The Wordy Shipmates Part 1

The wordy shipmates.

by Sarah Vowell.

For Scott Seeley, Ted Thompson, and Joan Kim

But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight. . . . Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,-top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his G.o.d, and is only a patriot to heaven.

-HERMAN MELVILLE, Moby-d.i.c.k

The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.

Take the Reverend John Cotton. In 1630, he goes down to the port of Southampton to preach a farewell sermon to the seven hundred or so colonists of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company. Led by Governor John Winthrop, a gentleman farmer and lawyer, these mostly Puritan dissenters are about to sail from England to New England on the flagship Arbella Arbella and ten other vessels in the Winthrop fleet. and ten other vessels in the Winthrop fleet.

By the time Cotton says amen, he has fought Mexico for Texas, bought Alaska from the Russians, and dropped napalm on Vietnam. Then he lays a wreath on Custer's grave and revs past Wounded Knee. Then he claps when the Marquis de Lafayette tells Congress that "someday America will save the world." Then he smiles when Abraham Lincoln calls the United States "the last best hope of earth." Then he frees Cuba, which would be news to Cuba. Then he signs the lease on Guantanamo Bay.

Cotton's sermon is t.i.tled "G.o.d's Promise to His Plantation." He begins with one of the loveliest pa.s.sages from the book of Second Samuel, an otherwise R-rated chronicle of King David's serial-killer years. Chapter 7, verse 10: "I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more." Sounds so homey, like that column in the real estate section of the New York Times New York Times about how people found their apartments. Until I remember that talk like this is the match still lighting the fuses of a thousand car bombs. about how people found their apartments. Until I remember that talk like this is the match still lighting the fuses of a thousand car bombs.

What Cotton is telling these about-to-be-Americans is that they are G.o.d's new chosen people. This they like to hear. In fact, they have been telling themselves just that. The Old Testament Israelites are to the Puritans what the blues was to the Rolling Stones-a source of inspiration, a renewable resource of riffs. What Cotton is telling them is that, like the Old Testament Jews, they are men of destiny. And, like the Old Testament Jews, G.o.d has given them a new home, a promised land. And, like the Old Testament Jews, G.o.d has printed eviction notices for them to tack up on the homes of the nothing-special, just-folks folks who are squatting there.

It's fine, according to Cotton, to move into "a country not altogether void of inhabitants" if said country is really big. After all, he continues, "Abraham and Isaac, when they sojourned amongst the Philistines, they did not buy that land to feed their cattle, because they said ' There is room enough.' "

This is G.o.d's plantation, remember? Cotton says, "If G.o.d be the gardener, who shall pluck up what he sets down?" Hear that, Indians? No weeding of the white people allowed. Unless they're Catholic. Or one of those Satan-worshipping Virginians.

John Cotton is forty-six years old. He is the most respected, famous, and beloved Puritan minister in England. Getting him to bless the send-off of these relatively unimportant castaways would be like scoring Nelson Mandela to deliver the commencement address at the neighbor kid's eighth-grade graduation. In fact, once the colonists arrive in Ma.s.sachusetts they will name their settlement Boston, in honor of Cotton's hometown.

These people listening to this man are scared. There's a boat in the harbor that just might sail them to their deaths. They may never see their friends again until heaven (or h.e.l.l, depending on how this dumb plan goes). For years they've grumbled that England is a cesspool governed by an immoral king under the spell of the Wh.o.r.e of Babylon, which is their cute nickname for the pope. But now that it's time to light out, their dear old mother country seems so cozy, all warm beds and warm beer and days of auld lang syne. auld lang syne.

Yet here is the smartest man in England, maybe the smartest man in the world, telling them, little old them, that they have been picked by G.o.d. They are Israelites is what they are. They are fleeing Egypt. Good riddance! Next stop, land of milk/honey.

Now they know. They can do this. They can vomit their way across the sea. They can spend ten years digging up tree stumps to plow frozen fields. They can even learn to love corn. For the first time in months, they can breathe.

Then Cotton quotes Luke 12:48. "To whom much is given, of him G.o.d will require the more." Of course there's a catch, Spider-Man. When G.o.d is the landlord, Cotton says, "defraud him not of his rent." The price? Obedience. Break G.o.d's laws and suffer ye His wrath. The Israelites, Cotton warns, "might wrong themselves by trespa.s.sing against G.o.d, and so expose themselves to affliction. . . . If Israel will destroy themselves; the fault is in themselves." Great. All this special treatment might get them nothing more than special punishment from a creator who sure is creative when it comes to retribution-the prophet swallowed by the whale, the wife turned into salt.

Thank goodness for bees. Cotton points out that when "the hive is too full, they seek abroad for new dwellings." Keep in mind that most of the colonists fear more than a watery grave, or the dark forest ahead, or even h.e.l.l. They question their leaving. What if their sinful birthplace needs them? But Cotton rea.s.sures them that England has more than its fair share of Englishmen. He remarks that "when the hive of the Commonwealth is so full, that tradesmen cannot live one by another, but eat up one another in this case it is lawful to remove."

Here we arrive at the reason why this here tale of American Puritans is more concerned with the ones shipping off from Southampton for Ma.s.sachusetts in the Arbella Arbella in 1630 than with the Pilgrims who sailed from Southampton toward Plymouth on the in 1630 than with the Pilgrims who sailed from Southampton toward Plymouth on the Mayflower Mayflower in 1620: because the Plymouth colonists were Separatists and the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay colonists were not. in 1620: because the Plymouth colonists were Separatists and the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay colonists were not.

