The Mayflower's 400th Anniversary
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Four hundred years ago, my ancestor Edward Doty boarded the Mayflower. He wasn't a Pilgrim but had sold himself as an indentured servant - a "white slave" - to Stephen Hopkins, one of the Pilgrims. We don't like to think of white people enslaving other white people, but the book They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America describes how the terms "indentured servant" and "slave" - and their fates - were often synonymous. Many of these poor English, the Irish, the Eastern Europeans were worked to death on farms, in coal mines, steel mills, and building railroads. The stories in this book are simply horrendous.
On the way across the ocean, however, the Pilgrims decided they shouldn't allow slavery in the New World, so they freed all their slaves. Thus Edward Doty became one of the Pilgrims and signed the Mayflower Compact, the first government document in America. But he remained something of a ruffian: he fought the first duel in the New World and was put in stocks twice for brawling. But Edward finally settled down and married. His descendants include Roger Sherman, the only person who signed all four U.S. founding documents (the Articles of Association, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and U.S. Constitution) - a descendant of a "white slave"!
Edward Doty's descendants also include Jonathan Edwards, leader of the First Great Awakening and one of the first presidents of Princeton Seminary; Civil War Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant (on the $50 bill) - two descendants of a "white slave" who led the fight against African slavery in the U.S. - poet and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (a eugenicist); Presidents Franklin Pierce, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Through them, I am also related to Presidents James Madison (on the $5,000 bill), Grover Cleveland (on the $1,000 bill), Abraham Lincoln (on the $5 bill), Martin Van Buren, Zachary Taylor, Theodore Roosevelt, and Gerald Ford.
My great-grandfather, Nicholas Richards, was a circuit-riding Methodist preacher in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin who was active in the "underground railroad" before and during the U.S. Civil War, helping slaves escape to Canada. Nicholas married Ann Stephens whose mother Sarah was from the Doty line. Sarah's mother Lucy had married the Quaker Daniel Anthony, so their daughter Susan B. Anthony is Robert's great-great-aunt, who as a young woman was active in the emancipation of slaves, later in life led the struggle for women's right to vote, and is the first woman whose portrait is on U.S. money. Sarah and Susan's cousin was James Duane Doty, a governor of the Wisconsin Territory and the founder of the capital city, Madison, where my wife and I raised our family.
These facts are not unusual: 30+ million Americans - about one-tenth of the U.S. population - are Mayflower descendants and thus are related to several U.S. Presidents, whether they know it or not. What is noteworthy, however, is the fact that the anti-slavery movement has been central to American history since its very beginning. In contrast, The New York Times has recently published an infamous series of articles, "The 1619 Project," that attempts to rewrite our history by claiming that slavery has been the basic, essential foundation of American history since its inception in 1619 when the Jamestown Colony was founded including some slaves and that the Mayflower Pilgrims were just a minor detail in our history. I grew up having learned just the opposite: the Jamestown Colony was abandoned and disappeared, so the Pilgrims in New England were the first European settlers who managed to survive - from which we have our Thanksgiving holiday that was originally celebrated together with Native American Indians.
Presently, the same sort of leftist historical revisionists are attempting to spin the narrative about the horrible killing of George Floyd into an insurrection against the "fundamentally flawed" so-called inherently racist U.S. government and society. Please read "Who's Behind the Riots? The New York Times and the Pulitzer Prize Committee" that details how our history has been rewritten and the rewriters are rewarded by the subservient Pulitzer Prize Committee. These lies are now being taught in our public schools and universities. It's been said that "facts are stubborn things" but George Orwell in his book 1984 knew otherwise:
"Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past… The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc [English Socialism]. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it."
We are involved in a great civil reevaluation of our American experiment and a rewriting of our history, our beliefs about who we are as a nation. The leftist mass media, politicians, and educators think they are in full control of all historical records and our collective memories. They want to erase their own historical connection to the KKK, eugenics, fascism, and racism. It was the view of 19th- and 20th-century Darwinian science that stifled the cries of Ota Benge - "I am a man! I am a man!" - yes, that same "African pygmy Ota Benga (1883-1916) [who] was bought in a slave auction and displayed in 1906 alongside an orangutan in the Monkey House at the Bronx Zoo. The organizers intended this as a lesson for the public illustrating the scientific truths of Darwinian theory. African-American clergy at the time spoke out against the insult to their dignity, only to be dismissed by the New York Times, which explained that 'the pygmies … are very low in the human scale.'" (See "Human Zoos - How 'Science' Fueled the Racial Fire".)
