Lessons from Early US Colonization

Unmoored: America Adrift in Historical Forgetfulness and Finding Our Way Back

We’ve seen that Christianity is vital to the type of society that everyone seems to want—individual rights, protections in liberty, etc… This vital need is both in acknowledging how Christianity brought these concepts to the West (and then others through “the West”) and how Christianity as guiding structure provided US culture the means for its success (that others strive to move here for).

So, we NEED Christianity…but WE ALSO HAVE SEEN that the “Christendom” concept (“Christian Nationalism”) is ruinous to the faith and also how the faith is expressed, especially in a civic structure. So, what did our first colonists believe?

Were the first colonists trying to establish a “Christendom,” a “Christian nation”…a nation only for Christians where there would be religious faith requirements before holding office or opening a business, as was true in the nations from which these colonists came? Or, were they somehow trying to escape religion altogether, eager to create a nation on some broad concept of “Natural Law” in which formal religions would be either absent, or at worst, only something for the individual, something kept quiet and private? To find these answers, we must examine the first English-speaking colonies to see what lessons they can provide.

We will read The Mayflower Compact and also excerpts from the Sermon of John Winthrop. Both documents are crucial to understanding the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. We will also examine Jamestown and St. Mary's. For St. Mary's we will read excerpts from their revolutionary Maryland Toleration Act of 1649.