Before I explain that, I will say that the theological differences between the Puritans on the Mayflower Mayflower and the Puritans on the and the Puritans on the Arbella Arbella are beyond small. Try negligible to the point of nitpicky. I will also say that readers who squirm at microscopic theological differences might be unsuited to read a book about seventeenth-century Christians. Or, for that matter, a newspaper. Secular readers who marvel every morning at the death toll in the Middle East ticking ever higher due to, say, the seemingly trifling Sunni-versus-Shia rift in Islam, might look deep into their own hearts and identify their own semantic lines in the sand. For instance, a devotion to are beyond small. Try negligible to the point of nitpicky. I will also say that readers who squirm at microscopic theological differences might be unsuited to read a book about seventeenth-century Christians. Or, for that matter, a newspaper. Secular readers who marvel every morning at the death toll in the Middle East ticking ever higher due to, say, the seemingly trifling Sunni-versus-Shia rift in Islam, might look deep into their own hearts and identify their own semantic lines in the sand. For instance, a devotion to The G.o.dfather Part II The G.o.dfather Part II and equally intense disdain for and equally intense disdain for The G.o.dfather Part III. The G.o.dfather Part III. Someday they might find themselves at a bar and realize they are friends with a woman who can't tell any of the Someday they might find themselves at a bar and realize they are friends with a woman who can't tell any of the G.o.dfather G.o.dfather movies apart and asks if movies apart and asks if Part II Part II was the one that had "that guy in the boat." Them's fightin' words, right? was the one that had "that guy in the boat." Them's fightin' words, right?

Anyway, England, 1630. Question: Why is the aforementioned John Cotton standing in front of the aforementioned John Winthrop and his shipmates, watering the seeds of American exceptionalism that will, in the twenty-first century, blossom into preemptive war in the name of spreading democracy in the Middle East that temporarily unites even some factions of the aforementioned Sunni and Shia Mus lims, who hate each other's guts but agree they hate the bully America more? Answer: Because Henry VIII had a crush on a woman who was not his wife.

In order to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyn, Henry had to divorce England from Rome. When the pope, for some reason, refused to annul the marriage vows Henry made to Catherine more than two decades earlier, Henry rebelled and established himself as the head of the Church of England in 1534. This was seventeen years after Martin Luther nailed Rome's abuses by nailing his "95 theses" to a church door in Germany, thereby welcoming in the Protestant Reformation.

Luther was outraged when the pope sent emissaries up north to raise money for St. Peter's Basilica by selling "indul gences," essentially coupons a buyer could use to pay off the pope to erase sins from the Judgment Day ledger. Luther's point was that, according to Scripture, salvation is not a bake sale: "They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory." His larger message became the core ethos of Protestantism: the Bible, not any earthly pope, is the highest authority.

The word of G.o.d, not a man of G.o.d, is The Man. For that reason, Luther translated the Bible into German so Germans could read it for themselves. Which inspired various international Protestants to do the same in their own native tongues. And, in one of history's great collisions, this sixteenth-century fad for vernacular Bible translations comes about not long after Luther's countryman Johan Gutenberg had invented movable type in Europe, making it possible to print said translations on the cheap and in a hurry.

So an English subject of Henry VIII who already had a soft spot for the innovations of Luther rejoiced at the king's break with Rome (while trying not to picture Henry and Anne Boleyn doing it in every room of every castle). That is, until the Protestant sympathizer went to church and noticed that the Church of England was just the same old Catholic Church with a king in pope's clothing. Same old hierarchy of archbishop on down. Same old Latin-speaking middlemen standing between parishioners and the Bible, between parishioners and G.o.d. Same old ornamental gewgaws. Organ music! Vestments! (It is difficult to understate the Puritan abhorrence of something as seemingly trivial as a vicar's scarf.) Same old easily achieved, come-as-you-are salvation. Here's what one had to do to join the Church of England: be English. But we want getting into heaven to be hard! But we want getting into heaven to be hard! said the Puritans. said the Puritans. And not for everybody! And not for everybody!

So the English Protestants protest. One of their heroes was William Tyndale, who had exiled himself to Germany in 1524 in order to commit the crime of translating the Bible into English. Captured at Henry's request, Tyndale was strangled, then burned at the stake in 1536; his reported last words were, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!" This prayer was answered two years later when Henry commissioned the so-called Great Bible, the first official Bible in English-based largely on the translations of, guess who, William Tyndale.

In the near century between Henry's breakup with Rome and the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay colonists' departure, members of the Church of England, which is to say the English, quar reled constantly about how Protestant to become or how Catholic to remain. No surprise that the monarchs and the clergy, at the top of the cultural hierarchy, tended to be in favor of cultural hierarchy and skewed Catholic. For instance, the late King James, son of the famously Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, threatened to "harry" the Puritans out of England.

So in Southampton, when Cotton promises the colonists that where they are going "the sons of wickedness shall afflict them no more," they know he is referring to James's son, King Charles I, and his Anglican henchmen, including the Puritans' nemesis, the Bishop of London, William Laud.

One reason Winthrop and his shipmates are hitting the road in 1630 is that Charles had dissolved the Parliament, the one check on his power, the year before. The Protestant-leaning House of Commons had pa.s.sed incendiary resolutions limiting the king's powers of taxation and proclaiming the practices of "popery and Arminianism" a capital offense. Arminianism, the dogma that a believer's salvation depends merely on faith, is at odds with the Puritans' insistence that salvation is predetermined by G.o.d. Laud, a portly and haughty gentleman in a puffy robe in his National Portrait Gallery likeness, is pretty much Mr. Arminianism. It's worth remembering that, while Laud is the bogeyman in Puritan history, his more open-minded and openhearted view of how Christians get to heaven won out in Protestantism worldwide. Which is not to deny the fact that Laud was both a ruthless ogre toward the Puritans and a suck-up to Charles, delivering sermons on the divine right of kings.

