Beyond Thanksgiving: 400 years ago, Pilgrims helped lead way for religious melting pot of America

By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer | Thursday, November 8, 2007 7:36 PM PST ∞

They arrived on the Mayflower, held the first Thanksgiving in the New World and wore big black hats that didn't really have belt buckles on them.

But as a religious people, what did the Pilgrims believe?

The Pilgrims ---- actually Puritans who called themselves "First Comers" or "Saints" ---- left Europe for the New World in 1620 to pursue religious freedom and distance themselves from the dominant Church of England, which they saw as corrupt.

As explained by Kenneth C. Davis and other historians, the Puritans' trouble in Europe were rooted in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

Heated debates about religious reform continued long after the Church of England split from Roman Catholicism during the reign of King Henry VIII.

While some in England remained Catholic, others wanted their own congregations because they didn't think the Church of England separated itself far enough from Rome.

These Separatists, called Puritans because they wanted to purify the church, were seen in their day much as extreme religious cults are seen today, according to Davis, author of "Don't Know Much About History" and other books.

What they believed

The Puritans believed in the Catholic sacrament of baptism and the Lord's Supper, but they saw as superstitious the sacraments of confession, penance, confirmation, ordination and the Mass. They considered marriage a civil affair, not a religious sacrament, and rejected religious symbols such as crosses, statues and stained glass windows.

Among their spiritual leaders was Richard Clyfton, parson at All Saints' Parish Church in Babworth, England.

Under the 1559 Act of Uniformity, attending Church of England services became mandatory, and people who missed them could be punished. Clyfton was declared a nonconformist in 1605 and stripped of his church position.

Separatists began meeting underground in the village of Scrooby with Clyfton as their pastor. In 1609, about 150 Separatists violated English law and left for Leiden, Holland, the only European nation at the time to allow religious freedom. The exiles found life in Holland difficult, however, and some returned to England.

English merchant Thomas Weston told the Puritans about a voyage planned to the New World. England had obtained a land grant north of the Virginia territory, and it was believed that a profit could be made by fishing in an area out of the control of the Virginia government, Weston told them. Fifty Puritans in 1620 boarded the Mayflower, which carried 102 people, for a 66-day journey to the New World.

They arrived in Plymouth, Mass., not their intended destination, and formed the second British colony in the New World, following Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement in 1607.

Life in Plymouth

The Pilgrims today are most strongly associated with Thanksgiving and the holiday season, but they did not celebrate the season's biggest holiday, Christmas, because they believed nobody knew when Jesus was born, according to Davis.

Even more ironic, Pilgrims did not celebrate Thanksgiving the way we do. For Pilgrims, Davis wrote, a true Thanksgiving was a day of fasting and prayer.

They did, however, share a feast with local Indians, just as our holiday recalls. But while the Pilgrims were the hosts, the idea might not have been theirs. The harvest festival, which lasted for three days, was very similar to a feast the Indians had been celebrating for years.

Following their tradition of separation from the Church of England and Catholicism, the Puritans worshiped in a building called a meetinghouse, because they saw a church as the people, not the building. A Sunday service lasted from 8 a.m. until noon, and then from 2 p.m. to 5 or 6 p.m.

Families read the Bible and prayed at home each morning, before and after meals and at bedtime. They mostly used the Geneva edition of the Bible, which contained Puritan interpretations. Strongly against the reciting of other men's prayers, Puritans shunned the Book of Common Prayer used by the Church of England.

Puritans also believed in predestination, which held that an all-knowing God already knew who would be saved and who would be damned. Predestination did not allow sin, however, as the faithful believed that their good behavior was an indication that they would be saved.

The melting pot

That first winter in Plymouth was harsh and left half of the Mayflower immigrants dead, but within a few years they were thriving. Through trade with the Indians, they repaid their loans and even bought out the shares held by their European backers.

Their success led the way for the great Puritan migration from 1629 to 1642, when between 14,000 to 20,000 left England for New England or the West Indies. Most were Anglican Puritans brought over by a joint stock company called the Massachusetts Bay Company, and they settled in Boston.

The New World did provide distance between England and the Pilgrims, a name they first were called in a book by Mayflower passenger William Bradford. But it did not isolate them from the rest of the world. The New World soon would begin to resemble the melting pot that would identify America.

What became of the Pilgrims

As for the Pilgrims, the original congregation lasted until 1801, when the installation of the Rev. James Kendall led to a schism. According to a timeline provided by the Church of the Pilgrimage in Massachusetts, Kendall was considered a liberal preacher whose theology leaned toward Unitarianism.

A slight majority voted to withdraw from Kendall's First Parish Church and reorganize as the Third Church of Christ in Plymouth. The First Parish Church then associated itself with the Unitarian Church, while the Third Church of Christ continued in the Congregational denomination, which held the Trinitarian beliefs of the Pilgrims.

In 1840, the Third Church of Christ dedicated a new church near the Pilgrims' original meeting house. It was called the Church of the Pilgrimage, its name today.

The Congregational denomination became more liberal throughout the 19th century, and its name changed as it merged with other denominations.

Its family includes the Reformed Church, which was rooted in the German Reformed Church, and the Evangelical Synod of North America, which stemmed from German immigration to the Midwest in the 19th and 20th centuries. The churches merged in 1934 to become the Evangelical and Reformed Church.

That church in 1957 merged with the Congregational Church, known by then as the Congregational Christian Churches, to become the United Church of Christ. Several hundred Congregational churches did not participate in the merger and instead joined either the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches or the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference.

Churches that did join the United Church of Christ include the Church of the Pilgrimage in Plymouth. While rooted in the original Puritan colony, church officials there make it clear that their faith has evolved in 400 years.

"We are not 'The Church of the Pilgrims,'" its Web site reads. "We are contemporary Christians who have owned and continue the pilgrimage toward truth and freedom which the Pilgrims have bequeathed to us as a spiritual legacy."

One other church in North County is a member of the United Church of Christ, and it should be obvious by its name: Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad.

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.

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