During the Thanksgiving holidays, most people focus on the experiences and the legacy of the Pilgrims - they are, after all, a primary source for Thanksgiving traditions and mythology. At the same time, however, they were not the first settlers in the Americas nor were they the only ones to experience and survive serious hardship. Most have never really learned about the Dutch settlers and their colony of New Netherland - a region which was characterized by religious and social diversity.
Russell Shorto describes them as the "Un-Pilgrims" in The New York Times:
The contribution of these settlers has been overlooked because of that truest of truisms: history is written by the winners. The two great European rivals of the 17th century, the English and Dutch, each planted colonies in America. ... In fact, "Dutch" is something of a misnomer. The colony was Dutch, but more than half its residents were not. Then again, "Dutch" is very much the point. It wasn't accidental that Swedes, Germans, Jews and others flocked to this colony, for the Dutch Republic of the 17th century was itself built on a policy of tolerance that made it the melting pot of Europe.
The colony ranged across the Middle Atlantic region, covering parts of five future states. After the English takeover, its residents stayed and simply continued about their lives. This is the region that historians now see as the birthplace of religious pluralism in America: as the origin of the melting pot. ... The colony centered on Manhattan was always an unruly place. Almost from the start there were 18 languages spoken in the capital's few streets.
I never learned much about the Dutch colony while in school - evidently, most have assumed that there wasn't really much of a colony there in the first place. This impression is changing, however, as records of the colony are slowly being translated and released to the public. I'd like to learn more about this and I'll be watching for interesting books in the future...
Thanks for this. I find that it’s very true that the way history is often viewed gives a false impression of uber-homongeny, and this is strongly demonstrated in any claim of Xian history by people who haven’t actually put in the time to read up on it themselves.
I recently had a discussion where a person kept insisting the Bible was the product of what Christians collected and put together as the books were being written. I corrected him and explained there was no “Bible” until quite a bit AFTER “the books” had been written; that there was no consensus as to orthodox doctrine; there was plenty of debate about which books best suited which doctrines were being debated; and that the books and the doctrines were hammered out by internal dialogues, debates, fights, and sometimes brute force (where one party simply exercised authority to silence anyone who voiced dissent). There was no divine finger pointed to validate that the “winner” was somehow more “right.” There was no dictate to produce a Bible.
Surely there were writings considered authoritative because of who was believed to have written them; but for example, it would be an abuse for me to hand over a prescription from my doctor for an antibiotic to someone else. Just because my doctor is authorized to provide such recommendation and access to medicine does not mean that when she provides it _to me_, it’s intended for someone else–anyone else–as well. Books such as the epistles _sometimes_ included notes to share the text with other groups; but often no such instruction is included. The point would be that even if Paul had written a letter to the Corinthians with divine instruction from god, who could later claim authority to bind anyone BUT the ancient Corinthians to whatever is contained in the letter? It was addressed to them, and meant to address their specific issues and problems.
To claim that the Corinthians, or Peter, or anyone in early Christianity called these letters “scripture” (authoritative religious texts), does nothing to imply or command that anyone but the disclosed recipients should be concerned with their content.
But the fact is, people tried to apply these half-correspondences (we don’t usually have the letters to which the apostles are responding) to everyone for all time, and it’s a mess–and for good reason. I don’t have a record of the original questions to Paul, so I don’t know what his reply is actually in reference to. And I’m trying to apply advice to someone else living in another time and place to myself today. The myth that this is easy, is just that–a myth.
And it, no wonder, resulted in much dissention in the early Church. Even Paul wrote that he hotly disputed Peter on the treatment of nonJews in the early Christian church. If the apostles record they couldn’t agree and that doctrine wasn’t even clear to them–being, as is assumed, in contact with god’s divine understanding of the issues–why do Christians, by and large, think there was some sort of linear, clear, undisputed path to what they consider to be “Christianity” today? Christianity today, in fact, is the result of a hodge-podge of powerplays and infighting that resulted in rules made and enforced by the most powerful, but not necessarily the most “right.”
I recall a preacher telling me he “had to believe” that god had a hand in producing the Bible. That’s no different than saying, “I don’t care if there’s no real means of defending it’s so, I just _have_ to believe god directed it.” Certainly anyone has a right to think that way and express it. But don’t talk to me about “truth” if you aren’t actually interested in whether or not history or the facts support your assumptions and unsupported opions. You don’t care about truth, in that case, you care about continuing to defend an indefensible doctrine.
RE Tracieh’s comment, and the whole subject of the source of the Christian “mythology”, here’s an Acharya S/D.M. Murdock “Freethought Nation” Site page with a lot of info RE the history of religions in general, and in particular (near the top of the page; under “Message”)…a free, updated pdf file promo for an upcoming (2010) book, which encapsulates her rather scholarly take on the subject; entitled:
“The Origins of Christianity”.
Basically, as some of you may already know, her rather extensive research on the subject reveals that there’s a WHOLE lot of myth and outright fraud in the amazingly tangled history of the Christian…
fantasy.
Check it out?:
http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2946
I’m in the middle of a history book by David Hackett Fischer called “Albion’s Seed: Four Folkways in America”. The first 25% of it is about the Puritan settlement of New England (nothing to do with “un-pilgrims”, other than the era and area). I highly recommend this book for an understanding of the religous underpinnings of American culture. I really had no idea what zealots the Puritans were. It was they who planted the seeds of religious fundamentalism which haunt us today. American schoolchildren are taught that Puritans left England “to escape religious persecution” as if they were innocent victims of unwarranted persecution. They were religious extremists. In one example provided by Fischer, a baby pig was born which had a deformity which resembled a particular person’s deformity. They accused the poor man of bestiality and executed him. They imposed their twisted logic on everyone and removed all non-conformists by one method or another. They attempted eugenics by forming a colony which did not accept any members from the underclasses to create a society without a lower class. Anyone who appeared ready to create a new underclass (through laziness, crime, etc.) was excised from the group. It was brutal and cruel and devoid of most of the joys that I hold dear (music, games, leisure, overindulgence).