(The subtext of Cotton's sermon to the voyagers is the question "Can I come, too?" Laud becomes more and more powerful and thus more threatening to Puritans. It is no coincidence that 1633, the year Laud becomes Archbishop of Canterbury, is also the year Cotton finally emigrates to Ma.s.sachusetts, where he becomes Winthrop's own minister.) Believers who wanted to "purify" the Church of England of its Catholic tendencies came to be known by the put-down "puritan." They mostly called themselves "nonconformists," or the "G.o.dly." Or, occasionally, "hot Protestants."

The more radical Puritans who severed ties to the Church of England came to be known as Separatists; they shook off all allegiance to grandiose national religion and concentrated on their own congregations, worshipping in plain, little meet inghouses. Hence the Separatists who hightailed it to Holland and then Cape Cod on the Mayflower. Mayflower. Puritans who wanted to reform the Church of England from the inside came to be known as Nonseparatists, which is to say they came to be simply unhappy. Hence, the simultaneously hopeful and guilt-ridden men and women listening to John Cotton before boarding the Puritans who wanted to reform the Church of England from the inside came to be known as Nonseparatists, which is to say they came to be simply unhappy. Hence, the simultaneously hopeful and guilt-ridden men and women listening to John Cotton before boarding the Arbella, Arbella, wondering if it is right to be abandoning England at all. wondering if it is right to be abandoning England at all.

I admire the Mayflower Mayflower Pilgrims' uncompromising resolve to make a clean break, and their fort.i.tude, so fundamental to the American national character that Sinclair Lewis called one of our core ideals "Plymouth Rock in a sleet-storm." Pilgrims' uncompromising resolve to make a clean break, and their fort.i.tude, so fundamental to the American national character that Sinclair Lewis called one of our core ideals "Plymouth Rock in a sleet-storm."

Still, I find the Arbella Arbella pa.s.sengers' qualms messier and more endearing. They were leaving for the same reasons the Pilgrims left, but they had either the modesty to feel bad about it or the charitable hypocrisy to at least pretend to. Maybe it's because I live in a world crawling with separatists that I find religious zealots with a tiny bit of wishy-washy, p.u.s.s.y-footing compromise in them deeply attractive. Plus, half the entertainment value of watching Ma.s.sachusetts Bay come to life is witnessing all the tiptoeing and deference-frequently just a pretense of deference-to the crown. Winthrop will spend most of his time as magistrate tripping all over himself to make sure King Charles doesn't get wind of any of the colony's many treasonous infractions. Because, unlike the Plymouth Separatists, the nonseparating Bostonians left England pledging to remain as English as behead ings and clotted cream. pa.s.sengers' qualms messier and more endearing. They were leaving for the same reasons the Pilgrims left, but they had either the modesty to feel bad about it or the charitable hypocrisy to at least pretend to. Maybe it's because I live in a world crawling with separatists that I find religious zealots with a tiny bit of wishy-washy, p.u.s.s.y-footing compromise in them deeply attractive. Plus, half the entertainment value of watching Ma.s.sachusetts Bay come to life is witnessing all the tiptoeing and deference-frequently just a pretense of deference-to the crown. Winthrop will spend most of his time as magistrate tripping all over himself to make sure King Charles doesn't get wind of any of the colony's many treasonous infractions. Because, unlike the Plymouth Separatists, the nonseparating Bostonians left England pledging to remain as English as behead ings and clotted cream.

In fact, Winthrop and six of the highest-ranking officers of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company sent an open letter to the king and the Church of England before their departure in 1630 t.i.tled " The Humble Request." They beseeched His Majesty and their countrymen for "their prayers, and the removal of suspicions, and misconstructions of their intentions." The Church of England is especially cajoled as "our dear mother," whom they bid adieu with "much sadness of heart and many tears in our eyes, ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salvation we have received in her bosom, and sucked it from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s." (Cotton will pick up on this mammary metaphor in his farewell sermon, reminding the colonists not to forget England, "the breast that gave them suck.") " The Humble Request" is so servile it boils down to this panicky appeal: Nothing uppity about us, Your Majesty, we're just hobos in the woods! Nothing uppity about us, Your Majesty, we're just hobos in the woods! To hammer home the image of themselves as unthreatening and pitiable, they remind the king and his bishops that "we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness." To hammer home the image of themselves as unthreatening and pitiable, they remind the king and his bishops that "we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness."

In private, however, Winthrop will soon tell his fellow colonists the very opposite. "We shall be as a city upon a hill," he says.

