"Freedom to Serve One Another"
Rev. Thomas Lineweaver
July 6, 2008

In 1620 a ship bound for Virginia accidently made land fall in Cape Cod, now Rhode Island. They were a mixed group of 102 persons, 35 of them Puritans, very religious. The other 60 were craftsmen, indentured servants (people who promised to work to pay for their trip across the Atlantic), and soldiers. They were picked so that they could set up a working village.

The whole settlement had agreed to work for seven years and then split the profits with the financial backers in London. The ship was, of course, the Mayflower. From the beginning it was a mixed affair, commercial and religious.

Ten years later, in 1630, a thousand picked settlers landed to the north in Massachusetts. By sixteen-forty 25,000 people had come to the colony. In these years the colonists usually acquired Indian territory by fair purchase treaties, according to English law. But the Indians knew nothing of private property or its laws. So they didn't understand what they had sold. These treaty ceremonies looked like a gift giving ceremony to signal friendship.

Indian raids on white frontier settlements followed this misunderstanding. The surge of immigration overwhelmed the Indians and looked threatening. The colonist's attitude turned from peaceful attempts to convert the red men to bloody retaliation. And the tribes fought back.

Six years after the colony was founded Pequot braves murdered a New England merchant. The next Spring a Connecticut army sought revenge. The colonists routed the tribesmen, burned their main camp and hunted the survivors. Finally a combined force from Plymouth, Massachusetts and northern Connecticut caught up with them and slaughtered them. They tried to kill them all.

So the English settlers flooded in. This was also a real challenge to the Puritan leaders, who had come to set up a religious community, "a city set on a hill." Many of the new-comers did not share these convictions. Thousands of them came for land and a new start. In the beginning Governor Winthrop in Boston ordered that eighteen "assistants" be selected to help him govern. Don't let the word "assistant" fool you, these men were going to call the shots.

At first these "assistants" declared that one could become a freeman (a full citizen) only if he was a member of a Puritan church. They were trying to keep their vision alive and not fall into the vices and decrepitude of the old country. This became harder as people prospered financially but were not part of the church; so they could not vote or hold office.

In 1648 the general court of Massachusetts called the Puritan clergyman to meet at Cambridge. The confirmed the unity of church and state and sought to make the secular government the explicit agent for enforcing religious and moral decrees. The historians writing in 1959 comment: "The appeal to the power of the state seemed to graduallv diminish Puritans moral strength [influence]." People looked up to them at first but this declined. The more they tried to force their vision on the others the more they lost respect.

Thirty-two years after the founding of the colony, in 1662 the Massachusetts general court began to cave in to the inevitable, they agreed to the "Half-Way covenant." Before this the only way to become a full member of the church was to publically recount your conversion experience. They wanted a church full of people that really had had a life changing experience with God. Remember one could only be a full citizen if they were a member of the church. The leadership was trying to keep the colony run by people that were deeply committed to Christ.

After the "Half-Way Covenant" people could be full citizens and have their children baptized without being members of the church. This Puritans were steadilv losing their grip on the colony. Governor Winthrop warned that New England's material success would make them: "fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intensions."

A few decades later in Pennsylvania the same themes played out. Our historians observe: "The rewards of farming, commerce, manufacturing, the professions, and politics simply dissolved the communal religious spirit... [that original dream so many of them had together simply fell apart] the new barbarians, or so they seemed even to their own clergymen," had arrived. (p.91)}

This struggle between the love of God and the love of money, or financial security, is ancient in our land. It is not an easy thing to resolve in any century. Jesus spoke the words: (Matt. 6:24)

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Back in New England not all the colonists looked to the land. A few looked to the sea, first as fisherman. They made good money. Soon: "a class of Puritan merchants as sharp and self important as any in the world" emerged. And they built ships, good ones, so sea-worthy and cheap that they began to sell them on both sides of the Atlantic.

This also took on a dark side. "Early in the 1640s Puritan captains began visiting the main slave markets on the West African Guinea coast. This is only ten years after the Massachusetts colony was founded. This quickly became violent as captains sought to fill their holds with black cargo. Massachusetts courts charged them with murder and condemned them with the: "haynos and crying sin of man stealing." But there was not much they could or would do. By 1700, Massachusetts and Rhode Island merchants had become heavily engaged in the Guinea trade (slaves). Their main customers were the sugar plantations in the Caribbean islands and later the larger markets on mainland America in the tobacco colonies.

So it's a complicated story. Such recounting may give us reason to pause. What words will guide us?

⁶ With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? ⁷Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? ⁸ He hath shown thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

May the Spirit and Word fill and guide us as we face the choices and temptations of our century.

(Notes taken from: The American Republic. Volume One, by Hofstadter, Miller and Aaron, Prentice-Hall, 1959, 1970)

Page last updated July 7, 2008.