I heard a commercial the other night where Kirk Cameron (Way of the Master guru and former actor) is now telling Christians to study the Pilgrims. He wants to study their epic journey from their homeland to the Americas and their puritan ideals. In his own words, studying their morality will make us better Christians. He has a new movie, "Monumental" coming out about the great, pure and Christian ways of the Pilgrims.
Pardon me for rocking the boat, but didn't the Pilgrims, or at least some of them, massacre the Native Americans when they got here? Did they not look at them as savages? Were they justified in the killing of Native Americans because the Native Americans were not Christians? Would they have been better served to learn (not assimilate) the culture and find an entry point whereby Christ could be introduced? For Paul, it was the monument to "an unknown god" on Mars Hill that he used to proclaim the gospel to the Athenians...for the Native Americans it could have been their penchant for worshipping nature that could have been used to let them know that even nature has a Creator that is supreme above all. Instead, the Native Americans were seen as inferior and killed/stolen from. Around the same tie that the Pilgrims were establishing Plymouth, Peter Minuit was "buying" Manhattan Island a bit further north. Manhattan Island in New York was bought for a pittance! Roughly $24 of goods to be exact. It may be said that some of the goods traded were high end technology but I'd take the land and my primitive technology, which worked pretty well before we made the deal by the way, over any axe or agricultural tool. It was a one-sided trade in every sense of the word.
Was the first Thanksgiving actually a cultural melting pot where Native Americans sat quietly with the pilgrims and ate roasted turkey? I'd venture to say that the history books got that one wrong. One incident that occurred when the Pilgrims arrived was an expedition that set out from the Mayflower that stole corn from a Native American burial ground and got into a battle with Native Americans indigenous to the land. That led to fear and a move south to Plymouth Port from Provincetown.
While their intentions as separatists were noble: to break away from the mother church that they didn't agree with, we cannot look at that as their most sterling achievement. Nor can we say that their separatism was totally dedicated to the glory of God. There were separate groups within the separatists but the bible says that in Christ we are all one. The Klan is also a separatist group. So are the NeoNazis. If the love of Christ was truly in their hearts, there is no way that they would kill the Native Americans, rob them of their possessions or enslave them. That is not moral or Christian, no matter what kind of spin you put on it.
Susan Bates writes the following in her "The Real Story of Thanksgiving":
For three days the Wampanoags feasted with the Pilgrims. It was a special time of friendship between two very different groups of people. A peace and friendship agreement was made between Massasoit and Miles Standish giving the Pilgrims the clearing in the forest where the old Patuxet village once stood to build their new town of Plymouth.
It would be very good to say that this friendship lasted a long time; but, unfortunately, that was not to be. More English people came to America, and they were not in need of help from the Indians as were the original Pilgrims. Many of the newcomers forgot the help the Indians had given them. Mistrust started to grow and the friendship weakened. The Pilgrims started telling their Indian neighbors that their Indian religion and Indian customs were wrong. The Pilgrims displayed an intolerance toward the Indian religion similar to the intolerance displayed toward the less popular religions in Europe. The relationship deteriorated and within a few years the children of the people who ate together at the first Thanksgiving were killing one another in what came to be called King Phillip's War.
Kirk Cameron might want to rethink this considering that the Pilgrims do not have a spotless history. Using folklore as history is dangerous. Whitwashing history is even more dangerous. He might want to pay homage to the fact that everything that went on in the New Word was not sweet and cuddly. I haven't seen the film and maybe he does address this. It is crucial that it is addressed. We don't need revisionist history, we need accurate history! Atheists use things like this to discredit Christians all the time. Whether it's Plymouth or the Crusades, we have to start answering the hard questions and not look disingenuous while doing it. Rather than looking to the Pilgrims as the model for culture and morality, how about looking to Christ? He set the model in the first place.
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