In "G.o.d's Promise to His Plantation," when John Cotton tells the seafarers before him that their exodus is as natural as a bee ditching a cramped hive, it is an act of kindness, especially to John Winthrop. Not all of Winthrop's old comrades have been so quick with a bon voyage. bon voyage. When he asked his friend Robert Reyce for advice on whether or not to emigrate, Reyce sent him a churlish warning not to, starting with the fact that, at the age of forty-two, Winthrop was too d.a.m.n old. "Plantations are for young men," Reyce wrote, "that can endure all pains and hunger. . . . But for one of your years to undertake so large a task is seldom seen but to miscarry." He added that the scheme would ruin Winthrop's family, and that even on the off chance his ship avoids shipwreck, he'll live across the sea on the dole, forever dependent on England "for supplies." (It must have taken all of Winthrop's considerable restraint not to ship Reyce a boat-load of so-there! corn upon Boston's first harvest.) Finally, Reyce tries to dissuade Winthrop with the wilderness's shocking lack of reading material, carping, "How hard will it be for one brought up among books and learned men, to live in a barbarous place, where is no learning and less civility?" When he asked his friend Robert Reyce for advice on whether or not to emigrate, Reyce sent him a churlish warning not to, starting with the fact that, at the age of forty-two, Winthrop was too d.a.m.n old. "Plantations are for young men," Reyce wrote, "that can endure all pains and hunger. . . . But for one of your years to undertake so large a task is seldom seen but to miscarry." He added that the scheme would ruin Winthrop's family, and that even on the off chance his ship avoids shipwreck, he'll live across the sea on the dole, forever dependent on England "for supplies." (It must have taken all of Winthrop's considerable restraint not to ship Reyce a boat-load of so-there! corn upon Boston's first harvest.) Finally, Reyce tries to dissuade Winthrop with the wilderness's shocking lack of reading material, carping, "How hard will it be for one brought up among books and learned men, to live in a barbarous place, where is no learning and less civility?"

Not so hard, it turns out. Winthrop and his shipmates and their children and their children's children just wrote their own books and pretty much kept their noses in them up until the day G.o.d created the Red Sox. One of the Puritans' descendants, Ralph Waldo Emerson of Concord, embodied the wordy tradition pa.s.sed down to him when he announced, "The art of writing is the highest of those permitted to man." As the twentieth-century critic F. O. Mat thiessen would complain of Emerson's bookish bent, "It can remind you of the bias of provincial New England, whose higher culture had been so exclusively one of books that it had grown incapable even of appraising the worth of other modes of expression."

The United States is often called a Puritan nation. Well, here is one way in which it emphatically is not: Puritan lives were overwhelmingly, fanatically literary. Their single-minded obsession with one book, the Bible, made words the center of their lives-not land, not money, not power, not fun. I swear on Peter Stuyvesant's peg leg that the country that became the U.S. bears a closer family resemblance to the devil-may-care merchants of New Amsterdam than it does to Boston's communitarian English majors.

History is written by the writers. The quill-crazy New Englanders left behind libraries full of statements of purpose in the form of letters, sermons, court transcripts, and diaries. Most of what we know about the history of early New England is lifted straight out of Winthrop's wonderful journal and William Bradford's also wonderful Of Plymouth Plantation. Of Plymouth Plantation.

The seventeenth-century Puritans are seen as the ancestors of today's anti-intellectual Protestant sects-probably because of high school productions of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, The Crucible, a fictionalization of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, an exercise in stupidity that took place more than forty years after John Winthrop's death. In fact, today's evangelicals owe more to the Great Awakening revival movement of the eighteenth century, in which a believer's pa.s.sion and feelings came to trump book learning. Subsequent Great Awakening sequels over the next two centuries brought forth recent innovations, including the ecstatic outbursts known as speaking in tongues. a fictionalization of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, an exercise in stupidity that took place more than forty years after John Winthrop's death. In fact, today's evangelicals owe more to the Great Awakening revival movement of the eighteenth century, in which a believer's pa.s.sion and feelings came to trump book learning. Subsequent Great Awakening sequels over the next two centuries brought forth recent innovations, including the ecstatic outbursts known as speaking in tongues.

There wasn't any speaking in tongues going on in Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, unless you count cla.s.sical Greek. The Puritans had barely nailed together their rickety cabins when they founded Harvard so their future clergymen could receive proper theological training in Hebrew and other biblical languages.

The magnitude of the Puritan devotion to higher education is on display in a letter Reverend Thomas Shepard, Jr., wrote to his son upon the lad's admission to Harvard. (The elder Shepard was a graduate of Harvard's cla.s.s of 1653.) The father is full of advice on how his son can be a better student-read history for wisdom and poetry for wit, admit when he doesn't understand something, etc. But Shepard's note is not so much a letter to his son as a love letter to learning, expressing how he hopes the boy will approach his studies "with an appet.i.te." He continues, "So I say to you read! Read! Something will stick in the mind, be diligent and good will come of it." Then he signs the letter "Pater tuus"-"your father," in Latin.

Perry Miller, a Harvard professor who became the twentieth century's preeminent Puritan scholar, wrote: Puritanism was not an anti-intellectual fundamentalism; it was a learned, scholarly movement that required on the part of the leaders, and as much as possible from the followers, not only knowledge but a respect for the cultural heritage. Being good cla.s.sicists, they read Latin and Greek poetry, and tried their hands at composing verses of their own. The amount they wrote, even amid the labor of settling a wilderness, is astonishing.

One of the Puritans' descendants, future president John Adams, studied at Harvard under Professor John Winthrop, our Winthrop's great-great-grandson. Writing the const.i.tution for the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts in 1778, Adams included a paragraph ent.i.tled " The Encouragement of Literature, Etc.," which, his recent biographer David McCullough points out, "was like no other declaration to be found in any const.i.tution ever written until then, or since." It reads: Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates in all future periods of this commonwealth to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them, especially the university at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns; to encourage private societies and public inst.i.tutions, rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings, sincerity, good humor, and all social affections, and generous sentiments among the people.

"It was, in all," writes McCullough, "a declaration of Adams's faith in education as the bulwark of the good society, the old abiding faith of his Puritan forebears." Compare that lovely insight to the typical Puritan spoilsport cartoon.

