Most
of the early settlers came to America because there was no opportunity
and no work for them back home. They wanted the chance to own and farm
their own land instead of working as .serfs (or sharecroppers). Many came
to escape the wars and religious strife. Thousands of Englishmen and women
migrated to North America after 1610, making the Jamestown Colony and
surrounding area a thriving community long before the pilgrims landed
at Plymouth Rock on December 21, 1620. By the time of the American Revolution.
Virginia had grown to an enormous size (five or six times bigger than
the State of Virginia today).
Although a great deal of mythology is attached to the Pilgrims' landing
at Plymouth, it was actually a rather insignificant event that had little
to do with the colonization of America. According to Pete Skirbunt, "The
Pilgrims...were 102 people who sailed from England. Of these, only 35
were actually seeking religious freedom. They were 'Separatists' from
the Church of England. The others, called 'Strangers,' simply wanted to
leave England for a variety of reasons and start life over in America."
(By the way, "Pilgrim" is just a name that was applied some
170 years later to the first groups of Puritan migrants) The Puritans
were fanatics, as exemplified by the Salem Witch Trials. Although quick
to criticize the morals and work ethics of others, they gave no evidence
of being any more productive or prosperous than anyone else. In fact,
quite the opposite is true. They arrived in New England on the first day
of winter, totally un-cquipped to survive in the wilderness. The Pilgrims
were focused on their religion; they weren't farmers and they were not
great hunters or fishermen; but they were determined. Apparently, they
survived the first winter by finding and stealing caches of food the Indians
had put away for themselves. It is quite possible that the Indians showed
the Pilgrims how to grow corn and to fish and hunt for themselves just
to keep them from stealing their food (what else could they do, kill them?).
Thanksgiving celebrates the meeting of these two cultures but in truth.
Thanksgiving speaks more to the humanity and generosity of America's native
Indians. Inviting the Indians to dinner to share their first Harvest was
the Pilgrims' way of thanking them for teaching them how to feed themselves.
However, the Pilgrims don't seem to have been fast learners, and they
may not have wanted to do more than feed themselves and pray — in
general, the Plymouth colon)' did not prosper, compared to other colonies,
and by 1629 it was on the verge of collapsing when the Massachusetts Bay
Company took control and put the Pilgrims to work building ships, and
fishing. So that, in a sense, it was hemp that saved them, too.)
The reason the Puritans did not face the same discrimination in America
as they did in England was that religion, particularly organized religion
(the Church), was much less important in the colonies. There were, of
course, plenty of churches and congregations supporting them, but those
were almost entirely in well -established communities, not on the Western
frontier (which was not very far "West" at that time). Actually,
most colonial Americans were not all that religious. They were not regular
church goers, and they were not forced to leave England or Europe in order
to be free to express their religious beliefs — to the contrary,
many of them came to America in part to escape the imposition of religion
in their lives.
Yes, the 35 Pilgrims and the religious cults that followed them were
a small minority of the 11,000-plus other colonists.18 The rapid colonization
of America was driven by something other than religion. And rapid it was:
from slightly over 4,000 Europeans in 1620, America grew six-fold to 24,000
by 1640. then doubled by a decade later, then doubled again by 1670 and
again by 1690, to a population of 192,000. All but a small minority of
these 17th-century colonists were Protestants — the dominant religion
in both England and colonial America. These were the same Protestants
who, only decades earlier, had made life miserable for Catholics, Puritans,
Quakers and others, forcing them out of England. Religious freedom was
not a primary motivating factor for the overwhelming majority of American
colonists.
Life was hard and most of the colonists were single young men. who spent
nearly all their time on the farm or on the outskirts of civilization,
trying to eke out a living by trapping, or trading with the Indians. They
rarely saw a white woman, and they drank large quantities of beer, rum,
wine and hard cider (partly because much of the water and [unpasteurized]
milk was not safe to drink, and coffee [first introduced in the colonies
in the 1660s] and tea were either too expensive or not available at all).
Even the Pilgrims apparently drank beer.
"Aboard ship [the Mayflower], the voyagers ate bread, biscuits,
pudding, cheese, crackers, and dried meats and fruits. Instead of water,
they brought barrels of beer — a standard practice in the days before
refrigeration, because beer remained potable longer than water."
The general belief in colonial America was in an "almighty God,"
but there was widespread skepticism about organized religion, which was
considered a real social threat — especially with the memories of
the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials still fresh in people's
minds. Most colonists, including most of America's founding fathers (including
Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Samuel and John Adams) disassociated
themselves from organised religion and referred to themselves as "Deists"
— not Protestants, Catholics or anything else. Deists were freethinkers
of the 17th and 18th centuries, who felt that their belief in God was
compatible with the rationalism of the "Enlightened Age." They
held that one's belief in God should be a personal rather than public
matter, and they believed that morality was derived from natural law.
not from revelation "Deists," today, are generally known as
"Agnostics." Apparently, the colonial era "Deists"
didn't feel threatened enough by organized religion to pass laws restricting
the practice of any religious belief — perhaps because they, along
with the outright atheists, were in the overwhelming majority.
Unfortunately, many religious cults, and many quite fanatical ones, established
churches in colonial America — churches that not only demanded their
followers live according to their teachings but that sought to impose
their will on the surrounding communities, as well. Push came to shove
when a number of town councils, dominated by church members, passed laws
that imposed additional taxes intended to financially support the local
church. Forcing people to support the church through taxes outraged the
majority of colonists and reaffirmed their skepticism and/or resentment
of religious influence. Organized religion came under heavy public criticism,
exemplified by Thomas Paine's very popular and often quoted book. The
A$c of Reason. (Too bad Paine did not have greater success: We still suffer
from the imposition of extreme moralistic views, including when it comes
to the question of recreational intoxicants.)
This encroachment by the church may well have been the primary reason
America's founding fathers included the concept of separation of church
and state in the Constitution. Constitutional scholars have variously
framed the intent of the First Amendment as either to protect religious
people From government, or to protect government from religious people
However, since the constitution only speaks of the rights of the people
— not the government's rights or religious rights — it is
far more likely that the actual intent was to protect the American people
from being dominated by organized religion, any religion.
According to the first official census (1790), when the Constitution
was debated (1787) there were approximately four million people in colonial
America, with a variety of religious backgrounds. It would have been impossible
for the founding fathers to officially sanction any one religion for the
whole nation — the Constitution never would have been ratified.
In fact, chances are that a civil war would have broken out. Including
the separation of church and state as part of the constitution reflected
a "live-and-let-live" philosophy. It also ended the ability
of the church to impose taxes, and it diminished the church's influence
on the society.
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