The Left is indoctrinating our youth that your race, gender, or sexual orientation defines you. But "systemic racism" and "gender discrimination" aren't the real issues plaguing America - it is our opposing value systems, the fact that "modernity" - the secular humanist worldview is fighting to replace the Judeo-Christian worldview. Fr. Stephen Freeman's recent blog article "The Violence of Modernity" speaks to what went wrong with the early American experiment:
"Human beings make things happen, as does most of creation. Modernity, however, is another matter. Its better world has no limits, its project is never-ending. What are the proper limits of violence? Are there boundaries that must not be crossed? Modernity has as its goal the creation of a better world with no particular reference to God – it is a secular concept. As such, that which constitutes 'better' is, or can be, a shifting definition. In Soviet Russia it was one thing, in Nazi Germany another, in Consumer-Capitalist societies yet another still. Indeed, that which is 'better' is often the subject of the political sphere. But there is no inherent content to the 'better,' nor any inherent limits on the measures taken to achieve it. The pursuit of the better ('progress') becomes its own morality.
"The approach of classical Christianity does not oppose change (there is always change), nor does it deny that one thing might be better than another. But the “good” which gives every action its meaning is God Himself, as made known in Christ. In classical terms, this is expressed as 'keeping the commandments.' Those commandments are summarized in the love of God and the love of neighbor. There are other elements within the commandments of Christ that minimize and restrict the use of violence.
"There is, for example, no commandment to make the world a better place, nor even to make progress towards a better world. The 'better world' concept is, historically, a heretical borrowing from Christianity, a secularization of the notion of the Kingdom of God, translated into terms of progressive technology and laws (violence). But, in truth, the management of history's outcomes is idolatrous. Only God controls the outcome of history."
Our real task in life is not to "make the world a better place" but to "seek first the Kingdom of God" (Matthew 6:33), to "strive to enter the Kingdom through the narrow gate" (Matthew 7:12), because "the Kingdom of Heaven is taken by great effort [violence], and those who exert effort [the violent] claim it for themselves eagerly" (Matthew 11:13-14). This is where we ought to focus our full energy: seeking first the Kingdom of God, building up the Body of Christ - the Church. Only then will all the other things fall into their rightful place.
What happened when the Old Testament Jews were taken into captivity? "Also they have shut up the doors of the porch, and put out the lamps, and have not burned incense nor offered burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel. Therefore the Lord's wrath was on Judah and Jerusalem, and He has delivered them to be tossed back and forth, to be an astonishment, and a hissing, as you see with your eyes. For, behold, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this" (2 Chronicles 29:7-9) The houses of worship were shut down, they abandoned their worship of the true God, and their wives and children were taken away and indoctrinated as pagans. This is precisely what we have let happen by giving in to secular humanism: our churches have been shut down and our families have become psychologically captivated by the dictates of secular humanism.
In the article Why bishops are wrong to allow government to dictate opening [and closing of] churches, how to receive Communion, we read -
"The oft-hailed 'principle of secularity,' whereby it is now taken for granted that civil states should be 'religiously neutral,' is scoffed at by [those who understand] that it is impossible, after the Incarnation, for peoples that have been touched by the Gospel to adopt neutrality toward the Gospel. Either their rulers will hate it, and their supposed neutrality will become a subtly effective instrument for marginalizing and privatizing religion, leading to its irrelevance and eventual extinction, or they will support it by legislation that consistently favors the interests of family and church, without which no just society can exist or endure.
"According to John Locke's influential 'Letter Concerning Toleration,' the State alone has true public jurisdiction and power, while religious bodies within the State exist and function at its sufferance and according to its regulations. The coronavirus pandemic has certainly exposed the secretly totalistic or quasi-ecclesial usurpations of our Lockean civil authorities: we see governments dictating when or how or even whether Communion can be distributed, when and under what conditions and for how many people church buildings can be opened, etc. We also see the bishops of the Church, in perfect conformity to the doctrine of Locke, submitting almost without a whimper to the total domination of the State. 'He who is not with Me is against Me,' says our Lord (Mt. 12:30)."
Toleration is the myth of modernity. It leads to a vacuous relativism that says you can believe anything in general... but nothing in particular! Having a particular set of beliefs that we cling to is considered "intolerant," so the social pressure is applied to force us to relativize our faith by agreeing that it's OK for people to believe whatever they want. "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which will devour the adversaries. A man who disregards Moses' law dies without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will he be judged worthy of, who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant with which he was sanctified an unholy thing, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?" (Hebrews 10:26-29).
What is the solution to this dilemma? "All discipline seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been exercised thereby. Therefore, lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, that that which is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed. Pursue peace with all men, and holiness without which no man will see the Lord, looking carefully lest there be any man who falls short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby the many be defiled; lest there be any sexually immoral person, or profane person, as Esau, who sold his birthright for one meal" (Hebrews 11:11-16). What are the key ideas here? "discipline," "exercise," "strengthen your feeble limbs," "holiness" (without it, we won't see the Lord!), "don't fall away from the grace of God," "don't practice sexual immorality," "don't be a glutton like Esau." Do the do's, and don't do the don't's! Put off your lazy bones, put on your sweats, get working out for the Kingdom!
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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