Like any other American educated in public schools, my youthful encounters with New England colonials focused on Plymouth in 1620 and Salem in 1692. Which is to say that I read The Crucible The Crucible in eleventh grade and I partic.i.p.ated in elementary school Thanksgiving pageants in which children wearing construction-paper Pilgrim hats linked arms with others wearing Indian costumes consisting entirely of gift-shop souvenir Sioux headdresses and sang "G.o.d Bless America" and " This land was made for you and me." in eleventh grade and I partic.i.p.ated in elementary school Thanksgiving pageants in which children wearing construction-paper Pilgrim hats linked arms with others wearing Indian costumes consisting entirely of gift-shop souvenir Sioux headdresses and sang "G.o.d Bless America" and " This land was made for you and me."

But really, as a child I learned almost everything I knew about American history in general and British colonials in particular from watching television situation comedies. The first time I realized this, I was attending a wedding in London. A friend of the groom's, an English novelist, cornered my American friend and me and asked us to name the British general from the Revolutionary War whom Americans hate the most. He needed one of the American characters in the novel he was working on to mention in pa.s.sing our most loathed Redcoat foe.

"Um, maybe Cornwallis?" I said, adding that we don't really know the names of any of the British except for the American traitor Benedict Arnold.

When the novelist asked why that was, my friend answered, "Because The Brady Bunch The Brady Bunch did an episode about him. Peter Brady had to play Benedict Arnold in a school play." did an episode about him. Peter Brady had to play Benedict Arnold in a school play."

True, I thought. The Bradys also taught us that the Robin Hood-like Jesse James was actually a serial killer; that the ancient indigenous religious culture of the Hawaiian Islands is not to be messed with; and that the Plymouth Pilgrims had a bleak first winter that was almost as treacherous to live through as that time Marcia got bonked in the face with her brothers' football and her nose swelled up right before a big date.

In fact, the Brady Bunch Brady Bunch Puritan episode is an educational twofer. Because its premise involves Greg Brady shooting a movie about the Puritan episode is an educational twofer. Because its premise involves Greg Brady shooting a movie about the Mayflower Mayflower Pilgrims using his family as actors, the viewer can learn about the hardships of colonial New England while at the same time learning about the hardships of directing an independent film. Greg's parents and the housekeeper, Alice, give too many notes on his screenplay. His brothers only want to play Indians, and all three of his bickering sisters demand to play the role of the Puritan girl Priscilla Alden. So Greg lets loose a tirade about artistic vision. He yells, "I want to write my own screenplay, design my own sets, choose my costumes, and pick the actors. Don't you see it's my project?" Pilgrims using his family as actors, the viewer can learn about the hardships of colonial New England while at the same time learning about the hardships of directing an independent film. Greg's parents and the housekeeper, Alice, give too many notes on his screenplay. His brothers only want to play Indians, and all three of his bickering sisters demand to play the role of the Puritan girl Priscilla Alden. So Greg lets loose a tirade about artistic vision. He yells, "I want to write my own screenplay, design my own sets, choose my costumes, and pick the actors. Don't you see it's my project?"

Greg's final product is full of factual holes-like the offhand remark alluding to the so-called first Thanksgiving that "the Pilgrims made friends with the Indians and invited them to a feast," when it was actually the Indians who taught the agriculturally challenged Englishmen how to plant corn in the first place. But there is one interesting exchange that's a pretty accurate picture of a child coming to terms with American history.

Bobby and Peter, who have agreed to play Pilgrims in some scenes and Indians in others, are dressed up in kitschy Plains Indian-type garb. When Greg asks them if they know what to do, Peter answers, "Yeah, attack the fort." When Greg and their mother point out that these are friendly Indians, so there won't be an attack, Bobby asks, " Then what do you need Indians for?"

"Bobby, the Indians were friendly at first," says Mr. Brady. " They didn't start fighting until their land was taken away."

Bobby: "You mean the Pilgrims took away all the Indians' land?"

" That's right," answers Mr. Brady, who immediately looks regretful at this point-blank lapse of patriotic-forefather boosterism and adds, "Uh, well, at first they didn't take much of it."

"Then how about not much of an attack?" cracks Peter. And that's the end of the original sin question. After all, they have bigger logistical headaches at hand, like creating a realistic snowstorm using a box of breakfast cereal operated by one of the decidedly nonunion kid brothers.

From Mr. Ed Mr. Ed to to The Simpsons, The Simpsons, there are actually a surprising number of sitcoms that have done episodes set in seventeenth-century New England. Even though seventeenth-century New England is all situation and no comedy. there are actually a surprising number of sitcoms that have done episodes set in seventeenth-century New England. Even though seventeenth-century New England is all situation and no comedy.

I was in third grade when I saw the Happy Days Happy Days Thanksgiving episode. The whole cast was in Puritan garb. Joanie Cunningham complains that "being a Pilgrim sure is a draggeth." The Fonz says things like "Greetethamundo." Here is the moment that inspired the first epiphany I ever had about colonial New England: Joanie leaves the room and her goody-goody brother Richie asks, "Father, are you letting her go out like that? Have you seen her skirt? It's up to her ankles!" I remember sitting there watching that and realizing, for the first of many times, " Thanksgiving episode. The whole cast was in Puritan garb. Joanie Cunningham complains that "being a Pilgrim sure is a draggeth." The Fonz says things like "Greetethamundo." Here is the moment that inspired the first epiphany I ever had about colonial New England: Joanie leaves the room and her goody-goody brother Richie asks, "Father, are you letting her go out like that? Have you seen her skirt? It's up to her ankles!" I remember sitting there watching that and realizing, for the first of many times, "Oh. Maybe the people who founded this country were kind of crazy." Maybe the people who founded this country were kind of crazy."

