How can you not like the story of the Pilgrims?  They came to America to find freedom, we remember.  Religious freedom.  They were Puritan “separatists,” believing that the True Church must separate itself from the corruptions of the world, in particular the Anglican church and its state-supported status as an established church.  They were known as “non-conformists,” as in non-conformity with the state and with the book of Common Prayer as its guide.  As in, “Hey, one of us needs to watch for the sheriff.” 

First they went to Holland, where there was greater religious freedom.  Amsterdam was a bit much for them, so next they went to Leiden.  All was going well until they realized their children were speaking fluent Dutch and fitting in a little TOO well.  They couldn’t go back to England—only jail and more trouble with the state awaited them.

So, after a lot of political and economic negotiation, they struck a deal to go to the New World.  They set sail with two ships, but one had to turn back.  Only the Mayflower made it.

 During the trip there were divisions between the Pilgrims, who called themselves the Saints, and the others on the trip, designated “Strangers.”  The Mayflower Compact was struck just to keep harmony among the differing groups.

 There was great illness on the ship—at least one died en route.  They left in September, went off course, and landed far off their destination—in November.  Cape Cod in November can be, well, brisk, to say the least.

 Over half died in that first winter.  Only three of eighteen married women lived through it.  Without an English-speaking “Indian” named Squanto, they would never have made it.  According to church historian Edwin Gaustad, they considered Squanto “a special instrument of God for our good”  (A Religious History of America, 54). 

 Squanto helped them know what was poisonous and what was safe to eat, and how to tap maple syrup from a tree, and how to plant, cultivate and harvest corn.  By the next year, a successful harvest was cause for celebration.  The following fall, though, brought a drought.  A proclamation by the governor called for prayer and fasting, and shortly thereafter the rains came.  Thanksgiving may have begun in that lean and difficult year, when they barely made it through.

 It is rather peculiar that a holiday so connected with abundance and the numbering of blessings would have begun as gratitude for bare survival, but fitting.  Thanksgiving is the recognition of our dependence on God, not the congratulating of ourselves.  We are blessed, but not deservedly.  Life is a gift from Someone, not something to which we are entitled.  It is a time to stop, take stock, and celebrate in the spirit of those early survivors.

Our way of life is under threat today, from without and within.  Can it outlast determined religious zealots who would destroy the world rather than accept compromise and freedom?  Can it survive a diverse society with profound moral challenges and serious differences from within?  Can it survive without either religious folk stamping out the secularists or vice versa?

 We are fighting about almost everything now, including who is telling the truth about our history. Ken Burns’ ambitious history of the Revolution has been released and admirers and detractors have already weighed in.  I recall learning a fairly whitewashed view of history until I got to high school. Then I began to meet teachers who had divergent opinions about America, its origins and tragedies. Little children need patriotism and love for where they live. Teenagers are ready for reality, at least some.

 I was in high school during the Vietnam War. No use hiding things from us. Teens can handle complexity more than we give them credit for.

 I thought about this as I was teaching adults at Auburn University this fall in an adult continuing education class on the history of the First Amendment and religion. Of late, the old “we began as a Christian nation and we’re falling apart if we don’t return to it” shibboleth has been resuscitated for the umpteenth time in our history (yes, it has happened before, and yes, it is a very spotty disregard of the complexity of historical truth).

 If Squanto had known what was coming from the Puritans, he might have let them starve to death. According to John Fea in his book, Was America Founded As a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction, the Puritans had aspirations to create a pure Christian world. As usual with sinners, including the righteous, their execution left a lot to be desired, especially the executions. Besides persecuting dissenters, especially women who wanted to be theologians, beating Baptists and Quakers, their treatment of native Americans was anything but Christian, at least as Jesus called upon us to be.

He writes that one of the criticisms of Roger Williams, that oddball Baptist who fled to Rhode Island to create a place of religious liberty, was their confiscating the land of the Indians without paying for it. Fea writes,

Puritans believed that it was their God-ordained right to usurp this Indian land. In theory, the Puritans took Indian land for religious reasons. They needed to expand their “city on a hill” westward, and Native Americans were in the way. As Massachusetts settlers moved into the Connecticut River Valley in the 1630s, tensions developed with the Pequots, the Indians who controlled the region’s fur trade. In 1637 the settlers, with the help of their Narragansett allies, burned the Pequot village in Mystic, Connecticut, killing several hundred Pequot women and children.

Fea notes that Plymouth’s Governor William Bradford described the massacre as a sad ad disgusting scene, but nevertheless akin to a sacrifice at the ancient temple that was necessary sfor God’s plan to go forward. ‘

No need to rehearse this at your family Thanksgiving table with Uncle Jim Bob, of course. Nothing is harder to put across than facts someone doesn’t believe they are required to accept. Just take it back home.

Still, amid the dark spots on our history are also many bright moments—women’s suffragettes were as often driven by Christian progressive fervor as by secular movements. The revivals of the nineteenth century stirred antislavery movements and many progressive impulses. And, inevitably, it was intertwined with the opposition. That’s just the way it is.. Humanity is inevitably religious, in the broadest sense, seeking meaning in life. And, like all things human, it can express the best that is inside us and the darkest remnants of our primitive instincts.

Squanto did not know what was coming. But it’s good to see these moments, when the moral depth outweighs the danger and darkness. When there is tragedy, you look at it, honestly. The worst thing is to sweep it under the rug and blame the teller for it. Historians cannot work like preachers.

As Squanto appeared to those desperate and misplaced Pilgrims so many years ago, it is better for us who are believers to also turn to the best that is among us. If there is a sin in the past, confess it and make restitution. Don’t do backflips trying to pretend it was something else. Remember that our own Christian story starts with a man of innocence, executed by his government and their occupiers to keep order, betrayed by one of his own and abandoned by the rest. It’s a pretty sorry way to begin a religion, unless the point is that God intends for us to look this truth in the face and own up to it.

Good news is not that there is no bad news. Instead, it is that despite the painful truth of who we can often be to one another, love and unexpected grace from God are greater.  No reason to expect it, no way we deserved it.  He simply came to us, a “special instrument of God for our good.”

As I sat down to offer thanks yesterday, I thought I would give thanks not only for the abundance of our means, but for our poverty and need. That despite the worst in us, our better angels are striving to deliver us from it. Isn’t that worth a feeling of hope and good will? That perhaps even my enemy can yet stop and turn around. Even I can forgive what seems unforgiveable. And something new might yet emerge amid that incompetence, dodginess and self-centeredness that is part of human nature. And it happens every time generosity, kindness, and benevolence pushes aside those more disappointing impulses in us and acts for the good of all.