Dienstag, 1. Mai 2007

Session II - May 2, 2007 - The City upon a Hill...will fall

To begin with - a link, namely to the library tutorial you need to sign up for some time over the next few weeks...
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The class! On Columbus...and the Puritans...and Apocalypse!


The header for the day was -

The Apocalyptic Inception of American Literature

- I wouldn't want to push the point too far, but it's remarkable at least that the Puritans were not just happ-go-lightly nation builders who went to the new world because in the old world realty was really too expensive to build the site for a decent dissident community.

Once again, we started with John, the apocalyptist -

John, as we have seen in the excerpts we read is very specific that what he is preaching about is immanent, it must soon come to pass –

(Revelation 1.1) – The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.


This was written some 1.900 years ago. No matter how much time is passing since the original Apocalypse/Revelation, the apocalypse-event is always immanent and about to pass – and if it is not yet, the believer must do his or her best to bring it about, to work for the apocalypse.

This mission – to bring about the apocalypse as a way to end history – pops up time and again throughout the development of Western civilization, and often it is taken up by thinkers or scientists or explorers who we explicitly think of as really modern and ultimately important for the development of modern civilization.

Isaac Newton (1643-1727) is one of these – one of the greatest scientists of modernity, he formulated, among other things, the general law of gravitation. Less known is the fact that he invested an awful lot of time and space on religious writings – and he concentrated largely on apocalyptic prophecy. Once again, apocalypse and prophecy become ways to approach the historical timeline – looking back on history, Newton thought, the prophecies of the book of Revelation and the book of Daniel would help make sense of the contents of history -


God gave the prophecies, not to gratify men's curiosity by enabling them to fore know things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and His own providence, not the interpreter’s, be thereby manifested to the world. (Newton)


His work on The Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John was finally published in 1733, six years after his death.

While Newton’s apocalyptic take on history was reactive, you might say, taking it in an retrospective act to create an understanding of history, the reverse might be said about Christopher Columbus – his voyages to the Americas had the aim not only of expanding Spain’s sphere of influence but also, implicitly, of raising money and gold for a final crusade into the Middle East to regain Jerusalem. This, he thought, would happen under the leadership of one last world king reigning over the final age of planet earth, and that king would have to be Spanish, of course. He compiled a host of apocalyptic prophecies into one book, the Book of Prophecies, and used it to advertise his travels at the Spanish court, in order to raise money. When his ships arrive in the Americas in the 1490s, this seems like the beginning of a whole new chapter of history – to Columbus, however, this was only the first step in the end of human history. When Europeans had first set foot on the new continent, they had also ushered in the Last Judgment of the World.

The Puritans

The term Puritanism designates various religious groups of the 16th and 17th centuries who were united in the belief that the Anglican Church had not gone far enough in breaking with the Roman Catholic Church. It’s important to note that these people (who, for most the time, didn’t call themselves “Puritans”) were not stigmatised outcasts – they participated in the daily political and religious life of 16th century England and were represented in Parliament. Still, one of their concerns was to purify the English church from Roman influences (hence, “Puritans”) – and from the beginning that was an agenda they wanted to pursue from within the state. It was only later, after several internal schisms and struggles, that some of them did indeed break away from the English state and the Anlican state church.

Belonging to this group were the Pilgrims – a group of Puritan dissenters from the English midlands who had migrated to Amsterdam in 1607/1608 to escape religious pressure back home in England. After some 10 years in their Dutch exile, the congregation of dissenters was starting to fall apart – some were even moving back to England. In order to preserve the congregation and also attracted by the possibility to do missionary work, thoughts of an oversea colony came up. This would not be the first English colony on American soil, of course – a colony had been founded in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia (and we also shortly hinted at the mysterious and spooky end of the colony in Roanoke, Virginia).

On September 6, 1620, finally, 102 members of the congregation set sail from the Netherlands, on board the Mayflower, and reached the American coast by the middle of November. They landed in present-day Massachusetts and founded Plymouth Colony.
The Plymouth group was comparatively small and tightly locked together – dissenters who went to the new world because the old world didn’t anywhere come close to offering them the religious and spiritual environment they sought for. As a group of migrants, the Plymouth pilgrims are often confused with a later and substantially larger group of Puritan emigrants.

After several smaller colonization attempts in the 1620s (one of them at Salem), the late 1620s saw other groups of Puritans depart from Europe, sail the Atlantic and found what became famously known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony – a relative mass migration setting in around, when governor John Winthrop (who was elected governor before the train even arrived at the American mainland) commanded a fleet to Massachusetts that would bring almost 1.000 Puritan settlers to the New World. They first settled around Salem, but soon relocated to what was later to become Boston. It was an exclusive community – political power in the colony could be shared only by those who where also full members of the congregation. They believed that mankind as a whole was under eternal damnation, but that a few had been chosen for salvation – the elect – and these few were consequently in a covenant with God. That covenant, or: contract, included that the elect had to take care that God’s laws were exercised in society.

Winthrop’s most famous and lasting contribution to the world of letters is the sermon he supposedly gave on board his ship, the Arbella, before the settlers disembarked. Most likely he gave the sermon when he and his fellow Puritans were still in Europe, but in any case it is an introductory sermon, setting the tone for the colonization enterprise these Puritans were about start. Originally, the sermon goes under the name of A Model of Christian Charity, but it is more widely renowned as the City upon a Hill sermon. In it, he is not talking at length about architecture and infrastructure of the new settlement, nor is he talking about building regulations or whatever: the city upon a hill comes in as a concluding image at the end of the sermon – he gives a very detailed list of the ideal virtues of the new settlers (such as charity), and then states that the colony will be to the world like a city upon a hill, that is out in the open, highly visible to everyone as a potential moral model and therefore under the obligation to be a moral model.