Later in the episode it is revealed that the person who gave us Thanksgiving was not Squanto or Plymouth governor William Bradford but rather the Fonz. All the Pilgrims were afraid of the Indians except Pilgrim Fonzie, who was their friend. Then Joanie gets her foot caught in one of Potsy's stupid beaver traps. (That Potsy.) Remember that thing Fonzie does with the jukebox? Where he whacks it with his fist and the music plays? Turns out that works on beaver traps, too. They open right up. But he won't free Joanie until everyone renounces their racism and acts nice to the Indians and invites them to dinner. Fonzie? He's the Martin Luther King of candied yams.

Mostly, sitcom Puritans are rendered in the tone I like to call the Boy, people used to be so stupid Boy, people used to be so stupid school of history. school of history. Bewitched Bewitched produced not one but two time-travel witch trial episodes-one for each Darrin. They're both diatribes about tolerance straight out of produced not one but two time-travel witch trial episodes-one for each Darrin. They're both diatribes about tolerance straight out of The Crucible, The Crucible, but with cornier dialogue and magical nose crinkles. The housewife/witch Samantha brings a ballpoint pen with her to seventeenth-century Salem and the townspeople think it's an instrument of black magic. So they try her for witchcraft and want to hang her. but with cornier dialogue and magical nose crinkles. The housewife/witch Samantha brings a ballpoint pen with her to seventeenth-century Salem and the townspeople think it's an instrument of black magic. So they try her for witchcraft and want to hang her.

Check out those barbarian idiots with their c.o.c.kamamie farce of a legal system, locking people up for fishy reasons and putting their criminals to death. Good thing Americans put an end to all that nonsense long ago.

My point being, the amateur historian's next stop after Boy, people used to be so stupid Boy, people used to be so stupid is is People: still stupid. People: still stupid. I could look at that realization as a woeful lack of human progress. But I choose to find it rea.s.suring. Watching I could look at that realization as a woeful lack of human progress. But I choose to find it rea.s.suring. Watching Bewitched Bewitched and and The Brady Bunch The Brady Bunch again, I was flummoxed as to why they made such a big deal about again, I was flummoxed as to why they made such a big deal about Mayflower Mayflower voyagers John and Priscilla Alden. Then I figured out that those two once loomed so large in the American mind mostly because schoolchildren used to spend every November reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1858 love-triangle poem about the Aldens called " The Courtship of Miles Standish." The poem is full of all kinds of hooey, like calling Alden a scholar, even though in real life he was the guy on the voyagers John and Priscilla Alden. Then I figured out that those two once loomed so large in the American mind mostly because schoolchildren used to spend every November reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1858 love-triangle poem about the Aldens called " The Courtship of Miles Standish." The poem is full of all kinds of hooey, like calling Alden a scholar, even though in real life he was the guy on the Mayflower Mayflower the Pilgrims hired as their barrel maker. Basically, he was in charge of the beer. And we should expect nothing less from Longfellow, who also poetically pumped up the importance of Paul Revere. There isn't that much difference between tall tales that start "Listen, my children, and you shall hear" and "Here's the story of a man named Brady." In other words, Americans have learned our history from exaggerated popular art for as long as anyone can remember. Revolutionary War soldiers were probably singing fun but inaccurate folk songs about those silly Puritans to warm themselves by the fire at Valley Forge. Right before they defeated that G.o.dforsaken General Cornwallis, of course. Man, I hate that guy. the Pilgrims hired as their barrel maker. Basically, he was in charge of the beer. And we should expect nothing less from Longfellow, who also poetically pumped up the importance of Paul Revere. There isn't that much difference between tall tales that start "Listen, my children, and you shall hear" and "Here's the story of a man named Brady." In other words, Americans have learned our history from exaggerated popular art for as long as anyone can remember. Revolutionary War soldiers were probably singing fun but inaccurate folk songs about those silly Puritans to warm themselves by the fire at Valley Forge. Right before they defeated that G.o.dforsaken General Cornwallis, of course. Man, I hate that guy.

A search through a sampling of American newspapers from the last few weeks for the word "Puritan" yields the following. An article on how much baby boomers are looking forward to retirement because they've always rolled their eyes at the "Puritan work ethic" since their turn on/ drop out youths and thus can't wait to spend their golden years traveling, volunteering, playing golf, and farming-the article really did say farming, which, I hate to break it to the flower children, is a pretty hard job. A financial a.n.a.lyst, speaking of a recent crackdown on mortgage lending, opines, " The transition from drunken sailor to being a Puritan was awfully fast." A profile of painter turned filmmaker Julian Schnabel claims "Puritan critics" always looked down on the artist's charismatic joie de vivre. A sports columnist waxes happily that the national ardor for athletic events holds together our otherwise "fragmented society" in spite of "our Puritan forefathers' deep distrust of any kind of play." search through a sampling of American newspapers from the last few weeks for the word "Puritan" yields the following. An article on how much baby boomers are looking forward to retirement because they've always rolled their eyes at the "Puritan work ethic" since their turn on/ drop out youths and thus can't wait to spend their golden years traveling, volunteering, playing golf, and farming-the article really did say farming, which, I hate to break it to the flower children, is a pretty hard job. A financial a.n.a.lyst, speaking of a recent crackdown on mortgage lending, opines, " The transition from drunken sailor to being a Puritan was awfully fast." A profile of painter turned filmmaker Julian Schnabel claims "Puritan critics" always looked down on the artist's charismatic joie de vivre. A sports columnist waxes happily that the national ardor for athletic events holds together our otherwise "fragmented society" in spite of "our Puritan forefathers' deep distrust of any kind of play."

