own Kingdom, here and now. It’s a captivating vision and a compelling mission.

Conclusion:

The problem is that Jesus never said that the Kingdom of God was of this world. He never said that any kingdom, nation, or government, let alone America, was intended by God to be God’s Kingdom on Earth. He never made any effort, whatsoever, to use one of the political parties of his time to overthrow a government or to establish a godly government. In fact, He said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”  (Luke 17:21) This was the context of that verse: “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.’” Jesus couldn’t have been clearer. The Kingdom of God is not a political or legal construct on our temporal plane. It is a personal condition on the spiritual plane.

It’s important to resist the temptations of the past. No matter how well-intentioned and biblically- based, the wedding of religion and government always corrupts both. Attempts to make governments enforce religious convictions have always become abusive. No matter how faithful, Christians are always subject to their own human nature with all its potentials for excess and corruption. Trying to make America or any other nation a “Christian country” is not Christ’s mission. It is a distraction from that mission and frequently subverts it.