The following passage is taken from the very end of the text (and here is the complete text).


Now the onely way to avoyde this shipwracke, and to provide for our posterity, is to followe the counsell of Micah, to doe justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, wee must be knitt together, in this worke, as one man. Wee must entertaine each other in brotherly affection. Wee must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other's necessities. Wee must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekeness, gentlenes, patience and liberality. Wee must delight in eache other; make other's conditions our oune; rejoice together, mourne together, labour and suffer together, allwayes haueving before our eyes our commission and community in the worke, as members of the same body. Soe shall wee keepe the unitie of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his oune people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our wayes. Soe that wee shall see much more of his wisdome, power, goodness and truthe, than formerly wee haue been acquainted with. Wee shall finde that the God of Israell is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when hee shall make us a prayse and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "the Lord make it likely that of New England." For wee must consider that wee shall be as a citty upon a hill. The eies of all people are uppon us. Soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our God in this worke wee haue undertaken, and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. Wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of God, and all professors for God's sake. Wee shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into curses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whither wee are a goeing.
I shall shutt upp this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithfull servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israell, Deut. 30. Beloued there is now sett before us life and good, Death and evill, in that wee are commanded this day to loue the Lord our God, and to loue one another, to walke in his wayes and to keepe his Commandements and his Ordinance and his lawes, and the articles of our Covenant with him, that wee may liue and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may blesse us in the land whither wee goe to possesse it. But if our heartes shall turne away, soe that wee will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worshipp and serue other Gods, our pleasure and proffitts, and serue them; it is propounded unto us this day, wee shall surely perishe out of the good land whither wee passe over this vast sea to possesse it;

Therefore lett us choose life
that wee, and our seede
may liue, by obeyeing His
voyce and cleaveing to Him,
for Hee is our life and
our prosperity.

These good intentions – justice, mercy, love – lasted only a few years, if at all, before things started falling apart. Over the following few decades after Winthrop’s arrival in 1630, the Puritan community fell from grace step by step. Winthrop, alas, died in 1649, before things got really bad.

A short chronicle of the fall would include points like –

- Heresy: the Puritans’ strict interpretation of Protestant theology was soon expanded by heretics who revolted against it. The two most famous of these are Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) and Roger Williams (1603-1684). Hutchinson was an independent preacher who held bible classes in her home. She was very successful in it and soon became a notable influence on the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She was finally expelled from the colony in 1638. Williams, of course, was one of the founders of Providence, RI – a pastor and theologian, he arrived in 1631 and proved to be just a little more radical than the Puritan establishment in his complete renunciation of any links with the Anglican church. He also believed that the state was in no position to interfere with its citizens’ religious beliefs, and that put him at conflict with other Puritan leaders who, in their communities, established their religion as virtual state religions.

In the late 1640s, the colony in Rhode Island was established officially – and one of its almost revolutionary features was the liberty of conscience its inhabitants enjoyed: everyone could choose every religion he or she pleased, and the colony soon was home to groups of Baptists and Quakers, for example, who had been persecuted and driven away in other parts of the colonial American world. There was a constant rhetorical fight going on between the liberal Rhode Island Colony and the older colonies.


- War: as early as 1637, the settlers went into open war with the Native Americans of the site, the Pequots. During the Pequot War of 1637, the largest part of the tribe was killed, while survivors were sold as slaves to the West Indies.


- Dogmatic Sloppiness: the first generation of Puritan settlers had generally been very pious and devoted to their faith. Their descendants in the new world, the second and third generation Puritans, began to shift their interests to more secular areas, especially into commerce. The colonies, after all, were rich in resources, and exploiting these could easily be regarded as more attractive than Puritan piety and spirituality. The original idealism – that desire to be a city upon a hill, a religious beacon to the world, had quickly faded under the strain of reality, and believers had somehow to be brought back to discipline.

That was one of the motivations of Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705). A second-generation Puritan who had come to America in 1638, he was a minister, a medical doctor, and also a poet. By far his most popular work is the Day of Doom (1662 - see the link for the complete text, if you feel brave enough to read it), and we read parts of that. While it’s not exactly high-class poetry – in fact, it’s pretty boring in parts and somewhat long to read – it was incredibly popular in the 17th and 18th centuries and is generally hailed as the first American bestseller ever. He doesn’t do and say anything much in the poem, except:

- that things have gone really, really bad. The end is near, and you’d better believe it.
- that noone is going to get away with it. Everyone is guilty of sin against God, and everyone will have to pay.
- that there is hope only for the Saints to behave as piously as Puritans should.

Obviously, many Puritan settlers at the time felt that Wigglesworth was indeed right, that they had fallen to sin and that they had to reform their ways right away to avoid the worst, going to hell. Note that apocalypse/the day of doom is a very sudden and unexpected thing (it comes in the night) – there is no way to anticipate it. Its most interesting parts, to me, are revealed when Wigglesworth, the man, comes through and pushes away Wigglesworth, the die-hard Puritan rhetor on the end of the world. We talked about the following stanza -

All filthy facts, and secret acts,
however closly done,
And long conceal'd, are there reveal'd
before the mid-day Sun.
Deeds of the night shunning the light,
which darkest corners sought,
To fearful blame, and endless shame,
are there most justly brought.

Throughout the poem, he's almost consumed by guilt, literal, stone hard guilt gnawing at him before it gnaws at his audience - the "filthy deeds" are supposedly his before they are anyone else's. Where did a 17th century Puritan minister and teacher turn to when he wanted to discuss his apparent homosexual leanings? To his diary, of course.

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