I'm always disappointed when I see the word "Puritan" tossed around as shorthand for a bunch of generic, boring, stupid, judgmental killjoys. Because to me, they are very specific, fascinating, sometimes brilliant, judgmental killjoys who rarely agreed on anything except that Catholics are going to h.e.l.l.

Certainly the Puritans believed and said and did many unreasonable things. That kind of goes with the territory of being born before the Age of Reason. Ponder all the c.o.c.kamamie notions we moderns have been spared simply by coming into this world after an apple conked Sir Isaac Newton in the head.

The Puritans' yearning for knowledge, especially their establishment of a college so early on, was self-correcting. In fact, it is Puritan father John Winthrop's great-great-grandson, the Harvard scientist who taught John Adams, who would be nicknamed the father of seismology. (After an earthquake shook Boston in 1755 and prompted the usual religious flip-outs about the wrath of G.o.d, Professor Winthrop delivered an influential lecture at Harvard proposing the earthquake might have been caused by heat and pressure below the surface of the earth. With G.o.d's help, of course, but G.o.d comes off as an engineer instead of a hothead vigilante.)

This book is about those Puritans who fall between the cracks of 1620 Plymouth and 1692 Salem, the ones who settled the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony and then Rhode Island during what came to be called the Great Migration. (Between 1629, when King Charles I dissolves the Puritan-friendly English Parliament, and 1640, when the English Civil War begins and the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell eventually behead Charles and run the country, more than 20,000 English men, women, and children settled in New England.) I am concentrating primarily on the words written or spoken during the Great Migration era by the Puritans of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony (mostly John Winthrop and John Cotton) and those of two exiles, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, who went on to found settlements in Rhode Island after Winthrop and his fellow magistrates kicked them out of Ma.s.sachusetts. Because, despite the gallingly voluminous quant.i.ty of their scribblings and the court records of their squabbles, nowadays the founders of New England are more or less mute.

Most college-educated American citizens can cough up a line or two from the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln. However, among my friends who are fortyish or younger, the only direct quote from seventeenth-century Ma.s.sachusetts I could get was from my friend Daniel. He knows that when Salem's Giles Corey refused to testify when accused of witchcraft, the magistrates piled rocks on top of his body to try and persuade him, until he was pressed to death. What Corey said to his tormentors-"More weight!"-is Daniel's name for his computer's hard drive.

The most important reason I am concentrating on Winthrop and his shipmates in the 1630s is that the country I live in is haunted by the Puritans' vision of themselves as G.o.d's chosen people, as a beacon of righteousness that all others are to admire. The most obvious and influential example of that mind-set is John Winthrop's sermon "A Model of Christian Charity," in which he calls on New England to be "as a city upon a hill." The most ironic and entertaining example of that mind-set is the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony's official seal. The seal, which the Winthrop fleet brought with them from England, pictures an Indian in a loincloth holding a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. Words are coming out of his mouth. The Indian says, "Come over and help us."

That is really what it says.

The worldview behind that motto-we're here to help, whether you want our help or not-is the Ma.s.sachusetts Puritans' most enduring bequest to the future United States. And like everything the Puritans believed, it is derived from Scripture. In Acts, chapter 16, one night the Apostle Paul has a vision. In the vision, a Macedonian man appears and tells him, "Come over into Macedonia, and help us." So Paul heads west.

So westward sails the Arbella Arbella in 1630. And then one night almost three centuries later President William McKinley will pray to G.o.d and G.o.d will tell him to help the Filipinos by Christianizing them (even though they have been Catholics for two hundred years), "and the next morning," he says, "I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department (our mapmaker) and told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States." So westward sail the gunboats toward Manila Bay. And then in the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy, believing that the United States must "bear the burden . . . of helping freedom defend itself," invades Vietnam; otherwise, he explains, "if we stop helping them, they will become ripe for internal subversion and a Communist take-over." So westward sail the aircraft carriers toward Saigon Harbor. And then, because the U.S. will keep on going west to help people until we're going east, the warships and the F-117 stealth fighters hurry toward the Persian Gulf. On March 19, 2003, President George W. Bush announced that "American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." Five days earlier, Vice President d.i.c.k Cheney appeared on in 1630. And then one night almost three centuries later President William McKinley will pray to G.o.d and G.o.d will tell him to help the Filipinos by Christianizing them (even though they have been Catholics for two hundred years), "and the next morning," he says, "I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department (our mapmaker) and told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States." So westward sail the gunboats toward Manila Bay. And then in the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy, believing that the United States must "bear the burden . . . of helping freedom defend itself," invades Vietnam; otherwise, he explains, "if we stop helping them, they will become ripe for internal subversion and a Communist take-over." So westward sail the aircraft carriers toward Saigon Harbor. And then, because the U.S. will keep on going west to help people until we're going east, the warships and the F-117 stealth fighters hurry toward the Persian Gulf. On March 19, 2003, President George W. Bush announced that "American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." Five days earlier, Vice President d.i.c.k Cheney appeared on Meet the Press Meet the Press and his words redrew the seal of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony, replacing the Indian with a citizen of Baghdad, begging, "Come over and help us." Of the American invasion, Cheney claimed, "My belief is that we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." After all, we're there to help. and his words redrew the seal of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony, replacing the Indian with a citizen of Baghdad, begging, "Come over and help us." Of the American invasion, Cheney claimed, "My belief is that we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." After all, we're there to help.

In the present-day United States, the Ma.s.sachusetts Puritans' laughable, naive, and self-aggrandizing idea that they were leaving England partly to come over and help American Indians who were simply begging for their a.s.sistance has won out over the Founding Fathers' philosophy of not firing shots in other countries' wars. In his 1801 inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson argued for "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none."

During the 2008 presidential primaries, the one candidate who brought up that Jefferson quote was outsider Con gressman Ron Paul, who equated being in favor of the war in Iraq with disagreeing with the Founders. "Since so many apparently now believe Washington and Jefferson were wrong on the critical matter of foreign policy," he said, "they should at least have the intellectual honesty to admit it." This sort of talk did not endear Paul to Republican primary voters.

Let's return to the coast of England in 1630 as John Cotton preaches to the Winthrop fleet. Cotton would have been aware of the pros-and-cons list Winthrop and his fellows in the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company wrote and pa.s.sed around among the G.o.dly, enumerating the reasons to go to America. In the various similar versions of this tract, Winthrop and Co. are trying to talk themselves and other potential colonists into going; but just as importantly, they're also trying to justify the venture to loved ones they're leaving behind, the family and friends who have a right to feel hurt if not downright insulted by this abandonment.

Two things especially weigh on Winthrop and his shipmates-news from Europe and news at home. Over the previous dozen years, continental Catholics and Protestants had been killing each other relentlessly, from Sweden to Spain, from France to Bohemia, in what came to be known as the Thirty Years' War. (As much as a fifth of the population of what would become Germany died.) The English couldn't help but worry the war would spread across the Channel. As Thomas Hooker would preach not long after the Arbella Arbella sailed: sailed: Will you have England destroyed? Will you put the aged to trouble, and your young men to the sword? Will you have your young women widows, and your virgins defiled? Will you have your dear and tender little ones tossed upon the pikes and dashed upon the stones? Or will you have them brought up in Popery . . . perishing their souls forever, which is worst of all? . . . Will you see England laid waste without inhabitants?

After Charles I dissolved Parliament in 1629, Winthrop became convinced England was courting the wrath of G.o.d. He wrote a letter to his wife, Margaret, confessing that he feared that since G.o.d had already made the European Protestants "drink of the bitter cup of tribulation," the unrepentant English would surely be served "the very dregs." He continued, "G.o.d will bring some heavy affliction upon this land, and that speedily." And so, he told Margaret about escaping to America, "If the Lord sees it will be good for us, he will provide a shelter and a hiding place for us and others."

The tract about the pros and cons of emigration that Winthrop wrote, most likely together with the Puritan ministers John White and Francis Higginson, was given the catchy t.i.tle Reasons to Be Considered for Justifying the Undertakers of the Intended Plantation in New England, and for Encouraging Such Whose Hearts G.o.d Shall Move to Join with Them in It. Reasons to Be Considered for Justifying the Undertakers of the Intended Plantation in New England, and for Encouraging Such Whose Hearts G.o.d Shall Move to Join with Them in It. It is a handy, albeit touchy, account of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company's objectives in the New World, and objections to the Old. Clearly, they believe England is in trouble, if not doomed. " The departing of good people from a country does not cause a judgment," they write, "but warns of it." It is a handy, albeit touchy, account of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company's objectives in the New World, and objections to the Old. Clearly, they believe England is in trouble, if not doomed. " The departing of good people from a country does not cause a judgment," they write, "but warns of it."

Again, Hooker, who would echo this run-for-your-lives sentiment before taking off for America via Holland: So glory is departed from England; for England hath seen her best days, and the reward of sin is coming on apace; for G.o.d is packing up of his gospel, because none will buy his wares. . . . G.o.d begins to ship away his Noahs, which prophesied and foretold that destruction was near; and G.o.d makes account that New England shall be a refuge for his Noahs and his Lots, a rock and a shelter for his righteous ones to run unto; and those that were vexed to see the unG.o.dly lives of the people in this wicked land, shall there be safe.

Honestly, I wish I weren't so moved by this Puritan quandary. I wish I did not identify with their essential questions: What if my country is destroying itself? Could I leave? Should I? And if so, what time's the next train to Montreal?

Well, maybe not Montreal. The first reason Winthrop's pros-and-cons tract gives for crossing the Atlantic is to build a Protestant New England as an antidote to Catholic New France, to "raise a bulwark against the kingdom of Antichrist, which the Jesuits labor to rear up in those parts." Antichrist, by the way, is another name they call the pope.

Their other arguments for getting gone? Overpopulation ("England grows weary of her inhabitants"); the universities at Oxford and Cambridge are "corrupted" and "ruffianlike" and cost too much; G.o.d gave the Indians land and they aren't really using it (no cattle); the Indians can "learn from us" about G.o.d (and, presumably, cattle); they will avoid hard times like the recent drought in Virginia (known as "the starving time") because, unlike the Virginians, they are neither "sloth" nor "sc.u.m"; and, regarding Ma.s.sachusetts, "G.o.d hath consumed the natives with a great plague in those parts, so as there be few inhabitants left."

I take back what I said about how there's nothing more dangerous than a belief. Sometimes there's nothing more dangerous than a germ.

"From 1492 to 1650, contagions claimed as many as nine [native] lives out of ten. . . . The kingdom of death extended from Chile to Newfoundland." I saw those words printed next to a map of North and South America when I visited the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. The map is black and white but it has a red light on a timer inside, so the Americas turn bloodier and bloodier all day long, like some kind of lava lamp of loss.